For many of those affected the regulations concerning the right to remain in Germany are inhuman

The new regulations concerning the right to remain in Germany for many refugees holding only temporary residence permits are in the eyes of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) inhuman. Many of those affected will have to continue counting on their being deported, fears the human rights organisation. "As a result of genocide, war, torture and expulsion sick and elderly people will not be able to fulfil the conditions for a secure sojourn in the country", said the GfbV expert, Sarah Reinke, on Monday in Göttingen. She went on to criticise "the fact that the unbearable requirement of chain temporary residence permits, which leads to families and single persons having in many cases to renew their residence permits every two weeks at the aliens office, has not been abolished.

"Only a few thousand of the approximately 190,000 persons with temporary residence permits will profit from this ruling", said Reinke. Since these persons continue to fall under the so-called rules of fixed residence many of them in areas with high levels of unemployment have practically no chance on the labour market. "The government cannot allow the hardliners among the ministers of the interior, Uwe Schünemann in Lower Saxony and Günther Beckstein in Bavaria, to push through their will in this matter. These two politicians are notorious for deporting in cloak-and-dagger operations people in dire straits even into regions where war or crisis are raging.

"The deportation of people who have been living among us for many years is a grave injustice and unimaginably cruel. If we have no respect for other people we lose our own self-respect", wrote the Jewish Prof. Ernst Tugendhat in a letter of the GfbV to the ministers of the interior. In this spirit the GfbV calls on government, the Bundestag and above all the ministers of the interior and the senators to exercise their responsibility for these people, whose fate has not been considered in the new regulations.