Announcer:
Deported
The Power of Bureaucracy
Radio documentary by Kathrin Aehnlich and Ingo Colbow
Original sound, Agim:
When my brother came into the room, I was sitting there alone watching TV, and he said „The police!“ I thought he was joking. And then I stood up and saw the police in front of the door. Then I really lost it. It was really awful because I didn’t know what to expect.
Original sound, Buletin:
And then they broke down the front door and came storming in. They arrested me first, shoved me into the car, the police car, and shut the door. I just stayed there and cried my eyes out. At that moment I didn’t know what I was doing anymore – I was sort of out of control.
Narrator:
They were my neighbours. The Bajrami family from Kosovo. They had been living in Germany for 11 years – peacefully. At first they were in a hostel, then in a container village, and then, as good luck would have it, in a garden house in Markkleeberg. It was put at their disposal by the boys‘ football coach, who predicted a great career for the Bajrami boys.
Then came the night of 3rd March 2004.
Original sound, Agim:
And then they stormed in, broke open the door and tied us up, there on the floor because I wouldn’t let them tie me up, so they threw me onto the floor. I ran up the stairs and they dragged me back down again. Four or five people sat on top of me. The carpet that was in the living room was rolled up. You couldn’t have a normal conversation with them. They didn’t want to listen, just tied us up and took us off.
Passer-by: Emine is still under-age. She can’t be deported without her parents. Get her out of the car!
Narrator:
The outrage felt by parents and friends goes unheard. The situation in Kosovo has eased. After 11 years the family’s „toleration“ in Germany cannot be extended any more. The seats on the plane are already booked. The family have to pack their bags. Immediately. 20 kilograms each, the regular luggage limit for a flight. Only now do the police officers notice that Selatin, one of the younger sons, has not yet returned from his football training session. They decide to deport only the father and the children Agim, Buletin, Liridona, Emine and Hacif. Their mother is to follow later with Selatin. But then the father suffers a heart attack. That leaves only the older children to be deported: 15-year-old Emine, 19-year-old Buletin and 20-year-old Agim. Despite the protests of the neighbours and their lawyer, the three of them are locked into single cells in a mini-bus and driven away. Destination: Düsseldorf airport.
Original sound, Agim:
I really didn’t want to leave the country voluntarily. I resisted. I didn’t want to go away. I love this country Germany so much. Then they got hold of me, one got hold of my right leg, one my left leg, one took an arm and another my shoulders, five people, and they tried to get me up the stairs and I held on to the stairs, and then resisted with my feet, and then one of them hit me hard with a truncheon. Then they threw me into the back of the plane in handcuffs, they didn’t even take the handcuffs off. Then two people from the plane’s security service sat down next to me so that I couldn’t move. I was flown to Pristina in handcuffs. Then, just before we landed, the security man took them off.
Original sound, Buletin:
As for me, I was finished. I couldn’t resist any more. I couldn’t do anything. I’d just had it. I couldn’t react any more.
Narrator:
Lawyer Stefan Costabel has been trying for years – free of charge – to get a residence permit for the family in Markkleeberg. With the help of „Caritas“, he manages at least to get permission for 15-year-old Emine to stay with her parents. For the time being. For the family is again threatened with deportation.
There is nothing he can do to help the two boys.
Atmo: Muezzin
Original sound, Buletin:
I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know what to expect here. I knew nothing. I was forced to get on the plane, I had to fly here to Pristina. And they made me get off here and nobody bothered about me after that. They put me out at the airport and then I had to fend for myself. It was a foreign country for me.
Original sound, Agim:
It was really awful from the very first moment we got off the plane – there was nobody we knew, so we just blindly followed people wherever they went. I think I was last out of the plane and I just followed the other people blindly, wherever they were going. Somehow I felt like a stranger, I still feel like a stranger. So empty, I don’t know, I had no real thoughts except about Germany.
Narrator:
Separated from their parents, the two boys are „marooned“ at Pristina airport. In the meantime, the family takes refuge in church asylum in Leipzig together with Emine, who has returned. They live there for over two years, supported the whole time by their circle of friends in Markkleeberg, who organize school lessons for the children, provide food every day and, together with the lawyer, are still trying to obtain a residence permit for the family. After over two years of „voluntarily“ imprisonment in an apartment, the family can now leave their asylum. The people of Markkleeberg have organized jobs and apprenticeships for them and deposited a financial bond. Slowly the family is returning to normality.
Atmo: Bus station
Narrator:
And Agim and Buletin?
