Tag: LAF

An Email from women at #Niedstr to Frau #Tomaske

On the 27.05, the inhabitants of the Lager at Niedstr 1-2, sent to Frau Tomaske (LAF) the following complain. Until
today, they didn’t receive any answer and there are no changes in this unsustainable situation. What is LAF waiting for?

(Deutsch unten)
Dear Frau Tomaske,

In Soziale Initiative Niederlausitz e.v. Notunterkunft Neidstr 1-2 12159 Berlin, there is a huge problem with food. Women complained to administration 100 times but they do not listen. Last month a Woman tried to kill herself because of being desperate that the food is bad and she cannot afford to buy herself food everyday. also another woman got very angry because of the disgusting smell of the food which look like garbage and she brock some dishes.
The women mad a complaint in Arabic and over 73 signature is on it and signatures are getting more. We tried hard to explain it in English and German to other women.(every body here understand that “Essen Nicht gut”) Arabic women, Vietnamese, Iranian, Afghani, Balkan  women all signed about the terrible quality of the food. it is damaging our health. yesterday women were crying because they do not know what to feed their children. Today at the first day of Ramadan for Muslim people, they offer them very spicy food that burns in the through (this food was the the same of the lunch for us) . Women are very depressed of the food and the administration carelessness about this issue.

There are other issues such as:

1. Cleaning is done only one time per a day (It should be done 3 times as the administration informed me personally)  and the administration does not supervise this process. we offered to supervise it our self (only if they cooperate with us and listen to us). the hygiene level in toilets and showers is most of the time below zero! also most of the time no Soap nor Sanitizer in the toilets.

2.The office hours are  not enough to handle our problems (we wanted it to be as a minimum 2 hours a day).

3.No special food for pregnant women nor for children.

4.The Erste Hilfe room is always closed. although it is written that it should open every Thursday which is not enough of course.

5.The administration choose 6 women to form a residence council who wrote a protocol that every thing is fine in the Notunterkunft and that every body see improvements! which almost 73 women who signed this complaint did not see .

6.We are not allowed to close the doors of our rooms. some time the women in the room are sleeping or they want to get dressed. which make us in a state of panic and fear that the door can be opened any time.

This place is supposed to protect women, not to traumatize them!

7.Every time the administration try to convince us that they will build a kitchen. they said the building work will start on May now they say that it will start in June and will be done by January 2017. do we have to be tortured by this food more 8 months?

they also got permission for us to cook in two kitchens in other buildings near the Notunterkunft, which is good. But still women cannot afford to buy the material to cook because money is wasted on the uneatable food provided by the Notunterkunft.

The Administration informed me and three other women that they would meet with us to discuss these complaints. but we are afraid that they do not listen to us as usual.

We love this place which offer us safety and relatively good life. we do not want to leave it to another place. Nevertheless we do not want to take food from this place because it is very bad and damaging for our health and our children. “we want to buy our Owen food and cook for yourself.

we also want such measurements as in Fehrberliner Platz.
Please check the attached photos.
also attached the complaint.

Warm regards,

Women from NeidStr

===================================================================

E-Mail an Frau Tomaske vom 29. Mai 2017

Sehr geehrte Frau Tomaske,

In der Soziale Initiative Niederlausitz e.V. Notunterkunft Neidstr. 1-2, 12159 Berlin gibt es ein riesiges Problem mit dem Essen. Die Bewohnerinnen haben sich 100 Mal bei der Administration beschwert, aber diese hört nicht zu. Letzten Monat hat sich eine Bewohnerin versucht umzubringen aus Verzweiflung über das schlechte Essen und dass sie es sich nicht leisten kann, Essen täglich selber zu kaufen. Eine andere Frau (Bewohnerin) ist sehr wütend geworden wegen dem ekelerregenden Geruch des Essens, das aussieht wie Abfall oder Essensreste, und hat Geschirr zerbrochen. Die Bewohnerinnen haben eine Beschwerde verfasst auf Arabisch, bisher sind 73 Unterschriften darauf, und es werden mehr. Wir haben uns viel Mühe gegeben, es auf Englisch und Deutsch zu übersetzen für die anderen Frauen. (Alle verstehen hier dass “Essen nicht gut”) Arabische Frauen, Vietnamesinnen, Bewohnerinnen aus dem Iran, Afghanistan und aus dem Balkan haben alle unterschrieben als Statement über die schreckliche Qualität des Essens. Es gefährdet und ruiniert unsere Gesundheit. Gestern haben Frauen geweint weil sie nicht wissen, was sie ihren Kindern zu essen geben sollen.

