Press release
August 13th, 1998
Kosovo casualties of Weissenborn
PRO ASYL appeal at the Minister of the Interior
New report on border and search policy
sees refugees as „victims of the Fortress Europe“
Kosovo casualties of Weissenborn (en)
Unfallopfer sollen bleiben dürfen (Frankfurter Rundschau)
Translation Info
This is a machine translation by the IBM-supported PERSONAL TRANSLATOR plus. It is slightly edited by combining its results with the translation of SYSTRAN. But you should not rely on it. If you want to use a translated text append or reference the original text.
The Human Rights Organisation for Refugees PRO ASYL has appealed to the Saxon Home Secretary Hardraht. He shall grant a temporary residence right to the flight and accident victims of the bus disaster of Weissenborn as civil war refugees. He should also support, that use might be made of the possibility given in the asylum procedure law According to this there could be refrained from an expulsion for humanitarian reasons. Literally PRO ASYL speaker Heiko Kauffmann writes in his letter: „That deportation orders even are laying on the table besides the beds of seriously hurt and freshly operated victims of the bus accident, may not become a symbol of the political culture of this country, the treatment of people who scarcely have escaped from chaos of war and danger to live neither“.
Kauffmann reminded that the refugees from the Kosovo killed at the bus accident are also „victims of the Fortress Europe“. A perfect „system“ of defensive measures against refugees has had the disastrous effect on the Kosovo Albanians which died at the bus accident. They would have been eligible for asylum, all of them have immediately fled from the civil war in the Kosovo, they have intended to join their relatives and friends, who in part were living for more than 20 years in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.
Regarding this background PRO ASYL presents at the same time an extensive and by itself supported report (contents and summary in German) of the Berlin Research Association on Flight and Migration (FFM). It deals with the current criminalization of refugees, assistance of flight, experiences of refugees at the German Polish Eastern border and the system of the German sealing off and search policy. This report has been published under the title „The border – Refugee hunting in the Schengen country“ by the Refugee Council of Lower Saxony.
The brochure is not only to make suggestions to Refugee Councils and engaged groups in the border area. It is also to request for fundamental discussion on refugee and social policy of the Federal government.
