21. april to 01. of may 2000 in jena - Human Rights Server

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Flight and migration of women “I came here in order to be in a free country, but the behaviour of German police was the same as in Iran. I could not believe that they would treat me just as badly here and that they would use brutal force to put on a veil. They violated my rights and my dignity as a woman...” Roya Mosayebi On 9th of November last year several policemen stormed into the private room of Roya Mosayebi on the instruction of the foreigners police in Nürnberg. They dragged her to the police station and put a veil on her head in spite of protests – injuring her arm in the process, so that they could photograph her. To make a travelling document to enable deportation the Iranian embassy insists on a veiled photo for women. A few weeks later in the case of Djamileh, also from Iran, the Bremen foreigners police used computer techniques to superimpose a veil on her photo! Strong protests initiated by the caravan groups Nürnberg and Bremen and the ‘8 th March committee’ forced the authorities not to use the photos. However soon after, the administrative court in Ansbach justified the brutal actions of Nürnberg authorities. It is incredible that Iranian women who fought the massive repression against women in their country and for that reason had to flee are confronted once more with the trauma of being forced to wear a veil here in Germany. The Islamic laws like these of the Iranian regime are officially condemned by Germany but nevertheless they support and stabilise just that regime because of their huge economic interests. Economical liberalism and support for the worst forms of feudal oppression go hand by hand. And in order to get rid of refugees, they are using the anti-women policies of the regimes that they ‘criticise’. It is not only in countries like Iran that women are treated as the property of men. German women, who have relationships with African men are confronted with immense hostility by German society and the state. Recently many such women and their partners have come out of their silent suffering and started to publicly talk about their problems and fight for their rights. For example, the foreigners office of Bremen are determined to deport the Gambian refugee Alieu Ceesay and thereby break up the marriage with his German wife Dorothea Volkmann. To add insult to injury, the foreigners office wanted Dorothea to present papers that prove her participation in a psychotherapy to prepare her to deal with the deportation of her husband! The message is clear: “Women who marry Africans are not normal and have to be treated therapeutically.” This thinking regards German women as property of German men and have to be defended from foreigners. Now several bi-national couples from different cities have joined the ‘caravan’ to protest against the apartheid in German family politics. Further, ‘Villa Courage’ from Freiberg will talk about problems refugee women have to suffer who are married to German husbands. For many years they have been fighting for a independent right to stay for women. They have fought against the effect of the section §19 of the foreigners law that forces a foreign woman to complete at least three years of a marriage to a German man, before she gets any rights and therefore be completely at mercy of their husbands’ arbitrariness. Several years ago, Tamil refugees launched a massive and sustained struggle to stop all deportations to Sri Lanka from Bremen. The success of this struggle, and the confidence other refugee groups derived from this laid the basis for the ‘caravan’ idea to emerge. In this struggle Tamil women played a leading role. How is it that Tamil women refugees, who had previously faced the debilitating feudal structures have played this dynamic and leading role in the anti-racist struggle in Germany? Clearly the liberation movement in Tamil Eelam has something to do with it! The transportation of the culture and experience of a successful and powerful women’s struggle like that which exists within the Tamil liberation movement through the refugees is valuable for the ‘Caravan’ movement. Workshop: Iranian asylum seeking women being forced to wear the veil by foreigners police, situation of women in the Iran (Iranian Women’s - 8 th of March Committee, IMRV) Workshop: Campaign against the Apartheid in the German family politics (Women from Bremen, The Voice, IMRV) Workshop: Political struggle for a women specific right to stay (Villa Courage and Committee for Filipino Migrant Workers) Workshop: On the situation of women in the asylum process and how authorities and courts deal with women specific flight reasons (Antifa Thüringen among others) Workshop: A spokeswoman of the Tamil Women’s organisation about experiences of women within the Tamil liberation movement and their role in the fight for refugee rights in Germany (IMRV) More workshops are planned. Further there will be the possibility to have women’s groups to every issue. There will be sleeping space for women only and crèche facilities. Contact: Traudi - email: sisterfriend@gmx.de or Steffi and Djamileh at IMRV
Unite against deportation Deportation is a gross violation of human rights not only because it means that refugees fleeing persecution torture and death are cynically handed over to their executioners but also because it is the violation of the freedom of movement from poor to rich countries which has come to symbolise the creation of a world-wide system of apartheid between the few entitled to enjoy the fruits of neo-liberalism and the many, who in the words of a Tamil poet, ‘bear our destiny seared on our foreheads like a mark of Cain’. The small number of us who manage the come into the fortress Europe are now facing increasing pressure and such humiliation, to make our lives so difficult that we leave ‘voluntarily’. It is often assumed that fascist attacks on foreigners is the most violent manifestation of racism in western democracies. This would be to forget the systematic planned violence unleashed by the state against foreigners everyday. This violence has a name - deportations. Each day thousands of foreigners are arrested, even killed as was recently the case in Braunschweig for no other reason than that the state deems that they have no right to be here. This racist onslaught, which has no other logical foundation except that, that the state has the absolute authority to determine who should be here and who not based on purely economic criteria; in other words that human beings may be treated like commodities brought in when required and discarded when not, is not merely a catastrophe for refugees fleeing persecution and death but also undermines the rights of all those of foreign origin, who may have lived in this country for a number of generations. This is why deportation is in itself gross violation of human rights. It denies the dignity of the human being to reduce him/her to a commodity. A state of affairs which was considered normal a century ago with the slave trade, which we have not forgotten. This is why deportation, the sharp end of racism, has to be fought as a precondition for any progress. Deportation is the backbone and the most powerful symbol of a system of international apartheid with the poor nations being cantoned into desolate ‘homelands’ which serve to fill the coffers of rapacious multinationals and denied the freedom of movement and only the rich nations are deemed to have any legitimate rights. It is in fact the consecration of this regime that Schily talks about when he argues that political liberalism follows economic liberalism, thus making the right of asylum meaningless. The section ‘unite against deportation’ on 29 th and 30 th April will bring together all the previous sections of the congress as well as deal with some concrete issues related to the practise of deportation. The basis for the brutal practise of deportation starts in fact in our home countries. As the first section proclaims, ‘we are here because you destroy our countries’. In fact the regimes in the countries of our origin not only force us to flee but also collaborate with the German authorities to forcibly implement our deportation. ‘Fortress Europe’ enables the deportation of refugees even before reaching Europe, especially before reaching Germany. Then the high tech control system ad the collaboration between the countries inside fortress Europe have devised diabolical methods to push us out. ‘Social exclusion, state racism and fascism’ unravel the terrible political dynamic which enable that deportations take place without a strong reaction from the community. Sexism combines with racism to humiliate women. Further issues - travelling documents made with the co-operation of embassies, centralised ‘appointments at embassies’ - deportation prisons - mistreatment and violent death during deportation - deportation of seriously ill and traumatised refugees - the role of airlines in deportations, mass deportations with charter flights - deportation of underage persons There is no timetable because the results of the previous workshops are crucial to this workshop. Its main goal is to build up forthcoming structures and to develop effective strategies in order to stop deportations. Excursion into refugee camps
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21. april to 01. of may 2000 in jena - Human Rights Server

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