http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/germ-o02_prn.shtml
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
Germany deports 50,000 immigrants a year
By Elizabeth Zimmerman
2 October 2003
The current policy in Germany of widespread detention of those awaiting
deportation was introduced when the right of asylum, originally
guaranteed in the German constitution of 1949, was largely abolished in
1993. The imprisonment of asylum-seekers is based on paragraph 57 of
the Aliens Act, a paragraph with a long and terrible tradition. Its
forerunner was paragraph 7 of the Aliens Police Regulation, which goes
back to the days of Nazi rule, and was in force from 1938 to 1965,
enabling the forcible deportation of foreigners who refused to leave
the country voluntarily. Detention pending deportation served to
prepare and effect this measure.
Today, any foreigner residing in Germany without legal immigration
status can be arrested and placed in detention pending deportation.
This includes refugees who are refused asylum, civil war refugees whose
right to remain has not been extended, and immigrants in the broadest
sense, who either entered Germany without a valid visa or whose
residence permit has expired.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the law has allowed the detention of
such people, in order to procure passports or travel documents before
deporting them. Those affected are in a desperate situation lacking any
recourse. The reason for their arrest is not any criminal offence they
have committed, but restrictive German laws that turn them into
“illegal immigrants.” Moreover, deportation detention can drag on for
up to 18 months. During this time, people threatened with deportation
are almost completely cut off of from the external world and can
neither seek legal advice nor—if they prefer to leave the country
“voluntarily”—even obtain their departure papers.
The Berlin Initiative Against Deportations has recently documented how
many people are affected and, citing individual examples, has shown the
desperate situation of many of those arrested.
According to the Initiative, over 50,000 migrants and asylum-seekers
are deported from Germany each year, most of them by plane. Each day,
130 to 140 are returned to the conditions from which they fled—civil
war, political persecution, dire economic hardship and regimes that
suppress ethnic minorities and women.
Deportees are frequently accompanied by the paramilitary German Border
Police or private security agents, who are prepared to use force. Those
who resist are beaten, restrained and injected with drugs. A number
have already been killed, but the culprits and the authorities
responsible have so far escaped prosecution. The dead and abused
refugees and immigrants are consciously accepted as the price of a
brutal deportation practice.
Since 1993, 99 people have taken their own lives or died trying to
avoid deportation, 45 while in detention.
In 2000, more than 7,000 were taken into detention in Berlin; at any
one time there were about 50 women and 250 men being held. In 2001,
there were over 5,000 in detention in the city. Those arrested are
between 16 and 65 years old. Pregnant woman are detained in hospital
six weeks before they are due to give birth. German objections to the
UN Rights of the Child Convention mean that minors can also be detained
and deported without an accompanying adult. Those aged 16 years and
over count as refugees and are subject to the restrictive asylum law.
They are also prohibited from seeking training and work.
The massive introduction of deportation detention is a part of the
dismantling of democratic rights and the almost complete abolition of
the right of asylum in Germany. It is part of a system of state
deterrence and intimidation.
For 10 years, detention facilities in North Rhine-Westphalia have been
used to hold those facing deportation. According to official figures,
in 2002 the biggest detention facility in Bueren held on average 599
detainees at any one time, most of them for many months. On one day in
April, seven young people under 18 years old were being held in
detention in Bueren, and four at another facility in Moers.
Deportation detainees frequently resort to desperate acts to protest
their imprisonment. On July 31, Hueseyin Dikic set himself on fire when
faced with deportation to Turkey. He died recently as a result of his
injuries.
It is no wonder that those taken into detention to ensure their
deportation from Germany, and are then exposed to subhuman prison
conditions and mistreated by the guards, try to resist. In the Berlin
detention facility, there have been several hunger strikes.
Sixty-eight prisoners took part in the last hunger strike at the end of
January, predominantly emigrants from Russian-speaking countries and
India. Their demands included the immediate release of those who could
not be deported for legal reasons but who had nevertheless spent more
than six months in detention, an end to inhumane treatment by the
guards, and an improvement in their intolerable hygienic conditions.
