Pagani Detention Centre - Lesvos, Greece

Here a couple of images which show how bad it is to be in Pagani, and a short video clip we produced with different material taken inside. It shows that even youngest kids are imprisoned. You also see detained women demanding freedom, and some young men show that their room is so overcrowded that they not only sleep on the ground, but also beneath the other beds.

Immediate release of Felix Otto! Stop his deportation!

Felix Otto, a refugee from Cameroon, who lives in Thuringia over 8 years.
Since March 30, 2009 Mr. Otto is in prison of Suhl‐Goldlauter.

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Fax template in english for download

He is sentenced to eight month imprisonment, because he has violated the so called “Residenzpflicht”. He only has taken his right, what according to the international declaration of human right is a basic human right, the right of free movement. Now he is punished double. The responsible Foreigner Office is additionally preparing his deportation to Cameroon. The Administrative Court of Suhl ordered accordingly his deportation detention. To do this all rules of a fair trial were excluded. Just two days before the hearing in the administrative court of Suhl Mr. Felix Otto, who is in a bad psychological and physical condition, was informed about the hearing. The hearing itself took place without his laywer, because the Foreigner Office did not inform the court that Mr. Otto has a legal representative. The chance was not given to him to prepare himself for the defense with the help of a legal expert and consultant.

As an asylum seeker and as a member of the refugee self‐organization “THE VOICE Refugee Forum“ in Germany he is in danger to be persecuted in Cameroon due to his activities as an oppositional. Cameroon is a country in which human right violations and corruption rule. Real opposition and political opponents are silenced with brutality. People are arrested arbitrarily and without a legal basis. The freedom of expression and the freedom of assembly are massively limited. Human right activists and journalists are intimated brutally or even killed. During the protests against thegovernment in February 2008 at least 100 people were killed on the streets by the security forces. Amnesty international warns from an increase of brutality prior to the presidential elections in 2011.

A deportation to Cameroon not only means a threat to the life of the deported but as well a silent acceptance of the human right violations.

Honduras: Coup and Me Against the World

By Al Giordano

In a discussion yesterday at Daily Kos, one commenter – we’ll presume he or she is, as self-described, Honduran or of Honduran descent – typed the following words:

“You obviously do not know us. We may be a poor country but we are very proud and will not be pushed around, even by the ‘great colossus to the North.’ Remember, we went to war over a soccer game...

“Zelaya has violated the Constitution. The term limits of the Presidency are not subject to referenda and Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”

This comment is fairly representative of many similar ones across the Internet. And it is instructive as to the attitude of what I call the Oligarch Diaspora that drives the deep disconnect between how coup defenders see themselves and how everybody else sees them.

Note the emphatic uses, in the comment, of the words, “we” and “us.”

“You don’t know us… We are very proud… We went to war over a soccer game.”

It’s as if the commenter personally was a combatant in the brief Honduras-El Salvador “Soccer War” of 1969, which I very much doubt. (Interestingly, the intervention of the Organization of American States, or OAS, was required to bring that conflict, which had no military victor, to an end).

And when OAS chairman José Miguel Insulza arrives today in Tegucigalpa for the last-ditch diplomatic effort to persuade the Honduran coup plotters to stand down and let democracy resume with its elected president restored, the attitude expressed is “Mr. Insulza will learn something about our Constitution when he visits Honduras.”

The Honduran Constitution of 1982 is a series of 375 Articles – most of them just a sentence or two long - divided into seven sections. It has been amended 22 times since its enactment, and it is the country’s twelfth constitution since 1838.

In that light, the kernel of the coup’s charges against President Zelaya – that his efforts to convene a Constitutional Convention (“Constituent Assembly”) were somehow illegal – are bizarrely extreme in a land where the Constitution already gets rewritten and amended with such rapid-fire frequency.

My point is that it doesn’t require any kind of divine birthright or special genetics to read and understand that document. In fact, two non-Hondurans, North American professor Greg Weeks (“Honduras: Summing Up Some Basic Points”) and Salvadoran attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen ("Why Zelaya's Actions Were Legal") have offered, so far, the most astute analyses of how the Constitution applies to the current crisis in Honduras.

Attorney Insulza – widely respected throughout the world for his diplomatic skills and intellectual toughness – is not someone who would have any problem at all reading and analyzing the Honduran Constitution as it applies to the current crisis. The suggestion that he has something to “learn” about the document that can only be provided to him by those the commenter calls “us” reveals more about the commenter than the Constitution.

Insulza, part of the Allende government in Chile in 1973 when it was deposed by military coup, who later spent years of exile in Mexico, could inform many throughout the world, including in Honduras, about the nature of coups d’etat from his unique personal experience. Historic events like that – unlike legal documents – are more difficult to understand without direct lived experience. But, no, coup defenders in Honduras largely view his travels to Tegucigalpa today to be sessions in which, like the commenter said, he has to “learn something about our Constitution.”

The generalized problem with the oligarchies throughout this region is that "we," to them, doesn't include the people they look down upon, which is pretty much everybody that isn’t in their economic-social class. To them, "we" does not mean a nation, but, rather, those who purport to own it.

I think I have already mentioned somewhere the story of the Cuban exile in Miami who said, "Before Castro, everybody had a maid!" Well, unless the maids also had maids, not everybody had a maid. Think about that. “Everybody,” in the oligarchic mind, doesn’t include, well, everybody, certainly not servants and the rest of the working and poor population.

I've witnessed these attitudes first hand in Mexico, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil... It’s widespread among a certain class that is the distinct minority in each population, but that has its hands more firmly on the economic levers of power in each country.

