Sie befinden sich im Archiv Dieser Teil der Website wird nicht mehr betreut. Es können somit einige Verweise nicht mehr funktionieren und die Sprache der Dokumente ist nicht zu ändern.

leaflet as pdf-file
Francais
Türkce

Sunny Omwenyeke goes on trial for breaking the Pass Law "Residenzpflicht"

Examples of refugees effected by `Residenzpflicht´

Faxcampaign for Jose Maria Jones

 On the 3rd of October at the Expo 2000, in Hanover Germany is celebrating its unification and selling a new modern image - that it is a defender of human rights and friendly to foreigners. The much vaunted attempts to restrict the activities of neo-nazi parties and groups is part of this image that Germany wants to show the world. But this propaganda circus about fighting neo-Nazi’s has nothing to do with the lives of the refugees - the real victims of the racist terror. In fact the German government has been laying the basis for the attacks on the foreigners for decades, by systematically isolating us. We have been put away in camps in the middle of forests and we have been hemmed into these accommodation with various laws and measures that we are effectively isolated from German society.  The ‘Residenzpflicht’ which restricts the right to free movement of asylum seekers since 1982 in the sharpest example of this. The Residenzpflicht forbids us the right to leave the police district that we are allocated (‘landkreis’). This law, which imprisons us in a sometimes very small police district, does not exist in any other European country.
This law criminalises all asylum seekers, and foreigners in general. Any one of us can be checked by the police, whether or not we are outside our district (landkries). For anyone witnessing this controll it appears that the foreigner has done something criminal. Every time a foreigner is checked by the police because of the Residenzpflicht law, the main political slogan of the of the Neo-Nazis, ‘criminal foreigner’ is given substance to. Further, as Germans cannot break the residence law, this makes the criminal statistics biased sharply against foreigners, again giving substance to the Neo-Nazi propaganda.
It is practically impossible for an asylum seeker to avoid an offence against the residence law. As soon as we come to Germany, we are automatically criminalised. The residence law inevitably enforces social isolation. This is shown by the example of Jose Maria Jones from Sierra Leone. He lives in a refugee camp in Grossensee in Thuringia. Whenever he would like to visit a friend living in Raßdorf, a neighbouring village, situated only 100 meters away in another district, or to participate in a political meeting there, he first has to travel to Bad Salzungen which is 32 kms away, in order to request the ‘foreign police’ for permission to walk to the neighbouring district. The train fare alone to get his permission costs him 35 DM, and then he must pay 15 DM more for the foreign police officer to issue a travel permission. However, like all asylum-seekers, he is only entitled to 80 DM monthly for all his expenses. (Sometimes, when he plays football on the street with friends from his refugee accommodation, and the ball rolls over the district border, they are forced to ask a German passer-by whether he or she can bring back the ball, because they live in fear that a police patrol passing by may control them.)
Jose Maria knows such police controls only too well. More than a year ago, he travelled with a delegation of the ‘Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants’ to several cities in Germany, in order to inform people about the situation in his country of origin and about violation of human rights of the refugees in Germany. In doing this, he ran three times into police controls. Since he could not show an appropriate government permission for leaving his district, he received an expulsion notice a short time later. According to this expulsion notice, he was a security risk for the free democratic constitutional structure of the Federal Republic of Germany, and a danger for internal security, merely because he had made use of his fundamental right to freedom of movement.
The Residenzpflicht forces every asylum seeker to stay inside his or her district. If you get checked by the police while you are outside the district you are charged, for the first offence 100 DM cash, which you cannot pay because as a refugee you receive only 80 DM a month. (From this 80 DM, at least 50 DM goes in lawyers’ fees in the constant struggle against deportation). The caretaker of the  refugee camp keep attendance records every day, to see if the refugees are there or not: If a refugee is not at home for a few days, the punishment that he or she gets may be to lose the right to accommodation. The Social Department in turn punishes you by cutting even the meagre financial assistance of 80 DM, by cutting food coupons or by paying the person weekly, in order to force the person not to go out of the landkreis. The refugee thus has not enough money to eat, let alone to pay police fines of over 100 DM. This means that he or she will be arrested and put in prison. In prison, you undergo racially based harassment and humiliation. The dignity of many refugees are routinely broken during such imprisonment, and they are thus prepared for so-called “voluntary” deportation.
So for us the current declarations of the German politicians are a pure mockery. How can they speak against Neo-Nazi terror against us when they have for nearly two decades prepared the basis for it. They have nearly completely isolated us from German society, they have humiliated us and terrorised us. The most explicit legal basis for this isolation is the German pass law - the Residenzpflicht. The refugees in the ‘Caravan for the Rights of the Refugees and Migrants’ have decided to launch a civil disobedience campaign against the Residenzpflicht. We will not be sitting ducks so that the Neo-Nazi’s can terrorise us! We will fight against the legal basis that prevents us from organising ourselves. We ask you join our struggle.

Please send a protest faxes to The German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to take a position to repeal this specially racist Residenzpflicht law, to show his seriouseness to protect the refugees against Neo-Fascists. Please send a copy to us at IMRV Bremen.

Fax Number for Gerhard Schröder with international code for Germany is:
+ 49/ 30/ 4000  2357