In early 1999, soon after he arrived in Germany, Jose Maria Jones, travelled with a delegation of refugees and their allies in a ‘mini-caravan’ tour through several parts of Germany. With great energy he not only expressed the brutality in Sierra Leone and the need for a ‘war crimes tribunal’ but also the inhuman conditions he and others had to face in the refugee camps in Germany. The group were stopped and checked by the police three times in Bavaria, for no other reason other than the skin colour of the delegation members. The car and the occupants were thoroughly searched with the police paying special attention to the political leaflets defending the rights of refugees in Germany. Jose Maria was found to breaking the Residenzpflicht law. Several months later, the foreigners police in Wartburgkreis where Jose Maria lived took the unprecedented step to issue him with an exclusion order - to leave Germany. 

The authorities justify the ‘exclusion order’ arguing that Jose Maria is a ‘danger for public security’, that his ‘criminal energy’ is a ‘bad example’ for other refugees. And that only an ‘exclusion order’ could have the general preventive deterrent effect on other asylum seekers. And that it is this punishment that can deter future potential ‘first offenders’.

Bad example or good example?
The German authorities’ declared intent to make an example of Jose Maria did not terrorise him into submission. He decided to fight back openly and politically, rising to the challenge put to him by the German state. For Jose Maria, a political activist with deeply held beliefs, it was not possible to do otherwise. In this way, by his personal example, he was sending a message to all asylum seekers - don’t be intimidated - stand up against this unjust law. As a result the authorities have yielded the bitter harvest of making an example of Jose Maria Jones. 

The snowball effect has meant that during the past three years an upsurge of political resistance against the ‘Residenzpflicht’ has emerged. Various refugee organisations have come together to hold protest actions at a national scale. Several individual refugees have publicly fought their ‘Residenzpflicht’ cases in the courts - with considerable success. 

The empire strikes back
However, the general situation regarding the rights of refugees in Europe has dramatically worsened in the recent period - specially after the ‘September 11th’. Britain and Germany are pushing Europe to dismantle asylum rights, stop refugees entering Europe and push out those who are here. As Tony Blair, proposes armed Naval force to intercept refugees fleeing war, persecution and starvation, Germany shows its prowess at internal pressure on we who are here to isolate us and pressurise us to such an extent that they hope we will leave on our own ‘free will’! True to form, while island Britain proposes the importance to ‘rule the waves’ (and drown the refugees?) Germany shows the effectiveness of efficient implementation of regulations, laws, categorisations, encampment, and isolation. So much so that draconian policies like Germany’s ‘Residenzpflicht’, which were earlier frowned upon by other European countries, are now being seriously considered for adoption by some of them. It is under these conditions that the German authorities are showing renewed confidence to attack those like Jose Maria Jones and Richard Ndika Ndakwe who have made a stand, to expose its inhuman policy of socially and politically isolating refugees.

For decades the German government has been systematically isolating us, by putting us into camps in the middle of forests and hemming us into these accommodations by various laws and regulations effectively sealing us from German society. The only legal way to leave the ‘landkreis’ (the police area) is to ask, well in advance, for permission from the ‘foreigners police’ authority assigned to you. This local ‘foreigners police’, which is charged by the government of controlling us and implementing its policy has incredible power over almost every aspect of our lives. It is easy to understand that the officials who end up working in such places have a more anti-foreigner and right-wing politics than general society. The fact that Jose Maria, has, from the outset systematically and practically opposed every aspect of this isolation policy, and has fought to unite refugees from different countries and promoted integration from German society and not isolation, has no doubt angered certain individual officials in the foreigners police in Wartburgkries. But the fact that an individual official in the office of a foreigners police in a provincial town in the eastern part of Germany can through vindictiveness assert that Jose Maria Jones should be thrown out of Germany only because of his political example shows the ultimate consequence and the aim of the isolation policy - deportation. 

For all refugees it is critically important to defend Jose Maria Jones. The risk and the sacrifice he has made with his pioneering struggle against the Residenzpflicht to promote our rights has to be appreciated. The serious setback for fight against the Residenzpflicht must be prevented.

Jose Maria has the right! Here to stay - Here to fight!