# taz.de -- Removal without paperwork: The future of deportations | |
> Any papers as required: the EU is increasingly pushing countries to leave | |
> Africa from a country other than their country of origin. | |
Bild: Where the rejected asylum seeker is sent can depend on an official's mood | |
They knocked at his door at three o'clock in the morning. It was a Tuesday | |
in October 2013. Two policemen came to the apartment of Joseph Koroma at | |
Heilbronner Straße 2 in Waldheim. He was now deported to Nigeria, one of | |
the officials said. Let him pack his suitcase. Since 2006, the rejected | |
asylum seeder lives in Germany. He was never in Nigeria. | |
He panicked, „I was beside myself,“ he says of the day. He should calm | |
down, the police say. Grab the things he needs most. „I can not go to | |
Nigeria. I'm from Sierra Leone, „said Koroma. They had their instructions, | |
the officials said. Koroma has to leave behind everything that does not fit | |
into his backpack, the policemen bring him to the immigration office. He | |
was held there for three hours, his German papers confiscated. His lawyer | |
does not answer the phone. | |
Koroma sees from the rear seat of a patrol car as the sun rises. At nine | |
o'clock he arrived at the Frankfurt airport. When his lawyer finally picked | |
up the phone, he told him that the Embassy of Nigeria had issued a travel | |
document for Koroma, which does not have a passport. | |
This story is about the means by which authorities sometimes intervene. It | |
is about two men who did not want to take them away from the country. It | |
deals with the past and the future of deportation. | |
## Coming from the Civil War | |
Koroma was one of 33,003 people who had registered the Federal Ministry of | |
the Interior in 2012 as a „direct departure“. But only about one in six of | |
them could actually be deported in those years. This was the complaint of | |
„AG Rück“, a working group of federal and state governments involved in | |
deportations. It listed 25 reasons why deportations were so difficult. On | |
the top of the list: „Pass (replacement paper) procurement“. In second | |
place, „Cooperative behavior of the countries of origin“. So, as with | |
Joseph Koroma. | |
In May 2006 he reached Germany, he was 42 years old. From 1991 to 2002 | |
there was civil war in Sierra Leone. Up to 300,000 people have been killed, | |
2.6 million displaced. But when Koroma arrives in Germany, the war is over. | |
After five months, his application for asylum is rejected, in 2008 the | |
decision becomes final. The Regierungspräsidium Karlsruhe, Department eight | |
– aliens – shows him. But Joseph Koroma does not have a passport. | |
In 2006, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) was furiously | |
mourning several diplomats, because 29 embassies, which Steinmeier's | |
ministry led on a secret „list of problems“, made difficulties with | |
deportations. On this list: Sierra Leone. | |
## Integrated | |
Joseph Koromas passion is table tennis. As a young boy, he started with a | |
young man as a „star,“ says Koroma, who now lives on the first floor of a | |
house in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Walls and floor are | |
unplastered, dusty, the roof is supported with wood, the room dark, on the | |
floor stands a large pot on glimmering wooden boards. | |
In Sierra Leone's up-and-coming table tennis scene, later he became a | |
nationaltrainer. In Kornwestheim Koroma searched the Internet for a club | |
and found the „SV Salamander Kornwestheim 1894 e.V.“. This „changed his | |
life more strongly than I can express,“ says Koroma. He is a tall man with | |
bald, calm voice, his English heavily West African colored. | |
The Stuttgarter Zeitung wrote articles about how he took his team in front | |
of players from Steinheim, Kleinsachsenheim and Bietigheim-Bissingen. „They | |
were my best friends, it was an honor for me to compete with them.“ Koroma | |
takes a framed photo of his team, shows it, looks at it himself, puts it in | |
his lap before he goes on. „If you're looking for asylum, they do not allow | |
you to work, but the sponsor of this club,“ the salamander shoe factory, | |
„even went to the immigration office to ask if he was going to employ me.“ | |
