Well, Yorick, take a seat this gonna be another long one.
The Kurd refugee might very well be from Iraq. I do not know if you know it, but
the Kurds, estimates of their total number range from 15-25 Mio., live split up in three countries: more than a half of the total in Turkey, mostly in the southeastern portion, the other factions live across the border in neighbouring northern Iraq and western Iran. In Turkey they have always been denied the most basic human rights, they are not allowed to speak their language in public, there are no newspapers, radio or TV programs in Kurdish, nor Kurdish universities. Politicians that campaign for Kurdish rights are persecuted and imprisoned. Until quite recently the Turkish government even denied that Kurds even existed, calling them "Mountain Turks". The southeastern region where they
form the majority is by far the least developed and poorest. Under such circumstances it was inevitable that opposition sprung up, but it was brutally crushed by the military and under such grim oppression only the most extreme and fanatic opposition force could survive, fight back and therefore gain credibilty with the Kurds: the terrorist and Stalinistic Kurdish Communist Party
of Abdullah Öcalan (see above).
Fore many years the Kurds in Iraq actually fared better as they enjoyed the benefits of a limited cultural and political regional autonomy. I am actually not sure how political autonomy works in a dictatorship, though. Anyway, eventually things got worse, there was a Kurdish uprising which was defeated, including the use of toxic gas by Saddam, and the Kurds were saved by the Gulf War, as a result of which the central government lost control over the Kurdish territories.
The last part may actually explain why that Kurdish woman has problems to be granted the status of a political refugee: I could imagine, pure speculation on my part, that the authorities claim that she was not facing persecution in Iraq
as the central government did not have control over the area where she lived.
All of the above does not mean that I claim that the German legal situation for political refugees is anywhere near to perfect, quite the contrary. That is actually one of most delicate and controversial topics today here in Germany:
As a result of the fact that many German dissidents had had to seek political asylum abroad during Nazi rule, the Federal Republic of Germany during the first four decades of its existence had one of most liberal laws on political asylum in the world. One of first articles of the constitution stated that each individual entering the country, even illegally, was entitled to the right of political asylum regardless where he/she came from, provided it could be proven that the individual had been personally persecuted.
The legal status, a high standard of living and back then still rather generous social benefits resulted in a situation in the early nineties in which the annual number of asylum seekers had risen to over half a million, two thirds of all refugees in Europe. On top of that came another half a million "civil war refugees" from Bosnia. This situation and populistic conservative demagogues trying to take advantage and appeal to the extreme right fringe of the political spectrum sparked discontent in some segments of the population and an ensuing extremely emotional and controversial debate in the media and in the political arena if the constitutional right of asylum should, could, had to be restricted or not. One side claimed that Germany was carrying an unfair share of the burden
in Europe, that the costs of the social benefits for the refugees were ruining the municipal budgets, that the very low quota (under 5%) of asylum seekers that were eventually granted political refugee status showed that most were not actually coming for political but economic reasons, that the high legal status as a constitutional right caused the procedures to determine if the individual had been persecuted and was therefore entitled to stay to take way too long (an average of some years for the cases to be eventually turned down, quite a few going through all the stages of appeal and ending up before the federal constitutional court). The other side claimed that for historic reasons Germany was morally obliged to carry an over-proportionate share of the burden, at least until through diplomatic channels and the EU the other European countries could be convinced to participate in a fairer burden-sharing, that as rich a country could afford the costs, that the low quota of recognition as political refugees was at least partially a result of unfair procedures, that the remaining people coming were not unfairly to be labelled as "economic refugees" but as "poverty refugees" (yes, in had become that kind of maddening debate where such a detail could dominate a whole 2 hour discussion on TV), and that the recognition procedures could be significantly speeded up through mere administrative changes.
At the time occured a couple of hideous arson attacks on refugee residences and the homes of Turkish immigrants by right-wing fanatics, that claimed several lives.That started an incredibly ugly blameshifting contest with the right accusing the left of being responsible by stalling a political resolution of the "refugee problem" and therefore causing popular frustration to build up which eventually had found an outlet, while the left accused the right of creating a political climate, by xenophobic demagogy and hyping the refugee issue, in which right racists had eventually felt that through their crimes they were only enacting the will of the "silent majority".
Fortunately, that was not to be the only reaction to this surge of hate crimes:
Private initiatives started to organize anti-racism demonstrations all over Germany with several ten thousands of participants in all big cities. The one I attended here in Cologne topped one hundred thousand and I almost was crushed,
as the square it was held in turned out to be way too small for the unexpected high number of people showing up.
In the political arena, even though at that time the conservative party was in government, the outcome really hinged on the biggest opposition party, the social democrats, since a two-third majority was needed for a constitutional change. For that party the issue was especially emotional as it has a long tradition of championing human rights and, even more importantly, as the vast majority of the political refugees from Germany in the Nazi period had been either communists or social democrats, the most prominent of them being Willy Brandt, later to become the first postwar social democrat in the office of federal chancellor (prime minister) and still the emotional father figure of the German left. But in the end, facing a potential disaster at upcoming general elections, they did give in. I think mainly for two reasons.
Many of their traditional lower middle class voters are deep down as more or less xenophobic and against immigration, partly for fear of social descent triggered by globalization, as the typical redneck voter of the conservatives. And the conservatives threatened to make it THE campaign and election issue, so IMO it was a similar effect of the one that makes left or liberal parties all over the world so susceptible to political blackmail whenever they fear the prospect of being successfully labelled "soft on crime". But it did cost them several ten thousands of disillusioned or even outraged members that left.
So the constitution was amended restricting the right to seek political asylum
to anybody not having entered the country via a "safe third country". That might sound insignificant but considering that Germany is now surrounded by democracies under the rule of law that actually means the only way to still qualify is to enter the country by a plane from outside of Europe. The social benefits for asylum seekers were also reduced to deter "refugees for economic reasons" and that is also the reason why until quite unrecently asylum seekers were not allowed to work.
The change proved to be very effective as the annual number of refugees went down from that half a million to 90.000 last year, actually the first year in decades in which another country, the UK, supplanted Germany as the top destination for refugees in Europe. The number of serious hate crimes also diminished significantly for a couple of years - there has been a quite alarming resurgence as of late - but it is still heavily debated if that was due to politics finally having acted and solved the "refugee problem" or because of the fact that the demonstrations had shown to the racists that they were actually isolated in society.
Well, is there still anybody out there ? Sorry for boring you to death with internal German affairs.
Back to the tales of Yorick ...
------------------
So long !
R³ - Co-president(s) of the Club of Broken Hearts
[This message has been edited by Ramon de Ramon y Ramon (edited 03-07-2001).]
[This message has been edited by Ramon de Ramon y Ramon (edited 03-08-2001).]