florian schneider on Thu, 08 Apr 1999 22:24:45 +0200 |
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Syndicate: milk of human kindness |
[below you find a text, which appeared today, april 8th, in the supplement of the german weekly magazine DIE ZEIT. i wrote that piece long time before the war started, i post it now in english translation, since i guess it highlights, how some western european governments and, first of all germany, were handling the human rights situation in kosovo over a certain period. up to november last year german authorities deportated refugees from kosovo back to their country. even after the embargo the bavarian state government tried to deport kosovars via switzerland. a lot of them escaped into illegality and tried to get to countries, where they finally were secure from expulsion. the piece is about an ordinary man, who helped a family from kosovo to enter britain and how the authorities reacted on such an humanitarian intervention on very individual level. soon, the text in german/english version and some very good pictures, the photographer armin smajlovic made, will be available at <http://www.contrast.org/borders> /fls] THE MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS Everything seemed as usual when he left his house in a small Hessian town in order to work for a few days abroad as a courier. Some minutes before midnight Kurt Braun climbed up the gray steps to his mother's small apartment in the attic of a house, where she had lived for almost thirty years. He gave her his 8-month-old shepherd, which he had recently bought from a breeder nearby. He hoped to be away for two days only and to be able to celebrate his 50th birthday at home. Kurt Braun has not been able to pick up his dog so far, and he can only talk to his mother on the telephone. If she had climbed on her little foot stool when her son had left and had looked out of the window - as she used to do during the day to watch the people in the street - she would have been surprised. In the middle of November her son got into a caravan and not into his van as usual. Late in the afternoon Braun had driven to Kelsterbach, one of the faceless industrial areas near the Frankfurt airport, together with one of his colleague at work. At a car rental on the outskirts of Kelsterbach they had hired the caravan. Kurt Braun was waiting outside while his colleague was signing the contract. The rent was low and they did not even need a membership card for the discount because the holiday season had ended a long time ago. Today Kurt Braun regrets that it was not him who signed the contract. "After all the whole thing was my idea." But his colleague, who had retired early and worked for Braun from time to time to increase his pension, had probably also wanted to take some responsibility. It took them about two hours on the highway to Saarbruecken. From here they had to drive 10 km further to Oberroschen, a little town at the French-German border. The border patrol station is only occupied during the day. There is a notice on the door that says where to go in a case of emergency. Kurt Braun had quite a case of emergency already waiting for him on the dark parking lot behind the police station: six children and three adults. A family from the Kosovo, who tried to escape their deportation by German authorities. Braun had to bring them to England. Already by then the British authorities, unlike the German, did not deport refugees to the civil war in the Kosovo. Thus, those who managed to flee from Germany to England were safe again. Kurt Braun has a friend who is now living safely in a small terraced house in the suburbs of London after he had unsuccessfully pleaded for political asylum in Germany. He has a work permit and slaves 12 hours a day, which is still better than being deported to the terrors of the civil war. It was probably something like a humanitarian instinct that induced Braun to help the family and not to think much about his own safety. After all, he is certainly not a martyr and had quite a lot to lose. Apprenticed to the production of wine and a specialist in cider, Braun had worked for several companies trading fruit juices. Then 4 years ago he lost his job. Since he was too old for his former line of business, he decided to start his own company together with his daughter - a small trucking company; he had always fancied garage sales. He was working as a sub-entrepreneur for big forwarding agencies and delivered urgent smaller dispatches mostly during the night. Today all that is left of the prosperous company and its three vans is a handy and a lot of debts. He certainly did not help the family to escape for the money. His expenses totalled 4.400 DM for the rent for the caravan, the costs of the petrol, 2 tickets for the Euro-tunnel and the costs for a night in London. The family had agreed to pay him that amount. Kurt Braun did not think of the possibility that something could go wrong, and he certainly did not think of what would happen to him in that case. Nevertheless, he was nervous when the journey finally started. Today he even believes that he had a bad feeling right from the very beginning: wouldn't the border patrol get suspicious on seeing a caravan in the middle of November. "But where else could I have put so many people?" he asks as if he had to apologize for a small but maybe pivotal mistake. The family got quickly into the back of the caravan. The children spoke fluent German and fell asleep soon. They drove from Saarbruecken through the Eifel, drove past Aachen and Liege, through Belgium, to Lille until they finally arrived in Calais. They had made a small detour but Kurt knew that route by heart. The highway was empty during the night and both drivers took turns at the wheel. They stopped three times for the toilet. Twice they crossed borders, which the travelers only noticed because of the changing color of the road markings and street lighting. Lonely hills in Germany, broad, brightly illuminated highways in Belgium, and the start of the rush hour in France at daybreak. At about 8 p.m. they arrived at the Euro-tunnel near Calais. At the first barrier they only had to pay a fee of 700 DM, 50 meters further the French and English border began. In between there were duty-free-shops and a huge sculpture that symbolizes the extraordinary effort that was necessary to connect England and the continent. Both countries had ceded some of their territory to each other to simplify and speed up the customs clearance. The French border patrol waves most of the cars through the control. As Great