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Eva Leitolf
Refugee hostel, near Bahnsdorf
[German Images - Looking for Evidence 2006-2008]
2006
C-print
66.5 x 53.5 cm (image) 81 x 69 cm (sheet)
Provided by the artist - Eva Leitolf
LL/37692
The private-sector company European Homecare runs hostels for asylum-seekers for local councils across Germany, including one near Bahnsdorf. In a press release for a day of action against the Bahnsdorf hostel on 2 April 2005, the organisation Nolager criticised conditions at the former Russian army base: Groups of three or four people had to share fourteen-square-metre containers in the forest without legal, psychological or social services. The Aliens Office in Senftenberg had 'restrictively' refused any permission to leave the camp since the beginning of 2005 and furthermore, according to the press release, the asylum-seekers had been asked to sign a statement that they would not press any claims if they came to harm through landmines and other objects abandoned in the woods by the military. The day of action in Bahnsdorf was part of a campaign against refugee detention facilities organised by Nolager, which toured northern and eastern Germany in summer 2004. According to a report in the local newspaper, the local official responsible for health and social affairs rejected the accusations, saying that it was simply impossible that asylum-seekers were living in such cramped conditions because their number had fallen from about one thousand to just over four hundred, and in fact the hostel was under-occupied. She went on to say that the asylum-seekers were treated not restrictively but according to the law, and that most of them were 'satisfied'.
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