KAFKA'S CASTLE REVISITED: URGENT APPEAL FOR A STATELESS PERSON AT THE MERCY OF EUROPEAN BUREAUCRACY !
2004-04-16 | This particular stateless person, Brian, after over 22 years in Europe and now existing in Luxembourg, has for all these years been denied the right to medical and financial support and is still not allowed the right to work, while being treated as a nuisance by bureaucrats who shuffle his case from desk to desk.
Would it really disturb the balance of the European Union to allow an intelligent, hard working and well educated man to work to maintain himself with some dignity ?
Apparently.
European bureaucrats - who enjoy greater work privileges than most people - cannot allow a refugee from political persecution to have peace of mind or the dignity of supporting himself. He is capable of working at two difficult professions.
WITHIN THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Brian (over 60 years old) is facing forced eviction from his modest one room apartment and will be forced to live on the streets, literally !
The U.N. OBSERVER & International Report has found Brian a place to live - outside Luxembourg - but he is not allowed to leave the country.
Please, contact us and send anything you can afford, however small, to the BRIAN FUND and it will be forwarded to him.
Due to the urgency, we ask that you transfer your donation directly to his lawyer's trust-fund as follows:
SWIFT CODE BILLLULL
Dexia Bank Luxembourg account number LU 07 0021 1717 0917 4600 Reference Brian Fund
Please e-mail this website stating that you have sent a contribution - and the amount sent - so that Brian can ensure that this has been received. He will then e-mail and thank you personally.
Contact: info@unobserver.com
Press copy
Cries of distress of one without papers
Brian Hassall is a little older than 60 years, he expresses himself in perfect English and sends letters of distress in all directions:
Originating in Southern Rhodesia, he fled his country under the racist rule of Ian Smith. He returned after the decolonization and started as a businessman, but ran up very quickly against the vindication of the police force which remained under the control of the white minority and which did not forgive him his ‘treason’. Arrested, released, threatened, he saved his life by fleeing. He existed for 16 years in Spain, where he received the status of stateless person but without the right to work. Married then
divorced, he took refuge finally with Luxembourg, a haven of peace, he believed. In Luxembourg, he was refused the status of stateless person similar to that he had granted to him in Spain. He does not have the right to remain and he does not have the right to leave since he does not have papers. Having entered without observing the required formalities, it became illegal, without possibilities of recourse. His letters to Polfer, Jacobs, Juncker, Frieden, to the ministry of foreign affairs, to the Attorney General, to the Grand-Duke remain unanswered. "And now I am the one who does not cooperate?" Hassall writes. "Treated as a nuisance by bureaucrats who send me from office to office." His letters are insulting.
Hassall described in a short passage the refugee house of Tarchamps:
"Report on my visit to Tarchamps slum-ghetto", a text which deserves to appear in an anthology. He tells the visit of the police who came to inquire if he had tuberculosis and would like to know from where he has an income. He calls the Minister for Justice an "anti-refugee-spin-doctor".
He is refused any medical care, nor any financial assistance. He asks: should the asylum seekers apologize for not being "mass-murdering-politicians".? He is told that he does not have any rights, that he should not exist. Luxembourg, haven of peace? Hassall answers:
"the Castle of Kafka revisited, an urgent appeal for a stateless person who is at the mercy of the European bureaucracy." Brian Hassall wants to live, work, earn his living, to find a place in the world where he can remain. He would be ready to learn Luxemburgish, says he, if he had the means to pay for the courses"Would it really disturb the balance of the European Union to allow an intelligent, hard working and well educated man to work, to maintain himself with some dignity ?"