'I
Can Hardly Breathe Here': German Refugee Shelters Face Sexual Assault
Problem
By
Riham Alkousaa, Julia Klaus, Ann-Katrin Müller and Maximilian Popp
Cases
of sexual assault in German refugee shelters are on the rise, with
women and children facing the greatest danger. Despite pleas for help
from the government, Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition has done
little to offer additional protections.
Diala Hasan was
surprised by her attacker in the kitchen of the refugee hostel where
she is staying. She was cooking rice with peas when a fellow resident
from Macedonia suddenly appeared. He commanded her to "come to
my room." He then grabbed the young woman's face with his thumb
and index finger, pressing his body against hers. Hasan resisted and
screamed. She was only able to free herself with great effort.
A few weeks after
the attack, Hasan, a 17-year-old high school student from Damascus,
is sitting on a stool in the asylum-seeker hostel in Bergisch
Gladbach, a city located 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of Cologne. She
is fiddling with two hand-made bracelets on her right arm. Her voice
shakes as she talks about her life in the shelter. She says that she
and her two sisters, nine-year-old Hala and 22-year-old Israa, have
been repeatedly stared at and groped, and that male residents have
hissed obscene comments at them. It happens in the courtyard, in the
kitchen and in the hallways. One man kept coming into their room
while she was sleeping.
Hasan doesn't
understand why the shelter administrators have done nothing about the
assaults. Following the attack in the kitchen, police officers showed
up at the hostel, but they only repeated what the guards had already
said, Hasan says: Sorry, but without proof we can't help you. It is a
sentence that female refugees in Germany often hear.
More than 440,000
people applied for asylum in Germany last year, with roughly a third
of them being women and girls. Their number has increased in recent
months. According to a February estimate by the German Foreign
Ministry, up to eight of 10 refugees on the Balkan Route were women
and unaccompanied minors in the weeks preceding the report. They were
hoping for a life in safety but were, like Diala Hasan, frequently
disappointed. "Nobody helps us," she says. "We are
completely alone."
The German
government was unprepared for the extremely rapid rise in the number
of asylum-seekers coming to the country in 2015. States and
municipalities were forced to quickly find shelters for the new
arrivals. Gymnasiums were emptied out to make room and former
building supplies stores were hurriedly modified. More recently, the
number of refugee arrivals has dropped significantly, providing the
government with an opportunity to focus more on integration.
Failing to Provide
Protection
But Chancellor
Angela Merkel's governing coalition is failing to provide protection
to exactly those people who need it most: women, children and
minorities who have fled their homes. The government's commissioner
responsible for the issue of sexual violence against children,
Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, is currently dealing with 40 cases of sexual
assault on children inside refugee hostels in recent months,
including cases of rape and even genital mutilation performed on a
small girl. The number of unreported cases, Rörig fears, is likely
much higher: He says that many refugees are afraid of approaching the
authorities due to worries that doing so may adversely affect their
asylum applications. "How many cases are still needed before
something changes?" he asks. "Fifty? One hundred? A
thousand?"
Back in 2013, the EU
issued a directive to member states requiring them to "take into
consideration gender and age-specific concerns and the situation of
vulnerable persons in relation to applicants within the premises and
accommodation centers." The directive also specifically
mentioned "appropriate measures to prevent assault and
gender-based violence" in addition to access to "psychological
treatment or care." Thus far, however, the German government has
been ignoring the directive.
It's not entirely
for lack of trying. Last fall, the Family Ministry in Berlin proposed
the inclusion of protections for women, children and minorities in a
draft law addressing refugees and asylum-seekers in Germany. But the
Interior Ministry, under the leadership of Thomas de Maizière, a
member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, removed the passage prior to
the law's approval early this year. The passage was allegedly struck
so as to save German states from extra work. But Interior Ministry
sources say the real reason was to discourage further refugees from
coming by way of more restrictive asylum policies.
It is "despicable"
that bureaucratic effort was used as an argument against providing
better care to those in need of protection, says government
commissioner Rörig. "Whether people are protected from sexual
violence currently depends on chance and the commitment of individual
people," he says. Last fall, the European Commission opened an
infringement case against Germany to address its lack of compliance
with the Brussels directives.
Conditions in
refugee hostels in Germany are intolerable for many women. Shorouk
Kerd, a 21-year-old law student from Homs, Syria has lived for the
past seven months in a former elementary school in Bielefeld together
with her husband, Mohamad Ali Hamami, a 32-year-old carpenter. For
almost their entire stay there, the couple shared a room with eight
other refugees, only now have the others moved out. Plastic tarps
serve as walls, the bathroom is three floors down, there is no
kitchen and food is delivered. Up until just a few weeks ago, Kerd
didn't even have a bed and had to sleep on the floor. "I can
hardly breathe here," she says.
Battling Depression
Kerd is in her sixth
month of pregnancy and is becoming worried about the baby. She
already had one miscarriage shortly after her arrival in Germany. At
the time, she was housed together with 300 people in a gymnasium in
Bottrop.
