Return-Path: Received: from zimt01.dillingen.baynet.de ([194.95.207.3]) by mailin03.sul.t-online.de with esmtp id 12bAU8-0FuuWmC; Sat, 1 Apr 2000 01:05:48 +0200 Received: from bndlg.de (buerger07.dillingen.baynet.de [194.95.207.167]) by zimt01.dillingen.baynet.de (8.9.3/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA14766; Sat, 1 Apr 2000 01:04:47 +0200 Message-ID: <38E52CB4.117EA56C@bndlg.de> Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:54:44 +0200 From: Wolfgang Plarre X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [de] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: de MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Recipient list suppressed , Hans Raidel , Deutscher Bundestag , SPD Verteidigungsminister Scharping , " =?iso-8859-1?Q?CDU=2DBundesgesch=E4ftsstelle?=" , Dr Edmund Stoiber , Bundesinnenministerium , "Marieluise.Beck" , "Joschka.Fischer" , "Christa.Nickels" , "Claudia.Roth" , "Ruth.Paulig" , "BROK, Elmar 1" , " =?iso-8859-1?Q?H=C4NSCH?=, Klaus 2" , " SAKELLARIOU, Jannis 2" , " =?iso-8859-1?Q?G=D6RLACH?=, Willi 2" , "MAYER, Hans-Peter" , "PACK, Doris 2" , "=?iso-8859-1?Q?R=DCHLE?=, Heide 1" , "SCHMID, Gerhard" Subject: repatriation of Kosovars - Wenn viele kleine Schritte tun ... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit ... wird sich die Welt verändern ? ! :-) _______________________________________________________________________ http://www.clari.net/hot/wed/ar/Qkosovo-germany-unhcr.RtdH_AMU.html UNHCR concerned by German repatriation of Kosovars Thursday, 30-Mar-2000 2:00PM PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, March 30 (AFP) - The UN's refugee agency in Pristina said Thursday it was concerned by Germany's decision to repatriate some thousands of Kosovars, some of whom have criminal records. Germany sent back 160 Kosovars in two planes Wednesday from Karlsruhe in the southeast to Kosovo's provincial capital Pristina, according to Captain Wolfgang Wagner of the UN customs and border police. He said 50 of the deportees had criminal backgrounds while the others had residence permits which had expired. Many of the residence permits were due to expire Wednesday, the day of the Kosovars' deportation, said Nadia Younes, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Peter Kessler, a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said he was concerned by the involuntary returns and stressed the "limited absorption capacity of Kosovo." "We are also concerned by the deportation of those alleged criminals without the adequate police and judicial structure in place," he said. UNMIK police took fingerprints of suspected criminals before releasing them Wednesday, said Wagner. He added that the UN force has no access to German police files. The UNHCR also criticised the involuntary return Wednesday of a family of Roma, members of "a minority group that can face threats" in the unruly Yugoslav province. Almost 4,500 Kosovo Albanians without residence permits and 300 with "a criminal background" living in Germany have been repatriated since February, said Sergeant Bernard Lux, another UN customs and border officer. One UN official, who wished to remain anonymous, said the Kosovars sent back Wednesday were forced to leave Germany in questionable conditions. "They were woken up between two and eight in morning and had very little time to gather their belongings," the official said. Most of them were aged between 20 and 50, he added. Following a court decision in the central German town of Kassel, published on February 28, Kosovo refugees in Germany cannot claim asylum and can therefore be expelled. On March 4, the interior ministry said that since UNMIK head Bernard Kouchner signed a memorandum with Interior Minister Otto Schily last November, the federal border police had expelled 60 Kosovars with criminal records. Around 180,000 Kosovar Albanians lived in Germany, of whom 14,614 arrived during NATO's three-month air campaign last year, the interior ministry said. Story from AFP Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) _______________________________________________________________________ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Europe/2000-03/germany310300.shtml Germany deports 'murderers' back home to Kosovo By Christian Jennings in Pristina 31 March 2000 Germany was sharply criticised by the United Nations refugee agency yesterday for "dumping" murderers and other criminals on Kosovo as part of a drive to repatriate 170,000 refugees to their devastated homeland. Captain Wolfgang Wagner, of the German border police, based in Pristina, said two Albanian Airlines flights arrived from Germany on Wednesday with 160 deportees aboard. "Of this number, 50 had criminal backgrounds," he said. "They were all fingerprinted on arrival and then released. The whole criminal code was well represented on these flights." Officials are particularly worried about the prospect of thousands of hardened criminals being added to Kosovo's explosive mix. Some Albanians who fled the province in the past decade have been linked to organised crime syndicates operating across Europe. Kosovo Albanian mafias are believed to be active in the heroin trade, weapons smuggling and prostitution rackets. German public opinion has been outraged by crimes committed by refugees and others from Kosovo and other Balkan provinces, but the country has long been the most generous in Western Europe in giving a safe haven to those fleeing civil war and economic privation. Germany has repeatedly demanded that its EU partners agree to a formal system of "burden-sharing", with quotas of asylum-seekers allocated to each country. But these entreaties have fallen largely on deaf ears, with the principal opposition to the Germans' plan coming from Britain. A stamp on a Kosovo refugee's hand that allowed entry to Germany Germany accepted by far the largest number of the exodus of refugees during the Bosnian conflict. In Pristina yesterday, Peter Kessler, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said: "We're concerned at the deportation of these criminals without adequate police and judicial structures in place. We're also concerned ... when people are collected in the dead of night like this and we're concerned about the absorption capacity of Kosovo." Germany says all convicted criminals from Kosovo willbe sent home as soon asthey have served their sentences. But it does not rule out the possibility that convicts might find their jail terms shortened, ostensibly for good behaviour, and flown back to Pristina. Capt Wagner said some 300 convicts had arrived since last month, with 500 deportees without criminal records. Wednesday's returnees had been arrested in Germany between 2am and 8am that morning, flown to Kosovo, and then taken straight from the airport to the addresses of any available relatives in the province. International organisations trying to keep the peace in Kosovo are perturbed. "These are exactly what this province doesn't need at the moment," said one European Nato official. "There's no workable justice system, no proper judges, a huge crime rate, and now they're dumping murderers on us." But Germany says it is not her problem. "Kosovo is not a German protectorate," said an Interior Ministry spokesman in Berlin. "We take the deportees back to Pristina. The rest is up to the local authorities." These agencies are likely to be swamped because of inadequate information from Germany. "We have no access even to the German criminal database," said First Sergeant Bernard Lux, of the the German border police in Pristina. "So we can't tell exactly what they have done." The policy to repatriate Albanian refugees to Kosovo was agreed by European governments at a conference in the Finnish town of Taampere last October. Expelling large numbers of Kosovo Albanians from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, and an estimated 100,000 from Switzerland, was deemed a necessary measure as part of a crackdown on organised crime and a means of returning life in Kosovo to normal. -- ******************************************************************** Wiederaufbau Kosov@ - Reconstruction Kosov@ Rindërtimi i Kosov@s - OBNOVA KOSOVA http://www.osnabrueck.netsurf.de:8080/~dbein/wiederaufbau.htm ******************************************************************** +---------------------------------------------------+ | Wolfgang Plarre | | Dillinger Str. 41, D-86637 Wertingen, Germany | | E-mail: wplarre@bndlg.de w.plarre@kosova.nu | | Tel: +49-8272-98974 Fax: +49-8272-98975 | | Internet: http://www.bndlg.de/~wplarre | +---------------------------------------------------+ _________________________________________________________ Ein Zeichen setzen: @ ! KosovO + KosovA = Kosov@ ! _________________________________________________________