Visiting Freienbessingen Refugee Camp
On Friday I visited Freienbessingen Refugee Camp to find people who were interested in participating in my project. The visit to the camp was sad and disturbing.
As you can see in the picture below, the camp is out in the middle of nowhere, the nearest town is the village of Freienbessingen which is 3 km away. Only a few hundred people live in this village. When I asked the people living in the camp if there is any relationship with the village, they just laughed and said no. The camp is far away from any place where the refugees can go shopping and there are only a couple of buses a day. The children have to travel 60km every day to school and back. Life in these camps is confined, monotonous, and humiliating; social isolation is almost complete.
Opened Camp
We were showed around the camp by Osman. Osman is a Bosnian refugee who has lived in the camp for sixteen years. Today he is in a relatively good position, he is allowed to travel anywhere in Germany legally so he is living in the opened part of the camp in a nice two and half room apartment with eleven other members of his family. but Osman is still required to live only in Thuringia and is not yet allowed to work.
The camp has two large old socialist style buildings (and one street light). The building where Osman lives with his family is for the more privileged refugees who are granted the freedom of movement.
Closed Camp
The other building is dormitory-style communal accommodations in which refugees usually have to stay during the entire process of seeking asylum. During this time, which could last from 5-20 years, they are not to allowed to leave the area of the municipality, which in this case is only a couple of hundred meters from the camp fence. The area is controlled by a guard who prevents vistors from entering. We had to enter the building secretly. Refugees that are caught out of their restricted area are fined a few hundred euro that is taken out monthly from their already very low allowance (a single male could recieve 165 euro a month, and of course has no permission to work). We were told that the police sometimes hide in the forest to catch movement violators.
The building looks like a run-down former army barracks. Around two hundred and fifty people live in the building which offers a 4-6 square meter room per person. There is one toilet for 40 people and three showers for the building. The showers are also locked between 11 pm to 6 am.
more about the visit will comming soon…
January 16th, 2007 at 5:14 am
dear ronen,
thank you for the information,
do we see here: “machane maatsar” like atlit by the british mandat???? up to 20 years? what is the futer of the people? where do they hope/have a chance to go furthere?
waiting to hear about it.
take care. lee
January 16th, 2007 at 7:25 am
Mabruk!!11
February 1st, 2007 at 2:47 pm
[...] I created the Blog to show the processes of the project, to bring it to the public sphere of the internet. It was important to me to present my research, the information that brought to this project, the photos I taken at the refugee camp, my thoughts and feeling to my friends and associates but also the as wide as audience as possible. This is working well, the refugees at the camp and the in Jena were delighted the pictures our distributed and presented in the internet. And websites from New York and Spain already featured the project and linked to the explanations. The Blog (and the Flickr set) are not only presenting the project but also modestly distributing the problems, struggles and information on migrants and refugees in Germany. [...]