Germany: “racist and degrading” identity checks on Sierra Leoneans

[ad_1]

Migrants from Sierra Leone who live in the German state of Bavaria are forced to attend identity “hearings”. Fearing that the goal would be to have them expelled, they organized a demonstration in Munich.

In Sierra Leone it’s called “Temple Run” – it’s the name of the risky journey Sierra Leoneans, mostly young people, make to try to reach Europe via Libya and the Mediterranean Sea. And just like in the popular cell phone game, the obstacles and challenges never seem to stop.

Therefore, despite his arrival in Germany and his secure job as a mechanical engineer, Victor Kamara had to sleep in the street, outside no. 51 Hofmannstraße in Munich to be exact, for over a week. He camped outside the immigration office with more than a hundred other Sierra Leonean migrants who demand that the authorities drop their plans to deport them.

What is the protest about?

Since last week, officials from the Sierra Leone embassy have been carrying out identity checks in Munich to see if undocumented migrants claiming to be from Sierra Leone are indeed from there. Sierra Leoneans in Bavaria – many of whom have lived in Germany for years – fear this could lead to their deportation to the West African nation.

“We fundamentally reject this degrading practice which leads to deportation,” said Kamara, president of the Sierra Leone Association in Munich.

Victor Kamara says there is no future for young people in Sierra Leone | Photo: Screenshot courtesy of Bayerischer Flüchtlingsrat München, October 27, 2021

More than 200 people have received letters asking them to attend interviews where the Bavarian Refugee Council says they are interviewed to see if they speak and sound like Sierra Leoneans. Hamado Dipama, a former refugee from Burkina Faso and spokesperson for the Munich City Migration Advisory Council, said it was a “racist practice based on arbitrary criteria”.

The Refugee Council says the interviews are being conducted “to find out if they are from Sierra Leone, based on their language skills, pronunciation, dialect, appearance, traditional tattoos, etc. This is not intended to verify whether people falsely claim to be from Sierra Leone – although it does, according to the embassy – but is intended to find out who is from Sierra Leone and then issue them with a travel document. which allow their expulsion.

Read also: Germany: Interviews to identify undocumented migrants – an opaque and controversial procedure

Letter from Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen Municipal Administration in Munich to Sierra Leonean National calling on him and his daughter to attend identity interview | Photo: Courtesy of HC, Munich, October 28, 2021

“It is traumatic for many Sierra Leoneans who have received these letters,” Kamara said. “A lot of them have worked, a lot of them have done their ‘Ausbildung’ (vocational training or apprenticeship). A lot of them have children here, and now you are trying to separate them from their children and their children. families to send them back (to Sierra Leone). “

People who have received a letter but do not show up for their hearing risk being charged, as the law states that anyone seeking protection in Germany must “cooperate to obtain an identity document” and “comply with the measures. identification requirements “. “They may even be forcibly taken away by the police to attend a hearing or be given a status known as ‘Duldung’, which means a temporary suspension of deportation. Following the introduction in April of last year of a new law aimed specifically at stimulating forced returns of unidentified asylum seekers, Duldung’s statute does not give them the right to work.

Read also: Greens target German law targeting rejected asylum seekers who fail to prove their identity

Sierra Leonean community spokespersons and supporters say identity checks are racist | Photo: Imago ‘No future’

There were officially more than 540 Sierra Leoneans living in Munich at the end of 2020, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “Most of us have come here to have better lives. And we are contributing to society,” Kamara said. “When you turn and look, they’re almost all young people,” he said, pointing to the Sierra Leoneans gathered at the street protest on a cold autumn afternoon. “I think the oldest would be around 35. They are healthy and they want to go to work, and they want to learn.

“If they are sent home, these guys will start roaming the streets. There is no future for them there,” Kamara said.

Although they are the ones who sleep on wooden pallets, not all people at risk are men. Women and girls in Sierra Leone are regularly victims of sexual violence, rape and traditional practices such as female genital mutilation, said Fatmata, 25, who fled Sierra Leone five years ago. “I want Germany to protect the Sierra Leoneans. I want them to stop the deportations.”

InfoMigrants has asked the Bavarian Regional Asylum and Return Office (LfAR) how many interviews have taken place and whether anyone has been informed that they need to return to Sierra Leone, but we have not yet received any reply.

[ad_2]