The current behavior of upper class Honduras and its aspirants brings to mind a scene from an episode of the television series, House M.D., in which Dr. Gregory House is on an airplane and a passenger falls ill. The other passengers go into a shared panic as suddenly everybody else on the plane begins complaining of, and even exhibiting, physical symptoms of what they thought – errantly, it turned out – to be a contagious illness.

There is precisely that kind of 30,000-feet-above-sea-level, in a closed and claustrophobic space, hysterical, shrieking tone to the pro-coup defense: That only "we" at these altitudes understand our Constitution; that "we" have to educate the rest of you, etcetera.

And it is from that zone of shared hallucination that their claim - "Zelaya has violated the Constitution" – arises.

They’ve demonstrated that they simply can't believe that anyone but members of their group (the “we” they frequently cite) would dare even try to interpret what only the educated and propertied classes of their milieu "know": in this case the Honduran Constitution.

A wisdom one learns when traveling and reporting in so many different lands: People aren't all that different from country to country. There are good and bad in all of them, and generally the different demographic types resemble each other very well across international borders. I've heard this “we” rap from the educated classes before but more to the point: I've lived alongside their attitude long enough to recognize it rather quickly when it surfaces.

There is something about elites – and its especially visible in this hemisphere – that demonstrates a kind of superiority complex wrapped around an inferiority complex, and all the while dripping with absolute bloody hatred and resentment toward "those people," the ones that don't see things as they and their demographic group see them in their shared hallucination. That's true of elites in the United States, in Honduras, the whole world over.

Insulza – who walks into that snake pit today – has also seen and heard people like that before, and lived the consequences of when their frenzied and shared hallucinations inflict upon society in brutal and violent ways. I’m fairly certain he has no illusions about changing the coup leaders’ minds with facts and reason: oligarchies are too often caught up in those shared hallucinations to be influenced by facts they perceive as external. Today’s visit is more likely to simply demonstrate that there will be no back-room deal from the OAS, that the return of the elected president is a non-negotiable demand, and perhaps to lay out explicitly what the consequences beyond Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS will be for continued intransigence by the coup.

The coup “president” Roberto Micheletti continues to labor under the illusion that he can negotiate a solution, which is why he is loudly proposing early elections and other trial balloons. But the nations of the hemisphere – and a significant swathe of the Honduran population – are not going to fall for such tricks by which an illegitimate coup government administrates an “election.” Nobody believes that such a vote could be fair or free, and to agree to such a scenario would only embolden other aspiring coup-plotters in other countries of America to then adopt the Honduran model to derail elected governments.

From the standpoint of the hemisphere, anything short of the unconditional return of Zelaya to the presidency would unleash a domino effect of coup attempts in other lands.

And, so far, in the shared hallucination of the coup defenders, they seem to believe they can bluff their way into forcing a negotiation still.

And this touches close to another misconception in some other circles that is being spoken: that if only the United States would cut off all aid to Honduras, the coup would instantly fall. (A related spin is that if only the United States had instructed the coup plotters in advance that said aid would be cut off – something that may have well occurred anyway - the coup would never have happened.)

That kind of analysis falls short for two reasons:

One, the hallucinatory nature of how the Honduran elites see themselves includes a willingness to destroy their own economy in a blazing attempt to assert their hallucination upon Honduras and the world. True or false, the pig-headed coup adherents really seem to believe they can survive and remain in power without that aid, or at least they seem willing to try for a while.

Secondly, Washington’s announcement that it has already put all but humanitarian aid “on pause” - the flow of money is already cut off - pending a decision on whether to legally define the regime in Honduras as a “military coup” isn’t having that effect.

From this vantage point, it’s strange to see people who I thought opposed the concept that Washington should dictate events in the hemisphere basically insisting that Washington should now dictate them. They seem to disregard the advances of the last decade that have made it impossible for the US to rule the hemisphere by decree anymore, something we should all celebrate.

And all this leads to the coming weekend – Sunday, to be exact – when President Manuel Zelaya says he will return to Honduras, and the coup regime says it will mobilize 25,000 people plus an arrest warrant to stop him.

This big game of chicken awaits one side or the other to blink. If neither side blinks, Zelaya will return and be imprisoned, sparking a rapid escalation of the conflict inside Honduras that might turn extremely violent. And Washington will certainly, in response, trigger the full cut-off of all US aid.

If Zelaya blinks, and doesn’t return to Honduras this weekend, he will lose popular support much in the same way that other legitimate presidents denied in this hemisphere - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas after 1988, Al Gore after 2000, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador after 2006 - lost popular steam from perceptions among their own supporters that they did not resist the electoral frauds against them with sufficient force.

If the coup blinks, it won’t be because of the penalties from OAS or the US, but, rather, because of internal divisions, specifically from two groups: the Armed Forces, and/or the commercial media. The first group, to me, seems a more plausible source of mutiny than the second, because the Honduran military – which, importantly, is not made up of members of the economic elite (and therefore is not caught up in the shared hallucination), but, rather, has long struck a deal to service them in exchange for certain privileges and powers – does, unlike the civilian coup plotters, know that it is Washington that pays its rent and bar tab.

(I only mention the commercial media – such as the pro-coup daily newspapers in Tegucigalpa and their owners - because they are so mercenary and corrupt that they could likely be bribed into temporarily turning on the coup regime. That’s an option that, if I were the OAS and its nations, I would carefully consider. They come relatively cheaply. The problem is, with them, that as an important sector of those elites, they are caught up in the shared hallucination, too, and thus if a higher bidder then comes forward, they are capable of switching allegiances on alternate days. The Armed Forces would be, if secured, a more reliable alliance of convenience.)

