Positioning Paper of the Campaign against Deportation Imprisonment

Halle, 24.06.2001

This year in March a meeting of groups which are working on the topic of deportation imprisonment took place. Consensus of the spent week-end: Abolition of Deportation Imprisonment! We decided to give expression to this demand in the frame of a big, country wide campaign. The positioning paper is the result of a further meeting and is meant to be a basis for discussion, further work and preparation on the campaign.

Generally it is possible for every individual which is staying in Germany without a German passport to be subject to deportation. Within the long chain of laws concerning the special treatment of ‘undesirable’ people, deportation imprisonment is on of the most restricting means on the basis of which it is possible to take away the freedom of a person because he or she doesn't have a passport. In the context of different, in some cases successful campaigns like e.g. the ‘deportation.class’ and the ‘Anti-Residenzpflicht’ campaign, and the aim to shake the racism of the state, we believe it very important to also attack deportation imprisonment.
Quite a number of deportation imprisonment groups have sometimes worked already for years on this bad state of affairs. Through social work they tried and still try to support deportation prisoners in their position and to better their state. Yet, it is their tricky situation that on the one hand they hold up the system that on the other hand they criticise. Because those people who work in the deportation prisons are so involved in their work in bettering the conditions in the prisons, it has until now been impossible to appeal to a critical public nor could many changes be reached. Therefore in Leipzig the decision was made to work unified for the complete abolition of this form of imprisonment. In initiating a country wide campaign we want to bring up the topic on a wide public level and want to call upon different anti-racism initiatives and individual people to engage themselves.
We understand the campaign as open and decentralised, it is meant to be filled with different actions. Yet the protest shouldn’t only be directed against deportation imprisonment institutions but it is meant to attack institutions which generally put people into those situations. Protest which is only directed against deportation imprisonment institutions fails short and covers the view for state institutions like the Ausländerbehörde or the Amtsgericht.
Actions in the frame of the campaign are possible in all forms and are important and are to be in the initiative of each individual group. Yet in order to act in a unified context we aim at placing the campaign under a common logo, which brings the demand of abolition of deportation imprisonment to the point. Even country wide actions can be placed under it.
We invite you to discuss the campaign with us, its content and actions at the Antirassistische Grenzcamp in Frankfurt/Main (27.07-05.08.01) and to enrich it with new ideas.

Let us join together and fight against deportation imprisonment as a corner stone in the wall of the fortress of Europe! For us an immigration law which only puts off racial exclusion for people which come in handy is not enough.

Close Deportation Prisons! Stop Deportation!

the supporters of the campaign against deportation