No more deportations to the torturing state! Cancel the agreement on the return of refugees!

The Committee on Internal Affairs and the Human Rights Committee of the German Parliament meet on Wednesday, 27th January 2010, to confer on deportations to Syria. The Society for Threatened Peoples STP (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker GfbV) is now calling on the members of the Committees to speak out against further deportations to the Arab Republic of Syria. The German government must cancel the agreement on return of refugees, which came into force on 3rd January 2009.

In the Arab Republic of Syria the rights of minorities and dissenters are trampled on. Persons whose applications for asylum have been rejected are seen generally as critics of the regime and so deportations from Germany have sometimes in the past led directly into Syrian prisons. In the hands of the Syrian courts persons regarded as dissenters are threatened with torture. The situation is even worse for many Kurds, who on their return are called up immediately to the Syrian army. The STP has the names of 34 Kurdish recruits who have died under mysterious circumstances while undergoing military service since 2004. The Syrian government speaks of "accidents”. The most recent case is that of a young man who died on 19th December 2009. 7,000 people living in Germany are still threatened with deportation to Syria.

The STP, other NGOs and non-parliamentary and some members of Parliament have constantly pointed out the inhumanity of deportations to Syria, yet the provincial ministers of the interior have held onto their practice. However at the end of last year the Federal Ministry of the Interior finally realized that Syria is not a country to which one can safely hand over human lives. In a letter of 16th December 2009 the Ministry called on the ministers of the interior of the provinces and the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) to suspend for the time being all deportations to Syria.

This letter is a step in the right direction, even if it cannot be seen as a general stopping of deportations to Syria. This is shown by a case from Lower Saxony in which on 5th January 2010 the district of Wesermarsch tried to deport a Kurdish refugee to Syria in spite of the call from the BMI. The Lower Saxon government took no action, but fortunately it was possible to prevent the deportation at the last moment by a follow-up to the application for asylum.

This case shows that deportation to Syria must be prevented on a permanent basis! The first thing to be done is to cancel the agreement with Syria on the return of refugees!

Tilman Zülch will be glad to answer questions at politik@gfbv.de