Immigration - in brief (10)
01 May 2005
Germany. Courts challenge authorities' orders to deport Imams: Germany's new immigration law, which came into force on 1 January this year (see
Statewatch vol 15 no 2), introduced increased powers to expel so-called "hate preachers" with accelerated deportation procedures. Now an immediately effective deportation order by the city of Berlin against the Berlin based Turkish Imam Yakup T., which was initially confirmed by the Regional Constitutional Court of Berlin, has been revoked by the Germany's Federal Constitutional Court. The Federal Court thought the order lacked "findings based on facts" and ruled that Yakup T.'s fundamental right to legal recourse had been violated. Further, the court found that it had not been proven that the Imam had called on people to carry out suicide attacks, thereby confirming that the issuing of immediately effective deportation orders required considerable proof. Another Imam who was deported from Bremen recently won his appeal with the Regional Administrative Court of Bremen, which ruled that he was allowed to return to Germany to appeal against his deportation order there.
Süddeutsche Zeitung 15.4.05, 24.6.05.
Italy/Spain/Libya/Morocco: Deaths in the Mediterranean: A 5-metre long boat carrying 27 "illegal" migrants sank in the Channel of Sicily, 60 miles off the Libyan coast, on 24 May 2005. Two corpses were found, eleven people were rescued by a fishing boat, and 14 others disappeared. Twelve migrants (six women and six small children) died after the dinghy in which they were seeking to reach Spain sank off the Moroccan coast after setting off from near Tangiers on 13 June 2005 - the dinghy had a capacity for ten people but was carrying around 90. Most of the occupants managed to swim to safety after the shipwreck, and there were pregnant women among the survivors. Increasing numbers of pregnant women and very young children are part of these dangerous sea-crossing. Some members of the Moroccan security forces were arrested in relation to bribes that they were allegedly paid in order to dissuade them from stopping the vessel's departure. Four border guards were reportedly paid 8,500 Euro. On 15 June 2005, the dead body of a pregnant sub-Saharan women was found floating 5 miles off the coast of Mogán, in the south-west of the island of Gran Canaria. On 4 July 2005, a Saudi Arabian stowaway was found dead in a boat that arrived in the catalan port of Tarragona from the Ivory Coast. On 19 July 2005, the
Asociación de Trabajadores e Inmigrantes Marroquíes en España (ATIME, Association of Moroccan Workers and Migrants in Spain) announced that since the start of 2005, 163 people have died or disappeared in the territorial waters of Maghreb countries while they travelled in dinghies. At a press conference in Seville, the association's president Kamal Rahmouni stressed that this figure is "far lower" than the real one and provided a break-down:
126 deaths have been confirmed, 62 of which were in Tunisia, 37 in Algeria, 15 in Aaiún (Western Sahara) and 12 in Tangiers (Morocco), whereas 37 would-be migrants have disappeared at sea.
Corriere della Sera, 25.5.05; El Mundo, 7.7.05; El País, 13, 15.6.05; Sur, 16.6.05.Infoapdha 20.7.05.