Germany: Asylum seeker threatened with deportation without court hearing
01 November 2000
After the prosecution of Cornelius Yufanyi, a member of the German based human rights organisation The Voice e.V. Africa Forum the German authorities have issued a deportation order and arrested another member of the organisation, which hosted the Refugee Congress in Jena in May this year (see Statewatch vol 10 no 2 & 5). The Nigerian human rights activist and member of the United Democratic Front of Nigeria (UDFN), Akubuo Anusonwu Chukwudi, played a pivotal role in the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, which toured over 40 German cities in 1998 in protest at the inhumane treatment of refugees and migrants in Germany. On 20 November, minutes after Akubuo had entered the premises, police stormed the offices of the Bremen based International Human Rights Association (IMRV) and arrested him. Akubuo has since gone into hunger-strike. This is the second attempt to deport the asylum-seeker who seems to have become a thorn in the side of the German authorities despite their recent pledge to support anti-racist struggles in response to far-right violence and an increase in its media coverage.
The first time the German authorities tried to deport Akubuo was directly after he took part in the Caravan, which lasted five weeks and uncovered the extent of isolation, impoverishment and racist attacks suffered by asylum seekers in hostels throughout Germany. His deportation was prevented at the last minute after international protests and the intervention of Nigerian human rights activists. Hours before his deportation, the administrative court in Schwerin ordered the deportation to be stopped on the grounds that he was facing a possible danger to his life in Nigeria, and adjourned a decision on his case after a full hearing. Akubuo is a former leader of a Lagos based opposition group which is targeted by the Nigerian government. In Germany, he continued his political activism, took part in information campaigns on the human rights situation in Nigeria and criticised the human rights situation of refugees and migrants in Germany. Despite the continued deportation threat, Akubuo campaigned against the living conditions in German asylum seekers homes, including his own, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Campaigners argue that it is not a coincidence the authorities are targeting Akubuo for deportation without allowing an open hearing of his case. The administrative court in Schwerin cancelled the deportation stop in July 2000, thereby reverting its 1998 decision, without prior warning or explanation. Akubuo's supporters argue that he had been a nuisance in the eyes of the so-called foreigner police in the Landkreis of Parchim for a long time. His campaigning activities brought him in conflict with the regional authorities: when he initiated and won the campaign for asylum seekers who had been resident in Germany for three years to receive their meagre living allowances in cash instead of kind (an asylum regulation which the Parchim district failed to follow), the regional authorities excluded Akubuo from the new arrangements. Whereas his fellow residents now receive their payments in cash, Akubuo was refused cash and continued to be paid in vouchers. This, and other incidents, has led supporters to believe that this most recent deportation threat must be seen in the context of political activism, rather than merely another arbitrary asylum decision.
Another irregularity in the proceedings is the timing of the deportation order: the human rights situation in Nigeria is currently deteriorating so that even the administrative court in Hanover, which has not decided in favour of a Nigerian asylum seeker for over five years, had to concede that it could not reach a decision on the asylum case of Sunny Omwenyeke, another member of The Voice, until further evidence on the political situation in Nigeria was gathered from Amnesty International and the German Foreign Office in Nigeria. Campaigners point to the similarities between Aku