UN urges Germany to ease asylum policy

By Joachim Kaeppner

BERLIN (DPA): The gathering in Berlin to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Geneva convention on refugees was a lot like a family reunion at a nice location, except that everyone present knew that there would unfortunately be no getting through all the festivities and speeches without some angry flare-ups.

First there was music, then came the drinks and some quaint niceties to mark the jubilee. But the atmosphere turned when the main speakers started talking turkey.

Ruud Lubbers, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), even made a wish directed at German Interior Minister Otto Schily (Social Democratic Party, SPD), who was also in attendance. Lubbers said he wished Germany would finally recognize "persecution by non-state agents" as a valid reason for granting political asylum.

But Otto Schily came prepared to offer nothing of the sort. On the contrary, the interior minister acted at the ceremony, which was put on jointly by the UNHCR and the Protestant Academy of Berlin (Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin), like a man confronted for the umpteenth time with a completely preposterous concern who is rapidly approaching the limits of his patience. Schily requested that critics "finally lay to rest the fairytale (that there are) protective loopholes in the right to asylum" in Germany.

There was no getting around noticing that the venue, the Friedrichskirche in Berlin, provided a provocative backdrop for a debate over Germany's asylum policy. The church was built at the end of the 17th century -- by French protestant refugees who had found a new home in the Berlin of the Great Elector.

Refugee and welfare organizations -- but also SPD and Green politicians -- have long criticized the fact that Germany's asylum law is fixated on governmental persecution. A key policy paper issued recently by the SPD's parliamentary group called for the right to asylum to be extended to cover those persecuted on account of their gender and those persecuted by non-governmental agents.

Unlike the tough stance of Schily, who is loath to liberalize the unpopular law just before his government's re-election campaign gets underway in earnest, such a change to the German law would bring it into line with the latest European legal standards.

"The viewpoint of the perpetrators cannot take precedence over victim protection," said the UNHCR's Lubbers, in a fairly direct jab at Schily. It makes little difference to victims whether they are persecuted by an organization of the state or by a non-state organization, he said.

The UNHCR, who has a penchant for irony, asked the German government "to take another hard look at the facts". After all, he said, the inclusion of non-governmental persecution as a reason for asylum would represent "not an expansion of German law, but merely an alignment with European standards."

Schily is convinced that he long ago thought through all the hard facts. Before a surprised audience, the interior minister spoke of massive abuse of the right to asylum and of the need to shorten the process of reviewing and deciding on asylum requests.

"An expansion of the grounds for asylum to include so-called non-state persecution cannot be reconciled with a streamlining of the asylum (application review) process, as much as it pains me." Otherwise, said Schily, the application process threatened "to get out of hand".

The minister said that the judges and civil servants who review and decide applications for asylum already take "quasi- governmental persecution" into consideration. He mentioned as an example the Taliban regime, which has extended its reign of terror over more than 90 percent of Afghanistan's territory. According to Schily, the fact that persecution by the Taliban can qualify as a reason for asylum meant that it was "simply not truthful" to refer to the oft-mentioned plight of persecuted Afghans in order to point out shortcomings in victim protection under German law.

Of course, with its decision recognizing the right of political asylum for Afghan refugees, Germany's Constitutional Court had forced the practice on German refugee authorities.

At the end of his speech, Schily offered his thanks to the "well-meaning and the charitable".

Commissioner Lubbers took the matter with typical Dutch aplomb. In practice, he said, the UNHCR and the interior minister weren't really all that far apart on the right to asylum: "But for domestic political reasons, Schily has to appear like someone who doesn't give in and who keeps the doors shut."