Kein Begriff bestimmt den derzeitigen weltweiten Alltag so sehr wie jener der „Grenze“. Wir leben eindeutig in einer Zeit der Grenzüberschreitungen. Akteure hierbei sind jedoch nicht ausschließlich Menschen, die ihr Heimatland verlassen. Auch die Politik hebt mittlerweile kurzzeitig Grenzen auf, staatliche Verwaltungen, freiwillige Helfer in Erstaufnahmeeinrichtungen und NGOs stoßen an ihre Grenzen. Die Flüchtlinge sind oftmals weit über die Grenzen des menschenmöglichen hinausgegangen. Überall finden physische und psychische Grenzübertritte statt und die Frage stellt sich, wessen Grenze eigentlich überschritten wird? Die Grenze eines Landes? Die Grenze eines Menschen oder die Grenze der Möglichkeiten? Die derzeitige Situation zeigt, dass es nicht nur eine Antwort gibt.
Mehr als 70 Personen hatten sich am 12.Oktober in der Rotonde 1 eingefunden, um über die Flüchtlingssituation in Luxemburg zu diskutieren. Ebenfalls anwesend waren neun Flüchtlinge / Asylbegehrende aus vier verschiedenen Ländern, die ihre Erfahrungen und Ansichten mit dem Publikum teilten. Abweichend vom herkömmlichen public forum Konzept, gab es hier keine feste Redner-Gruppe, sondern die Diskussion war von Anfang an offen und wurde lediglich durch kurze Impuls-Vorträge strukturiert.
Bedauerlicherweise kam es in den ersten 20 Minuten zu einem technischen Fehler auf der Aufnahme. Die Zusammenfassung der Erläuterungen der Historikerin Sonja Kmec, welche nun in der Audiodatei fehlt, finden Sie am Ende dieses Beitrags. Neben Frau Kmec ermöglichten auch Nadine Conrardy, Frank Wies, Geneviève Jadoul, Djuna Bernard und Charles Margue durch ihre Wortbeiträge interessante Einblicke in die Bereiche der institutionellen und der freiwilligen Flüchtlingshilfe sowie den juristischen Kontext und die Berichterstattung zum Thema.
Um die Verständigung zwischen allen Gesprächsteilnehmern zu erleichtern wurde Englisch gesprochen.
Den Radiobeitrag des 100,7 zur Veranstaltung können sie hier nachhören.
Die Fotos von der Veranstaltung kann man sich hier ansehen.
Hier nun die englische Fassung der historischen Einführung in das Thema:
In 1951, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a United Nations multilateral treaty signed in Geneva, defined who is to be considered a “refugee”. This definition has been up-dated over time, but at its core is still “a well-founded fear of being persecuted” for a variety of reasons. Countries signing the treaty (including Luxembourg in 1953) agree to protect refugees’ rights against forcible return and grant asylum. Of course, the difficulty is to judge what a “well-founded fear” is…
It would be quite ahistorical to use this definition to qualify people fleeing across borders before 1951 but the phenomenon is probably as old as that of more voluntary migration, as old as humankind. This contribution seeks to sketch very briefly some historical examples of the eviction and persecution of people and the reactions they were confronted with in the places they arrived, settled in or moved through. There are certainly earlier examples, but I am not an expert on ancient or medieval history, so I’ll start with 1492. Today is Columbus Day, but I am not referring to the beginning of displacements and extermination of Native Americans, rather about something that happened in Europe: the Alhambra Degree signed in 1492 by the “catholic kings”, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, expelling all Jews from their kingdoms. Muslims also had to leave or convert. Many left for the Ottoman Empire, where Christians, Jews and Muslims co-existed more peacefully than in many (other) European countries. Thessaloniki – then part of the Ottoman Empire – was for centuries the city with the largest Jewish population.
Religious persecution was probably the most common cause for people to flee in large numbers, especially after the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, which declared that in the Holy Roman Empire the Prince decided on the religion practiced on his or her lands (cujus region, ejus religio). In France, limited practice of Calvinism (the “Religion Prétendue Réformée”, as the Catholics called it) was allowed until 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Thousands of “Huguenots” fled to England, the United Provinces of the Netherlands and Prussia, where they were received with various degrees of open arms, some rulers welcomed them for their economic assets and handcraft, the while artisans often feared their competition.
The French Revolution may have caused the first massive exodus of people for political reasons. After the Terreur England became a safe haven for many noble families. In the initial stages, many – including the brothers of the French King – were welcomed by the Prince-Elector of Trier, Clemens Wenzeslaus. In the summer of 1792 Koblenz, which counted ca. 8.500 inhabitants, housed about 5.000 French “émigrés”. They were welcomed for their purchasing power, the luxury and life-style they imported, but as they tried to levy an army to fight the revolutionaries in France, the Estates turned increasingly against them and insisted on their political neutrality, for fear of French retaliation.
Political refugees from France also came to Luxembourg. After the 1851 coup, preparing the way for the Second Empire, the writer Victor Hugo and about twenty other people fled to the Grand-Duchy. In the 20th century, the age of extremes as Eric Hobsbawm has called it, people fleeing both communist and fascist regimes passed through or settled in Luxembourg. In the 1920s White Russians were employed for instance by the Cérabati factory in Wasserbillig or the Ideal-Lederwaren factory in Wiltz. Italian antifascists also came to work, side by side with other Italians who did not leave for political reasons. The distinction between political and economic reasons to leave was not always a straight forward one. After the economic turn-down, however, refugees continued to pour in from Germany (and after 1938 Austria) notably after the Nuremberg race laws and the clamp-down on political opposition, writers and artists. The reaction of the Luxembourg government and population has been discussed elsewhere in detail (see Paul Dostert’s review on the exhibition “Exilland Luxemburg” organized by the Centre National de Littérature, in forum 271, Nov. 2007). It seems that propertied, politically conservative refugees were more readily accepted, but that those suspected of communism were evicted as soon as possible. During the Cold War period, refugees from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam and Poland were accepted in general very warmly. People fleeing South American dictatorships, for instance from Chile, were received by local solidarity groups, while those fleeing the Iranian Revolution after 1979 were also building up transnational networks. It would be interesting to examine in more detail what initiatives the government took with regard to these refugees, which spontaneous solidarity acts and associations emerged in civil society and whether there were any differences, for instance in times of economic crisis and boom. Many did not apply for the status of refugee, as they were offered a job and authorization to stay, and adopted the Luxembourg citizenship after some years. This makes it difficult to give exact figures for “refugees” and the official number of 50 refugees per year (1945-1990) may be grossly underestimated (for a summary, see Anne Hoffmann’s article in forum 225, April 2003). At any rate, a new situation emerged in the 1990s, when thousands of war refugees, fleeing the Balkan wars, came to Luxembourg. A new statute (statut humanitaire temporaire) was created for the years 1992 to 1995 to deal with this situation. Nowadays, there are still people coming from the Balkans, but they have more difficulty to prove that their fear is “well-founded”, as do Roma people arriving from central and Eastern Europe. Which brings us again to the question who is to judge another person’s fear and future.