(fwd) HOLLAND URGENT! HELP NEEDED! (fwd)

[Brad Dolan]

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 at 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

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Christine Prat
POB 16545,  1001 RA  Amsterdam
E-mail: Christine.Prat at let.uva.nl                     University of Amsterdam
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