Protest Continues as Embassy Ignores Call to Stop Corrupt Collaboration
“Diplomatic Minister Ehiaghighala denies Nigerian Community Delegates”
- The VOICE Refugee forum (Baden Württemberg)
As we intensify our campaign with the anti-deportation activists to protest the country embassies' abusive roles to their citizens abroad in collaboration with German regime, more than 50 Persons amongst whom were refugee and non-refugee activist, Nigerian community representatives and other concerned persons assembled publicly to protest the Nigerian embassy corrupt deportation hearing at the Central Asylum Reception Center in Karlsruhe on 18th August 2011. (http://thevoiceforum.org/node/2220
This campaign which is coordinated by the Baden-Württemberg section of The VOICE Refugee Forum with the support of activists from Hessen and Baden -Württemberg attracted wider solidarity from many groups within Germany as well as Austrian based Nigerian activists who contributed to create more awareness of our campaign within Nigerian communities in Africa and Europe. Although their intended physical presence at the protest in Karlsruhe was hindered by the spontaneity of the action, their impact on spreading the call was enormous. (http://thecaravan.org/files/caravan/deportationhearing.pdf)
The protest rally began with presentation by the coordinating activist of The VOICE Refugee Forum opened the rally with an expression of acknowledgement in the solidarity from the anti-deportation network in Frankfurt, Mainz, Mannheim, Heidelberg, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe and also with the refugee activists, interested persons and groups who had expressed solidarity either by physical presence or otherwise to the manifestation.
A police officer tried to provoke the manifestation and generated an unnecessary call for police backup but the protesting activists tactically ignored them and kept the situation under control to avoid any form of police intimidation as their usual strategy of projecting activists as radicals to divert our intention.
The conflict developed from the police officer's refusal to allow some Nigerian Community representatives from Kassel the opportunity to observe the conduct of the deportation hearing as offered to some Nigerian Community representatives with an activist of The VOICE who as a delegation visited the then Ambassador Ridmap and his diplomatic Officials with of Minister Okoye who has always played the manipulating games since the heat of this campaign in 2008.
The new Diplomatic Minister Ehiaghighala (taking over from Minister Ahmed) as the representing Nigerian embassy official in the Karlsruhe hearing confirmed his ignorance with the German deportation regime and thus exposing his irresponsibility to have denied the Nigerian Community delegates with whom he had a discussion session on the corrupt deportation hearing during an April book lunch in Kassel. His denial further provoked protesters to question the possibility of identifying strange African faces if he could deny community delegates with whom he had earlier in April discussed the corrupt mobile hearing practices Kassel.
The venue was flooded with influx of security vehicles conveying victims like war crime criminals on handcuffs. Some of the vehicles identified were carrying registration Plate numbers from Dortmund, Köln, Bonn, and Mainz etc. Protesters chanted at every movement of the conveying vehicle “No border! No nation! Stop deportation!” or “Deportation is Torture, Deportation is Murder, Right to stay for All Immediately”
We had the opportunity to speak with 2 victims who identified themselves as nationals of Burundi and Nigeria. They narrated their experiences of having lived here in Germany for 11 and 15 years respectively. The victim from Burundi confirmed this as his 5th invitation to such hearing of the Nigerian Embassy and expressed his disappointment with Minister Ehiaghighala who was advising him to accept being a Nigerian. For the Nigerian victim, he is diagnosed with a heart problem for which he is under medical attention which would last for a long time but this didn’t interest the Embassy Minister as he showed no concern to get copies of his medical reports at the least.
The manifestation was a way forward to broaden The VOICE Refugee Community solidarity networking against every form of deportation hearing. In continuity, there have been ongoing plans for an information campaign with the Nationwide Caravan for Rights of Refugees and Migrants, the anti-deportation network in Frankfurt (Rhein- Main gegen Abschiebung) as well as activists from Vienna-Austria and Switzerland. Further efforts will be made to include activists in Brussels and Netherlands being major chartered deportation transit partners. The campaign is intended to go beyond Europe to home countries of refugees to publicize ex-deportees testimonies and protest the brutal deportation and malpractices of the European state and Frontex in General.
We shall inform our supporters on any deportation hearing that we know about and also would want to appeal to everyone with such information to inform us so as to enable us plan our intervention. More also, information events are being planned in some regions to pave way for the decentralized rallies and demonstration at the embassy premises in Germany
We call on every progressive group to join us in spreading information and empower the community of the oppressed in general. The mobile hearing is not confined to Nigeria but to other embassies of refugees home country involved with the German state deportation collaboration business.