What Zelaya needs to land in Honduras on Sunday without being arrested is an airfield or border entry point that is sufficiently protected either by large crowds or a sector of the Armed Forces loyal to him (which means, practically, both, since one will follow the other). If he can pull that off, he’ll quickly be president again, and the coup plotters will be seeking exile in other lands.

If he doesn’t have that, Zelaya still has to go and subject himself to arrest, which will spark another chapter in this saga that could turn more violent yet. But not to do so would ensure a much greater and permanent violence: the maintenance of an illegitimate coup regime that has already proved its contempt for the most basic of freedoms, ripping up the very Constitution that it claims it has rallied around.

Whatever happens this weekend, I'm certain of this: it will be no soccer game that comes next.

Coup “President” Installs Nephew as “Mayor” of Honduras’ Second City

By Al Giordano

The Oligarch Diaspora shouts, again and again, in its flailing attempt to convince the Honduran people and the world that its coup d’etat was somehow legitimate, “we want democracy!”

Well, here’s a powerful example of the kind of “democracy” they apparently want.

In November of 2008, the voters of San Pedro Sula – with a population of one million, it's the second largest city in Honduras – elected Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunseri (right, in the photo above) to be their Liberal Party candidate for mayor, with 63 percent of the vote.

Another candidate in that contest – William Hall Micheletti (left, in the photo above, and doesn't that last name sound familiar?) – garnered just 16 percent, coming in third.

Padilla went on to win the mayoralty.

But when your uncle Roberto Micheletti is the newly installed dictator of your country, coming in third is good enough!

At 11 a.m. this morning, workers and citizens in and near San Pedro Sula City Hall heard gunshots and explosions, while riot police attacked a crowd that was demonstrating outside against the coup. More than 50 citizens were reportedly arrested. And nobody has seen Mayor Padilla ever since.

So who is now “mayor” of the city? Telesur reports: the coup “president’s” nephew, William Hall Micheletti.

Ain’t their version of “democracy” grand?

Watch the coup's soldiers taking Channel 36 TV off the air:

Watch the coup's soldiers force Radio Progreso 103.3 FM to cease broadcasting:

That scene is from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, after the station had reported that a coup d’etat had taken place. Spontaneously, listeners of the station in the nearby neighborhood gathered outside its gates to find out what happened. That turne d into a demonstration in defense of the radio station, with chants of “People! Unite!”

At seven minutes into the video, a radio station employee comes out and says “we’ve decided to stop broadcasting.”

Here’s what happened next:

A radio station employee explains how they were convinced by the soldiers to stop broadcasting. A local citizen then addresses the crowd: “Radio Progreso is the voice of all the people of Progreso…. They are informing us that to avoid confrontations… they have decided to close operations... They are going to close the radio frequency… Radio Progeso asks that the people organize ourselves.”

Then a group of soldiers leaves, heading for one of the various trucks they arrived in, as people yell “get out, get out.”

Honduras' Coup Congress Cancels Five Basic Liberties

By Al Giordano

Despite the best efforts of what I call "the Oligarch Diaspora" to flood the Internet with near identical messages that the Honduran coup "is not a coup" and that was a "constitutional succession" (cough, cough) dressed in the blue-and-white flag of Honduran democracy, the coup regime bared its fangs today. And like any vampire, it's coming out at nightfall.

The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti as the coup "president" today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country's constitution:

1. The right to protest.

2. Freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.

3. Freedom of association.

4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.

5. Freedom of transit in the country.

Tomorrow morning's papers are already out across the ocean in Europe, and correspondent Pablo Ordaz of the Madrid daily El Pais has reported from Tegucigalpa about the Coup Congress' decree:

"Minute by minute, step by step, Honduras moves farther from its freedoms..."

Read the defenders of the coup and they are united by one powerful feeling: fear. They're afraid of the growing demonstrations in the streets, like the in the capital city this afternoon captured in the video above, where despite the brutal repressions against the people, each day the opposition crowds grow larger, more emboldened, and better organized. In the defiant but smiling faces of the Hondurans opposing the coup you can see the palpable difference between their passion and the lack of it from the passive bumps on a log that attended yesterday's pro coup rally.

The Congressional decree specified that only at night may those five freedoms be disappeared. And so tonight, a new reign of terror begins.

The coup defenders are afraid, they say, of Honduras becoming another another Cuba, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, of losing their "freedoms" and their "democracy." But today, in one fell swoop their leaders erased those very freedoms, atop all the other ones they've already burned alive - freedom of the press, freedom to elect their own president, among them - and buried democracy with it.

For democracy is not possible unless a people has freedom to protest, freedom from unwarranted invasion of their homes, freedom of association, rights of due process under law, and freedom of travel in its own country.

That's over now, and will be as long as the coup regime remains in power.

The Oligarch Diaspora will not likely blink, comforting themselves with the Kool-Aid that this attack on civil rights and freedoms is not (well, not yet) aimed at them, but, rather, at "those people," the workers, the poor, the farmers, the indigenous, the rebel students and youth, their social organizations, organizer priests, defense attorneys, human rights observers and authentic journalists, the ones that want their democracy back so much that they risk life and limb now each time they say it.

The Oligarch Diaspora will continue spamming the Internet with their hysterical claims that the rest of the world "just doesn't understand," that the coup was "legal" (attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen made mincemeat of that claim today), that they represent a majority (unsaid is that they are afraid to let that majority vote on a non-binding referendum, revealing that even they know they are not), that "Honduras wants the coup." But if the opposition were so small would the Coup Congress really have needed to enact the State of Siege and its repeal of those five basic freedoms?

