Kosovo:

An immediate initiative of the German EU Presidency to realise a concerted policy for the reception of refugees from Kosovo demands the Nation-wide Human Rights Organisation for Refugees PRO ASYL in view of the dramatic situation on the spot.

According to PRO ASYL more than 20.000 people have been expelled since Christmas; since the beginning of the conflict more than 300.000 people have been forced to flee; 180.000 refugees fled within Kosovo, more than 120.000 into the neighbouring European countries.

„Violence escalates in Kosovo, ten thousands of refugees try to survive in houses, cellars and sheds shot to pieces; thousands wander around in the region“, declared the spokesperson of PRO ASYL, Heiko Kauffmann.

„The European Union will have to adapt itself to the fact, that faced with the instability in the Kosovo people will seek refuge outside the conflict area furthermore“. „Regionalising“ of the refugee reception propagated by the EU has led in the neighbouring countries of Kosovo to devastating conditions. „The refugee camps in Bosnia Herzegovina, which should ensure originally the reception of returning Bosnian civil war refugees, are overburdened with about 10.000 refugees from Kosovo living there under inhumane conditions. In Montenegro refugees concretely run the risk to be deported immediately into Albania“, said Kauffmann.

Pictures in the meantime being part of daily messages of refugees from Kosovo run aground or exposed on the high seas would demonstrate the pressing necessity of a Pan- European reception concept in favour of this people.

„We take it for a humanitarian catastrophe, that political decisions in view of the expulsion from the Kosovo have been taken up to now under the point of view of preventing the reception of refugees“, declared Kauffmann.

PRO ASYL calls upon the Federal Government, to use the German EU Presidency for a concerted refugee reception policy.

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