The protest of the VOICE Refugee Forum
The VOICE Refugee Forum and other Support Network condemn these maltreatments and the persecution of refugees and the asylum seekers or migrants in Germany and Europe.
We demand that the Nigerian Embassy and the German counterpart should be held politically and judicially responsible for all past abuses like the 2007 Ludwigsburg hearing where victims were stripped naked and humiliated (http://thevoiceforum.org/node/737) and the continuous maltreatments of refugees in Germany like the unlawful detention of Smart Imafidon and many others in deportation prisons, Police abuses during deportation and torture meted on Joshua Nnabuife and others in deportation prison.
We denounce the human rights abuses before and during the hearings: the privacy breach from controlling victims telephone during the deportation hearing, the German police deceit of compelling victims to undersign German text which they don't understand, traumatizing police presence during the hearing, the force used on refugees to appear in deportation hearing by police pressure and detention in Police cells as option to gather them together prior to the hearing day.
We condemn the embassy hearings as a means exercising racial persecution and elimination for different reasons:
1. Based on racial features: The hearings are based on profile of assumed racial features like Face Form, Scars, or Accents. Also in German National Socialism physio-gnomic distinction was used to decide who was an Aryan, Slavic or a Jew. Being applied in this modern Democracy with nobody raising awareness about it - is it because it has to do with Africans?
2. Based on a image about Africa as culturally less developed: This implicit distinction between
3. Europeans and Africans, Whites and Blacks could be further linked with a kind of "racism against states or nations". In Germany it has, at least in some parts of the society, in the last time become accepted that a German does not necessarily have to be blond and blue-eyed. Many have learned that also people with parents, grandparents from Turkey, Italy, Poland - or even Africa - could be Germans by having a German Passport, speaking German, identifying with German culture even without "looking" German.
The practice of embassy hearings is based on the basis that such concept of "Kulturnation" (nation based on the identification of a common culture) does not exist in Africa. On the basis of such modern concept of nation physical features can not be a practical proof to identify who belongs to any nation.
The obvious ideology behind it is that an African nation must be based on a kind of Tribalism whereas a more progressive idea of nation based on the decision of belonging to certain culture, a system of law, values etc. are only preserved for Europe.
Concretely, the idea of embassy hearings exists on basic distinction of Europe being the progressive and developed while Africa is defined a backward and tribal
3. Deportation itself is racist elimination: Obviously the aim behind the embassy hearings is not to decide who is really Nigerian but aimed at deporting as many as possible which identifies their racist concept of selecting persons based on who is worth to live here and who is not.
The invitation to the hearing in Halberstadt sent to The VOICE refugee community members in Hof conveyed the reason for the attendance and for the deportation of the persons as public interest which was allegedly projected higher than the deportee's interest to have appealed against the decision. How inhuman and cynical is it to call it of public interest to deport us just because we are from a country whose citizens are not likely to get a legal stay, are rejected because they want to make us poor? We, who have lived, worked paid taxes, loved, laughed, breathed, suffered, raised children, made friends, learned the language, acquired German ways of living or fought for our life and our rights for many years in Germany?
It is annoying to see the state projecting its deportation practices as an interest of the public. In this sense deportation is a form of societal elimination based on selection between who is worth to live here or not. A form of elimination which may not be intended to killing but which is a manifestation of enormous racist hatred with the main aim of removing the victim from the society. It may also cause death by accident through carelessness and wickedness by the border police or the Victims persecutors in the home country. Death which is willingly accepted by German authorities, death which usually never finds justice (see the numbers of deaths by deportation from Germany and Europe)
Undertaking mobile deportation hearing identifies the country embassy collaboration to this selection, persecution and elimination and further contributes to the racist ideas about Africa and Africans and its colonial continuity in Germany.
We demand public Interest to unite against the abuses of refugee rights, human rights, humanity, right to live a life free from persecution, the right of free movement, the right to live in dignity for refugees in Germany and Europe and for everybody.
We appeal to all refugee community activists and to all other anti-racists to stand up and protest against deportation hearings! We appeal to all refugees who are concerned of a deportation hearing: Don't support your own deportation! Refusing to attend a deportation hearing or to refuse speaking at the hearing is civil disobedience against deportation business!
Join us to break the isolation and the silence of country embassy deportation collaboration's with its failed role to address the German state abuses meted on its countrymen.
More Information on Colonia Collaboration:
http://thevoiceforum.org/search/node/nigeria+deportation+embassy
The VOICE Refugee forum (Baden Württemberg)
Böblinger Str. 105, 70199 Stuttggart
Tel; mobil: 0049 (0) 173 4165 134
E-Mail: [email protected]
http://thevoiceforum.org
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