Warning to those it may concern
MASS DEPORTATION TO NIGERIA
On April 21st, a mass deportation flight from Austria to Nigeria is supposed to take place. We recommend you to be on alert if you are potentially concerned of this mass deportation. We also ask you to pass this information on to family members, friends and people within your community who are potentially affected.
Who may be concerned by a charter mass deportation flight to Nigeria?
- Generally persons who have had a definite negative result on their asylum case.
- People living in Austria under undocumented, irregular conditions.
- Having trouble with the Austrian law enforcement authorities and having a criminal case on one’s record can increase the risk of deportation, but people who have never had any such problems are also concerned.
How to avoid deportation:
- Be aware of the potential dangers (see points above).
- Inform your lawyer, your friends, your family members etc. if you are under deportation threat, so that they can try to support you in case you get arrested.
- If you have new information about any risks of persecution in your home country, you can use this to make a new asylum application.
- If you are suffering from severe physical diseases or mental troubles, get it confirmed by a doctor and present it as a reason against being deported.
- In case that you are already arrested, you have the right to demand for a phone call to inform your people and your lawyer.
- On a normal passengers’ flight, you have lots of ways to resist: declare you are not willing to fly, demand to talk to the pilot, refuse to sit down on your seat, involve other passengers, struggle physically if necessary. But: all this does not work out on a charter flight mass deportation with lots of police inside.
- Some people managed to get out of the deportation prison due to critical health conditions resulting from hunger strike etc. But be aware that a hunger strike can be very harmful for one’s health – everyone must decide for himself/herself what level of resistance is possible for her/him.
- In general: Don’t hide your problem of deportation threat to yourself, share your problem with other people, get organized against deportation!
Situations of high risk to get arrested for deportation:
- The risk is generally higher if someone is already under severe pressure from the authorities to leave Austria.
- If people regularly have to show up at the police station due to the so-called “gelinderes Mittel” imposed on them.
- For people under deportation threat, it is dangerous to get in a “racial profiling” police control situation. Such racist controls are common at certain police control hotspots in international train stations like Westbahnhof and Hauptbahnhof as well as in metro stations of U6 and in Praterstern. People under deportation threat should be aware of the danger of visiting such places, especially with a mass deportation on the way.
- The “Meldeadresse”, as an officially registered address, is the place where the police will show up first if they are searching for you for deportation.
For more enquiries, please contact us: stop-deportations-to-nigeria@riseup.net
Returnwatch
Returnwatch monitors risks that forced returnees from the European Union face upon arrival in Turkey. We are an initiative of volunteers and researchers who operate under the umbrella of the Post-Deportation Monitoring Network.
This website aims to be an accessible and practical tool for people to reach us after having been forcibly returned to Turkey. We seek to connect returnees to Turkey with lawyers and human rights NGOs in Turkey, as well as to document the procedures implemented by Turkish authorities.
Forced returns to Turkey are expected to start on the 4th of April from Greece and by the 1st of June 2016 from other European Union member states. To be able to hold policy makers in Europe and Turkey accountable, we need to know whether these returns can be qualified as collective expulsions, whether returnees have effective access to international protection on a case by case basis and whether refugees are safe from being sent back to countries where they are at risk of serious harm.
Thank you for supporting our initiative by sharing this tools with refugees at risk of being deported to Turkey.
stop deportation 