Nationwide day of action | Hundreds protest at airports against deportations

Photo: IMAGO / Richie Sanders The rush at Leipzig Airport was particularly large on Saturday because of the autumn holidays in several German federal states. But many people who were there didn't want to travel: around 500 people demonstrated in the entrance area in the afternoon on the occasion of a nationwide day of action against deportations and detention pending deportation. They chanted “Stop deportation,” and the slogan was also on several posters. "The airport has become a crime scene for deportations," said a speaker to applause. People are increasingly being taken against their will by plane, under police escort, to countries they don't want to go to.

Several speeches reported on resistance and moral courage with which deportations were prevented. Affected refugees defended themselves and made fellow passengers aware that, unlike them, they were not sitting on the plane voluntarily. Passengers then showed solidarity and refused to take their seats, which delayed the start. Sometimes the flight captain also refuses to take people who are on board against their will. »Since the pilot is the highest decision-making authority on the aircraft, the deportation must then be aborted. “This has happened more often recently,” said a speaker, receiving applause.

A large police presence ensured that the protest in Leipzig remained in the entrance area of ​​the airport. Most travelers apparently didn't notice the demonstration anyway. But some stopped and accepted information leaflets from the anti-racists. It also criticized the airport procedure, which applies under the new asylum border procedure and was introduced with the Common European Asylum System (GEAS) since June 12th.

There has now been a first court ruling that sets limits on this practice, as a speaker explained: The Cottbus Administrative Court stopped the border procedure for a family with three children and a sick man who had arrived alone. The court took the view that care for asylum seekers at the capital's BER airport was not guaranteed. The refugees can now go through a regular asylum procedure.

»These are not isolated cases. Behind this is a system of irresponsibility: speed and deterrence count more than human rights in the new border procedures. Asylum seekers do not belong behind fences and walls. Border procedures must be completely abolished - and families with children and those in particular need of protection must be exempt from them now," said a speaker at the Day of Action protests at Berlin Airport.

Under the common title “Nationwide against deportation madness,” anti-racists also protested on Saturday at Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Munich, Düsseldorf and Hanover airports. Almost 300 people came together in Frankfurt. The money spent on deportations should be invested in measures to integrate refugees, said a spokeswoman for the anti-racist network, which called for the day of action in Frankfurt.

The total number of participants at the seven airports was in the three-digit range. The police spoke of around 50 demonstrators at each of the Cologne/Bonn and Düsseldorf airports.

The protests are part of a longer anti-racist tradition: actions against deportations at airports have been taking place since the 1990s. There was a debate about whether people could also enter the airports. In 2011, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in the so-called Fraport judgment that the operators of Frankfurt Airport are bound by freedom of assembly because the AG is majority owned by the state of Hesse and the city of Frankfurt. The lawsuit was filed by an opponent of deportation who had distributed leaflets in the terminal in 2003 and was banned from entering the building for this.

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