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Subject: stowaways
From: grenze <grenze@ibu.de>
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 1997 13:04:31 METDST

* * * * *

The German government is not able to deport tens of thousands of Africans because they don`t know their identity, according to the German newspaper "Welt" which is agitating against the refugees. The "Welt" demands a repatriation agreement. Indeed, the German home secretary Kanther is negotiating with a few African states the issue that one state should take all African refugees whose identity is not known.

Although our group "Stowaways" is just marginally involved in these dirty tricks, we presume that these machinations between the Ghanaese government and the German home secretary may influence the destiny of a Liberian stowaway:

I am running because of problems in my country.

On January 9th, Jackson arrived together with seven other stowaways in Rostock on a Russian cargo-ship. By appointment of the Russian shipping company, the ship assurance agency Pandi Baltic (a subsidiary company of the Pandi Service at Bremen) signed a warranty to repatriate stowaways and remunerate any occurring costs. According to German immigration laws, fright companies are obliged to deport rejected refugees and to cover the costs.
Mr. Adler from Pandi Hamburg and Mr. Martin from Pandi Baltic did their job quite well in cooperation with Mr. Brobe from Ghana. They threatened the young men with deportation to Russia or Liberia, and thus convinced them that it would be better to pose as people from Ghana.

So everybody starts to say what will save him.

Only three days later six of the eight young Africans fled to Accra in Ghana by Swissair via Zürich. This had been made possible by the Ghanaese Embassy in Bonn, who supposedly issued substitute passport documents.
Jackson and another stowaway could make use of their right to ask for asylum, because the foreigners´ representative from Rostock, Mr.Richter, informed a lawyer, who supported them. But as was to be expected, Jackson´s application was rejected, and in April 1995 a certain Mrs. Fleischhauer from the regional office for refugee and asylum matters in Nostorf-Horst successfully instigated their deportation to Ghana.

They said I could stay one year in prison and then stay in Ghana or stay two mon ths in prison then leave the country. I choose two months.

When he entered Ghana, Jackson was arrested as a Liberian with Ghanaese substitute papers,
interrogated, sentenced, imprisoned and then deported. In Liberia, he got his birth certificate and returned to Tema in Ghana, where he waited for the next ship that would take him to Europe or North America.

My mind was telling me this ship goes to Amerika. Thats the only place I am dreaming to go.

On 16th February Jackson and eight other Liberians arrived in Hamburg on the cocoa freighter Constantinus D. (see off limits Nr. 14). A month later, it became known that he had already applied for asylum once under a Ghanaese name. During the six months in remand pending deportation Jackson was presented to the Ghanaese embassy, amongst others. There, he met an embassy official, who had already told him in Rostock that he wasn´t from Ghana after all. That´s why he didn´t issue a passport paper for him this time.

In prison we learn street german but once a week real lessons.

After six months the committing magistrate had to consent to his release from remand pending deportation, because the Oldenburg foreigners´office in question couldn´t name an embassy that would issue travel documents. As Andrews Jackson, nationality unknown, he arrived in Nostorf, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and again Mrs. Fleischhauer was dealing with him. She tried everything to give Jackson his Ghanaese identity back, and she succeeded.

I will not ask you to respect me. I will respect myself.

Now she contacted Pandi Services Bremen and asked the staff members Schmude and Rabitz to help get a substitute passport paper from the Ghanaese embassy. For the company, who claims to even keep passport photos in their stowaway-files, no problem. In February 1997 the Ghanaean embassy again issued a paper, that declared Jackson Ghanaese and enabled the foreigners´ office to deport him. The current address was again "c/o Pandi Services Bremen".

I think so much of all my problems so I forget that I have no money.

However, Jackson could avoid his arrest and hide at some friends´ place. The supporters from Oldenburg and Hamburg tried their best to make the Ghanaese embassy withdraw the substitute passport paper. They found out in the process, that Mrs. Fleischahauer was active on two levels. One was the business relations between Pandi Services and the Ghanaese embassy, the other one was the official one. Via the Schwerin home office she urged Mr. Boerner from section 514 of the foreign ministry to ask the Ghanaese embassy to issue a substitute passport paper. Mr.Boerner confirmed via telephone that the verification of the accordance of the person to be deported and the dates of the passport papers was the embassy´s task and not his in any case. The embassy, however, rejected any questioning of this accordance with indignation: If German authorities asked them for a paper, they would assume that everything was in order.

They said they will try to find out who I am. I told them the truth I am from Liberia.

But after having received a visitor from Oldenburg the responsible embassy official did give a written justification for the accordance: Jackson had come to Rostock with a Ghanaese passport and been repatriated with a substitute passport paper. First, a substitute paper isn´t necessary, if ther is a passport, and second, it says in all the records: no passport papers.
At the end of April Jackson is arrested, taken to the deportation prison in Glasmoor and is supposed to be deported to Ghana on 2 May 97. In the plane he asks the pilot for his substitute passport and declares that he isn´t Ghanaese. So the pilot refuses to tke him. While his friends assume that he is in Ghana the foreigners´ office makes him disappear. For 10 days Jackson stays in the cellar of the Hamburg remand prison and is not allowed to use the phone or write to someone. A fellow prisoner finally takes a message outside, whereupon Jackson is again transferred to Glasmoor.

Dont let them jugde us.

Outside, we are trying to prevent the embassy from issueing another paper. Two people from Oldenburg stage a campaign in front of the Ghanaese embassy. Through talks they find out that the embassy is under the pressure of demands for travel documents. There, the BGS arrives every Thursday with busses (!) full of Africans from various countries. While the refugees stay put in the bus, the BGS-officials produce the papers.
There is another campaign in front of the Bremen office of Pandi Services. The employees of the company refuse any talks and hide behind closed doors.
The embassy now embarks on a standstill. According to Mrs. Fleischhauer, investigations as to what to do are under way.
Meanwhile, Jackson has been transferred to Buetzow in Mecklenburg,-Vorpommern. There, an inquiry into his remand will take place on 20 June 97.

Freedom will come my way some day.



Arbeitsgruppe Blinde Passagiere im Hamburger Flüchtlingsrat
c/o Haus für Alle, Amandastr. 58, 20357 Hamburg
Fax: 040 - 490 42 56 Telefon: 040 - 430 80 30