Press release
August 14th, 1998
Situation of the Kosovo refugees more and more embarassing
PRO ASYL appeal for the admission of refugees
Taking seriously the obligation deriving
from the Geneva Refugee Convention
Situation of the Kosovo refugees more and more embarassing (en)
Pro Asyl fordert Abschiebestopp für Kosovo- Flüchtlinge – (dpa)
Pro Asyl fordert EU-Konferenz zu Kosovo- Flüchtlingen – (AP)
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.
Regarding the catastrophic situation of more than 200.000 refugees in Kosovo the Human Rights Organisation for Refugees PRO ASYL urges the Federal government to receive refugees from Kosovo, to issue immediately a deportation ban to the FR of Yugoslavia, to quit the readmission agreement and to call a special EU-conference on the admission of Kosovo refugees.
The human rights violations are obviously a political persecution, declared PRO ASYL-speaker Heiko Kauffmann, and therefore the people, who fled would be refugees according to the Geneva Convention and its obligation of non returning asylum seekers at the borders would be applicable absolutely.
Considerations of German politicians, to accommodate refugees from Kosovo in Macedonia or Albania as closely as possible to their home country and to take this as concept of „Regionalising“ didn’t solve the problems but creates new ones. Macedonia won’t accept the admission of a large number of Albanians for undefinite time, because it would change the population structure further. Moreover a resettlement in the vicinity of the border would be only meaningful if there would be available a political concept of the repatriation of the refugees as well as a political will to its enforcement. A reasonable concept of the regionalising must rather take into consideration, that refugees choose their receiving countries according to language, cultural and family relationships and reference points and former relations resulted by employment . It is understandable that many threatened refugees wish to join their relatives in Germany. 2/3 of the 400.000 Kovovo Albanians in Germany would live there as migrant workers for many years. „In front of the dimension of the expulsion the German politics mustn’t any longer concern the upcoming humanitarian tasks under the point of view of the prevention of the reception of refugees“.
The disastrous development in the region is as well the result of a lack of political pressure, short-sighted crisis diplomacy and self-interests of the western states blocking each other.