The Oligarch Diaspora - and hey, Larry Birns (yes, you to whom I sent that memo on Sunday) didn't you and your organization COHA find out the hard way this week how they swarm and leech upon NGOs and media organizations to spread their falsehoods, causing your organization to have to issue another embarrassed "clarification"? - will continue to deceive the gullible into thinking they're really of democratic and freedom-loving tendencies.

But what they don't tell you is that they don't want those freedoms for all Hondurans, just for the ones with money and property and political power and privilege: themselves. The rest must be subordinated to them and controlled, by force if necessary.

And so today, Honduras said goodbye to the following articles of its Constitution:

Article 69: "A persons liberty is inviolable and can only be restricted or suspended temporarily through process of law."

Article 71: "No person can be arrested nor kept incommunicado for more than 24 hours without being placed before a competent authority to be judged. Judicial detention during an investigation must not exceed six consecutive days from the moment that the same is ordered."

Article 78: "Freedoms of association and meeting are always guaranteed when they are not contrary to public order and good customs.

Article 79: "All persons have the right to meet with others, peacefully and without weapons, in public demonstration or transitory assembly, in relation to their common interests of any type, without necessity of notice or special permission."

Article 81: "All persons have the right to circulate freely, leave, enter, and remain in national territory. No one can be obligated to change home or residence except in special cases and with those requirements that the Law establishes."

The Oligarch Diaspora says that the democratically elected president was removed by force because he supposedly "violated the Constitution" by proposing a nonbinding referendum to ask all Hondurans if they wanted the chance to vote about whether they wanted to rewrite it through a Constitutional Convention.

But the coup leaders the Oligarch Diaspora defends just rewrote that same constitution today without any formal process of consulting the people at all.

They claim they're fighting for their constitution, but they just ripped it apart.

Gone. All gone. Everything they claim to be defending is gone now, destroyed and in tatters at the hands of the very political class that claimed it was protecting them.

And now, with the Congress' invitation to enter the people's door, the vampires begin to come out... tonight.

Life threatening racist fire attack on Refugee in Möhlau (Sachsen-Anhalt / Germany)

The refugee initiative Mölau is informing the press about the ongoing attacks on innocent refugees living in Mölau

At arround 2 pm yesterday being Tuesday the 29th of june 2009 a refugee named Azad Murad hadji from Irak were been attacked and burned alive here in his Heim Möhlau while he only went to walk around the compound, to which Azad, the victim is presently at the Hospital.The criminal police of investigation are presently investigating on the matter and they arrived in Mölau at about 4am today. A lot of past intimidated attacks had been reported.

The refugees in Möhlau are feeling insecure and they were been consistencly traumatized including thir innocent children, having the humour of fear which have a negetive impact to thier days to days lives.

The refugees initiative are calling for the immidiate closure of the Heim which is quite isolated and had no adequate protection in terms of protecting innocent refugees.

For more information contact the speaker of the refugees innitiative Möhlau
Salomon Wantchoucou
01743529066

Pictures from Möhlau - End of June
http://ludwigstrasse37.de/nolager/bilder_09-06_moehlau.htm

Stop further intimidations of the refugee Activist and Speaker of the Refugee
Initiative in Möhlau-lager http://thecaravan.org/node/2016

The 'Fortress Within': Restriction of Movement and Refugee Self-Organisation

The 'Fortress Within': Restriction of Movement and Refugee Self-Organisation

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by Sunny Omwenyeke

Sunny Omwenyeke is member of The VOICE and the Caravan-for the rights of refugees and migrants. A human rights campaigner, he was one of the activists who launched the anti-Residenzpflicht campaign in 2000 and for his protest was imprisoned for 15 days.

The concept of Fortress Europe entails in political and practical terms, the concerted will of the collective European Union (EU) to prevent unwanted migrants, refugees or asylum seekers from entering the territorial EU. And beyond preventing them from entering, it also describes the 'weeding' away of each and every one of the aforementioned groups who, by dint of courage or unyielding persistence already found themselves within the EU but have yet to secure a permanent legal residence. Underlying this concept is the idea that the EU must secure and protect itself from being swarmed by these unwanted elements; that could constitute a strain on the social system here. Therefore, the farther the territorial border is from mainland EU the higher the probability of actually preventing these groups of people from stepping into the EU. To this end, not only has the territorial EU border been broadened to Eastern Europe, coerced and dubious agreements have been reached with some of the countries that now border the EU aimed at preventing the 'unwanted' from reaching the EU.

These new border countries like Ukraine and across the See like Libya have been compelled to be recipient of EU camps (Lagers); where supposedly, asylum applicants are held and their application processed to prevent their presence in Europe. The audacious FRONTEX project of the EU is a step further in the intensification of border policing-both land and water, to achieve the aim of preventing the unwanted from entering and not the burnished humanitarian image that is sold to the public. Put differently, secured and externalised borders and externalised Lagers is the solution to the problem of the 'unwanted' in the EU, even at the expense of human freedom and dignity. This is because the EU turns a blind eye to its humanitarian commitment and obligations and the precarious condition of the 'unwanted' that is orchestrated by its own policies and actions like its lop-sided trade policies with the so-called third world countries.