On the first day of the school holidays in summer 2007 the family are setting off on a trip. Hacif, the youngest son, is so excited he can’t keep still. He is going to see his brothers again for the first time in three years. First, however, a 25-hour bus trip lies ahead of us. We have known the family for years, and we are constantly hearing how bad things are for the two boys in Pristina. But this is always second-hand information. Now we are going to see – and hear – for ourselves:
Atmo: Inside the bus
Narrator:
The monitors in the bus are showing Albanian television programmes and the driver’s announcements are also in Albanian. All the passengers have blue UNMIK/United Nations passports. We are the only ones who stand out with our wine-red German passports. „It’s as though there were Chinese on the bus!“ the man in front of us says. It’s the same routine at all the borders: the official goes through the bus randomly collecting passports; then the driver meets him behind the bus and buys them back off him with banknotes that he has deftly placed in the list of passengers. The doors to the luggage compartment remain closed. Just before we reach the border with Serbia we are all warned not to curse, laugh or pull faces. This time it’s our passports that disappear. Two Germans in a Kosovo-Albanian bus are suspicious. It’s more expensive this time to buy the passports back: €40 each. The journey itself – from Munich to Pristina – cost only 70 euros.
The closer we get to Pristina the more restless the passengers on the bus become. Women start taking smart, new shoes out of their luggage. They all want to arrive in Pristina looking „nice“. Emine changes her shoes, too. „I love Markkleeberg“ she cries when she sees the grey, prefabricated high-rise buildings that are reminiscent of the GDR in the early seventies.
Atmo:
Ah, hello, I’m Ingo Colbow.
I’m Buletin.
Narrator:
Everything in Pristina looks grey: half-built houses, piles of rubbish, tank traps, high-rise buildings from the Tito era. The bus station is also made of grey, unplastered concrete. We recognize the tall, slim figure of Agim and the shorter, compact Buletin among all the waiting people.
They all hug each other. A reunion after three years.
Memories of how they had arrived alone in Pristina three years ago. Back then, their friends in Markkleeberg had at least arranged for them to be picked up by a member of the Caritas charity and taken to their grandfather’s house in a village outside Pristina.
Original sound, Agim:
I didn’t know anybody there, as I said. And there had been a power failure. We sat around with just a candle for light. Everyone hugged me. I just sat there. Everybody was trying to tell us something: „Why don’t you recognize me? Didn’t your parents tell you anything about us? I’m so and so.“
Original sound, Buletin:
And nobody here asked me, „Where will you live?“ Or „What will you do?“ Nobody told me what would happen here, nobody. I had to make my own way, make my own decisions. I had no chance of getting a job. I just had to stay in the village and help the people. Nothing else was possible.
Original sound, Agim:
It was (not?) easy for me (weeps) ….. You try not to think about it. You try to forget it. But you can’t. You don’t want to talk about it. You have to come to terms with it yourself, (breathes) because it was so awful (weeps).
We liked living in Germany. We had settled in really well. We were willing to try anything but … (weeps)
Narrator:
The two boys were handed over to their grandfather, who they can hardly remember after eleven years.
Original sound, grandfather
(Albanian)
Translator:
When Buletin and Agim were deported, it was dreadful – you could almost say fatal. They came to me. I was only just managing to get by with my family myself, and now I had to take care of these two as well. Poverty is very hard for them. But fortunately they’re young and healthy. It’s hard for them to be separated from their family, their father and mother. They have no home. You’ve probably seen the damaged house. There’s nothing but poverty in Gadime, too. Where can they go? There’s no house, and what will they eat?
Music
Narrator:
At the „request“ of the German authorities, Agim and Buletin were supposed to return to where they came from. We go with the Bajrami family to their old village. Mr Bajrami and his sons show us the house – or rather what’s left of it.
Atmo: music / wedding / neighbour’s house
Buletin:
It belonged to our grandfather, and then father lived here with us all. And it was handed down from generation to generation.
Narrator:
Two small rooms, a windowless kitchen. Chickens scurry off. The house no longer has any doors. The floors have rotted. Everything has been destroyed, ransacked. Only Mrs Bajrami’s light summer coat still hangs on a nail: she left it there when she fled fourteen years ago.
Question: Tell us what has been destroyed.
Agim: The whole house, as you can see. Everything has been torn to pieces. The windows, the floor. And you can see the same on the roof. There’s no electricity. You can’t live here. You can see: all the rooms, the kitchen, simply… You can’t live here. It’s so small.
Buletin: We didn’t know where to go. And we kept telling them what it’s like down here. But nobody believed us.
Agim: Or they didn’t want to believe us…. Probably they couldn’t care less.
