»Residency Rights for Victims of Racist Violence« – A campaign and its initiators

The Working Committee for Counseling Projects for Victims of Racist, Extreme-Right and Anti-Semitic Violence (agOra)

Introduction of the umbrella organization, based on an interview with Rahel Krückels, project member of ABAD and one of the initiators of agOra

The Working Committee for the Counseling Project for Victims of Racist, Extreme-Right and Anti-Semitic Violence (agOra) started their work in the beginning of June, 2002. agOra was established in order to bring to public attention at a federal level the concerns and issues of counseling projects for victims of racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism, and to consolidate the experience and expertise of individual projects. Until then the counseling projects’ work had been uncoordinated and had taken place only at a state level. All agOra projects share the goal of providing the victims with quick professional help and confronting society with the victim’s perspective.

The victim counseling projects aim to change social work from being focused on the perpetrator to being supportive of victims of extreme-right violence. This entails sensitizing society as a whole to the need for such a change. Rahel Krückels, one of the initiators of the campaign and a member of the Thuringian victim counseling project, has noticed that media perception has changed and that particularly in Brandenburg, courts are giving increasing consideration to the possibility that crimes have an extreme-right background. Ms. Krückels reports the example of summary court hearings being initiated on the grounds of strengthening victim rights. These hearings are started just days after the crime and so provide the possibility of quickly and directly »punishing« the perpetrator and avenging the crime. This means for the victims of crimes that they can experience the condemnation and conviction of the perpetrator. There is no month or year-long wait before the trial begins. All too often, it has happened that the main witnesses of an attack, the victims themselves, were deported before the trial began. Or the crime simply happened too long ago and therefore could no longer be prosecuted. In case it comes to a conviction, this can also have an effect on the psychological state of the victim, for example on how the victim copes with the trauma. But, says Ms. Krückels, this practice of summary court hearings can also be to the victim’s disadvantage. She points out that in the short time available, an incidental action cannot be thoroughly prepared. This is, however, often the only way to claim in court that a crime has an extreme-right background or to present the full extent of the victim’s physical and psychological suffering.

The problems confronting the victims’ counselors are always the same: sometimes they aren’t even able to find the names and addresses of the victims, whose cases the project members often only know of through mention of them in the media. The counselors have found access blocked to refugee residences. Residency restrictions significantly hamper and delay office visits to doctors and therapists, for example, and sometimes completely prevent them.
Another problem that often occurs is that the victims of attacks are themselves charged – because they have defended themselves, for example. Within local communities, attacks are often played down, being perceived and represented as the conflicts of »youth cliques«; the attacks’ racist backgrounds are completely ignored. Rahel Krückels points out that there’s another problem, in Berlin for example: racist police violence. In such cases, it is often even more difficult to continue to investigate on the part of the victim, and to make the public aware of the situation.

Before the Parliamentary election, agOra challenged parties and politicians with »electoral touchstones« and asked them to say where they stood as regards the campaign for Residency Rights for Victims of Racist Violence and the continued sponsorship of the program, Civitas.Their reaction until now, says Rahel Krückel, has been reserved. It was not possible to get a clear statement from the CDU on the programs against right-wing extremism and for residency rights for victims of racist violence. Katherina Reiche from the CDU only spoke to the continuation of Civitas, saying that »I am of the opinion that these various programs must be examined where it’s necessary. An appraisal is thus needed in the new legislative period.«

The PDS and the Greens give the campaign consistently good marks, although the ruling parties (including the SPD) refer to the revision of the immigration law and the »hardship provision« it makes (e.g. for cases in which potential deportees would face persecution upon being returned to their country of origin). This new provision envisages a state-level commission which makes decisions on a case-to-case basis and in accordance with humanitarian criteria. These »hardship commissions« would be the province of the Bundesländer and would not be obligatory. The calls of the campaign, however, are formulated without regard for the consequences – Krückel says that victims of racist violence should be accorded unrestricted residency rights in all cases, regardless of, among other things, the seriousness of an attack’s consequences. Nevertheless, no statements can be made now regarding possible effects of the new law, as no practical experience has yet been gained.

Victim counseling centers in the former East and West Germanies work quite differently: the counseling centers in the East are primarily funded by Civitas and beyond that work on a voluntary basis. A few projects work only with volunteers. The counseling center projects that are in the West of the Republic are excluded from Civitas funding and have been working for years on a volunteer basis. Networking between the projects has progressed significantly since the establishment of the umbrella organization, agOra, in the beginning of June, 2002 and is intended to enable continuation of the work when Civitas support ends. According to Rahel Krückels, they don’t intend to let their counseling work degenerate into a purely charitable issue, but to expand it and confront right-wing extremist and racism in the communities in which racist attacks and discrimination happens. This includes the support of initiatives and projects in which young people stand up for democracy and against racism.

The Campaign: Residency Rights for Victims of Racist Violence

agOra’s call for action

In the last two years or so, public awareness of acts of racist violence has increased. The protection of potential victims and the redressing of such offences have become issues of public debate. This increase in public attention, however, has not lead to a decrease in the number of crimes.

A particularly large number of the victims of racist violence are migrants and refugees. Crimes like these affect them especially seriously when their residence in Germany is not secure. Their general living situation, already difficult due to a lack of social contact and insecure prospects for the future, is not helped by the physical and psychological results of an act of violence.

Thus we call for permanent residency rights for victims of racist violence. This right to residency must be strictly independent of the results [of the crime and must not be dependent on any further conditions.