The 'Fortress Within'

The above is only one side of the coin. The other side is what obtains within the EU proper and this complements the former, hence the 'Fortress Within'. To be specific, I use Germany and the 'Residence Obligation Law' (Residenzpflicht) for illustration. In Germany, refugees are restricted to the particular administrative Districts where they are registered and irrespective of the reasons and urgency, they can only leave there with a written permission issued by the foreigners' office. Any refugee who violates this restriction is either fined or sent to prison or can be both fined and imprisoned. The fine could be as much as 2500euro and the jail term as much as a year. Refugees are denied the right to freedom of movement and are forced to live in miserable Lagers for the endless years that it takes to decide their asylum applications. Most of these Lagers are isolated from the mainstream society and sometimes located in abandoned military barracks in the jungle with little or no access. They are deliberately isolated from the main populace like outcasts and stigmatised.

Now can these refugees be regarded as inhabiting an 'Area of Freedom' or simply living-out life in a Fortress? No doubt it is the latter. The Residence Obligation is a clear violation of the right to individual freedom of movement and a violation of the right to human dignity. It is a blatant violation of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 2 Protocol No.4 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The UNHCR, human rights groups and refugee activists have long condemned this as inhuman and campaigners have rightly branded it as the 'Pass Law' in Germany, in direct comparison to the erstwhile Pass Law in apartheid South Africa. Its effects on refugees combined with their living conditions are broad and far reaching. As space will not permit these to be exhausted here, I will therefore briefly look at its history and the self-organisation of refugee groups in Germany.

When most refugees leave their friends and loved ones behind, they do so in search for safety, security and the preservation of their human dignity. They carry the hope to live a good life if not a better one than they have had and to lend a helping hand to those they leave behind. They are often driven by war-which they are not responsible for, hunger-arising from the loss of the means of livelihood, persecution-political and cultural; some of which are neither properly nor legally codified internationally and thus not a "sufficient" reason for being granted international protection (asylum). Contrary to widely held opinion in the West, they do not simply want to 'feed on the sweat of others'. They are being forced by the circumstances to seek a place more amenable to their desires and aspirations as human beings. They therefore also want to develop and live like other regular and normal human beings, study or work as the case may be even while they go through their travail. Much as no one expects a red-carpet reception, no one also expects to be restricted to a particular local District for years on end. The expectations and hopes always seem to be at odds with the reality. For some it is a shock and for others it is outright disbelief.

Peculiarity of Restriction

Several studies by different independent organisations across Europe reveal that the restriction on the refugee right to freedom of movement in Germany is unique. In other words, there is no other country in Europe where such a blanket restriction is placed on every refugee. What is also particularly troubling here is the arbitrariness of those in a position to issue any permission. They are not obliged to give any reason for their refusal and in most cases, you only hear that refugees are expected to eat and sleep in the Lagers and not travelling all over the country. And many refugees have been told that if they are tired of eating and sleeping, they can return to their countries. Moreover, there is no provision for appealing such refusal except by going to the court, which makes a mockery of any attempt to get permission in the first place. And in some Districts, refugees who only get 40euro a month have to pay 10euro for any permission. If the applicant is politically active, the chances of refusal are doubled and so are the attempts to intimidate and persecute him/her for being active against the miserable condition they are forced to live in. And when permissions are refused and refugees are then compelled to violate the restriction, they are treated and classified as criminals-a natural boost for statistics with the underlying message that most refugees are criminals and not fit to live here. For refugees, this criminalisation by default is a traumatic experience.

The so-called Residence Obligation was established with the introduction of the Asylum Procedure Law of 1982. The argument was that it would make it possible or easier for the authorities to contact refugees for their asylum cases. An argument that flies in the face since allowing refugees to move freely is not a hindrance to contacting them. Moreover, the registered address of the refugee is already enough for contact. In reality, the law was about intensified control-like the EU borders, making life uncomfortable as much as possible for refugees here and then sending them out if they can't bear it anymore. It was also to prevent other potential refugee from coming-since they will not like it here as it won't be comfortable. This recent history is ebbed on a 'control mentality' and it dates back much longer. Combined this with the Lager system, you arrive at a lager and control mentality which basically underlies the asylum system here in Germany with no respect for freedom and human dignity.

And even earlier.

It should be remembered that in former German colonial territory like Togo, villagers and local inhabitants were prevented from attending meetings outside their immediate localities without permission from their German colonial masters. This was specifically to ensure that the locals were prevented from meeting and fomenting any sort of unrest against their colonial masters. And even more chilling is the recollection that on 22nd August 1938, the National Socialists through the Foreigners' Police Order placed a very similar restriction of movement on foreigners in Germany. The consequence of a violation then like now was both a monetary fine and a possible one year jail term. And this law existed and remained valid until 1965 when a new foreigner law was enacted. Judging from the similarities in language, fine and consequences of the 1938 restriction and the Residence Obligation Law, it can hardly be doubted that the restriction placed on refugees today in Germany has not simply been paraphrased from the racist law enacted by the dreaded Nazi regime. That for a refugee in Germany in 2009 to leave his/her immediate District he/she needs a written permission from the foreigner's office-else a fine or possible jail term awaits upon police control is a startling and sad reminder of that 1938 restriction.

Self-Organisation

So far the focus has been on the Residence Obligation and the restriction of movement as a major problem to show that many of us are really living it out in a Fortress, contrary to what others would want us believe. But it should be said that it is not the only problem. There are the problems of refugees being denied private accommodation and privacy, leaving adults to be crammed together in single rooms, denied access to doctors and proper medication, being forced to use food coupons with its consequent public humiliation and of course the incessant police brutality; which sometimes results in the death of refugees at the hands of the police. These, combined, leave the refugees with hardly any better option than to organise and confront them, which brings us to refugee self-organisation. Normally, a few courageous individuals take the initial lead. They articulate the main problems before various audiences and in no time, they are speaking on behalf of the others while at the same time soliciting solidarity and support. It should be mentioned that although refugee self-organisations are also engaged with other fundamental issues like the exploitation of their home countries, neo-colonialism and the damning effects of globalisation amongst others, the focus here remains the experiences of these groups within the Fortress with particular attention to restriction of movement.

