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Baden-Wuerttemberg's Justice Minister Marion Gentges (CDU): Eritrean violent criminals should be deported more easily
Photo: Bernd Weißbrod / dpa
After the riots surrounding the Eritrea meeting in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg's Minister of Justice, Marion Gentges, is pushing for violent criminals to be deported more easily to the East African country. "Anyone who commits the most serious crimes here must not be sure that they will be allowed to stay here," said the CDU politician in the broadcast "SWR Aktuell".
Eritrea has been a dictatorship for 30 years, with serious human rights violations and torture. That's why many people from the country get asylum in Germany. "In the case of the most serious crimes, one must ask oneself the fundamental question of whether the protection for corresponding offenders should not be lowered somewhat," the minister continued.
Deportations "virtually impossible"
It is possible that the leeway offered by the Geneva Convention on Refugees could be used for this purpose. "It says that an individual may not invoke the ban on deportations if he commits crimes or serious misdemeanours in the protected state," the politician said. However, the implementation is difficult: "In fact, it is hardly possible to deport to Eritrea at the moment."
Eritrea does not allow unaccompanied repatriations with scheduled aircraft. And the Eritrean authorities undermined accompanied repatriations by not issuing passport replacement papers to their compatriots. Of the approximately 9000,200 Eritreans in Baden-Württemberg, around <> are obliged to leave the country, the minister continued.
In the riots in Stuttgart on Saturday, 31 police officers were injured, 228 suspected rioters were temporarily arrested, one of them arrested. They had protested violently against the event of the Stuttgart Eritrea associations – according to the police, a political seminar – and attacked both participants and police officers. Interior Minister Strobl spoke on Monday of an "angry, violent and armed mob".
aeh/dpa