Heute war der erste Tag des Ramadans für muslimische Menschen und sie haben ihnen sehr scharfes Essen angeboten, das in der Kehle brennt (das war das gleiche Essen wie das Mittagessen für uns anderen). Die Bewohnerinnen sind sehr deprimiert wegen der Essenssituation und die Unbekümmertheit und Lethargie der Administration bezüglich dieses Themas.

Es gibt noch andere Problematiken:

1. Es wird nur einmal pro Tag geputzt (es sollte dreimal pro Tag sein, wie mich die Administration persönlich informiert hat) und die Administration überwacht das nicht. Wir haben angeboten, selber die Supervision zu übernehmen (unter der Bedingung, dass sie mit uns kooperieren und uns zuhören). Die hygienische Situation in den Toiletten- und Duschräumen ist meistens unter aller Sau! Meistens gibt es auch keine Seife oder Desinfektionsmittel in den Toilettenräumen.

2. Die Bürozeiten sind nicht genug lang, um unsere Probleme anzugehen (wir fordern minimum 2 Stunden pro Tag).

3. Es wird kein spezielles, adequates Essen für schwangere Frauen und Kinder angeboten.

4. Der Erste-Hilfe-Raum ist immer zu. Obwohl da geschrieben steht, dass er jeden Donnerstag offen sei, was natürlich auch nicht genug ist.

5. Die Administration hat 6 Frauen ausgewählt um ein residence council (Bewohnerinnenrat) zu gründen. Dieser council hat ein Protokoll geschrieben, dass alles in Ordnung sei in der Notunterkunft und dass alle Verbesserungen sehen! Was 73 Bewohnerinnen, die die vorliegende Beschwerde unterschrieben haben, nicht sehen.

6. Es ist uns nicht erlaubt, die Türen unserer Räume abzuschliessen. Manchmal schlafen die Frauen in den Räumen oder wollen sich anziehen. Das bedeutet ein konstantes Gefühl und Zustand von Panik und Angst, dass die Türe jederzeit geöffnet werden kann.
Dieser Ort ist dafür da, die Frauen zu beschützen, und nicht, sie zu traumatisieren!

7. Jedes Mal will uns die Administration weismachen, dass sie eine Küche bauen werden. Sie sagten, dass die Arbeiten dafür im Mai anfangen, jetzt sagen sie:  Im Juni, und die Arbeiten  sollen bis Januar 2018 fertiggestellt werden. Sollen wir weitere 8 Monate von diesem Essen gequält werden?

Sie haben eine Erlaubnis eingeholt für uns, in zwei anderen Küchen in anderen Gebäuden nahe der Notunterkunft zu kochen, was gut ist. Aber die Frauen können sich die Kochzutaten immer noch nicht selber kaufen, weil das Geld verschwendet wird für das unessbare Essen, das in der Notunterkunft zur Verfügung gestellt wird.

Die Administration hat mich und drei andere Bewohnerinnen darüber informiert, dass sie sich mit uns treffen und diese Beschwerden besprechen möchten. Aber wir befürchten, dass sie uns wie üblich nicht zuhören.

Wir lieben diesen Ort, der uns Sicherheit uns relativ gute Lebenskonditionen bietet. Wir wollen ihn auch nicht verlassen. Nichtsdestotrotz können wir das angebotene Essen nicht essen, weil es sehr schlecht und schädlich ist für unsere Gesundheit und die Gesundheit unserer Kinder. Wir wollen unser eigenes Essen, unsere eigenen Zutaten kaufen und für uns selber kochen.

Wir fordern ähnliche Messungen wie am Fehrbelliner Platz.

Bitte sehen Sie sich die beiligenden Fotos an.
Ebenso angehängt ist die Beschwerde.

Beste Grüße,

Frauen aus NiedStr
Email attachments :

Reactions to the break out of the Lager at Osloerstr. 23

After the rise up of the people living in the Lager at Osloerstr. 23 two weeks ago (link), a lot of things are happening in a very short time: the company administrating the lager, BTB Bildungszentrum, and LAF (the new LAGeSo) are really afraid about the propagation of these protests, and here we share with you and make public some of the consequences of this first protest. First of all, the supporters of the protest organized by the people living in the Lager are getting bans (Hausverbot) that don’t allow them to visit the families and play with the children, as they have been doing for over a year. The families and the children are very angry with the administration of the Lager, specially with Mark Held, the Heimleiter. Mr. Held is lying all the time to everybody: for example, he says to the people from Lager Mobilisation Group that now they are asking everybody who wants to visit a friend to sign a contract, but when someone not belonging to the group tries to enter, no contract is required. Prohibiting the entrance of the friends of the people living in the Lager only segregates them even more, and goes against the integration principles that are supposed to guide the work of the companies administrating the Lagers.

osloerstr lager protest

Secondly, the company BTB Bildungszentrum is having now emergency meetings: they are afraid of loosing a big business with the administration of the Lager that gives them around 100 000 € of benefits per month (after paying costs, salaries, etc.), and yesterday, on Wednesday the 8th of December, the boss of the company, Frauke Behrens, was visiting the Lager to see what’s going on.