Starting from the scratch, refugee self-organisation is a hard and strenuous affair for a multiplicity of reasons. First, many refugees faced with the plethora of problems that is the asylum process and the constant threats of deportation simply withdraw onto themselves and begin to suffer depression with little or no attention. In some cases, the result is an attempted suicide or actual suicide. Second, because the formation of a refugee self-organised group is usually predicated upon the immediate problems that confronts the refugees, the primary aim of these groups is therefore to solve those problems. While it is true that some of these problems like closing down a camp or abolishing food coupon require long term planning and strong commitment to solve, such long term plans are usually not part of the original bargain at the beginning. One of the reasons for this is that you can never be sure of who will be around and for how long, to continue any such plans. This is because; the authorities always devise and employ the strategy of relocating most of the leading figures in such situations. Such activists are usually sent to far more remote places to isolate them, limit their possible support and solidarity to break any refugee resistance. Added to this is that they could be deported anytime. Third, even though many refugees live and experience the same horrible conditions in the Lagers, bonding together to confront these problems is not always an easy or straightforward project. Sometimes, differences in cultural background can be a problem. But more importantly, are both the issues of mistrust between refugees (in some cases due to previous experiences in their home countries) and the politics of 'divide and rule' by the authorities. For many who faced persecution and torture in their home countries, it takes time to trust strangers. Then there are those that are regarded as the "good refugees"-who are not complaining about their ordeals here and therefore not giving the authorities any problems and those seen as the "trouble makers"-who would never keep quiet about the problems they experience in the system. So, the authorities play them against each other and this affects how well they organise themselves against their common problems.

Besides the continuous relocation and isolation of refugee activists by the authorities, some of the leading figures in any such resistance also cease to be active soon after their papers are regularised, move out of the Lagers and no longer face movement restrictions. In many cases, the void left is difficult to fill. Therefore, long term commitment to common purpose from the self-organisation perspective is a huge problem. Another problem is sustaining the structure of engagement or improving on what has been developed for a start. Because these structures are usually feeble and unstable, it is not uncommon to see them crumbling under pressure-both from refugees' expectations of immediate solutions to his or her problems and from the authorities. By far one of the biggest problems to refugee self-organisation and networking remains the restriction of movement. When refugees go out of their Districts to attend meetings and network with other refugees, the threat of being arrested possibly brutalised and the certainty of a fine hangs over his/her head. It takes a lot of courage and some preparedness to pay a heavy price to continuously violate the restriction. Moreover, the intimidation and punishment that comes with such action serves as a lesson to discourage other refugees from being politically active.

Effects and Results

Nonetheless, refugee agitation leads to solutions of other problems like improving the living conditions in the camps or sometimes securing private apartments in some cases. And what is undeniable is the motivation, encouragement and re-awakening of hope that such little practical and tangible successes can inspire in some refugees. They are then imbued with the self belief that they can fight and win even against the all-powerful state. This is also particularly true in deportation cases. When refugees are active, the authorities adopt a hostile and aggressive attitude towards him/her and usually attempt to deport such refugees with haste. For a known activist, it is easier to mobilise support and solidarity to stop such deportation attempts.

The fact that other refugees can see and feel the support and solidarity that hinder such a deportation; which can be traced back to the personal engagement of the refugee usually offers a huge motivation. At the same time, the so-called "good refugees" are made to realise that irrespective of how "gentle" they may be, it would not endear them to the authorities to stop their deportation. On the contrary, they see that their deportations are usually easier because, it is more difficult to mobilise support for them when it is needed because they are relatively unknown.

Resolve and Defiance

Given the enormity of the problems refugees face here coupled with the institutional and societal racism, it is not surprising that many refugees feel too intimidated and therefore afraid to confront the situation and fight for their rights. There is a mental and psychological block that needs be broken for many of these refugees. This is precisely where self-organised and courageous refugee activists and groups like The VOICE Forum (http://thevoiceforum.org) and networks like the Caravan-for the rights of refugees and migrants (http://thecaravan.org) come in. These groups consist of refugees and migrants of diverse background from different nationalities and continents. Formed over 15 and 10 years ago respectively, they have the experience of motivating and mobilising refugees in isolated Lagers to fight for their rights and not accept the deplorable conditions that are forced upon them here. They have been at the forefront in highlighting the isolation and social exclusion of refugees and the realities of the 'Fortress Within'.

In 2000, The VOICE Forum hosted the Caravan-organised International Refugee and Migrant Congress in Jena. As preparation got underway refugees were threatened with imprisonment if they attend the Congress without a written permission from the foreigners' offices. Many refugees defied the threat and attended the congress without permission. They rose from the congress and launched a civil disobedience and the campaign to abolish the residence obligation law. They vowed never to respect this law anymore and never to ask for any permission to leave their Districts. At the same time, they risked and were prepared to go to jail rather than pay any fine for exercising their right to freedom of movement. Since then, there have been lots of public events, discussions, rallies, demonstrations and other forms of protest against the residence law throughout the country. At the same time, litigations have gone through all the instances in the German judicial system with the cases ending up at the European court of human rights. As expected, many refugees have been fined and punished for violating the restriction. And while some have been threatened and remain threatened with imprisonment, others have actually been sent to prison for weeks or months depending on how angry the presiding judge was at the time. Nevertheless, these groups are determined to not only expose the nature of the Fortress but break its tentacles 'Within'.