The club paid the school fees for Koromas son in Freetown. „If I had a | |
problem they would help me without hesitation.“ For six seasons, Josef | |
played for the club. | |
## Petulant messages | |
The government presidium Karlsruhe has it presented at the Embassy of | |
Sierra Leone in 2011. He did not want a passport and he did not get it. Re | |
AG has made a list of why deportations often fail at the embassies. Some | |
passports are issued only if the person agrees. Koromo did not want to. | |
They would protect their citizens from the German authorities, writes the | |
reinsurance company, that there is corruption, arbitrariness, a lack of | |
„political interest in repatriation“, some countries wanted to even push | |
Germany's concessions or money. | |
In order to circumvent the disgusting messages, the federal police had in | |
the previous years repeatedly had the idea of letting officials from West | |
African states fly in extra. In 2008 such officials came from Freetown to | |
Hamburg. The Süddeutsche Zeitung later found out that these 250 euros per | |
deportation paper got a „daily flat rate“ of 200 euros plus expenses; The | |
federal police invited them to the HSV game and even made the | |
sierra-leonian service stamp of officials who had been sent without the | |
emblems for 63.50 euros at a key service. | |
Contrary to the Embassy, this „delegation“ presented a deportation paper to | |
two-thirds of all rejected asylum seekers, whom the federal police | |
presented to them. For a foreigners authority and federal police a bombing | |
success, they could dozens of old cases in one fell swoop. In the media and | |
in court, on the other hand, the matter did not work well. It smelt too | |
much of corruption. After a while, the Federal Police intervened. | |
## Africa is big | |
The Regierungspräsidium in Karlsruhe could not deport Joseph Koroma, who | |
had to leave immediately, because he had no pass for him. But the officials | |
are not discouraged. Koroma is from Afrika And that is great. It does not | |
just consist of Sierra Leone. | |
On the morning of April 10, 2012, they take Joseph Koroma in his home and | |
take him to Karlsruhe. There is a so-called delegation of the Nigerian | |
Embassy in Berlin. It is to examine whether it is not possible that Joseph | |
Koroma is from Nigeria. Koroma said he would sue if he was made a Nigerian. | |
The messengers sent him and the officers away. But the aliens' authority | |
was not to be misled. On June 25th, 2013, she took Koroma again in his | |
apartment, took him back to Karlsruhe. Dieselbe „Delegation“ of the Embassy | |
from Berlin was there. This time they were: Koroma was Nigerian. | |
He sits five months later at the Federal Police at Frankfurt / Main Airport | |
and is waiting for the entry into the deportation aircraft. He can keep his | |
phone. „My lawyer said he would now write letters to the court and the | |
aliens office,“ says Koroma. „That was the last time we spoke.“ At 11:10, | |
the Lufthansa flight LH 568 started to Lagos / Nigeria. On board: Joseph | |
Koroma. | |
## Travel money from friends in Germany | |
In Lagos, policemen bring him to officials of the Immigration Agency NIS. | |
Koroma tells them that he is not a Nigerian, knew anyone in the country and | |
did not know where to go. Soon afterwards, a man from Togo, who lives in a | |
suburb of Lagos, came to the station. He wanted to pick up Koroma. It is | |
the brother of a friend of Koroma from Kornwestheim. There had been | |
rumbling over the course of the day, what had happened. The friend had | |
asked his brother to take Koroma with him. | |
A month Koroma stays with the man, the apartment he hardly leaves. Most of | |
the time he sits in front of the computer, writes mails, telephoned, with | |
his family in Sierra Leone, with his table tennis buddies in Kornwestheim. | |
After Freetown it is 2,500 kilometers from Lagos, the bus goes through the | |
area of Rebellenarmeen. The flight costs several hundred euros and Koroma | |
has nothing. A month later, money comes to Western Union for him. His | |
friends in Kornwestheim had collected it. | |
„Joseph is not a Nigerian man or a bad man. But we were very ashamed of | |