But she was not alone in the Lager: also workers from the state like Noemi Majer (Koordinatorin für Flüchtlingsfragen Integrationsbüro) and Sascha Langenbach (second hand of the president of LAF -the new LAGeSo) where also visiting the Lager with translators, so that they could talk directly with the people living there.

After their visit to the Lager, we were able to talk a little bit with them. This was very productive: for example Mr. Langenbach thought that BTB earns 15 € per person and day. He is wrong: BTB actually earns 47,28 € per person per day, which makes over 1400 € per person every month (!). We can multiply by the 130 people that are living in this Lager to get an idea of the nice business that this Lager is for the company BTB. Another thing that Mr. Langenbach was saying is that he doesn’t understand how this situation, with thousands of people living in NUK (and this are just the numbers of Berlin), is not escalating and propagating to different Lagers. They are aware that this will happen soon, and that’s why they are all afraid.

The people living in the camp just want this horrible Lager in Osloerstr. 23, ran by Mark Held from BTB, to be closed. They are suffering a lot of pressure, their living conditions are more and more stressful, and the only thing they are asking for is having a place were they can stay peacefully, rest after the horrible experiences that they had to live (not only in their country and in their way to Germany, but also here), and start integrating in the society. In this link one can read their concrete demands.
So the questions are: when will this business finish? When will a real process of integration start?

soap bubbles at osloerstr lager

Press release about what’s happening at Bornitzstr. 102

bornitzstr-notunterkunft-lichtenberg-berlinby abriraqui

Are private companies, like PeWoBe establishing how to run the Lagers of asylum seekers and refugees? Who are the real decision-makers?

During 7 days, in the Lager at Bornitzstr 102 run by PeWoBE, 122 refugees are trying to avoid an eviction but there is only uncertainty.
No reasons were given to it but they were told to pack and go in 24h.
No official papers are backing up this decision, but PeWoBe is implementing it.
Daily meetings are taking place between the management of the Lager, some refugee speakpersons and supposed representatives of Lageso (officially Lageso ignores the negotiations taking place) to negotiate the current situation. Meanwhile PeWoBe is pushing LAF /Lageso to get people out of the building.

Refugees are asked to go to ICC / LAF – Lageso, where nobody can’t do anything, and just says “you must stay in the same place”.
Several sources assure that since Thursday Lageso cancelled the eviction, however PeWoBe has been threatening refugees with been thrown out.
Unclear negotiations with KopecknickerAlle Lager were taking place, so that they hosted the 122 expelled refugees. Does PeWoBe profit from that?
Officially PeWoBe’s contracts with Lageso were canceled on summer after some shameful mails were leaked to the press. Now PeWobe runs a legal battle not to hand out the management of the Lager while is still getting the money.

Meanwhile for the refugees: not food is distributed among 122 people, electricity is cut from their rooms, locks removed from their doors, some people are being checked and stolen by security.
After the pressured of social workers, supposed Lageso delegation, and management, finally some refugees decided to move out to Spandau Lager.

But is not enough, now PeWoBe is going to do new lists to throw more people out.

After one week some things become clear:

  • Economical interests are above human rights.
  • Private companies are the decision makers of how to run Lagers as well as beneficiaries from the business around refugees.
  • Refugees fighting for their human rights are being threatened,cornered and declared persona non grata.

Will fighting for human rights harm a person’s asylum process and integration in their new country?
Are people merchandise in the hands of politicians or corporations?

They urgently ask the support and attention of local and international medias and activists.

More information at

** http://abriraqui.net/2016/10/11/after-a-weekend-of-tension-and-without-food-whats-next-in-borniztstr102-berlin-refugeeswelcome/
** https://www.oplatz.net/support-in-front-of-lager-in-bornitzstr-berlin
** https://www.oplatz.net/another-day-at-lager-in-bornitzstr-102-waiting-the-police/
** https://www.oplatz.net/122-people-are-pending-eviction-from-lager-bornitzstr-102-run-by-pewobe-refugeeswelcome-berlin/

There is a refugee speakperson, please write to refugeeresistanceberlin AT lists.riseup.net to get the contact.