Since she has lived
in mass accommodations, she has had trouble sleeping and is battling
depression and anxiety attacks. She only leaves her room in the
company of her husband and says there are drunken refugees in the
hallways at nighttime. Kerd says she has nobody to talk to about her
problems and that only men work at the hostel. The director is a
woman, but she is often unfriendly. The state has thus far not
provided her with the services of a midwife for pregnancy care,
saying that there are insufficient funds. In January, a doctor found
that the couple badly needs their own apartment, but nothing has come
of it.
Women are often
victimized several times. Many of them experienced sexual violence in
their home countries or during their flight to Europe -- and now they
are vulnerable once again in Germany. The spectrum of abuse ranges
from pick-up lines paired with threats to groping and even rape. The
lack of a private sphere is also a problem for the women: They are
never alone. Many women only want to take off their headscarves
behind closed doors, but there are none.
Little is known in
Germany about the extent of violence against refugee women and there
has been little research into the issue. In one of the few studies
that has been undertaken, four out of five respondents said they had
been the victims of psychological violence with every second woman
saying they had suffered physical violence. The study is now more
than 10 years old, but experts believe it is improbable that the
numbers have sunk since then.
In addition to other
refugees, the perpetrators also include security personnel,
care-givers and volunteer helpers, all of whom can take advantage of
existing structures to easily approach their victims. Institutions
such as schools, boarding schools and daycares, where there are clear
hierarchies of power, are considered to be particularly prone to
violence and abuse, says Ursula Enders, head of Zartbitter, a center
for victims of sexual violence in Cologne. Refugee hostels are also
susceptible, she says. "It infuriates me that nothing is being
done."
Persecuted
Minorities
In addition to
women, minorities are also the victims of attacks. Boris Fadeyev
relates how several men stormed into his room in a Berlin refugee
hostel three months ago. One of them yelled: "Do you smell that?
It stinks like shit here, you fag!"
Fadeyev, whose name
has been changed for this article, is 33 years old and fled last year
from Russia to Germany. He is gay and was persecuted back home
because of it. His own father wanted to shoot him. "I came to
Germany to find protection," Fadeyev says. When his roommate in
the refugee hostel, a Moldavian, found out that Fadeyev was
homosexual, his problems started anew. His roommate insulted him and
threw dishes at him.
Fadeyev says that
nobody helped him, but he also didn't lodge a complaint. "That
would have only made it worse." Fadeyev no longer felt safe in
the hostel. Ultimately, a social worker found a spot for him in one
of the few refugee shelters in Germany for gays, lesbians,
transsexuals and bisexuals. Now, Fadeyev says, he feels free for the
first time.
Experts like Heike
Rabe from the German Institute for Human Rights have been demanding
for months -- in vain -- the introduction of minimum standards for
refugee hostels such as those that exist in youth hostels. Those
demands include separate and lockable showers and bathrooms for men
and women. Furthermore, Rabe says, hostel personnel must be trained
in dealing with instances of sexual violence and women must be
provided safe havens and support from social workers in addition to
being better informed about their rights in Germany. Should they
become victims of violence, Rabe says they must be quickly brought to
a safe place. Currently, she complains, it takes too long for the
authorities to react by, for example, sending perpetrators or victims
to a different refugee hostel.
"The situation
in the refugee shelters is bad in many places and indications of
violence and sexual attacks are unfortunately on the rise," says
Ralf Kleindiek, state secretary in the German Family Ministry. In
March, he sent a letter to Interior Minister de Maizière in which he
proposed a compromise. German states, he suggested, should be
encouraged to develop a plan for helping those refugees in particular
need of protection.
'Even War Is Better'
The Interior
Ministry still hasn't answered. When contacted, the ministry said it
was examining the proposal but that responsibility lies with the
states. According to his spokesman, de Maizière sees the need for
action primarily when it comes to "the safety of asylum-seekers
of the Christian faith."
The Chancellery has
likewise declined to address the issue. Angela Merkel recently
rebuffed a request from the heads of Germany's largest charity
organizations for a nationwide law addressing the issue and said it
was up to the states. In mid-April, leaders of the chancellor's
governing coalition intended to address the issue during a regularly
scheduled meeting, but it was deferred. During the chancellor's
meeting with state governors just over two weeks ago, the issue
didn't even make it onto the agenda.
The Family Ministry
has resorted to launching individual initiatives. Municipalities, for
example, can apply for assistance from the KfW, a German
government-owned development bank, should they wish to remodel their
refugee hostels to address issues of violence and sexual assault.
There is up to €€200 million available for such projects.
Furthermore, UNICEF is to hold training sessions and distribute
informational material in 100 refugee facilities. Also,
child-friendly zones are to be established.
Thus far, nothing
has changed in the refugee hostel where Diala Hasan lives. Hasan's
older sister suffered so much from the situation in the shelter that
she tried to commit suicide. A security guard was able to save her at
the last minute. The three sisters are now considering whether they
should return to Syria. Diala Hasan says: "Even war is better
than life here in the refugee shelter."
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