what happened to him, „said Mariama, his wife. When Koroma gets off the | |
plane in Freetown in November 2013, he is grateful to his friends in | |
Germany for letting him come to his family. But it was no longer the | |
country he'd left seven years before. At that time Joseph was working in a | |
small mine in the east of the country. What he could save, the family | |
invested in his trip to Europe. Now he was looking for hard work, but he | |
did not find any. Soon after, the Ebola plague breaks out. The family is | |
spared from the epidemic, not from the subsequent economic crisis. The | |
money that his friends had collected was not long enough for the small | |
apartment. | |
## Table tennis and life support | |
The relation to kinship had „completely changed“ after he returned, says | |
Mariama. „If you were out in the world and deported, it's a shame. They | |
despise you instead of giving you a helping hand. „People would say,“ This | |
man did not take any trouble when he was in Europe, but they do not | |
understand how things work there.“ | |
Koromo is unemployed, the family threatens to evacuate her son Emmanuel is | |
17 years old. „It is a gift from God that he is smart enough to go to the | |
university next year,“ says Mariama. But this will probably not be the | |
case. The entrance exam costs nearly 200 dollars, in Sierra Leone average | |
wage is under two dollars a day. There is no one to help the Koromas. | |
So the son spends time just like his father: With table tennis. Josef earns | |
some money by training youth and national teams. Soon he wants to organize | |
with his son a training camp for young people. They are supposed to have | |
possibilities which he himself did not have. „If my friends in Germany | |
taught me something, then that you should always help people if you can,“ | |
said Joseph. „This is how the world works better.“ | |
## Money for deportation papers | |
A man whom Germany sends into a country from which he does not come. Joseph | |
Koroma is not the only case of this kind. But it is one of the few that are | |
documented. This was caused by the activist Rex Osa from Stuttgart, who was | |
from Nigeria. He left Koroma shortly after his deportation to Sierra Leone, | |
collected his testimony and the similar cases in which deported refugees | |
suddenly became Nigerians. | |
The Embassy of Nigeria in Berlin had set official fees: 250 euro should be | |
paid to immigration authorities per hearing since 2005. But there was the | |
suspicion in the room, that with the deportation papers a business is made. | |
The criticism grew; here, too, it smelled of corruption. In 2011, the | |
Embassy thus officially charges the fees. The activist Osa, however, is | |
certain: The embassy workers have stopped the hand, and in the case of | |
Koroma, twice. That is why they had twice invited to Karlsruhe. „This is an | |
absolutely corrupt system. They're doing a deal with deportations.“ | |
In 2015 the Berlin journalist Daniel Mützel asked the federal police | |
responsible for the deportation of Koromoa whether this could be true. | |
Whether the federal police had offered incentives for Koroma and others to | |
be made a Nigerian in order to be able to deport them. The response of the | |
Federal Police Office in Potsdam: „No incentives are offered by the Federal | |
Police. With regard to the motivation of the embassy, no statement can be | |
made from here.“ | |
## An ordeal | |
Did Koroma now tell the truth? Is he actually from Sierra Leone? It looks | |
like this. The authorities in Freetown, on the other hand, issue a passport | |
with the number E0143344 on 6 November 2013 shortly after his arrival. It | |
says that he was born in Freetown on December 7, 1964, as he told the | |
authorities in Germany. When activist Osa visited Freetown in 2014, he met | |
him with his family, as did the taz in November 2016. | |
That Koroma and a number of other deportees landed in Nigeria, it has come | |
because many consulates do not cooperate with the German foreigners | |
authorities and another already. For whatever reason. It is a dubious | |
approach, expensive, tedious, lengthy. For the person concerned an ordeal. | |
That was the past. For, as it happens, the foreigners‘ authorities are no | |
