Third-Rate People for Good?

The article “Third-Rate People” (ZN #22, June 14) about Ukrainian seasonal workers mistreated by German police on their way home from Spain drew a massive wave of public response. In their letters, email messages, phone calls, and on the web forum readers shared their concern about the acute problems exposed in the article and offered practical aid to the unlucky victims of red tape. Some advised cheap flights from Spain. Others volunteered to disseminate the English translation of the article among EU offices in Brussels and via the German press. There were even offers of free legal assistance to the ten Ukrainians deported by German authorities.

The incident was discussed in the Ukrainian parliament. Besides, MP Boris Tarasyuk reported it to the European Parliament in Brussels. The Foreign Ministry sent a note to the German Foreign Ministry. According to Sergey Pogoreltsev, chief of the ministry’s consular department, the note demands that the German authorities “thoroughly investigate the facts described in the official complaints and to restore justice, bring the guilty officers to account, return the confiscated money and, possibly, allow the Ukrainian citizens to cross the Schengen border again”. There has been no official response yet, but, according to Ukrainian diplomats in Germany, the German side promised “a thorough internal investigation”. At the Foreign Minister’s order, staffers of Ukraine’s representative office to the European Union met with Johannes de Kester, director of the visa policy department at the European Commission directorate of justice, freedom and security, and with staffers of the EC directorate of external relations. They conveyed a note which expressed Ukraine’s deep concern over the brutal violation of Ukrainian citizens’ rights and humiliation of their human dignity by German policemen. The note particularly drew the EU officials’ attention to the fact that Ukrainian citizens were treated so disgracefully in Germany and that it was not the only such case there. The Ukrainian diplomats also requested information on the active Schengen regulations for transit travels by holders of national visas.

Johannes de Kester responded that his department shared the Ukrainian side’s concern. According to him, the German police acted inadequately and grossly violated the Ukrainian citizens’ rights and freedoms. It was agreed that the European Commission would raise the issue at the July 4 meeting of the EU Visa Group.

Johannes de Kester explained this and other problems experienced by transit travelers by “different interpretations of indistinct formulations”. Generally, a national long-term visa issued for employment in a Schengen country allows its holder to travel to the destination country via the Schengen area freely, i.e. without a transit visa. The holder is further supposed to obtain a residence permit which allows him/her to move freely within the Schengen borders. However, most seasonal workers who stay legally in Schengen countries with their “D” visas do not apply for residence permits as they do not intend to stay there long. As long as this regulatory lacuna remains unfilled, holders of national visas will be legally unprotected during their transit travel back home.

The Ukrainian side requested the European Commission develop a regulatory mechanism that would spare Ukrainian seasonal workers problems or inconveniences while entering Spain or any other Schengen country and on the way back. The Embassy of Ukraine in Spain has approached the Spanish Foreign Ministry with a proposal to issue visas that would allow for double transit via the Schengen area.

Meanwhile, according to Maria Popovych of the employment company Lviv-Intourtrans, 142 of 154 customers have returned home from Spain. The Spanish association Freshuelva finally decided to send the Ukrainian workers home by air. Lviv-Intourtrans says that most of those who have returned from Spain intend to go there again next season. The company is now collecting detailed information about their working and living conditions in Spain in order “to get rid of the farmers who break the terms of employment contracts or mistreat their Ukrainian employees”.

According to Tetyana Sayenko, Ukrainian consul in Malaga, the majority of 123 women who worked by contract in Huelva have reached Ukraine without problems. Another group – nearly 40 – received ?120 each from their employers for travel expenses due to the general strike of Spanish transport companies; some of them went by plane and others returned safely by land via Romania. Twelve persons who have failed to return are staying in Spain illegally. Most of them are young girls who had intended to obtain a tarjeta (residence permit), to marry, or at least to find a Spaniard to lean on.

We contacted other companies that seek to operate in the Spanish employment market, but almost all of them declined to disclose the number of Ukrainians working in Spain and having problems with the journey back home. They said it was “a commercial secret”.

Nobody can say exactly how many Ukrainians are in Spain at present. According to Sayenko, they get there by different ways, both via intermediary agencies and individually. Some of them move to Spain from Portugal where their employers pay them less than before. According to official data, 20,000 Ukrainian citizens are staying legally in the autonomous province of Andalusia and in Murcia – the area of responsibility of the Ukrainian consulate in Malaga. At the same time, up to 100,000 are staying there illegally – according to data collected by the local police. Naturally, they are reluctant to register with the consulate unless they get into trouble with the police or in the case of a relative’s illness or death…

Hopefully, the governments of Ukraine and Spain will sign the long-awaited agreement on regulation of labor migrant flows, thus allowing more Ukrainians to work in Spain legally and feel more secure. In mid-June representatives of the Labor Ministry, the State Employment Center, the Trade Unions Federation, and the Federation of Employers visited Spain “to take a closer look at its immigration policy, programs for attracting labor immigrants, and experience in immigration consultancy”. The Labor Ministry’s website said that the delegation would “offer recommendations with regard to a mechanism of application of the future bilateral agreement”.

