" United against colonial injustice " - that was the programmatic motto of an international refugee tribunal against the Federal Republic of Germany in Berlin in June 2013. The four-day event at the Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg was organized mainly by the Karawane für die Rechte der Flüchtlinge und MigrantInnen (Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants) – and was supported by other organizations and groups such as the Föderation der ArbeitsmigrantInnen in Deutschland – AGIF (Federation of labor migrants in Germany), the Initiative Christy Schwundeck or the transnational network Afrique-Europe-Interact. It was not the aim of the Tribunal to get to a verdict as quickly as possibly. It was rather meant to be a platform giving refugees the opportunity to publicly speak about their experiences with the policy of the Federal Republic of Germany – the economic policy, the war policy, the refugees policy etc. It was meant to mark the beginning of a long-term process in the course of which further testimonies are to be collected and gradually made into a well-documented indictment. Finally this process included a judgement to be carried out in public.
The Tribunal with about 500 participants became a huge kaleidoscope of sometimes highly disturbing experiences (of violence). Vacillating between the past and the present, numerous continuities have emerged – concerning the facts as well as the stories of resistance. It is obvious that we should take a closer look at the Tribunal especially considering the latest 18-months protests of refugees. We would then be able to prevent a lack of reference to history which could be seen everywhere in these protests. The only catch: there was such a huge number of subjects which came up during the course of the Tribunal, ranging from an analysis of single countries to experiences made while crossing the EU-borders to the lack of good health care in many German districts. At this point it is impossible to show a complete overview over all the included subjects of the Tribunal. Instead some keywords can help to give an overview:
Keyword continuities: The idea for a refugee tribunal had firstly arosen during a conference of the Carawane in September 2009. Leading the way was particularly a brilliant position paper "On colonial injustice and the continuity of barbarism", which was published by The Voice Refugee Forum in reaction to the outcome of the first Oury Jalloh trial as well as to the deportation of Felix Otto, a longtime activist of the The Voice (1). The first step was the Carawane-Festival in memory of the dead of the fortress Europe in Jena in the summer of 2010 (2). A crucial factor was the aim to overcome powerlessness, fear and fragmentation not only among refugees through a collective physical presence. These brief hints should already give an idea about how some of the commentators lack awareness of the history of the current protests. It has been claimed that these protests have begun in the spring of 2012 and – as we could read in all seriousness in the latest issue of this newspaper in reference to the hunger and thirst strike at the Rindermarkt in Munich – "no other action has gained as much media presence for the serious debate about the German asylum system within the last years". Anyone who argues like that, putting the protests into a hierarchical order, ignores the simple and basic fact that the latest protests have always been based on personnel, material and political results of earlier struggles – for better or for worse. An example: when in the year 2000 the campaign against the residence restrictions was launched at the international refugee congress in Jena (which had about 600 participants from 40 countries), the then radical left-wing mainstream reacted in an ignorant, yes even grumpy way (3). The project was labeled as "humanitarian" and thus as "restricted in refugee politcs". The Voice – because of its well known obstinacy – was also confronted with the accusation to "surf" on the bad conscience of European activists with the sole aim to recruit so-called "campaign soldiers". But those who were told off couldn't be intimidated. Instead, they organized the days of anti-residence-restrictions in Berlin in 2001 with about 2,000 participants, most of them refugees from all over Germany. After that the troubles of everyday awareness and mobilization work followed – including spectacular lawsuits and prison stays which the activists had to put up with. An example is the arrest warrant against Mbolo Yufanyi, which wasn't carried out for years – with the consequence that he was able to speak – as a moderator – directly to the police, which had shown up in great numbers at a demonstration in Göttingen on November 12th, 2005: "The police sees me but they don't act – isn't that wonderful!?" Those and many other acts of civil disobedience have contributed to the fact that over the years the residence restrictions have step-by-step been delegitimized in the public. In consequence, most of the federal states have handled this rule less restrictive. This was the precondition after which the latest refugee protests were able to become increasingly critical about the contradictions. And therefore a lot of unusual sympathy came from the public (4).
Keyword Selfempowerment: In numerous variants participants of the Tribunal denounced the politically decreed isolation of refugees. They also declared living in a camp would be harmful to any human being. For this reason both the concepts of physical presence and of civil disobedience were talked about again and again. So at the beginning of the Tribunal the moderators pointed out, that the whole event was going to be broadcasted via a livestream and this visibility including the possibility of identification of participants was intended. "We have learned in our struggles that every sentence we say has got a face. This is our face and we want to show it" (5). In short: the accordance with the logic of the current refugee protests is more than obvious: The tents that have been put up in public places can show the physical presence better than anything and therefore ignore the regime of isolation. And the public marches work with the same strategy, that in Germany had first been made public by the Ad-Hoc-Committee of Civil Disobedience Against the Residence Restriction Law on April 26th in the year 2000.
