welcome to wuppertal (w2wtal) press release
The Refugee Supporters Initiative «welcome to wuppertal» (w2wtal) publishes a statement about a „visit“ last weekend by neonazis from the Party „Die RECHTE“ in a refugee accommodation in Wuppertal-Vohwinkel.
With consternation we had to learn from the media that obviously members of the nazi-party „Die RECHTE“ could „inspect“ the recently opened accomondation for refugees at the Edith-Stein-Straße in Wuppertal-Vohwinkel, with the consent and even support of the concierge. In this situation the nazis even talked with some of the new residents, even though this residents surely had no idea who they were talking to.
From our point of view there can only be three possible explanations for the incredible and dangerous behavior of the concierge who is employed by the municipality: Either the municipality did not prepare him appropriately for his sensitive task. Or he acted grossly negligent by guiding well known nazis through the accommodation. Or he did it intentionally and has sympathies for the nazis.
The incident itself is not only concretely dangerous. It becomes a political issue, because even before the accommodation opened two racist manifestations by „Die RECHTE“ took place, and in several occasions they even threatened the accommodation and its residents in a barely disguised way. Before the opening of the accommodation, in an open neighborhood-meeting, citizens pointed out this threatening situation provoked by nazis in Vohwinkel several times. In this meeting, the director of the authority for Integration and Immigration stressed out that the concierges in charge of the refugee accommodations received a special training and qualification for their responsible task, just as the social workers, and that the municipality had elaborated a „security concept“ for the refugee-accommodations.
The incident of last weekend shows clearly that these concepts have failed or have not been realized. We are wondering if that means that antifascist people from Wuppertal will have to gather in front of refugee-accommodations 24 hours a day, in order to prevent nazis from entering the rooms and from threatening refugees?!
A refugee accomodation has to be a save place!
Our demands to the authorities of Wuppertal:
- Make a public statement on this incident and also on the future tasks of the concierge in question.
- Apologize to the affected refugees and explain the background of what has happened to them.
- Ask the affected refugees what safety measures they would appreciated or consider useful for their own protection, in order to make sure that the safety of the residents is guaranteed on the one hand, and their personal freedom – for instance, to receive visits – is not limited on the other hand.
For the rest we repeat our opinion that a decentralized accommodation in private flats is the best solution. We hope that the city of Wuppertal will continue to work on this model and to keep it as a priority, even with increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the future.
welcome to wuppertal (w2wtal) 4/13 2015