A March 11 report in the Frankfurter Rundschau exposed the situation
for those in deportation detention: before the fall of the Berlin Wall,
“the Gruenauer building was a women’s prison. Since 1995, the Berlin
city government has jailed accommodated those awaiting deportation
there. It is a collection centre for those who are now stranded and who
wanted a better life for themselves in Germany, but were prevented from
remaining in the country. Like Larissa from Azerbaijan, a woman of 34,
who has lived in Germany for 10 years, with some interruptions. In
Hanover and Berlin she worked illegally looking after old people at
home. Her mobile phone rang and an old woman asked whether she could
come today. But Larissa cannot, she is sitting in detention.”
Another detainee, who features in the report, is a student from
Moldavia who has attempted suicide in the past. He is now free, but is
required to leave the country. He expects to be deported to Moldavia at
any time. He has no legal possibility of entering Germany again. If he
nevertheless tried to, the German government would ask him to pay 60
euros per day for holding him in deportation detention. That is as much
as he could earn as a bookkeeper in a month in Moldavia, if he could
get at a job there.
Desperate living conditions in their home countries push people again
and again to risk mortal danger to emigrate. The reaction of the German
authorities and politicians, whether in Berlin or elsewhere, is to
sharpen the policy of deterrence.
The governing SPD (German Social Democratic Party) and the Greens, as
well as the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism, governing in a state
coalition with the SPD in Berlin), have no other answer to the social
and political problems bound up with immigration than to intensify
repression. They attempt to save money for the state coffers by
increasing the use of private security agencies to carry out the dirty
work in the detention facilities.
Germany’s conservative parties also adopted repressive immigration
measures, but the situation facing asylum-seekers and immigrants has
worsened considerably since the SPD and Greens entered government in
1998 and were re-elected in 2002. Although the number of asylum-seekers
has declined to an historic low due to the restrictive laws and
deterrence measures employed by the federal and state governments,
deportations have increased—even of those with families who have lived
in Germany for a long time.
Those migrants who have work, whose children were born here and go to
school, or are undertaking an apprenticeship and are fully integrated
into society, can also face deportation. A sinister statement issued in
December 2001 makes clear that this is the declared policy of the
Social Democratic-Green Party government: “The government will also in
future undertake all steps required to safely and securely return
foreigners subject to deportation—if necessary, also against their
will.”
Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : Germany
Germany deports 50,000 immigrants a year
By Elizabeth Zimmerman
2 October 2003
The current policy in Germany of widespread detention of those awaiting
deportation was introduced when the right of asylum, originally
guaranteed in the German constitution of 1949, was largely abolished in
1993. The imprisonment of asylum-seekers is based on paragraph 57 of
the Aliens Act, a paragraph with a long and terrible tradition. Its
forerunner was paragraph 7 of the Aliens Police Regulation, which goes
back to the days of Nazi rule, and was in force from 1938 to 1965,
enabling the forcible deportation of foreigners who refused to leave
the country voluntarily. Detention pending deportation served to
prepare and effect this measure.
Today, any foreigner residing in Germany without legal immigration
status can be arrested and placed in detention pending deportation.
This includes refugees who are refused asylum, civil war refugees whose
right to remain has not been extended, and immigrants in the broadest
sense, who either entered Germany without a valid visa or whose
residence permit has expired.
Since the beginning of the 1990s, the law has allowed the detention of
such people, in order to procure passports or travel documents before
deporting them. Those affected are in a desperate situation lacking any
recourse. The reason for their arrest is not any criminal offence they
have committed, but restrictive German laws that turn them into
“illegal immigrants.” Moreover, deportation detention can drag on for
up to 18 months. During this time, people threatened with deportation
are almost completely cut off of from the external world and can
neither seek legal advice nor—if they prefer to leave the country
“voluntarily”—even obtain their departure papers.
The Berlin Initiative Against Deportations has recently documented how
many people are affected and, citing individual examples, has shown the
desperate situation of many of those arrested.
According to the Initiative, over 50,000 migrants and asylum-seekers
are deported from Germany each year, most of them by plane. Each day,
130 to 140 are returned to the conditions from which they fled—civil
war, political persecution, dire economic hardship and regimes that
suppress ethnic minorities and women.
Deportees are frequently accompanied by the paramilitary German Border
Police or private security agents, who are prepared to use force. Those
who resist are beaten, restrained and injected with drugs. A number
have already been killed, but the culprits and the authorities
responsible have so far escaped prosecution. The dead and abused
refugees and immigrants are consciously accepted as the price of a
brutal deportation practice.
