Germany: Schily's "economic" asylum claims refuted
01 November 1999
Asylum and human rights organisations have severely criticised the latest public statement by Germany's interior minister, Otto Schily (SPD), claiming that 97% of asylum seekers to Germany are not genuine refugees fleeing from persecution but come for economic reasons. Investigations, especially of deportations to Turkey, have shown that it is not the asylum seekers' stories which are bogus, but Germany's asylum practice itself.
"Only 3% [of all asylum seekers] are genuine (asylwuerdig)", Schily exclaimed at the beginning of November, "the rest are economic refugees". The German representative of the UN High Commissioner of for Refugees, Jean-Noel Wetterwald refuted Schily's assertion, adding that last year alone, 30% of all asylum seekers in Germany came from Kosovo, "and these people hardly fled for economic reasons". The Green party secretary, Reinhard Buetikofer, also attacked the interior minister, saying that "Schily, with this statement, is threatening to question an important component of [the democratic process] in our
republic... A minister of constitution, which Schily necessarily is, should concentrate on the protection of the Basic Law, not its erosion."
After Schily's claim, the Frankfurter Rundschau (11.11.99) reported that figures from the Federal Office for the Acceptance of Foreign Refugees (BAFL), which is under the direct authority of Schily's ministry and publishes its statistics on the internet (www.bafl.de), stand in contradiction to Schily's claim as well. Whereas the granting of an official refugee status under Article 16 of Germany's Basic Law only amounted to 3.48% in the first ten months of this year, the gradual undermining of the right to asylum via legal changes in Germany and Europe generally, has led to the creation of various "sub-statuses" of people who are clearly persecuted, just not adequately protected.
During the same time span around 5.17% of asylum-seekers in Germany have received so-called "small asylum" (temporary protection) under paragraph 51 of the Foreigner Law (AuslG.) which implements the Geneva Convention in its provision on non-refoulement. A further 1.6% fall under paragraph 53 AuslG., which concerns people who are under threat of torture, the death penalty, inhuman punishment or concrete danger to life and limb; they obtain a residency permit. 10.25% of asylum claimants have officially been categorised as being under threat of persecution. Moreover, these figures neither include asylum seekers' claims which were rejected on false grounds and later overturned in the appeals procedure, nor those who face the threat of torture and are deported anyway.
Only 15% of Turkish asylum seekers for example, the majority of them Kurds, received protection under paragraphs 51 & 53 AuslG. in 1998. In a recent study, the asylum rights group Pro Asyl has documented at least 19 cases since 1997, where Kurdish asylum seekers were denied protection by the German courts, deported and consequently severely tortured and imprisoned in Turkey. This number is expected to be the tip of the iceberg, not least because it only deals with one country and excludes the so-called repatriation of the largest group of asylum seekers this year, around 20,000 Kosovar refugees. Justifications for rejecting Kurdish asylum claims are usually based on the alleged existence of an "internal flight alternative" (west Turkey), allegations of false documents or the plain dismissal of the fact that desertion, for example, leads to political persecution in Turkey.
Schily's numbers game, it seems, bears little relation to reality. The abuse of asylum statistics however, is unfortunately a well established practice in German politics. The danger, as expressed by the German Amnesty International General Secretary Barbara Lochbihler, that the right to protection for the politically persecuted will degenerated into becoming a pawn in the game of politics, has therefore long been realised.
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