THE deportation of children who were denied asylum in Austria during the coronavirus pandemic has caused protests and tension in the country’s governing coalition between anti-immigration conservatives and leftist Greens.

Some 160 protesters set up a roadblock at a deportation detention centre on the outskirts of Vienna in the early hours of Thursday to stop police from driving three girls to the airport to be deported, police said in a statement.

The demonstrators included several parliamentarians from the Green party, the junior coalition partner of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s People’s Party.

Officers broke up the protest and the girls were flown to Armenia and Georgia.

The Greens sharply criticised that minors are forced to leave the country during the pandemic.

“It is inhumane and irresponsible that well-integrated girls were deported in the morning hours,’’ Green Vice Chancellor Werner Kogler said in a statement.

Kogler criticised that the Interior Ministry went ahead with the flights even though tough conservative Interior Minister Karl Nehammer had promised to look into the cases.

The deportations also made national headlines because classmates of one of the girls, a 12-year-old born in Austria with Georgian roots, inaugurated an online petition and gathered outside the detention centre on Wednesday to bid farewell to her and her five-year-old sister.

The siblings and their mother were deported on Thursday, while their father, who lives and works in neighbouring Slovakia, stayed behind.

A high school student with Armenian roots was also deported in spite a campaign on her behalf. – dpa/NAN

– Jan. 28, 2021 @ 3;51 GMT \