I don't know anything about the particulars of this plea, but I thought it nicely illustrated the potential dangers of a national ID card such as we will soon have. bd ---------- Forwarded message ---------- #From: "Hillel Barak" <freedom@netvision.net.il> #Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive #Subject: HOLLAND URGENT! HELP NEEDED! #Date: 22 Nov 1996 20:00:43 GMT ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Hier in Holland, we have been in the past few years regularly confrontated with the problem of Palestinians whose requests for a stay permit in Holland have been rejected and who have been ordered to leave the country, although they cannot go back anywhere. It concerns refugees who are excluded by the "Oslo Agreements", who fled or were expelled from the countries where they resided and who do not have a nationality or any valid papers. We have, for instance, people who used to work for the PLO in Tunis and who had a stay permit there only as employees of the PLO, but who cannot go back since they don't work for the PLO anymore, or people who have been expelled from Kuwait after the Gulf War. It appears that those people's requests for refugee status or stay permit are always rejected, after which they get an expulsion order. In some cases, they are put by the police on a flight to Tunis or elsewhere. When they arrive at the airport there, they are put on the next flight back to Amsterdam. Then the police here put them in the street, without any paper. They are supposed to be "expelled", so that they do not exist in Holland. First they have to find people who can house them. Then, as they have no papers, not even an identity card, they cannot work, have no right to medical help, cannot send their children to school, etc... and totally depend on the charity of the people who house them and are moreover threatened to be arrested for having no papers each time they have to go out (as the police who put them in the street does not even give them a paper explaining why they have no papers: the policy is clearly to insure that they have such a bad time in Holland that they will in the end seek refuge elsewhere). Some people here, who are actively involved in helping refugees, want to put a complaint to the European Court of Justice and the Council of Europe. To do so, we need as much legal information as possible on the "legal" status of those Palestinians refugees who fall out from the "Oslo Agreements" and do not have any nationality or resident status anywhere. So please send me as soon as possible any information, legal texts, etc... about the official status of Palestinian refugees from Tunisia, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait, Libya or any other country were they might have lived. I request those of you who are lawyers to ask their colleagues who are specialized in international law to give legal information and their advice about the problem. Our point is to show the European instances that those Palestinians who have been expelled from the Arab countries where they once resided have legally nowhere to go and that it is preposterous to deny their existence and give them the status of "expelled persons" to countries they cannot enter. I thank you all very much in advance, Christine Prat ***************************************************************************** Christine Prat POB 16545, 1001 RA Amsterdam E-mail: Christine.Prat@let.uva.nl University of Amsterdam *****************************************************************************