Germany: Sanctions for taxi drivers
01 July 1997
42 investigations against taxi drivers suspected of supporting illegal immigration have been carried out in the federal state Brandenburg alone in the last years. Figures for the border states Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony are not available. In Zittau (Saxony), two taxi drivers have now been sentenced to 16 months and 22 months respectively. The crime they committed was to transport non-German looking persons from a town near the Polish border to another one 25 miles west. The persons were later detained as illegal immigrants. An analysis of the court ruling basically shows that internal "carrier sanctions" have been introduced. The two men who have appealed against the decision, have been found guilty of supporting illegal immigration by the district court in Zittau. The court argued that the taxi drivers should have become suspicious as the foreigners travelled without luggage. A civil servant from the Foreigners' Office (Auslaenderbehoerde), as a witness for the prosecution, explained to the court that out of the 1.000 foreigners living in the district of Loebau-Zittau, 600 were asylum seekers and about 400 students. Therefore, according to the court, all foreigners travelling in this area are suspicious as asylum seekers are usually not allowed to leave the district, and thus not likely to go on long distance journeys. Moreover, it was "highly unlikely" that foreigners had enough money to travel such a long distance by taxi.
The prison sentence was especially severe as the court believed that the taxi drivers are involved in organised illegal immigration. After all, by the judge's reasoning, they had "realized that their passengers were foreigners". In response to the taxi drivers defense that they had no right to control travel documents, the court stated that they could have informed the Bundesgrenzschutz (German border police) about their "suspicious passengers". At meetings between district state prosecutors, the border police, taxi companies and car hire companies in Dresden and Goerlitz, taxi drivers have been asked to report any non-German looking passengers via a code word to the border police. Otherwise, if their passengers were later found to be not in possession of valid travel documents, they would be charged with supporting illegal immigration. Polls among taxi drivers in Zittau have shown that they either do not transport any non-German looking persons at all or report them to the border police. The district magistrate's office has promised leniency if any "legitimate passenger" reports to the police being refused transport by a taxi driver which is an offence under German law. Since 1994 the border police has started to include different groups of the population into its surveillance system at the German-Polish and German-Czech borders. First, a "citizen's telephone" was launched to encourage people to denounce suspicious looking persons; now, taxi drivers are coerced into "cooperation" with the border police.
Frankfurter Rundschau, 15.8.97; press release Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration, 18.8.97.