longer dependent on such cooperation. The future of deportation could be a | |
different one. | |
They could soon do it like Arne Sahlstedt, inspector at the police in | |
Gävle, Central Sweden, 70,000 inhabitants, two car ports north of | |
Stockholm. Sahlstedt also had to pass a man who did not have a passport. | |
His name is Fulani Camara, 29 years old, from Mali, orphan. | |
## Assigned nationality | |
The aliens authority of Gävle had pointed out Camara, after his asylum | |
petition had been rejected. As happened in Swabia with Joseph Koroma. Even | |
Camara did not go out, even the embassy of Mali in Stockholm did not make a | |
pass for him. Why not, the police in Gävle on taz request does not want to | |
say. „Privacy,“ it says. Probably also Mali is on the „problem list“. | |
What people like Sahlstedt should do in such cases, there has been a decree | |
in Sweden for two years. It bears the designation RPSFS 2014: 8 FAP 638-1, | |
which states that Sahlstedt can also issue a travel document himself if the | |
message does not. It is a simple DIN A4 sheet, the flag of the EU is | |
printed at the top, Sahlstedt only has to enter the name, the body size, | |
the Swedish registration number, the date of birth and the „presumed | |
nationality“. In the case of Camara, Sahlstedt was wearing „Mali“. On 24 | |
October this year Sahlstedt stamped and signed the paper. Three days later, | |
Fulani sat in the plane. | |
On this day the phone of Ousmane Diarra rang in Mali's capital Bamako. He | |
is an activist of the Malaysian Association of Deportees (AME). For years, | |
he has been driving to the airport when the only direct flight from Paris | |
arrives at 7:15 pm, with people sitting in their homes somewhere in Europe | |
on the morning of the day because they lost their bathing suit. Most do not | |
know where, the least have money, and so the people at the airport are glad | |
when the AME cares. That's why they call him, when deportees get off the | |
plane. | |
Diarra then waits in front of the office of the airport police, then takes | |
them to the office of the AME. A place to sleep for the first night, a | |
meal, much more Diarra can not offer the people. But every time he asked | |
them about the circumstances of the deportation. Thousands of such stories | |
may have belonged to Diarra. But Camara's case was special. | |
Because the sheet of paper with the EU flag that the Swedish police | |
inspector Sahlstedt had signed – officially, Malian authorities do not | |
recognize it at all. As early as 1994, the EU issued a „recommendation“ for | |
the use of such a deportation paper. The problem of uncooperative messages | |
is old. But so far, with the exception of the island state of Cape Verde, | |
all the countries of Africa have refused officially to accept these papers. | |
On the one hand, this would be perceived as a betrayal of one's own people. | |
On the other hand, according to the reading, the embassies lose the | |
possibility of checking whether someone is actually a citizen of the | |
respective country – or even to stop the hand, in order to earn some money | |
with the deportations. Unofficially, however, there have been individual | |
cases in the past in which these „EU Laissez Passers“ were applied. | |
## Migration as profit | |
Diarra asked Fulani Camara to stay a few days. On 5 November this year the | |
AME celebrated its 20th birthday. She had rented the National Museum of | |
Bamako, between the football stadium and the town hall, for this day. It | |
was an important day for her. Mali is a country whose inhabitants | |
traditionally go to work elsewhere, most of them to other countries of West | |
Africa, some to Europe. For a long time the country has had its own | |
ministry for the Malians abroad. And since this has existed, it is under | |
pressure: Above all, France wants many Malians to deport. The government | |
does not think much of it. | |
In an internal strategy paper, the EU Commission described the situation in | |
January 2016: The views on migration between the EU and Mali „do not | |
coincide“. Migration „culturally as a success model“, which „takes acco… | |
of the economic importance of transfers“. Mali's government even regards | |
