Saturday 13 November 2010

Asylum law in Germany: a 'big lie'

Bundesverfassungsgericht, KarlsruheImage by Al Fed via Flickr
Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung

By Heribert Prants

Translation by Heinz Leitner

Since 1963, the German asylum law is straightened to its needs. It simulates protection where there is none. It defines safe states that don’t exist. The Federal Court of Constitution has joined in these lies – up to now.

Since 17 years, since 1993, the German asylum law is simulating justice. This big lie has stopped now. The Federal Court of Constitution does not join in this hypocrisy any more.

The Federal Court of Constitution examines whether automatically deportation of asylum seekers is in agreement with the basic law.

This asylum bill promises what cannot be relied on. It simulates protection that does not exist. It defines safe states, even if they are not safe. The Federal Court of Constitution has joined this lie for a long time: It issued its blessing to it in its judgement of May 14th, 1996. It has stricken a bad patch in the history of basic laws: The Court refused to consider individual fates being confronted with enormous numbers of asylum seekers (there were 400.000 asylum applications in 1992). The judges did not want to hear anything more about the suffering of the world like the majority of the citizens and the parties. Quick deportation without any legal protection was more important to them than the highest basic law then, more important than the human dignity, more important than the principle of a fair trial.

Nowadays, the numbers of asylum seekers have been reduced to 6 percent of the former number. Now, the highest judges think about the compensation of former times; they feel uncomfortable with the former judgement. The judges do not want to accept the merciless mechanism of the asylum law any longer that made it possible to send back refugees at the borders; the judges want to reinstall the law of appeal again. This has become obvious in the oral proceedings. The judgement is said to exclude the 3rd-country-article in the German asylum law.

The new asylum law has just simply enlisted many countries as safe countries in a list maintaining that refugees are safe in these countries. 3rd-country-articles, this sounds harmless but it is sharp as a knife, meaning that there is no chance for a refugee in Germany who had moved a foot forward to another country than Germany. This person is considered not being a political refugee in Germany even though this person makes it obvious that he had been tortured. The only thing that counts is the route the person has taken. He  has not got any chance to maintain that he is not safe in the country to which he is going to be deported,.

This article has been  propagandistically presented successfully by German politics as an ideal for the European asylum law of the European Union . But the sharpness of the German article has not become an ideal yet. Germany behaves like a Pontius Pilatus: it washes its hands of  it but rigorously deports refugees as Sarkozy is deporting Romanies. To Greece for instance by Germany – although there is no protection  for refugees. The asylum procedure in Greece is no right but a right of chasers. The German asylum law does not acknowledge this fact. What happens in Greece (or elsewhere) in real life is not interesting at all. They look into the list, and there it is written “safe” – and they deport. This is called “ascertainment by law”; the reality does not count, the letter of the law counts.

1992/93 it had been a white lie maintaining the unsafe is safe facing high numbers of refugees. Countless refugees had become victims of this  “excess of the  wrongfully self-defence”. The judges of the constitution start  betinking themselves of the better as the lower courts did not want to be a party  in this cynicism  Plotics does not join. Politics still wants an asylum law with a basic law of the 3rd class.

1996 three judges of the court of constitution spoke out against the 3rd-country-aricle distastefully in a different statement. “It is”, as judge Bertold Sommer said, “a roof without a house.” What happens to such a roof? It does not give ground, and strikes dead those who are looking for shelter below. This is still the fact. It must not remain like that.

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