Buletin: Because we kept telling them it’s no place/there’s no room for us down here, no income, no house… Nobody is expecting us. But nobody took any notice, nobody seemed to care.
If we had all come back down here, we would have had to live here. Just as it is. These are the facts. That’s the way it is here. If we had no support, we’d have to stay here.
Narrator:
There are wedding celebrations in the neighbouring house. The yellow-painted house is large, it has two floors. It’s a holiday home. The owners live in Switzerland. The two worlds of Kosovo. Life abroad and life at home.
The Bajrami family have seldom talked about their escape. We are aware that they have shown us great trust by bringing us here.
Original sound, Buletin:
The Albanian population has always been treated badly here in Kosovo. We had no freedom. If you were caught out after dark, they had the right to hit you, or they had a reason to beat you. It was no problem for them. Many people can prove that they were treated that way for no reason. We were badly treated, singled out as a minority, so to speak.
We saw escape as our only way out, going abroad, to Germany or somewhere. We thought at least we would have a future there and be freer. And we could do what we … for example work or live and earn some money. That was the only reason we had to leave – poverty.
Original sound, grandfather
(Albanian)
Translator:
The situation was very difficult. They shot at us with weapons with telescopic sights, tried to hit and kill as many Kosovans as possible.
If you were caught on the street, they would beat you.
I still feel afraid when I think about it. A 75-year-old relative came to me and asked me what I would do if they surrounded us. I said, don’t be afraid. I’ll carry you on my shoulders wherever I go until the day I die. My wife was ill, she couldn’t breathe, and we had no medicine because we were on the run. I daren’t think about what I’ve experienced, it would drive me crazy.
Narrator:
Fear of the Serbs is still ever-present. While we were travelling through Serbia on our journey and had to stop, switch off the engine and wait because of an accident, the bus driver kept the doors locked. For an hour, at 40 degrees centigrade in the shade.
You have to go through three Serbian villages to get to the grandfather’s village. We stop there and can feel the mistrust and fear.
The grandfather lives in a house left to him by a neighbour who fled. The house has three rooms. An uncle lives in the first room with his wife and children, another uncle and his family in the second. The grandfather lives in the third room – now with his two grandsons Agim and Buletin. He owns a few sheep. Now and then the two uncles try to earn some money by chopping wood. The grandfather is the only one with a regular income: 40 euros a month – the usual old-age pension in Kosovo.
Original sound, Buletin:
They were difficult months because we couldn’t get on with the people; the whole environment was difficult for us. The mentality, the people, the whole situation. The whole atmosphere was foreign to us. They were friends of the family, and relatives, but they were still strangers to us. Because we came to Germany as children. For us they were strangers, and it took us some time to get to know them.
Narrator:
The two boys are homesick for Markkleeberg. They long for running water, a functioning power supply, rubbish collections. Garbage and plastic bags are piled high in a ditch that runs through the village. When the water supply breaks down – and that’s almost a daily occurrence during this hot August – the family has to fetch water from a spring five kilometres outside the village. After one week in Kosovo all the children are suffering from sickness and diarrhoea.
Original sound, Agim:
I liked living in Markkleeberg. It was a lovely town. It was nice to live there. There are a lot of nice people. I never had any trouble with anyone. They were all friendly.
Narrator:
In their grandfather’s village, the two boy miss that sense of security. Although they were welcomed in by the family, they don’t belong. They are strangers. They had been away too long. A lot of people ask them: „Where were you when the war was raging here?“ And nobody believes they’ve returned from Germany, the land of milk and honey, without any money.
Original sound, Agim:
Yes, of course we were afraid. We were afraid somebody would try to blackmail us, or whatever. Because everyone thinks that if you come from abroad, you have money. They think that abroad you find money lying on the street.
Narrator:
Their Markkleeberg friends come to their aid again. The two boys are to move to Pristina; they will be less conspicuous there, and perhaps they will be able to find a job or start an apprenticeship. Together, friends and family transfer two hundred and fifty euros a month to Pristina.
Original sound, Buletin:
We pay 180 euros for the rent and that leaves 70 euros a month for our personal needs. But then there’s the electricity bill and other things. And we have to live off those 70 euros. Both of us, my brother and I.
Question: One euro a day?
Original sound, Buletin:
Yes, you could put it like that.
Question: And what do you buy for a euro?
Original sound, Buletin:
We buy bread or macaroni, spaghetti. A packet costs about 50 cents. Rice. That’s about it really.
Narrator:
We find it hard to believe that there’s no work in a country that’s in the midst of rebuilding. Are the two boy too shy, or perhaps unwilling to get established in this country?
