But people do fight back | 26th September 2010
More school-age children have been sent from Hamburg to Horst, despite an agreement to the contrary. A fascist attack occurred on a refugee who is forced to live in Horst. It is the second week of protests in Horst, where the refugees are still waiting for an opportunity to finally talk about their demands with the camp management.
On Wednesday, the camp management and the interior ministry invited politicians and selected journalists to visit the facilities in a desperate attempt to silence the 300 people who live there. No attempt has been made to talk to the refugees about their demands.
On Saturday, 25th September several people and solidarity groups from various cities visited the refugees to reassure them of their support. The attempt to visit them was stopped at the gate, due to a general ban on visits. Whenever we asked in the past why the IDs of everyone wanting to visit were checked, we were given the excuse that told that the camp was open, the people were free and the checkpoints were only for the protection of the refugees.
So we were back in the friendly car park, which the children immediately started decorating. A portable photo studio soon revealed how many children are living here and are being condemned not to go to school, because they are forced to stay in the camp. At least two Afghani families with school-age children have been brought here from Hamburg. This is against a coalition agreement between the government of Hamburg and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which states that no child, and especially no school-age child is to be sent to Horst.
We also talked to a 19 year old Afghani woman who has been in the camp for nine months. Her family, including smaller siblings, is living in Cologne, but she was denied permission to visit them. Another young man from Afghanistan, who is now staying there for a year, has been denied permission to go to school and learn German. He should be happy with the one hour per week lessons he is getting at the camp and wait for another 10 months when he would be allowed to go to Hamburg, he was told. Condemned to 22 months of doing nothing.
The people in Horst and other camps are being robbed of their lives by bureaucrats who keep them locked up and control them. They do this thinking that these people won’t have a chance to resist, get help or even find out about their rights.
But people do fight back, like they do in Horst. And we will continue to publish the stories they tell us until they are all free and all the camps are demolished.
As if all this wasn’t enough, when we left we were told about this incident: in the evening of the 18th September, an African refugee was attacked 2 km away from the camp on the road leading to Boizenburg. Two Nazis hit him with a beer bottle over the head and continued to kick him when he was already lying on the ground. When a car drove past, the Nazis left. The refugee dragged himself to the camp bleeding and informed the security, who called the police and paramedics. He laid a complaint with the police and was interviewed by them in Boizenburg but wasn’t taken to hospital until the next morning. He stayed in hospital for four days. The police told us that they were investigating the complaint.