As far as those ten deported Ukrainians are concerned, there has been no response from inveterate human rights activists, public organizations, or foundations that claim to be “defendants of the rights of Ukrainians abroad”. Offers of help have only come from individuals and Ukrainian public organizations in Germany – the virtual platform Ukraine Kompetenz Zentrum and the Central Association of Ukrainians in Germany. The unlucky Ukrainians received legal aid from the IOM Kyiv office. According to its staffer Ulyana Vankovych, her colleague Klaus Wolken, a professional lawyer well-versed in deportation rules, kindly volunteered to help the ten Ukrainians to write their appeals and send them to Germany. Staffers of the IOM Berlin office kindly agreed to timely communicate the documents between Ukraine and Germany.

Now the ten have to wait for official decisions on four issues: the deportation fee, the court tax and other law charges, the deportation, and the entry ban. Herr Wolken says the process may take between several weeks and several months. He believes that the appellants will retrieve the larger part of their money from the court cost deposit. As to the deportation fee, its retrieval depends on how much was actually spent. He does not expect the deportation to be canceled since, in formal terms, the Ukrainians stayed in Germany illegally. However, the term of the entry ban is very likely to be shortened.

On June 25 activists of Ukraine Kompetenz Zentrum gathered in Berlin to discuss the incident. They were joined by Ukrainian embassy staffers, representatives of the German immigration and refugee agency, and individual Ukrainians and Germans concerned about the problem. According to one of the activists, Olga Samborska, the participants cited other facts of mistreatment and humiliation of Ukrainians by German police. They decided to send a letter to the Bundestag to draw the public attention to the problem. Ukraine Kompetenz Zentrum also proposed to open hotlines for Ukrainian labor immigrants as an alternative to the dead or busy phones of Ukrainian embassies. It was proposed that public activists and organizations monitor the work of German border guards and policemen.

ZN inquired about the investigation of the actions of German policemen in Herlitz. Frau Siegrun Meyer, PR department chief at the German embassy in Ukraine, wrote in reply: “The accusations of brutal treatment leveled at German policemen in the Ukrainian press are groundless. The police intervened lawfully since the complainants were staying in Germany without permission. They held only the Spanish national visa which allowed them to travel to Spain via the Schengen countries but not back. Besides, the court confirmed that the measures taken by the German federal police were lawful.”

Actually, nobody expected a different reply: it was clear from the start that German authorities would never have their reputation stained. Yet, it does not mean that Ukrainians should lose heart and give up.

Andrian Rudakov, a professional lawyer and president of a track-and-field club, told us the following story. In late June of 2007 two sportsmen from his club were heading for a tournament by bus from Wroclaw to Frankfurt-am-Mein. They had one-year Schengen visas. At the same notorious spot, German policemen made them leave the vehicle, shook all their baggage out on the asphalt and threw their food and medicines into a garbage bin. They broke all ampoules with restoratives. Then they said, “You may be carrying drugs,” and cut expensive athletic shoes in which the Ukrainian sportsmen were going to compete…

Rudakov turned to his colleague Christoph Kopp, president of the Berlin track-and-field association who invited good German lawyers. When the Ukrainian side won the lawsuit, the zealous German policemen were fired without restitution.

Here is another story, told by Eberhardine Seelig from Hamburg, a retired public servant who helps Ukrainian children suffering cancer. Every year since 1992 she invites 25 children to undergo a rehabilitation course in her city. Two years ago she became president of the Ukraine-registered charitable organization “DAVID – Aid to Ukrainian Children Suffering Cancer”. Last fall she invited a young physician from Lviv to a training course in transfusion and transplantation at the university clinic in Hamburg. On the way back home the woman experienced a severe case of shock (again at Herlitz). She was stripped naked during the search, arrested, kept in a Dresden jail for several days, and then deported to Ukraine. Frau Seelig, shocked no less than the Ukrainian doctor by the outrageous behavior of German policemen, helped her restore justice. She even wrote to Interior Minister Scheuble. The fines, custody costs, and deportation fee were all canceled and the entry ban lifted. Now, according to Frau Seelig, the Ukrainian doctor can come to Germany again this summer. The women, however, are going to follow through and file a suit with the European Human Rights Court. Having read the June 14 article, Frau Seelig wrote us that hundreds or even thousands of Ukrainians might have had a similar experience at the German border and that only by joint effort could they resist such a shameful practice.