We call on the Wuppertal City Council to issue a political declaration on the reception of refugees being trapped in Greece.
(Deutsch)
The Idomeni refugee-camp at the Macedonian-Greek border was «voluntary» evicted. Some people from «Cars of Hope Wuppertal» have been there and observed how the remaining people have been pushed into buses and then into official camps. Conditions in these „official camps“ are even worse than in Idomeni: People report there is no drinking water, everything is dirty and the ceilings are leaking. There is not even electricity for charging mobile phones. We expect many people leaving these camps soon. The eviction of Idomeni, which was announced for a long time, is an obvious attempt by the Greek government and the European Union to cover the fate of the people who are stranded in Greece on their way to Europe. They want to make them invisible. Given the conditions in the «official camps» there were probably less the terms, but rather the pictures whose „enduring“ had been requested of us by Interior Minister de Maiziere, which led to the eviction. Because of the work of volunteers and organizations – ie. «Medics sans Frontiers» or «Cars of Hope Wuppertal» – these images had illustrated the inhuman European treatment of refugees almost on a daily basis in the past.
«welcome 2 wuppertal» (w2wtal) will not participate in the hiding of refugees and their life. We maintain our demand which was formulated in our Open Letter to the parties of the Wuppertal City Council: We urge the City Council to engage in the reception of refugees who are trapped in Greece in Germany by humanitarian reasons and to declare the willingness to host an adequate quota of these people in Wuppertal. In Wuppertal are enough spatial and personnel structures which just were build up recently with a lot of engagement. These structures are much more suitable for refugees than those in Greece – a country which is in a desolate situation itself as a result of Germany’s financial dictate.
There have been similar demands to ours in some cities and state-parliaments. In Offenbach, München, Osnabrück, in Schleswig-Holstein or at the Bavarian parliament something similar became a topic. Demands to take refugees from Greece have been made by many initiatives, by local structures of the Green party, by representatives of the Left party, the Prime Minister of Thüringen, Bodo Ramelow, and even by Bavarian parlamentarians of the Social Democrats. None of the initiatives made it to the public discussion. The opening of the border to Macedonia and Europe seems to be a taboo – a fence, which not can’t even be shattered by a discourse, although Germany agreed on the reception of refugees from Italy and Greece in the last year. But until now only 37 refugees came from Greece to Germany by this so called «relocation-program».
The Open Letter and our demand will be brought to the Wuppertal City Council by the fraction of the Left party during its next session in July. The fraction of the Green party, which is part of the red-green state government didn’t decide to support our initiative. They argued strictly formal as they rejected support for a political statement by the city of Wuppertal (see their answer). They say Wuppertal would have no possibilities to decide on refugees itself. This coaching wasn’t necessary, of course we know about the structures of decisions in the reception of refugees. This is the reason why we engage for a political statement of the City Council. But this seems to be the problem of the Greens – by a refugee-friendly petition which could lead to a joint action of German states as it was proposed by Thüringens Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow, they would force an unpleasant situation for their own state-government in NRW.
The session of the City Council will take place on Monday, July 4. It starts at 16:00 CET. We would be glad if many people will become witnesses of the parties’ decisions on our call.