irregular migration as a „resource“. And therefore against a readmission | |
agreement with the EU. | |
On the occasion of her birthday, the AME invited the high-ranking official, | |
Broulaye Keïta, to the title of „Consultant to the Minister“. She wanted to | |
talk with him about how the government was dealing with the growing | |
pressure from Europe. They wanted to know how they are part of the | |
deportation agreements for which the EU states such as Mali currently offer | |
hundreds of millions of euros. And it should be said that Europe will be | |
able to issue deportation papers in the future. | |
Present at the celebration was the filmmaker Hans-Georg Eberl from Vienna. | |
He reports that Keïta said the government is holding onto her line. Without | |
a malpass no deportation to May. There would not be anything else. Diarra | |
had scanned Camara's note, now he threw the picture of the note from the | |
Swedish authorities before the assembled guests with a projector on the | |
screen. He did not know anything about it, said Keïta. The „Haute Conseil“, | |
the High Council of its ministry, would initiate an investigation into the | |
case. | |
## Buy a change of mood | |
Keïta may have said the untruth. Only three days after the celebration, a | |
delegation from the EU in Bamako landed: Italy's Foreign Minister and | |
future Prime Minister Paolo Gentolini, State Secretary Dominico Manzione | |
and Commissioner for the European Commission, Franc Lucani. They met the | |
President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. „The exchange was mainly focused on | |
issues of migration,“ the EU said. | |
In 2004, 5,495 males were requested to leave the EU, 610 were deported – a | |
rate of 11.1 percent. Since the African Union and EU Summit in Valletta in | |
November 2015, the EU's highest priority has been to increase this rate. | |
Mali alone offered it for the first 145 million euros and for the next few | |
years probably even more – if there is „concrete and measurable results in | |
the rapid operational return of irregular migrants“, as it is called in a | |
Ratspapier. | |
The EU has also negotiated such agreements with Senegal, Nigeria, Niger and | |
Ethiopia for months. It would be the end of the worries of the AG Re. What | |
happened with Joseph Koroma can then flourish for every African. Countries | |
such as Germany or Sweden are no longer dependent on incalculable, | |
sometimes corrupt, messages. In principle, they can deport any refugee | |
where the papers are recognized – no matter where the person actually comes | |
from. | |
The competent European External Action Service of the EU Commission does | |
not reveal which criteria must be fulfilled in order for such a paper to be | |
issued. The authorities are likely to have a free hand. So there could be | |
many people like Joseph Koroma, where the police knock at the door to take | |
them to a foreign country. | |
Collaboration: Daniel Mützel (Berlin), Reinhard Wolff (Stockholm), | |
Hans-Georg Eberl (Bamako) | |
15 Dec 2016 | |
## AUTOREN | |
Christian Jakob | |
Cooper Inveen | |
## TAGS | |
migControl | |
Schwerpunkt Flucht | |
Abschiebung | |
Nigeria | |
Mali | |
Sierra Leone | |
Lesestück Recherche und Reportage | |
migControl | |
migControl | |
MigrationControl | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Europas Grenzen in Afrika: Über den Zaun hinaus | |
Die EU baut Frontex zu einer Full-Service-Agentur um. Dabei arbeitet sie | |
mit zwielichtigen Regierungen zusammen. | |
Europäische Migrationspolitik in Afrika: Stillgestanden, Flüchtling! Kehrt um! | |
Europa will mit mehr Hilfe in Afrika „Fluchtursachen bekämpfen“. Ein | |
zynisches Spiel: Es wird bezahlt, wenn Menschen festgehalten werden. | |
Kommentar Fluchtgründe in Afrika: Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt | |
Unser Autor stammt aus Äthiopien. Seit Jahren lebt er im Exil. Er glaubt, | |
dass die Repression Menschen außer Landes treibt. | |
ECOWAS-Beamter über EU und Migration: „Man kriminalisiert Migration“ | |
Die westafrikanische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft bleibt bei Verhandlungen | |
zwischen EU und regionalen Staaten zur Migrationskontrolle außen vor, | |
beklagt Sanoh N’Fally. |