Criticism of official practice
Did the BAMF illegally reject homosexual refugees?
06/17/2022, 5:53 p.m
The allegations against the BAMF weigh heavily: According to the lesbian and gay association, the Federal Office does not grant homosexual refugees asylum, although they face severe penalties in their home countries. The alleged justification for this practice is criticized as “outrageous”.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) has apparently rejected asylum seekers who fear persecution in their home countries because of their homosexuality on legally inadmissible grounds. This is reported by the “Spiegel”. In asylum procedures, forecasts are made as to how the refugees might behave if they return to their country of origin. If the authorities assume that those affected would keep their sexual orientation secret, they can be deported – even to countries like Iran and Pakistan, where homosexuality can even be punished with the death penalty.
In 2013, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that refugees could not be required to hide their sexual orientation in order to avoid persecution. That would contradict the importance of sexual orientation for a person’s identity, the Luxembourg judges reasoned. According to the judgment, the EU member states must grant those affected protection from persecution if they are threatened with imprisonment in their respective countries of origin, which would actually be imposed.
The lesbian and gay association LSVD claims to have collected more than 70 cases in which the BAMF nevertheless argued that the homosexual refugees could simply keep their sexuality secret. The most recent cases come from the past few months. “The behavioral forecasts violate European law and are outrageous,” said LSVD federal board member Patrick Dörr to “Spiegel”. “We even have half a dozen cases in which asylum seekers wanted to enter into same-sex marriages or have entered into them and the BAMF nevertheless made negative decisions.” The people affected come from Algeria, Iran, Jamaica, Pakistan and Tunisia, “ie from countries with massive prison sentences and social violence for queer people”.
The traffic light coalition wants to review how queer refugees are treated. According to the report, an internal working paper by the SPD parliamentary group states that the current practice is “absolutely inhuman”. In the past, when asked by “Spiegel”, the BAMF spoke of “unfortunate individual cases”, which one might want to examine again.