We travel on – two hours by bus from Pristina to Prisrin, where the German KFOR troops are stationed – and the CIMIC, which stands for civil-military cooperation. The commanding officer, Captain Pab, invites us in for coffee and cakes. Here, too, we are first given a lecture on aid projects, water-treatment plants, new school buildings. But even at CIMIC our two boys fall through the „aid net“. No job, no training.
Original sound, CIMIC officer:
The special thing here is that people returning after being deported from Germany all have a problem: they never know where to go. They land in Pristina and are then perhaps driven to the place where they were born, where they are supposed to have lived, and then, well, they’re left to their own devices!+ Either they still have family they can go to or, and that often happens, they are told in Germany that there are German troops here and they will take care of you,. There’s CIMIC – civil-military cooperation – they’ll help you. And then they stand here and say: „Well, help us then.“
Original sound, Gisela Kallenbach:
I don’t think anyone in the deportation authorities in Germany thinks about what it means when people are sent back. Especially if they don’t have any family there, (…) because it’s only if they have such connections that people can get a roof over their heads at all. There’s nowhere for them to go. Basically you have to assume that the people will be homeless.
Narrator:
Gisela Kallenbach, Member of the European Parliament. For two years she was mayoress of Pea, where she built up municipal structures. Small steps towards independence. Because despite all the difficulties one thing must not be overlooked: that Kosovo has a right to international aid.
Gisela Kallenbach is currently one of the responsible experts in Brussels dealing with the problems in Kosovo. Yet she can’t find Agim and Buletin a job, either.
Original sound, Buletin:
We couldn’t find anything because we didn’t know anyone where we were. We were told to leave our telephone number and they would call us back. I left my number in offices all over the place. Nobody took any notice. Nobody called me. Nobody. I went back again and they told me there was nothing, no inquiries, nothing.
I told them: „Please, I would like to do something.“ They said: OK, leave your number here, go and introduce yourself. I introduced myself, I did everything. Really, it was impossible.
Narrator:
It seems as though there is no economic structure in Kosovo, only a family structure. The hotel we are staying at is run by aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. Families live in cramped accommodation. There are few official jobs, wages – if they are paid at all – are low. A nurse earns 200 euros, a car mechanic 250 at the most. The prices of food in the supermarkets are comparable to ours. The flat Agim and Buletin have rented costs 180 euros, and only one room is inhabitable in the winter: a small, eight-square-metre, windowless room. Two sofas and a small table.
They read German newspapers, watch German television and wait for something that is impossible under German law. But lawyer Stefan Costabel will not give up.
Original sound, Stefan Costabel:
Seen formalistically, that would be the case. Because, as I said, anyone who has been deported is not allowed into the Federal Republic again, because it was a compulsory measure involving sanctions, i.e. not being allowed to enter the country again. The problem is that these children are of age, and thus probably too old to justify a plea for the reunion of the family. However, there are humanitarian reasons – I am hoping for support from the political sphere.
Original sound, Gisela Kallenbach:
I personally think it’s a scandal to tear a family apart, even if the two boys are over eighteen. 18-year-olds need their families, too. They need their parents and brothers and sisters. At the moment there are very few apprenticeships and a frighteningly high rate of unemployment. I can’t see any chance of the boys finding proper jobs and that’s why I can’t understand it – and find it inhumane – that something like this can happen in my Germany, that families should be torn apart. So I can only hope that the legal possibilities will be fully exploited.
Narrator:
But before Agim and Buletin can even apply to re-enter Germany, they have to pay the costs of their deportation. The police operation, the transport to the airport in a police-vehicle cell, the flight in handcuffs. Total cost: over 2,500 euros.
Question: How does Agim handle living in this situation, being deported and all that? How does he cope with it?
Original sound, Buletin:
Stress, so to speak. We both feel very stressed. You can’t handle it.
Question: Do you protect him sometimes?
Original sound, Buletin:
Yes. I don’t know. I don’t like to talk about it. I try … (weeps) to take some of the stress away from him. (weeps) I try to somehow take some of the stress away. (weeps)
Music:
Original sound, Agim:
We have no plan for our lives. You get up as usual. When we are hungry, we eat. We don’t have a timetable for eating, we only eat when we are hungry and then we eat as cheaply as we can. Then we go out, sometimes here, sometimes there.
We hope to return to Germany. I hope that we can go back there as soon as possible. I don’t see any future here, not for my brother, not for myself, nor for anyone in our family. And I also hope that I can go back.
CLOSING ANNOUNCEMENT
