Iranians during a gathering at Zaventem airport in Brussels
A group of people have held a gathering in Zaventem airport in Brussels on Monday to stop the expulsion of two Iranian refugees by the Belgian government.
The demonstrators held the gathering to prevent Mohammadreza Hamian and Alireza Hesam, both 22, to be sent home after their asylum application was rejected in December despite their attempts to gather as many documents as possible.
The men had arrived in Belgium after taking part in anti-government protests against the clerical rulers in Iran. However, they now fear for their lives.
“We have been in a closed reception center for 80 days, and no one hears our voice,” one of them told RTBF, the Belgian Radio-television of the French Community.
"The whole world knows what is happening in Iran for a few months. We were in the streets asking for freedom. The whole world knows what we risk if we go back to Iran ," they told RTBF from the center.
“Returning to Iran equals death, like what happened to many other young people like us in Iran ,” they say.
A Monday flight will take them to Turkey, and then they might be sent back to Iran.
Ali Amerian, the lawyer of these two asylum seekers, and Darya Safaei, an Iranian member of the Belgian Parliament, have asked the government to stop their deportation.
Nicole de Moor, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration said “asylum is really reserved for those who fear individual persecution, which was not the case for these two people, according to the independent analysis of our asylum authorities.”