Lampedusa in Hamburg – Right to Stay! Appeal to the Hamburger Senat (Government of Hamburg) to give the group ‘Lampedusa in Hamburg’ the right to stay by § 23 Residence Law or any other construction which allows a group solution.
“What Europe does not understand is that migrants’ movements do not depend on them. Only the conditions of those movements depend on them.” (Coordinamento Migranti)
To Mr. Olaf Scholz, Mayor of Hamburg and the government of Hamburg
Since the early spring of 2013 about 300 African refugees who had escaped the Libyan Civil War and its escalation through the military intervention of NATO-states and subsequently made their way via Lampedusa to Italy, have been living in Hamburg. These people (mostly men) were migrant workers in Libya where they earned their living and sent home money to their family or community. When the EU-program for refugees of the Libyan war ended, they were put onto the streets. They have all been accepted as refugees’, but their papers only allow them to work and to settle in Italy. Because of the economic crisis and the lack of support from the Italian authorities, they were unable to lead a self-determined life in Italy and came to Hamburg to rebuild their lives as others try too in diverse European countries. But here they are treated as though they have no rights. In Hamburg, first, they found sleeping places in hostels for the homeless, the so-called Winternotprogramm (winter emergency program) of the government. When these places closed down and they were stranded on the streets, they organized themselves as a group and started a campaign for their right to stay. Since then they have found the support of grassroots groups, the Protestant church, Muslim communities, the multi-trade union ver.di and the teachers’ union GEW and more and more citizens of Hamburg. Some of them are staying in mosques, others are living in private places or still on the streets, the biggest group of about 80 refugees found a shelter in the church of St. Pauls. They have found friends in this neighborhood: the local football club, FC St. Pauli, supports them, the famous Thalia Theater ensemble read a new text by the Nobel prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek on the refugee question together with members of the group in the church. Their struggle for the right to stay has become a struggle against the European refugee policy of exclusion. In Hamburg, it is already a major topic of the media and the day-to-day conversation of the people.
We do not accept that you, the mayor and government of Hamburg, claim these refugees to be Italy’s responsibility, and have ordered controls in the form of racial profiling in order to arrest and to deport them without proper consideration of the concrete situation of refugees there. Many German courts have already acknowledged that Italy like Greece is not a place where the human rights of refugees are respected today. You do not only refuse to speak directly to these war refugees and their lawyers to find a common solution for them, but have announced that they will be refused places in the next Winternotprogramm. This is not only inhumane, it is shameful in one of the richest cities of Europe. Now you have even begun to act directly against the efforts of the church and their supporters to organize a separate Winternotprogramm for them. This is not tolerable. It is like a declaration of war on civilians. Denying a group of people all rights and ways of surviving is racist. These actions cannot be explained or defended by the legal standards of European refugee politics. On the contrary, it shows how urgently these exclusionary politics and laws need to be abolished. On the 3rd of October, more than 300 people died after a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. Politicians, including the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, called upon EU Member States to “show solidarity both with migrants and with countries that are experiencing increasing migratory flows.” And the Pope called what happened near Lampedusa ‘a shame’ and asked people to pray for the victims. But in reality, the EU border regime with visa regulations, Frontex, sophisticated technical systems like EUROSUR, which was adopted some days after the deadly “accident”, and the collaboration of coastguards on both sides of the Mediterranean, who even shoot at boat people, aim to prevent refugees and migrants reaching Europe legally and without risk to their lives. Even helping boat-people is criminalized. If migrants manage to arrive in Europe, regulations like Dublin II/III and Schengen, restrict the free movement of people who are not citizens of the EU. This year, more than 25.000 migrants have arrived by boat in Italy, three times more than in 2012, but countries in the middle of Europe, particularly Germany, still refuse to take in more refugees and try to send back all who came through
Italy despite the opposition of several courts. The Mayor of Lampedusa threatened to send the coffins with dead boat people to the governments of those countries which refuse to change these regulations.