Britain has not signed the Schengen agreement, it insists on an independent immigration policy. Normally the border police has only a quick look on the passports, type data into their computers, might ask for the purpose and the duration of the journey. Then the passengers are allowed to drive up the ramp to the Eurostar, that leaves the terminal every thirty minutes to Dover. The last meters to the English borders seemed to take ages. Up to now everything had been more or less a matter of form: an urgent cargo/freight and some hours to drive in the night - nothing unusual for a courier. It had been strenuous but compared to the danger that waited for the family in the Kosovo, nothing worth mentioning. Real danger lurked only on lay-bys/rest stops where the passengers in the back of the caravan might rouse the attention and suspicion of policemen. Some kilometers before the border, the two drivers had changed places once again and Braun was now sitting on the passenger seat. Then finally they were on British territory and the family was in safety. Both handed the passport to the border patrol and then the inexplicable or rather the very explicable thing happened: by chance, bad luck, or just by the nervousness of Braun's colleague and the fact that he was not used to handle such a broad vehicle as the caravan. However, the caravan touched the corrugated iron of the border patrol station with his outside mirror. The police got suspicious and demanded to have a look into the caravan. Kurt Braun had provided for that case: the six children were hidden on the bed above the driver cabin under a heap of bed linen. The three adults lay under benches. First, a police woman entered the back of the caravan and did not notice anything. Then one of her colleagues got in as well, removed the bed linen and discovered the children. For more than a year Kurt Braun has now been sitting in English jails. He spent his 50th birthday on a police station in Folkstone, on the other side of the tunnel. On December 27th he was brought before a summary court and accused of the smuggling of human beings. Braun who hardly spoke English and had no idea of the British law admitted his guilt before the law and instinctively took the responsibility for everything upon himself. He never even dreamed of the consequences that would follow this decision. Apart from that he could hardly communicate with his public defender. Three days after his arrest Kurt Braun was brought to Canterbury where he was to spend the next 12 months. Behind pretty terraced brick houses there is the jail, far away from the streams of tourist who invade the medieval town center of Canterbury year after year. There, Kurt Braun works in the kitchen of the prison and carves the meat for his fellow prisoners 7 days a week and for less than 40DM per week. Most of those who are in jail in Canterbury are accused of border offenses; for example a Vietnamese who has lived in Germany since 1979 who has got a German passport and 4 children. He says that he was persuaded by a friend whom he owed 1000DM to bring a Chinese from Rotterdam to England to pay off his debts. When he arrived at the meeting place three people wanted to come with him. They were discovered just as a man from Nigeria who lived in Germany as well and had tried to bring a pregnant friend into safety with the passport of his English wife. Germany wanted to deport the pregnant woman back into the military dictatorship of her native country. Even the public prosecution conceded that his motives were purely humanitarian, nevertheless he was sentenced to 15 months in jail. The British judiciary probably intended to make an example of Kurt Braun's case. He and his colleague were sentenced to 5 years in jail - the maximum sentence for the smuggling of human beings in Britain is 7 years. Braun still cannot understand why he was punished so severely. In Germany where the maximum sentence has recently been raised to 10 years in prison, the judges would at least have considered his so far blameless criminal records. The English judge did not even want to hear anything about them. One year ago a court of appeal reduced the sentence to three years. And at least the family is in security, "somewhere," as relatives report "and certainly not deported to the Kosovo." That may be a little consolation for Kurt Braun; the fact that his life is ruined, because of a few hours, when he dared to show moral courage, cannot be changed. In retrospect what he did may seem naive, but the big and strong man might be the very embodiment of a contemporary hero as well. Exhausted and nervous at the same time, marked by the difficulties concentrating which are typical for those imprisoned for more than one year, he takes a seat in the visitor room of the jail one day before Christmas. He talks about the turkey legs he has to prepare for the Christmas dinner, about his tennis elbow, the bad medical service in the prison. He says that he is soon going to be transferred and speaks about all the prisoners who sit in jail without any aid from outside, who are arrested for deeds they would have never believed to be evil. Until recently, in Germany as well as in Britain to aid an escape had hardly been prosecuted or was even considered a heroic deed if it fitted into the political line of the country. Now it is punished as severely as a capital crime; while the borders in Europe are disappearing, those who take the promise of the freedom of travel literally get prison sentences that had normally only been passed for crimes of violence. Although the family immigrated illegally into Great Britain and has thus violated against existing laws, they never did any harm or evil to anybody, wonders Braun's mother and points on a paragraph in a letter she wrote to the British Prime Minister. "After all, my son did not bring contaminated animals to England, but he brought human beings, who were in great danger, to their relatives." Of course Tony Blair did not answer the letter. Instead, Braun's mother received a message from the Federal High Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, which says that her son is now registered also in Germany for a crime he committed abroad: "trafficking in migrants." Some time ago the same deed was called escape aid--those who committed it were honored and rewarded and streets were named after them. Florian Schneider -- Break the logic of war! Desert! Open the borders! http://www.teleportacia.org ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/east/ to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress