According to a demo participant, the victim is an Iranian who lives with a negative asylum decision in a return center in the canton of Bern. The action of his fellow countryman came as a complete surprise, said this participant, who also claims to be from Iran. It shows the pressure under which people with a refused asylum decision lived.
A group called “Stop Isolation” announced the rally last Friday. This after the security department of the canton of Bern published a letter to them. In this letter, the directorate responsible for asylum issues in the canton of Bern defended the new return centers as being democratically legitimized.
Often, the people living in these centers with rejected asylum applications did not cooperate with the authorities – for example, by not disclosing their identity.
The persons accommodated and looked after in the cantonal return centers had opposed the obligation to leave Switzerland. The responsible federal authorities had checked and confirmed that these people would not be persecuted in their home country.
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“Open Prisons”
The group “Stop Isolation” and the supporting organization “Migrant Solidarity Network” reacted to the letter on Friday according to a message “outraged”.
Instead of emergency aid in the return centers, work permits and relaxation in the approval of hardship applications are needed. The new return centers are “open prisons on the margins of society”. Members of the “Stop Isolation” group – that is, people from the return centers – were received by the Bern asylum authorities and representatives of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) in early July.
This was after around 60 rejected asylum seekers had spent a night in the Bern riding school as a protest against the three return centers in the canton of Bern and the conditions there. At that time, the Bern asylum authorities held out the prospect of a formal answer to the protesters’ demands – last Friday’s answer. (vof / jmh / SDA)
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