Germany Wants to return Gay Refugees to Gay Un friendly Countries
Germany may soon pass a law that would consider three North African countries, known for their anti-LGBTI laws, as safe, meaning asylum seekers will have applications rejected unless they are able to produce evidence proving their persecution.
Germany’s lower house of parliament has approved the draft law stating that the North African countries, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco are considered to be safe, a concept defined by a Federal Constitutional Court ruling that reads, “For a state to be declared a safe country of origin, there has to be nationwide safety from political persecution for all citizens and demographic groups”, reports to Gay Star News.
Homosexuality is illegal in all three countries and the bill has been criticised by human rights groups, the opposition party the Greens and hard-left party Die Linke.
Baerbel Kofler, the government commissioner for human rights, voted against the bill and told Reuters that there were “proven and documented human rights violations” in all three of the countries.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière defended the bill saying that “being able to say ‘no’ is also a part of helping” and that migrants from these countries were coming not because they faced persecution but “because benefits are better [in Germany] than they might be in their home country.”
The bill still needs to pass in the parliament’s upper house.
Chancellor Angela Merkel
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Homosexuality is illegal in all three countries and the bill has been criticised by human rights groups, the opposition party the Greens and hard-left party Die Linke.
Baerbel Kofler, the government commissioner for human rights, voted against the bill and told Reuters that there were “proven and documented human rights violations” in all three of the countries.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière defended the bill saying that “being able to say ‘no’ is also a part of helping” and that migrants from these countries were coming not because they faced persecution but “because benefits are better [in Germany] than they might be in their home country.”
The bill still needs to pass in the parliament’s upper house.
By GayNZ.com Daily News
Also in Germany:
Germany is preparing to overturn the convictions of gay men who were convicted of having homosexual sex before 1994 when same-sex intimacy was decriminalised.
The German justice minister says the historical convictions are "wrong... they are deeply hurtful to human dignity.”
A campaign to have historical convictions in New Zealand wiped from the records has yet to bear fruit, with Minister of Justice Amy Adams saying as recently as January this year that “its impossible to tell whether they involved consensual acts or not after the event, because of the way the law was written.”
Also in Germany:
Germany is preparing to overturn the convictions of gay men who were convicted of having homosexual sex before 1994 when same-sex intimacy was decriminalised.
The German justice minister says the historical convictions are "wrong... they are deeply hurtful to human dignity.”
“Homosexual men who were convicted should no longer have to live with the stain of a criminal record," he added.
Homosexuality was partially decriminalised in East Germany in 1968 and in West Germany in 1969, but there were a further 3,500 convictions before the law was finally repealed in 1994.A campaign to have historical convictions in New Zealand wiped from the records has yet to bear fruit, with Minister of Justice Amy Adams saying as recently as January this year that “its impossible to tell whether they involved consensual acts or not after the event, because of the way the law was written.”
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