Deported — Season 1, Episode 1: War children
Documentary • 44 min • 1 season, 4 episodes
Episode synopsis
In the first part, director Floris-Jan van Luyn shows what remains of dreams for the future when children are forced to return to countries with armed conflict. Journalist Sinan Can visits Ahmed (14), who was deported with his family from Dronten to the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. The oil-rich city is the new front line in a new round of fighting in Iraq, and the violence is frighteningly close. Can also travels to Kabul, Afghanistan. There, Ali (12) and his family live in daily fear, having been threatened by the Taliban since their deportation. Maryam (20) suffers the same fate. Now that violence is flaring up in Afghanistan, she and her family are seen as Western collaborators.
About Deported
This is a four part series on the fate of deported children of asylum-seekers in the Netherlands. Over the past ten years, many hundreds of children have been deported to countries they have little or no memory of, their parents having sought political asylum in the Netherlands but ultimately been rejected, leaving them the choice of leaving voluntarily in exchange for money or being forcibly deported by the Dutch government. Politically responsible administrators guaranteed that these children would be fine in the country of their parents. But virtually nothing is known about what actually happened to them after their deportation. This series tells the story of deported children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, and Kosovo.