Germany: 40 years of church asylum

The incident sent shockwaves through Germany. In late August 1983, Turkish asylum-seeker Cemal Kemal Altun stood before the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin, which was tasked with ruling whether he could be sent back to Turkey, then under military rule and pursuing some political opponents.

When officials removed the 23-year-old's handcuffs, Altun ran and jumped out of an open 6th floor window of the courthouse building, to his death. The image above shows his grave in Mariendorf, Berlin.

The building where the court was in Berlin's Hardenbergstrasse no longer exists. But a memorial stone placed in 1996 commemorates Altun. "Politically persecuted people must receive asylum" is one of the messages written on it, in German and Turkish.

Though Altun's suicide made headlines, he was not the only asylum-seeker to take his own life for fear of being deported. At least 100 such cases have been documented, though no other sparked such passionate debates.

Socio-political commitment 

Altun's fate had a major impact on the life of Jürgen Quandt, now 79, who in 1983 was pastor of the Holy Cross church in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. In the spring of that year, several friends of Altun went on a hunger strike in his church hall. Refugees had already been seeking help from Quandt's congregation — people from Turkey, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories. "We wanted to engage more strongly in socio-political issues," Quandt told DW.

But a few weeks after Altun died, refugees from the Palestinian Territories approached the pastor asking for asylum, appealing to the ancient Christian tradition of providing sanctuary in churches. The congregation granted them protection in the parish hall.

This is how Altun's story started the modern tradition of church asylum in Germany. For the past 40 years, Catholic, Protestant and independent churches in Germany have attempted to provide temporary protection in cases where deporting people who had fled their home countries threatens to put them in danger. Several thousand people have been helped in this way, according to the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum.  In mid-August, the committee reported that at least 655 people were currently in church asylum, including 136 children. So far this year, 285 church asylum cases have been closed.

Someone who currently administers church asylum is Gottfried Martens, pastor of an independent Protestant church in Berlin. Several Christian Iranians are currently living in the basement of his Trinity Lutheran Church in the Steglitz district.

One of them is Sasan Rezai. A trained chef from northern Iran , he told DW that he had to flee his country because he was a Christian. He described being beaten up and detained without food and drink at the border from Bosnia to Croatia after his illegal entry and told to "get out of this country." Rezai said that he was afraid he would die.

When the fear dissolves

Rezai said that two days after he arrived in the church in Steglitz, his fear and his anxiety disappeared. He never wants to go through such an experience again. On the morning of the day DW visited, he spent a long time on the treadmill provided by the church, because he is currently not allowed to leave the building. Later, he was to cook for himself and the other asylum seekers living with Pastor Martens.

The fate of Rezai is typical for many of the people who currently live in Germany under church asylum. It also illustrates the consequences of the failed attempt to reach an agreement on regulations for asylum law at the European Union level.

According to current European regulations, applications for asylum must be decided in the EU country a refugee reaches first. That means that, formally, Germany could deport people such as Rezai. But there is an exception if the asylum-seeker has been living in Germany for at least 6 months.

"Protecting refugees is an expression of our faith," Quandt told DW. For the past 40 years, the issue has been a regular debate within the church, though some aspects of the initiative have changed since 1983. Initially, it centered on the protection of refugees from deportation to their countries of origin, which often required them to be accommodated on church premises for a long time. Today, most of the cases center on protection from being returned to other EU countries, which means in theory, stays should be shorter.

Church asylum remains controversial. From time to time, politicians accuse the parish communities of flouting laws, and occasionally there are cases where pastors or laypeople must justify their involvement before a court. In July, in the western city of Viersen, immigration officials entered a church asylum facility in a protestant parish hall and removed a Kurdish married couple who had been living there since May 2023. The municipality, perhaps in the face of nationwide public outrage, later decided against sending the couple to back Poland.

Commemoration for Cemal Kemal Altun

The Berlin-based German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum marked its 40-year anniversary in late August. The program included a commemoration for Cemal Kamal Altun, who would now be 63. He was buried at the Trinity Church Cemetery III in Berlin-Mariendorf. This cemetery is no longer in use, and most of its graves from earlier decades have since disappeared, and the site is certain to be redeveloped. However, Altun's grave remains, and was recently adorned with a new picture frame with his photograph and a bouquet of flowers – evidence that it is still being visited.

Editor's note: If you are suffering from serious emotional strain or suicidal thoughts, do not hesitate to seek professional help. You can find information on where to find such help, no matter where you live in the world, at this website: https://www.befrienders.org/

This article was originally written in German.

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