A Harder and Operational Fortress

Finally, we can review how the Fortress has developed and operated in its fortification, both externally and 'Within' since the last several years and we can only come to one conclusion: it is that the Fortress has become harder and more ruthless in trying to achieve its aim of keeping out the unwanted. Just a few years ago, some people who sought asylum in this country away from dictatorship and other forms of oppression in their home countries still managed to secure that internationally guaranteed protection. But since the last couple of years, particularly with the reckless abandon with which the so-called war on terror has been prosecuted and its consequent anti-terror laws, the very reasons for which a lot of those people got asylum and international protection has become the very reasons to now withdraw that protection. Many are being forced to live and endure life in 'illegality' or face the ominous process of being returned to the tormentors they fled from years ago.

And as if to show how ruthless the Fortress can be, the horrors and the harrowing experience of the Boat people are further spiced with such cruelty and inhumanity that is only matched by the inconsiderate and selfish aim to keep away the unwanted. And even so at the expense of disregarding and discarding the much vaunted European value of human freedom and human dignity not to mention humanitarian obligation. If anyone ever needed to be reminded of where we are, the sight of Spanish police and soldiers shooting and killing innocent migrants and potential refugees at their borders in 2005 should do. If not, then the more recent deadly collaboration with Libyan authorities will help. We should note that the Fortress is operational and its functionality has been taken to a higher level in the just ended week by the horrendous example of Italy. Having watched hundreds of hapless Boat people braved the odds and risks to arrive on its border, it wasted no time and immediately repatriated them to Libya without even allowing them to make asylum claims. Libya of all places-where there is neither any form of asylum policies nor is it a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Germany, if accident occurred and a victim needed help, a passer-by who refuses to help when it is within his/her capability is normally charged and prosecuted for not helping-to save life. Now, those who have taken the risk to rescue and save drowning people on the high See have become villains and criminals. They are being prosecuted with jail terms awaiting them-for supposedly helping drowning people who 'ought to be left to drown'. And for the Fortress Within, it is the same-it is more brutal and more ruthless. As we speak a refugee is currently in jail to languish there for eights months for violating the restriction law and no other offence. Imagine a crime that would warrant eight months in jail for a German! The list goes on.the Fortress is here.

June 2009

References

• 2. StGB § 323c
• Michael Stoffels, Die «Residenzpflicht» - eine rassistische Auflage für Ausländer
• Grundrechte-Report (2002), S. 159-163
• The research by European Council of Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) on the restriction of movement for asylum seekers in Germany/Europe (2002).
• The 'Residenzpflicht'-History and Current Developments in: "Widerstands Bewegungen: Antirassismus zwischen Alltag und Aktion. (2005), Assoziation A, Berlin/Hamburg.

Police Open Fire on Indigenous Blockade in the Peruvian Amazon

25 Civilians and 9 Police Dead, 150 Injured

Garcia Government Criticized for Orchestrating Violent Attack on Peaceful Blockade While Censoring Congressional Debate on "Free Trade Laws"

Peru Ministers Under Report Number Indigenous Peoples Dead and Injured

Interviews with Eyewitnesses and High-resolution Photos Available Upon Request

Photos of June 5 Police Attack on Peaceful Blockade in Bagua

Peru's Amazon Indigenous Peoples need you to TAKE ACTION now!

Tell the Peruvian Government:

1. Immediately suspend violent repression of indigenous protests and the State of Emergency
2. Repeal the Free Trade Laws that allow oil, logging, and agricultural corporations easy entry into indigenous territories
3. Respect indigenous peoples' constitutionally guaranteed rights to self-determination, to their ancestral territories, and to prior consultation
4. Enter into good faith process of dialogue with indigenous peoples to resolve this conflict

Bagua, Peru (June 6, 2009) – In the early morning hours on Friday, Peruvian Special Forces staged a violent raid on a group of indigenous people at a peaceful blockade on a road outside of Bagua in a remote area of the northern Peruvian Amazon resulting in 25 civilians confirmed dead and more than 150 injured. Over 600 police attacked several thousand unarmed Awajun and Wambis indigenous peoples including many women and children and forcibly dispersed them using tear gas and live ammunition.

Dramatic photos (available on www.amazonwatch.org) of the attack show clearly the police brutally beating and shooting demonstrators at close range. At 2am police began to approach the demonstrators as they were sleeping along the Fernando Belaúnde Terry road. Demonstrators refused to move from the roadblock as police in helicopters fired teargas grenades and live ammunition. Eyewitnesses report that police also attacked from both sides firing live rounds into the crowd as people fled into surrounding steep hillsides, many becoming trapped. As the unarmed demonstrators were being killed and injured some wrestled with police, fighting back in self-defense, which resulted in the reported deaths of nine police officers.

In local radio reports the chief of police claimed that the indigenous demonstrators were armed and fired first. This claim has been strongly rejected by dozens of local eyewitnesses including local journalists who confirmed that Amazonian demonstrators have been entirely peaceful and only bear traditional spears and in no way provoked any violence. A point highlighted by the fact that the blockades have been going on for 56 days without a single incident.

Gregor MacLennan of Amazon Watch who is currently in Bagua gathering first hand testimonies from blockade participants, local journalists and residents stated: "All eyewitness testimonies say that Special Forces opened fire on peaceful and unarmed demonstrators including from helicopters, killing and wounding dozens in an orchestrated attempt to open the roads. It seems that the police had come with orders to shoot. This was not a clash, but a coordinated police raid with police firing on protesters from both sides of their blockade."

