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Germany: Deportation without papers

01 September 1999

In August the Hamburg Foreigners Authority (FA) came under attack for its illegal deportation practices, when the interior senator Hartmuth Wrocklage (SPD, Sozialistische Partei Deutschland's) issued a decree saying that the main hindrance to deportations was the existence of medical certificates, which were obviously issued by doctors on false grounds. Since then, Hamburg has started overruling doctor's warnings of ill health and suicidal tendencies by employing its own medical officers, who issue "fit for travel" documents in order to enable deportations of unhealthy or seriously depressed asylum seekers.

A similar practice has now been extended to asylum seekers whose identity and therefore country of origin is unknown. At the end of August, it was made public that the Hamburg FA had started "identifying" refugees from Africa with the help of diplomats from the Ivory Coast "in order to create the preconditions for the swift return to their country of origin", said spokesman Norbert Smekal. The FA issued a notice of attendance to around 180 African refugees who were not in possession of papers. Of the 49 who turned up, 33 were then identified by a representative of the embassy. By what criteria he "identified" them was not clear.

Once in the building the refugees realised that they had practically been taken into detention for deportation, and started to demolish the waiting room and attempted to block a prison van which was about to take those "identified" to the detention centre. They are now facing criminal prosecution. Wrocklage opined that these were "unjustified attacks" and assured that the "authority would fulfil its duties with.. persistence".

The practices of the Swiss Fedral Office for Refugees (BFF) and the Zurich ForeignerÆs Police (Frepo) are run in conjunction with Swiss embassies in Ghana and the Ivory Coast (see Statewatch vol 9 no 3 & 4). Moreover, embassies and security services of the countries which refugees are trying to escape from are being contacted by European authorities in order to enforce deportations.

CARF no 52 (October/November) 1999; taz 30.8.99.