Roma campaign against deportation and for residency
01 November 2002
The situation of Roma in Germany has always been precarious, with continuing threat of deportation and institutional racism and racist attacks against them. Since 27 April 2002, around 500 Roma have been travelling across Germany in a protest and awareness raising Caravan. They first put up their tents in Essen in June to protest against their deportation to the former Yugoslavia. The camp and caravan are part of a campaign supported by the German asylum organisation Pro Asyl under the slogan "Here to Stay! Right to Residency". The campaign is demanding a federal residency regulation for all refugees who have lived as families with children on "tolerated" (Dildung) status for more than three years or as individuals for more than five years. The right to residency campaign is supported by all regional refugee councils, charities and churches.
The camp has been going for six months and conditions at the site are reported to be difficult. The humanitarian organisations which were providing food have ceased as they view it as the city council's responsibility. There has been racist verbal abuse from local residents and media coverage is mixed, sometimes inciting fear and hatred. People have very little money and some have fallen ill. Roma on the site are living in fear of imminent deportation, and two people have already been arrested whilst attending the Foreign Affairs Office to renew their permits to stay in Germany. On 17 July, they were deported back to Belgrade despite protests.
Protests outside the camp are continuing as well. On 18 November, around fifty Roma refugees occupied the regional offices of the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS) in Berlin and protests are being held in front of political party offices all over the country. But the deportations are continuing. At the beginning of November the Berlin Refugee Council reported an unlawful deportation that led to the separation of a family. The eight-year-old son remained in Berlin whilst his parents and siblings were deported, despite their pending asylum claims.
On 16 September, the Berlin Refugee Council said that:
In the face of the reality that the [readmission] agreement in particular entails the deportation of Roma, who have been living in Germany as refugees from war for many years, that the racist oppression and exclusion in Yugoslavia is continuing and that it is still impossible for the Roma to secure a social and economic existence because they are denied access to housing, work, education and legal protection, it borders on hate crime, when Interior Minister Otto Schily defines those affected by the agreement merely as "illegal migrants from the Balkan region". Not least the historical responsibility of Germany in the face of more than 500,000 Roma and Sinti having been murdered by the Nazis in Germany and Eastern Europe, demands not to accelerate their deportation but instead to at last create a generous and effective residency regulation, which does
not grant a "tolerated" status for a few weeks but which entails a permanent and secure residency status with the right to housing, the right to education and work as well as funds for social integration, that is education, language and employment courses, and child and parental support.
Anti-Roma racism reached its height in 1989-1990 when most of the hostility was aimed at Romany immigrants who had fled similar mistreatment in Eastern Europe. On 2 October 1989, for example, Hamburg police tried to displace a number of recently arrived Roma who were camped out at the site of the former Neuengamme concentration camp. Some of the Roma who were attacked by police in full riot gear were survivors of the Holocaust.
For more information on the camp: C.I.A.E. Roma-Union e.V. (Centre of Integration, Affirmation and Emancipation of the Roma in Germany) Spokesman: Dzoni Sichelschmidt Tel: 00 49 (0)178-2836880 or Dsichelschmidt@t-online.de. and http:// zone.noborder.org/ On the need for a secure