Prison for Freedom of Movement in Thueringen Germany

Felix Otto, a Camerunian protest against his imprisonment in Suhl

The VOICE Refugee Forum protests the arrestment of our friend Felix Otto. Felix Otto, a member of The VOICE Refugee Forum for many years was arrested on […] as the result of a police control as a consequence of a police control on the highway A4 where he was travelling together with a friend. Later, he was taken to the prison in Suhl-Goldlauter.

The arrestment was connected with a sentence against him suspended on probation for having violated the German residential restriction law for asylum seekers. Felix Otto had been accused of having violated the conditions of the foreigner’s authority. Because of that the suspension was cancelled. Now he has to serve a prison sentence of eight month.

He is now imprisoned for making use of his natural right to live as a free human being, a right that is denied asylum seekers in Germany.

He had refused to accept the Asylum lager as his permanent stay, a lager which is situated some few kilometers from the next bigger village in a forest near Juchhöh in the county of Schleiz at the Southern border of Thüringen. He had eluded the foreigner’s office totalitarian control of his person, wanted to evade the forcefully imposed social isolation.

Felix Otto simply took what according to basic human rights every human being is entitled to – except an asylum seeker in Germany: freedom of movement and a live with a minimum of dignity.

But the German asylum proceeding laws make it a crime to simply cross the borders of the landkreis without permission of the foreigner’s authority. Whoever does not accept this prison of landkreis to which every asylum seeker is sentenced to for years without any crime, will be put into prison of bars and walls. This is a scandal.

Once more The VOICE Refugee Forum protest this German special law of residential restriction that subjects the people concerned to a racist system of controls, discrimination, exclusion and deportation and deprived them of their human liberty, dignity, hope and perspectives for the future.

We demand the immediate release of Felix Otto from detention because the arrest is based on a racist special law.

We demand the immediate abolition of the residention restriction law!

German Text: *Gefängnisfür Bewegungsfreiheit - Protest gegen die Inhaftierung von Felix Otto

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