Prague, Aug 5 (CTK) – A total of 765 foreigners applied for Czech asylum in the first half of 2016, which is 19 fewer than in the first half of 2015, according to the Interior Ministry’s report, which said the citizens of Ukraine and Iraq prevailed among the asylum seekers.
The applications lodged by Ukrainians and Iraqis made about a half of all applications, the ministry said.
Ukrainians have been the strongest group of Czech asylum seekers for a long time. They lodged 246 applications from January to June, which is 134 fewer than in the first half of 2015.
Unlike them, the Iraqis were not among the top ten most frequent asylum seekers last year, but they lodged 131 applications in the first half of 2016.
This increase can be ascribed to a Czech NGO’s project of resettling Christian refugees from Iraq.
The first 89 refugees came to the Czech Republic within the programme in the past months, but the government scrapped the programme after a part of the resettled refugees left the Czech Republic for Germany and others returned to Iraq.
Unlike last year, Chinese have been among the most frequent seekers of Czech asylum in the first half of 2016.
They lodged 64 applications. Daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) wrote earlier this week that these applicants were Christians who face persecution over their faith in China.
The number of applications lodged by Cubans, Syrians and Vietnamese exceeded 30 in the case of each of the three nationalities.
According to the ministry’s statistics, Czech asylum was granted to 131 people in the first half of 2016.
Another 72 were granted subsidiary protection that is granted for a definite period, unlike asylum, and is mainly granted to the people who failed to gain asylum but face danger if they returned to their homeland.
A total of 530 applications were turned down and 602 still remained unsettled by the end of June.
In 2015, a total of 1,525 foreigners applied for Czech asylum, an increase by 369 against the previous year.
In 2010-2013, the annual number of asylum seekers stayed below 1,000 but a total of several hundreds was no exception.
Exceptional was the year 2001 with more than 18,000 applications.