Since 1993, 99 people have taken their own lives or died trying to
avoid deportation, 45 while in detention.
In 2000, more than 7,000 were taken into detention in Berlin; at any
one time there were about 50 women and 250 men being held. In 2001,
there were over 5,000 in detention in the city. Those arrested are
between 16 and 65 years old. Pregnant woman are detained in hospital
six weeks before they are due to give birth. German objections to the
UN Rights of the Child Convention mean that minors can also be detained
and deported without an accompanying adult. Those aged 16 years and
over count as refugees and are subject to the restrictive asylum law.
They are also prohibited from seeking training and work.
The massive introduction of deportation detention is a part of the
dismantling of democratic rights and the almost complete abolition of
the right of asylum in Germany. It is part of a system of state
deterrence and intimidation.
For 10 years, detention facilities in North Rhine-Westphalia have been
used to hold those facing deportation. According to official figures,
in 2002 the biggest detention facility in Bueren held on average 599
detainees at any one time, most of them for many months. On one day in
April, seven young people under 18 years old were being held in
detention in Bueren, and four at another facility in Moers.
Deportation detainees frequently resort to desperate acts to protest
their imprisonment. On July 31, Hueseyin Dikic set himself on fire when
faced with deportation to Turkey. He died recently as a result of his
injuries.
It is no wonder that those taken into detention to ensure their
deportation from Germany, and are then exposed to subhuman prison
conditions and mistreated by the guards, try to resist. In the Berlin
detention facility, there have been several hunger strikes.
Sixty-eight prisoners took part in the last hunger strike at the end of
January, predominantly emigrants from Russian-speaking countries and
India. Their demands included the immediate release of those who could
not be deported for legal reasons but who had nevertheless spent more
than six months in detention, an end to inhumane treatment by the
guards, and an improvement in their intolerable hygienic conditions.
A March 11 report in the Frankfurter Rundschau exposed the situation
for those in deportation detention: before the fall of the Berlin Wall,
“the Gruenauer building was a women’s prison. Since 1995, the Berlin
city government has jailed accommodated those awaiting deportation
there. It is a collection centre for those who are now stranded and who
wanted a better life for themselves in Germany, but were prevented from
remaining in the country. Like Larissa from Azerbaijan, a woman of 34,
who has lived in Germany for 10 years, with some interruptions. In
Hanover and Berlin she worked illegally looking after old people at
home. Her mobile phone rang and an old woman asked whether she could
come today. But Larissa cannot, she is sitting in detention.”
Another detainee, who features in the report, is a student from
Moldavia who has attempted suicide in the past. He is now free, but is
required to leave the country. He expects to be deported to Moldavia at
any time. He has no legal possibility of entering Germany again. If he
nevertheless tried to, the German government would ask him to pay 60
euros per day for holding him in deportation detention. That is as much
as he could earn as a bookkeeper in a month in Moldavia, if he could
get at a job there.
Desperate living conditions in their home countries push people again
and again to risk mortal danger to emigrate. The reaction of the German
authorities and politicians, whether in Berlin or elsewhere, is to
sharpen the policy of deterrence.
The governing SPD (German Social Democratic Party) and the Greens, as
well as the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism, governing in a state
coalition with the SPD in Berlin), have no other answer to the social
and political problems bound up with immigration than to intensify
repression. They attempt to save money for the state coffers by
increasing the use of private security agencies to carry out the dirty
work in the detention facilities.
Germany’s conservative parties also adopted repressive immigration
measures, but the situation facing asylum-seekers and immigrants has
worsened considerably since the SPD and Greens entered government in
1998 and were re-elected in 2002. Although the number of asylum-seekers
has declined to an historic low due to the restrictive laws and
deterrence measures employed by the federal and state governments,
deportations have increased—even of those with families who have lived
in Germany for a long time.
Those migrants who have work, whose children were born here and go to
school, or are undertaking an apprenticeship and are fully integrated
into society, can also face deportation. A sinister statement issued in
December 2001 makes clear that this is the declared policy of the
Social Democratic-Green Party government: “The government will also in
future undertake all steps required to safely and securely return
foreigners subject to deportation—if necessary, also against their
will.”
Copyright 1998-2003
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved