Kurdish mother of two violently forced out of Denmark

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Kurdish woman was expelled from Denmark alongside two of her children on Monday, following the use of excessive physical force by Danish authorities during her attempted deportation back to Iran.

Qadam Kher Haqanizadeh, a refugee from Kermanshah province in western Iran (Rojhelat), was dragged out of one of Denmark’s refugee camps, a place she had been calling home for several years, in the early morning hours of Monday by agents of the Danish deportation authorities.

The woman and two of her sons had arrived at Istanbul Airport in Turkey when Danish authorities contacted her husband, Sirus Azizizadeh, and gave him two options: to either accept the authorities’ money and return to Iran, or to never see his wife and children again. Sirus had already turned the offer down multiple times in the past. 

Sirus was also detained by the authorities and is currently imprisoned along with his infant in a room 40 meters away from the camp they were sheltering in. 

“At five in the morning on March 28, 2022, nearly 20 people stormed the house without knocking and claimed to be from the Danish deportation services, without showing any identification… I wasn’t aware of Qadam Kher, I don’t know what happened,” Sirus told Rudaw on Thursday.

Witnesses from the scene reported that Qadam Kher fell to the ground as she was fending off the authorities who were trying to force her into a vehicle. Qadam Kher was then handcuffed and pushed inside a minivan.

Sirus was contacted again by the same number later on, and was given the chance to speak to his wife. Qadam Kher told Sirus that she was sedated in Denmark and had only regained consciousness in Turkey. Qadam Kher then showed her husband the bruises she says were caused by the violent treatment by the Danish forces. 

Khalil Azizi, Qadam Kher’s cousin who also lives in Denmark, told Rudaw that he was able to contact Qadam Kher while she was at the airport in Istanbul and he could see her face was covered in blood as she resisted boarding the plane back to Iran. When the other passengers saw the way Qadam Kher was being forced onto the plane, they immediately reacted and prevented them from boarding her and sending her back to Iran.

Qadam Kher and her two sons have been sent back to Denmark where she is currently receiving treatment at a Danish hospital. As of Thursday, Sirus has not yet been able to see his spouse. The sons claim that their mother’s injuries and persistence, sparking outrage among the other passengers, is what prevented them from being deported back to Iran.

Sirus and his family left their home in Kermanshah’s Sarpel Zahaw district in 2014. The family first migrated to Turkey where they stayed in a city near Ankara for 15 months, before reaching out to the United Nations’ Migration department, claiming that they could not go back to their own country as their lives were in danger.

As soon as European countries began accepting refugees in 2015, Sirus illegally entered Denmark after travelling through a number of countries, while Qadam Kher and her sons entered the country using their passports. The passports are what have been causing problems for Qadam Kher, as Danish authorities claim that if they were truly in danger in their home country, they would not have been able to travel using passports.

The family has lived in Denmark for the last seven years, but their petition for asylum was rejected in 2017.

Sirus, who was a blacksmith back in his hometown, was arrested by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence in 2014, under the pretext of being connected to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). Sirus’ father was hanged in 1984 after being accused of providing help to the party, while Qadam Kher’s father, an active member of the party, was shot and killed in 1985.

“Due to the fact that our fathers were members of the party, they would blame us whenever something happened in the area,” said Sirus.

The KDPI is a Kurdish party that has waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

There is very little access to timely data on immigration and deportation in Denmark, but the country has been actively restricting their migration agenda adopting nearly 70 legal amendments tightening immigration laws from 2015 to 2018. The Danish Prime Minister stated in 2021 that their goal is to receive ‘zero’ asylum seekers.

“The country’s first instance refugee recognition rate has plunged, from 85 percent in 2015 to 36 percent in 2017,” stated a report from The Global Detention Project.

Denmark received 30,000 refugees from Syria in 2015, according to North Press Agency, but has since canceled the residence permits of over 350 people from the Damascus region with over 400 other files being reviewed, as it has declared Damascus to be a “safe area.”

“She doesn’t deserve to be arrested. I’m afraid that at any moment they could arrest my children and deport them,” said Sirus.