Germany - France - Guinea - Benin.... : transnational resistance against deportations

On the 16th of august 2007, six french policemen were beaten up at the airport in Conakry/Guinea, when they delivered two deportees. Not only the two deported Guineans, who had taken part in a hungerstrike of sans papiers in Lille, and some of the passengers, who protested against mistreatment of the deportees, were involved, but also two Guinean policemen. This caused a lot of diplomatic troubles.

Similar problems were created by a dubious delegation from Guinea which came to Germany for the fourth time, after visits in Switzerland, France and on the Canary Islands, to "identify" African refugees in order to enable their deportation. Protests in Germany and Guinea resulted in a declaration of the new Guinean government on the 27th of august to suspend all measures of identification and deportation until a bilateral agreement is signed.

Also a charter deportation on the 10th of september from Hamburg to Togo and Benin caused diplomatic problems, because the German authorities wanted to deport a Liberian to Benin, without having valid papers from this country. Before, they wanted to put him on board a plane of Air France, where trade unionists are campaigning against deportations and denounced the collaboration even with German authorities. The Liberian was released some days before the charter deportation - thanks to all these transnational protests.