BERLIN — Sometimes I tell people I had trouble getting my visa for Germany, but it’s not really true. I rolled up to the Ausländerbehörde (foreigner’s registration office) here carrying a bunch of homemade cookies, and emerged triumphant shortly thereafter.
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Had I been seeking asylum, however, I might have starved by now.
That’s what 28 refugees are doing in front of the Brandenburg Gate right now. When I went to see them on Monday, on the sixth straight day of their hunger strike, I was shocked to learn that not a single representative of any German political party had come to see them.
Germany’s new coalition might still be getting organized, but as the protest leader pointed out, it’s not as if the government is shut down, American-style. Institutions are functioning as usual, forms are still being filed, and asylum applications are presumably being rejected. “They don’t want to look,” he said, referring to the politicians. “This is the reality.”
The group, the majority of whom looked like they were from North Africa or the Middle East, trekked to Berlin from Bavaria to hold the hunger strike, which they said they would stop only if their asylum applications are accepted. Some of them have been fighting for legal status in Germany for seven years.
“Which is more important: Papers, or the human life?” one young refugee asked reporters during their press conference.
He caught my attention. A lanky young man with a pointy chin and dark, deep-set eyes that looked out heavily under the rim of a beige Jack Wolfskin baseball hat, he did not look happy.
“For myself,” he said, introducing himself as Hamed and explaining his asylum bid, “it is political.”
“My problem is with the Islamic Republic,” the Iranian, whose last name has been withheld for safety reasons, told me. “They govern the country with religion,” he explained, saying he had been active in protests against the government.
Hamed fled to Germany because, according to him, this country owes him—it was the Germany company Siemens, along with Nokia, that provided the spying software that led to Hamed’s arrest in 2010, he said.
“It is my right to come here,” the 23-year-old refugee told me, saying their collusion led to the “breakdown [of] my life.”
Hamed was imprisoned for two months and tortured before he fled to Germany, currently the top destination for asylum-seekers in Europe. He told me his asylum application was negatively received, but he has a follow-up interview next month. Germany refuses asylum applications for various reasons, but most often there’s a problem with the paperwork. Eighty percent of applications lack sufficient identification, according to Der Spiegel. Other reasons for denial are that candidates are not considered refugees, are not victims of political persecution, or otherwise fall outside the norms of German asylum law. Responding to a high number of applications from former Yugoslavia, 90 percent of which are reportedly rejected, the nation last year overhauled its asylum application procedure.
Hamed is determined to succeed when he meets with the authorities in December. When I spoke with him on Monday, he hadn’t eaten anything in six days, and was going to start going without water. So far, five members of the group have been hospitalized, he said.
If Hamed can obtain legal status in Germany, he wants to enroll in university to continue studying to be an electrical technician.
Hamed’s case is one of thousands in Germany, a nation that has a long and fractious relationship with its refugee population—a bunch of frustrated refugees having been living outside Berlin’s Orianenplatz in protest since last October.
Many of them say they are waiting to hear back from the authorities, but there is no law compelling government action on asylum cases within a set period of time—which means some cases become a virtually endless appeals process, according to a 2012 report on Germany by the Asylum Information Database (pdf). Even so, the average length for applicants in Germany is reportedly only five to seven months. But that’s only after they manage to smuggle themselves into the country—those caught at the border are subject to arrest, the report said.
A growing number of them are getting in. German authorities registered more asylum-seekers in the first half of this year than any similar period since 1999, overloading the system amid growing opposition from far-right groups, according to Der Spiegel. Bloody clashes outside a refugee shelter in the Berlin borough of Hellersdorf in August attested to the severity of the problem.
All of Berlin’s refugee shelters are full, but people like Hamed keep coming.
Standing near the capital city’s landmark on a crisp, cold fall day, he gestured around hopelessly. “Here is paperland,” he said, referring to Germany. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to live here. He’s already got a girlfriend. When he mentioned her, it was one of the few times I saw him smile, mostly because, it seemed, he couldn’t resist. Within seconds, a big in-love grin had completely transformed his previously grim, embattled-looking face.
As we parted, I began to wonder if, despite the obstacles Hamed faces, that look of love may help him win the Germans over—cookies or no cookies.
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