Since December 2022, the social authorities have been accommodating minor, unaccompanied refugees in a gym behind the airport. This is happening despite the fact that there are free places in the regular primary reception center. Isolated from the public in Bremen, the young refugees have to live with several others in rooms of about 4 square meters and wash themselves in moldy bathrooms. Not even a minimum of privacy is possible in the camp. The minors are exposed to permanent monitoring and control by a lot of security as well as the staff of the Johanniter. The camp is an manifestation of the systematic exclusion and harassment by the social authorities. The Green Senator for Social Affairs, Stahmann, and her department head in the department “Grundsatzangelegenheiten UmF” have been pushing the dismantling of youth protection in Bremen for years.
This violence against underage refugees is nothing new; Bremen is the only federal state in which young people are threatened with violence if they refuse to be redistributed. The social authorities then have the youths in their care put in hand and foot cuffs by the police in order to be able to deport them. With this threat of racist violence, with isolation, control and harassment, the will of the minors is supposed to be broken.
The Johanniter, who are running the camp, become accomplices by helping the social authorities to abolish the orientation towards the welfare of children and the prohibition of violence in youth welfare.The violence against underage protection seekers, the harassment, the placement in camps – all this is racism and the attempted dehumanization of BiPoC children and adolescents. This must stop! We will not allow the situation of the youth in the gym to remain invisible and the racist violence of the authority to remain unchallenged.
If we could close Gottlieb Daimler Strasse even when Stahmann loved the camp so much and wanted to keep it, we can also close this Turnhalle near the Airport. If it is not good enough for their children, it cannot be good enough for our siblings there. SHUT IT DOWN, SHUT IT NOW!!!
Let’s break isolation! Come to the rally and support the youth of the camp. We say: #ShutDownTurnhalle and no more camps – in Bremen and elsewhere.