Refugee children who have been living in Germany for several years must not be deported!

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) calls for a right to stay for refugee children and their families if they have been living in Germany for several years. At a press conference of the human rights organization in Hannover on Thursday, young Roma refugees from Kosovo spoke about their fears. They fear they might be deported if the German authorities and politicians decide to no longer consider their special situation because of the expected influx of more than 800,000 new refugees. Often, the children don’t know anything about the country their parents came from – except from a few deeply disturbing stories of people who had to flee from persecution, discrimination and unbearable misery. The STP’s Secretary General, Tilman Zülch, appealed to the federal government that minors who were born in Germany or have been living there for many years should not be deported.

The wording of the STP’s appeal:

Protect our refugee children!

Dear Mr. President,

Dear Mrs. Chancellor,

Dear Minister of the Interior,

Dear federal Interior Ministers and Interior Senators,

Dear federal and state political representatives:

Today, we would like to address you with our deep concerns about the fate of tens of thousands of refugee children who have been living with us for six, eight, fifteen or twenty years – and have still not been granted long-term residence permits or naturalization.

There are often complaints that there are too few children in Germany. Nonetheless, you continue to force more and more of the refugee children and their parents to leave our country. These refugee children were born here or grew up here, they speak German as their mother tongue, often with a regional accent. As they grew up in Germany, they are – from a cultural point of view – German citizens. These children, or their parents, fled to us – mostly from war, persecution or genocide- situations.

Many of them are Roma, Ashkali and Egipcani from Kosovo, Kurds, Baha'is, Yezidis, Christian Assyrian/Chaldeans/Arameans and Armenians, Alevis or Mandeans from the Middle East, Chechens from the Russian Federation or Afghans who fled from the Taliban or from the Soviet army.

Many teachers, social workers, clergymen, the Christian churches, refugee councils, human rights activists and many other citizens have shown a lot of commitment for their integration – ideally and materially. Now, many German ministers, senators and representatives are about to waste the potential. In our country, there is a lot of talk about crimes of the past – which is, of course, totally appropriate – but you apparently tend to forget that a large majority of the Germans citizens were once refugees or displaced persons themselves, or have ancestors who were.

We are ashamed that fathers are separated from mothers, and children from their parents or their siblings – and that there are even unreasonable deportations of people who are seriously ill, of pregnant women, elderly people and traumatized war victims. While the federal and state governments are willing to take up 800,000 refugees in Germany, the Interior Ministers fail to allow refugee children and adolescents to stay, although they have been living with us for many years.

After the murder of 500,000 Sinti and Roma in the Third Reich (our human rights organization was able to persuade Federal President Karl Carstens and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to formally apologize, and we advised the federal government to pay reparations), the federal and state governments are now unwilling to take up the only about 7,000 Roma children from Kosovo, whose parents were forced to flee in the 1990s. The German Interior Ministers have done more than enough to keep them from taking up work, to obstruct adequate vocational training for the young people and to limit their freedom of movement to their respective district.

Now, we appeal to you to ensure that these refugee children and their families will be given a home in Germany, and allow them to be naturalized, just like the Russian Germans or the Jewish emigrants. Please use your influence!

Thank you very much!

Tilman Zülch,

President of the Society for Threatened Peoples International