RIGHTS-FRANCE: Refugees Who Cannot Stay, Cannot Go

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Aug 29 2002 (IPS) - Yusuf Aksoy lies thin and exhausted on his makeshift bed at the Notre Dame de la Victoire church in Saint Raphael village in southern France. He has not eaten since July 18.

Yusuf, a Kurdish refugee living in France since 1996 has decided that either he is given legal status, or he will die. He has written several letters to authorities demanding recognition as refugee. His letters end with three words: “Liberty or death.”

Yusuf has lost 20 kilograms. Doctors say he is entering the terminal phase of his condition. “He has even ceased to drink, he is rejecting everything,” says Elsa di Meo, a doctor with the Solidarity Association with Immigrant Workers (ASTI, after its French name).

Yusuf, 32, came illegally to France in 1996 from Uluçayir in Turkey, a region populated mainly by Kurds. Yusuf was fleeing repression by the Turkish army.

Yusuf has sought in vain to be accepted as war refugee in France. His case has now drawn national attention. Danielle Mitterrand, widow of former president Francois Mitterrand, and Olivier Duhamel, member of the European Parliament are among prominent persons supporting his demand.

The government allowed Yusuf Thursday to submit again the asylum application he presented in 1996. Until then he and his family will be given a temporary residence permit. But ASTI says this “doesn’t guarantee anything for Yusuf and his family.”

Kurd refugees cannot be expelled under French law, even if they entered the country illegally. But the government continues to reject demands by individual Kurds to be accepted as refugees.

Yusuf belongs to the group of refugees who call themselves “les sans papiers”, or “the undocumented”. The “les sans papiers” have begun now to occupy churches all over France, and to put pressure on the new right-wing government to give them legal status.

“We are not clandestine,” says Ali Mansouri, leader of Coordination 93, a group of about 1500 les sans papiers. “We work legally in France, we pay our taxes, we are registered in practically all state administrations, be it the fund of pensions, the health insurance, or the schools of our children.” But officially they are still illegal.

Hundreds of members of Coordination 93 have been occupying the Saint Denis cathedral about 10 kilometres north of Paris since August 18. Members of Coordination 93, so called after the first two digits (93) of the post code of Seine-Saint Denis, met with minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday in another effort to seek regularisation of their status. But Sarkozy rejected the demands.

“We will examine the demands case by case, and if regularisation cannot be given, we will proceed to expel the foreigners to their countries of origin,” Sarkozy said.

Sarkozy suggested that he will reintroduce mass deportation of refugees on charter planes, as his mentor and former minister Charles Pasqua ordered between 1993 and 1995. Those charter flights came to be called “Pasqua Airlines”.

Mansouri announced after the meeting with Sarkozy that “as long as we don’t obtain regularisation of all sans papiers, our occupation of churches will continue.”

The Catholic church supports the refugees’ demands. French bishops urged the government in an appeal in February last year “to regularise the legal status of all refugees living in France.” The bishops demanded “transparent application of the law of asylum.”

Over about 10 years now, Catholic churches all over France have been occupied by immigrants in an attempt to underline their uncertain status. The Catholic church often accepts such occupation. It seeks in any case to avoid the kind of violence seen in August 1996 when the police expelled hundreds of “sans papiers” from the church of Saint Bernard. The police used axes to enter the church building, and tear gas to force immigrants to leave.

In Saint Raphael where Yusuf has been on hunger strike, the local bishop Dominique Rey has been supporting Yusuf’s family. Rey looks after Yusuf’s wife and sister, who are both pregnant. He is asking for immediate regularisation of the women’s status to help end Yusuf’s hunger strike.

The bishop criticises the government for rejecting Yusuf’s demands. “He is not asking for money, or for any form of assistance,” he says. “The only thing he wants is to be recognised as a refugee in France to lead a dignified life.”

ASTI says most refugees have a job and can lead an almost normal life, but “many of them live in constant fear of been controlled, imprisoned or expelled.”