Wandering Church Asylum

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The traveling church asylum in North Rhine-Westphalia was a special form of church asylum between 1998 and 2000 . Its actors were a growing number of Kurdish refugees from Turkey until the beginning of 1999 , around one hundred Protestant and Catholic parishes and the NRW network of the nationwide campaign no one is illegal .

Course of the action

Antoniterkirche, place of the first protest action in 1998

On January 21, 1998, supported by the newly established Cologne network, no man is illegal and the Evangelical Community of Cologne , 21 Kurdish refugees who are obliged to leave Cologne, began what was initially called a “protest against deportations to the torture state of Turkey” in the Antoniterkirche in Cologne . Her limited goal was initially her personal recognition as a person entitled to asylum and a right to stay in Germany. In the following weeks the number of refugees involved rose steadily. For their part, other Cologne parishes took in groups of refugees for a few weeks each. After a nationwide demonstration on February 14th, the media reported extensively and continuously about the action. The number of refugees in now four Cologne parishes continued to grow, however, the possibilities of persuading other Cologne parishes to support could not keep up with this rush. In March 1998 the actual traveling church asylum began with the expansion to churches in Düren and Aachen , then in Bielefeld and numerous other cities in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The "three K" (Kurds, churches, campaign nobody is illegal ) drew attention to their demand for a ban on deportation to Turkey with a number of actions . What was special was that, for the first time in Germany, people without legal residence (“illegals”, “ sans papiers ”) appeared in public in large numbers at demonstrations and other forms of protest. Internally, the protest action was organized in the grassroots democratic form of large plenums, at which delegates from all refugee groups and the communities granting them asylum as well as the campaign groups discussed further common steps as well as everyday problems. Again and again, individual refugees were arrested while driving to these meetings. A man was deported, but was able to return to Germany after being mistreated by the Turkish police, who followed the action closely. Because the state government was not in sight of giving in, there was serious tension among the allies over the question of whether the campaign should continue to grow and even more people affected should be admitted. A first hunger strike by a large group in the Antoniterkirche in the summer of 1998 was rejected by the churches, reached little public and was canceled. In November 1998 and January 1999, churches in Wuppertal and Oberhausen were occupied. After further arrests, refugees occupied the state headquarters of the Greens in Düsseldorf on January 11, 1999 and began a hunger strike. In negotiations between representatives of the refugees and the state government, the commitment to re-examine all individual cases from North Rhine-Westphalia (about 1/3 of those affected came from other federal states) was finally accepted.

This began a phase of action in which, on the one hand, collective public actions continued to take place, while, on the other hand, the goal of reaching a solution in each individual case tied up the strength of the supporters. The joint action largely ended with the defeat in the fight against the deportations of Hüseyin Çalhan and Mehmet Kilic in October 2000. As the number of refugees who still had to be housed in parishes decreased, the remaining families actually became cases of usual church asylum . Ultimately, the campaign achieved a right to stay in Germany for the vast majority of the almost 500 refugees involved.

Award

The traveling church asylum in North Rhine-Westphalia was awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in 1999.

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