A decisive aspect of the call for residency rights for victims of racist violence is its symbolic content: society announces its willingness to assume responsibility for the injustice and to oppose the intended outcome of the violent offence, namely the deportation of the victim. Instead of the attempted expulsion, a permanent secure right of abode is granted. This demonstrates solidarity, encompassing emergency assistance and more.

The demand for permanent residency rights for victims of racist violence is grounded in three basic tenets:

1. Residency rights as compensation for victims and their social environment
   Racist attacks imply a denial of the victim’s right to be or to reside in Germany. The perpetrators derive from this denial a legitimation of their violent attacks. The damage resulting from such attacks, however, is not exclusively limited to the physical or psychological effects on the victim. As the victims and their social environment quite clearly understand, the attack is not directed against the individual but against a particular group of people. As a consequence, a racist attack in the form of fear, intimidation, limitation of freedom of movement, and disintegration not only affects the individual victims but also their social environment. Because of the persistently large number of such attacks, these effects cannot be countered by measures of legal prosecution alone. (This is not least due to the substantial time-lapse between the crime and the criminal’s conviction.) Neither can the damage be redressed by financial compensation from the assailant or the state. Rather, victims without secure residency status should be granted permanent residency. It is only through this form of compensation that victims and their corresponding »social environments« will discover that victims of racist attacks are not left to fend for themselves, but experience clear support from society.
2. Residency rights as a political signal to the offender and to society
   The offender disputes the victim’s right to live in Germany and subsequently derives for himself the right to violently attack him or her.
   By granting residency rights, the planned outcome of the attack is thwarted and the opposite result is achieved. In granting residency rights, the offenders are quite simply shown that their actions achieve precisely the opposite of what they are aiming at. Simultaneously the right of abode for the victims of racist attacks signals an acceptance of responsibility and an acceptance of the fact that racism and the violence that accompanies it are results of the failure of politics and civil society.
3. Residency rights for humanitarian reasons
   People lacking secure residency status often find themselves in extremely critical living situations. Their freedom of movement is often limited; they are not allowed to work; they lack social contact and their future prospects are completely uncertain. Because of this, many of the after-effects of racist attacks are further reaching than amongst other types of victims. Seen against this background, the granting of residency rights creates additional security and prospects which enable victims to better deal with and recover from their injuries.

A case study taken from the campaign, »Residency Rights for Victims of Racist Violence«

In cooperation with agOra

On January 27, 2001 in Suhl, Thurginia, a 42-year-old Vietnamese man named Chien was beaten up by several of the local right-wing extremists. The injuries that Chien suffered were so serious that he had to stay in the hospital. The psychological trauma that has preyed on him since, however, is worse than the physical mistreatment itself. He still suffers from sustained headaches, high blood pressure and a fear syndrome. He is afraid to go on the streets in the evenings without accompaniment.

Chien is still undergoing medical treatment and recently started an urgently needed course of therapy to deal with the psychological effects of the attack. The immigration authorities in Meininger have forbidden deportation until his therapy has ended; his residency will be legally »tolerated« until then. This toleration, however, simply means that deportation cannot take place while the toleration is valid. It can be revoked at short notice, and at any time, and does not accord him secure residency status. It must be feared that Chien will be deported after his therapy is completed.

The Meininger authorities do not take into account the fact that Chien’s recovery depends on his having secure residency status. Over the years, Chien has established a life for himself in Zella-Mehlis. But it is now, of all times, in his current situation as a victim of a violent attack, that he would have to leave the place where he has worked and lived for years. Regardless of when his departure happens, it must seem to be a »continuation« of this rupture in his life.

Chien is still not able to return to his work as a chef. Losing his job has led to his legal toleration status being shortened from 3 months to only one month at a time. According to the immigration authorities responsible for his case, this is normal procedure in the case of jobless refugees. The perspective of the victim, however, is not considered. Chien sees the shortened toleration periods as an indirect accusation of guilt for his state of health.

The court stated in its judgement that the perpetrator »should be seen as belonging at least to the extreme-right sub-culture.« He had already been sentenced for several related offenses. Another indication that this was a racist attack is that the victim was suddenly attacked, i.e. that there was no direct reason for the attack.

Although Chien reports having been attacked by 4 assailants, only one perpetrator was convicted of and sentenced for grievous bodily harm. The other assailants have not yet been officially identified. For this reason, Chien filed a new charge in April, 2002. Deportation would rob him of the possibility of his experiencing at least partial redress through the sentencing of his assailants. It would furthermore remove the person best able to identify the assailants. His deportation would disable him from actively taking part in the conviction and necessary sentencing of the assailants.

The Meiningen immigration authorities are still convinced that it is in the public’s interest to end Chien’s residency as soon as possible. With their act, the assailants also imply that the victim should not be allowed to stay here. They will feel confirmed and strengthened in their role as »executors of the public interest.« Even if this is not the authorities’ intention, deportation is in effect the completion of the act that the assailants began: the victim is guaranteed no protection; he or she is not to stay here; they don’t belong here.

The immigration authorities, furthermore, are denying any responsibility as a state institution for the acts of its citizens. The victims of racist attacks can only understand this kind of behaviour on the part of governmental institutions as contempt for the suffering they have endured.
If avowals of commitment to the values of civil society and to political engagement against right-wing extremism are to be taken seriously, then Chien and others who are being physically driven out of here by right-wing extremists must not be deported by German institutions.

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