Keyword heterogeneous composition of participants: Constituitive for the Tribunal was the fact that refugee activists of all levels of citizenship had the chance to report their situation: people who had just arrived, others who have been tolerated for many years, Dublin-II-Refugees, deported people (6), undocumented migrants, recognized asylum seekers, UNHCR refugees etc. This heterogeneity of perspectives, experiences and thematic focal points was an enormous strength of the Tribunal. But this heterogeneity also at least indirectly contributed to a relevation of the sterile concept of dichotomy with non-citizens on one side and citizens on the other, a belief which part of the current refugee protests have propagated saying that the activists of the refugee protests are all non-citizens, i.e. asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and tolerated refugees. To narrow down the perspectives like that ignores all the shades of gray – e.g. when members of Youth Without Borders (Jugendliche ohne Grenzen) suddenly were told to belong to the group of Citizens although they have had a childhood and youth full of fear of deportation. This happened at a refugee conference in Munich in March 2013. It also gets ignored that strategies which deprive people from their rights can easily be transfered from one group to other groups – as it happened in the case of the Residence Restrictions when they were applied to people receiving social securitiy under Hartz IV. This dynamic shows that citizen rights are by no means static or untouchable, but instead are subject to constant struggles of recognition and economic battles.
Keyword mobilization: This worked only half well in the case of the Tribunal: Many had come but still there were many missing. Some couldn't be reached or were occupied with local struggles as for example the Lampedusa refugees in Hamburg. Even activists from the nearby refugee camp on Oranienplatz were scarcely present which shows the fragility of the Oranienplatz protests but also shows the fact that there are some animosities coming from activists of the current refugee protests against the Carawane. These animosities are partly due to political reasons having to do with the non-citizen debate, partly they have derived out of misunderstandings which have led to rumours persisting until today (7). And yet at this point a very special mobilization success should be mentioned: On the occasion of the Tribunal the women refugee conference took place in Hamburg in April. This was the first conference of its kind in Germany. The decision to this conference had already been made in the Break Isolation Camp in the summer of 2012. At the Tribunal its protagonists had their own demonstration and their female witnesses had their own group of speeches covering feministic issues (8).
Keyword national reports: Many of the national reports were vague, even simplistic at times, although the subjects of exploitation, robbery of raw materials or war ran like a thread through the whole Tribunal. This was an obvious dilemma. Still there were very interesting detail reports for example on the topic of the repression in Turkey. A report on Togo showed how the regime had felt under pressure by constant demonstrations and had therefore burnt down three markets to frighten the market traders, because almost all of the stallkeepers support the opposition. In short: As far as the national reports go the analysis has to be differentiated significantly. In the future questions about individual countries should be discussed with activists who are still living in those countries and who are politically active there. Actually it should go without saying, that an analysis exclusively from a diaspora perspective and therefore considering only the experiences of those who have left their country long ago, is not sustainable.
Keyword looking back, looking forward: The Tribunal was a place of mourning and remembering. Large groups were mentioned as well as individuals, for example Lodoe Kamacha from Nepal (who was called Alex), who in 2004 had participated in the activities of the then NoLager network and who – scarred in body and soul – died after he had spent 17 years of his life in a camp in Parching on March 8th, 2013. The Tribunal was also a kind of laboratory for the future – although it had content and formal shortcomings. It has shown how political demands can be extracted step by step from collectively shared experiences of a loss of rights, from individual selfempowerment, and from political struggles. It is now all the more important to circularize the results in as many refugee camps as possible (also with the help of the 15-hour Youtube video archive) not least to pave the way to a further round of witness statements.
(1) See http://thecaravan.org/node/2017
(2) See the interview with Osaren Igbinoba in ak 549: http://www.karawane-festival.org/de/presse
(3) About the refugge congress: http://www.akweb.de/ak_s/ak438/23.htm
(4) See the film about the a campaign against the residence restrictions: http://residenzpflichtdoc.com/
(5) The whole Tribunal can be watched here: http://www.youtube.com/user/RefugeeTribunal
(6) See the interviews with deported persons in Togo und Nigeria: http://www.youtube.com/aeinteract
(7) The offending object is and was, that the money which had been donated for the Oranienplatz into the non-profit Karawane bank account could only be handed out if their were any receits, as the responsible Karawane members had to insist upon.
(8) See Youtube-channel of the Tribunal: 3rd Day, Part One
Olaf Bernau/NoLager Bremen is an active member of Afrique-Europe-Interact