"Give our refugee children a safe home at last!" – Society for Threatened Peoples sends an appeal to the interior ministers to decide on a permanent residence permit

Together with 17 Romani children from Göttingen – age three to 15 years – the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) presented an appeal for a permanent residence permits at the Conference of the Interior Ministers in Hanover on Friday. The STP's appeal was signed by the chairman of the National Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony, Michael Prince; the chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma, Romani Rose; the former UN High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Prof. Christian Schwarz-Schilling, and the President of the Society for Threatened Peoples International, Tilman Zülch.

"Germany has a lot to make up for – especially for children, as they were the most vulnerable victims of the Nazi Holocaust", the STP recalls the tragic fate of the children of Jews, Sinti and Romani. The human rights organization demanded that refugee children – who are mostly well integrated – should finally be finally given a future here. "As millions of expelled German children and youths could be taken up in Lower Saxony in the period of 1945-1950, a few thousand refugee children should not be a problem today," says the STP's General Secretary, Tilman Zülch. "Please ensure that the refugee children and their families will finally be allowed to remain in their home country of Germany!"

The STP criticized the previous policy of deporting refugees and their children who had been tolerated for years before by showing large banner reading "Our Romani children: Murdered in Auschwitz yesterday, expelled from Germany today!" The fate of the Romani children from Göttingen who took part in the STP's vigil in Hanover is also uncertain. The were born in Germany, grew up here and German is their mother tongue – but most of them are threatened to be deported to Kosovo, together with their families, if the hardship commission of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Sports in Lower Saxony rejects their appeals. The children now live in fear because it is not certain if they will be able to stay in Germany, where they feel at home, with their grandparents, their uncle's family, friends and acquaintances.