"There have been many accounts of atrocities committed by the Special Forces. Some have reported seeing the police throwing liquid on the cadavers and burning them. Also local residents have given accounts of having seen police throwing bodies of dead civilians into the river in an apparent attempt to underreport the number of dead. We've also received accounts that some of those injured were being detained by security forces and denied medical attention leading to additional deaths. There are many people still reported missing and access to medical attention in the region is horribly inadequate."

Peru's Ombudsman's office issued a strong statement yesterday demanding an end to the violence. Letters condemning the government's actions are pouring in from thousands of Peruvians and international human rights activists and organizations. Today, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the chair of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues of the United Nations issued a letter expressing "shock and deep distress at reports received of atrocities committed" and calling on the government to "Immediately cease all violence against indigenous communities and organizations."

Indigenous peoples have vowed to continue protests until the Peruvian Congress revokes the "free trade" decrees issued by President Garcia under special powers granted by Congress in the context of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

In the past two weeks, the Constitutional Committee of Congress has ruled that legislative decrees 994 and 1090 were unconstitutional. The Peruvian Congress was scheduled to debate the revocation of decree 1090 again on Thursday, however, Garcia's political party, for the third time, prevented the debate preferring instead to attack the peaceful blockades. The government Ombudsman office has filed a legal action with the constitutional tribunal regarding the unconstitutionality of decree 1064, which affects the land rights laws in Peru.

"Garcia has rejected several congressional debates on the decrees, opting for violent attacks and brute force that will only worsen this conflict. It is outrageous that the ministers are now attempting to blame the victims for this incident and cover up the number of indigenous people
dead," said Gregor MacLennan.

The protests have provoked national debate about government policies in the Amazon that ignore indigenous peoples and encourage large-scale extractive industries in Amazonian lands. Indigenous peoples assert that new laws undermine their rights and open up their ancestral lands to private companies for mining, logging, plantations, and oil drilling without their consultation or consent.

AIDESEP, the national indigenous organization of Peru presented a legal petition yesterday for "precautionary measures" to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights requesting intervention to prevent more bloodshed. Orders for the arrest of leaders of AIDESEP, including Alberto Pizango who is being charged with sedition, were put in effect on Friday.

A coalition of human rights and environmental organizations are urging the Garcia Government to stand down and cease violent confrontations by the military and calling for solidarity demonstrations at Peruvian Embassies around the world. There were demonstrations on Friday at the Peruvian Government missions in San Francisco and Washington, DC. More are planned next week.

AIDESEP, the national indigenous organization of Peru has called for a nationwide general strike starting June 11th.

For Background information see additional links and www.aidesep.org.pe.

Hessen (Germany) deports 26-year-old Rom to Kosovo

28 May 2009 – According to information by his lawyer, police officers arrested the 26 year-old Elvis A. on Monday, 26 May 2009, around midnight at his home in Fuldatal, to deport him back to Kosovo. His life-time companian and the two small children of the couple are left alone in Germany.

28 May 2009 – According to information by his lawyer (see press release on our website), police officers arrested the 26 year-old Elvis A. on Monday, 26 May 2009, around midnight at his home in Fuldatal, where he lived together with his life companion and their two small children, one and a half year and three weeks old, to deport him back to Kosovo, where he has no other family members. According to the same source, Elvis A. arrived in Germany, in September 1999, together with his parents and other siblings, in the aftermath of the Kosovo conflict.

Instead of receiving asylum, Elvis A. was merely granted a “tolerated status” (“Duldung”), which offers but a limited protection against deportation. Moreover, under this status, Elvis A. was not allowed to receive professional training or take up a regular job. Arriving in Germany 82 days too late, he missed the deadline for having his case to be considered by the so-called “Härtefallkommission”, which deals with cases of exceptional hardship among asylum seekers.

One month ago, Elvis A. received a letter, asking him to leave Germany on a “voluntary basis”. Referring to his family situation and social integration, his lawyer requested a residence permit. There was no response to this, until his deportation to Kosovo. According to his lawyer, there was no time to introduce legal remedies.

The German federal government has recently concluded a readmission agreement with the Kosovo authorities which allows for the forced repatriation of people originating from Kosovo, regardless their ethnic background. This agreement stands in contrast and de facto violates the UNHCR position on the continued international protection needs of individuals from Kosovo, according to which Kosovo Roma and Serbs continue to be at risk of persecution and should be granted asylum or subsidiary protection.

The deportation of Elvis A. coincides with the publication by Minority Rights Group International of a report highlighting the continued discrimination of ethnic minorities leading to their departure from Kosovo. The same day, the Council of Europe Commission against Racism and Intolerance, ECRI, issued its fourth country report on Germany in which it expressed its criticism regarding Germany’s restrictive policies towards asylum seekers.

In this report, ECRI devotes an entire section to the situation of people who have been admitted in Germany on the basis of the “tolerated status”. While praising Germany’s efforts to provide a provisional residence status to persons who have been staying in Germany for many years, which is referred to as “Bleiberechtsregelung”, provided their fulfilment of certain conditions, ECRI encouraged the German authorities “to work towards a solution which is humane and respectful of human rights for all persons, including those who will not benefit from the present provisions, who have been living in Germany with tolerated status for a long time and have developed close ties with Germany.” Elvis A. would certainly have fallen under this category.

Chachipe a.s.b.l.

For more information, please visit our website
http://www.romarights.wordpress.com