“The visit lasts two hours and not a minute more. You decide how to spend your time.” The press officer of the Berlin Office for Refugee Affairs, Monika Hebbinghaus, does not feel comfortable when refugees approach the group of journalists. Although he tries to convey normality, he can barely hide the fact that it bothers him that people housed in this refugee center at the old Tegel airport stop the group of reporters to tell their stories.
It’s mid-October. The sun’s rays lose strength as autumn progresses on the northern outskirts of Berlin. Winter is approaching and with it, the cold, the darkness and the most difficult months for the Tegel refugee reception center. About 5,000 people live here. The majority are Ukrainians, with special status granted by the German Government after the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022. Thanks to this, they obtained a residence permit without having to go through the corresponding bureaucratic process. But this permit does not guarantee being able to find an apartment in a city with one of the most stressed real estate markets in Germany and Europe.
There are also asylum seekers from other countries. The majority come from Türkiye, Afghanistan, Syria, Vietnam and Moldova, according to official figures from the Berlin authorities. Those responsible for this improvised reception center in what was the main airport of the German capital – closed in November 2020 after the inauguration of the Willy Brandt International Airport – are organizing a press visit today for a team from the German international television Deutsche Welle. and for elDiario.es. They are interested in improving the image of the largest refugee reception center in Germany. Tegel accumulates too many negative headlines in the German and foreign press.
“A place that should not exist,” headlined the weekly Der Spiegel a long chronicle, published last September, about the precarious living conditions of the people housed around terminal C of the old airport. “The days here are long. There is nothing to do although there is a lot to solve” is one of the phrases that best summarizes the text. The chronicle sheds light on the management of the reception center, on the lack of transparency of the contracts and their public financing, and, above all, it does so through the protagonists of the place: the refugees.
Criticism and appreciation
The Deutsche Welle camera and microphone quickly draw the attention of the residents. Many look with curiosity. Others come to speak directly in their language. A Ukrainian woman with a cane begins to address the camera lens in Russian, without waiting for anyone to ask her. He complains about the lack of adequate medical care. She has been in Tegel for 18 months, with no prospect of being transferred to other accommodation. He says that he arrived with two children, one of them with a disability. The press officer of the Office of Refugee Affairs first takes an interest in their situation and ends up interrupting the conversation with the argument that the visit must move forward.
But people here want to talk. “The conditions are very bad. We can’t do anything. The food is bad. “I’ve lost weight, my ribs are visible,” says the young Ukrainian Berdnyk Aleksander, a few meters ahead, at the doors of what was the Terminal C building where the old check-in windows are today used for registration. to the newcomers. Berdnyk has been in Tegel for 10 months. He claims that no one gives him a job, that he cannot learn German, that they live without prospects, that they do not even allow him to cook.
“My husband and I suffered a fire. All my belongings were burned. Nobody promised to help us. They simply closed the doors and blamed the victims,” says Aleksandra, a 22-year-old Ukrainian from Crimea, inside the collective dining room, between impersonal gray cabinets with dozens of numbered lockers. Aleksandra talks about the most serious incident known so far in Tegel: last March a fire destroyed one of the giant tents that served as a dormitory for 300 people. Nobody died nor were there injured. It was a miracle, the Berlin media agree. It was also a sign that something was not going well in Tegel.
There are not only complaints from young people. There are many older people, with health and mobility problems, who are dissatisfied with the conditions in which they live. They seem the most helpless of all. Some don’t even bother to protest. They look with a mixture of hopelessness and boredom at the journalists who are paraded around the premises by those responsible for it.
There are also those who take the opportunity to thank the press for Germany’s welcome. “Here I can earn 10 times more than in Ukraine and I have an opportunity to develop,” says a young Ukrainian amid the disapproving looks and loud criticism of a group of compatriots older than him who do not share his story.
Emergency solution
The Tegel refugee reception center opened its doors shortly after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Initially, it was used as a registration point for Ukrainian refugees who were then referred to reception centres, social housing or other types of accommodation distributed throughout Germany.
But what had to be a temporary emergency solution has become permanent accommodation with a capacity of up to 8,000 places due to the uncertainty of what the hosting needs will be in the coming months and years. That the improvised solution has become permanent is the main criticism of the detractors of the Tegel refugee center.
Kathie Lehmann is one of the members of Tegel Assembly, an assembly of organizations and activists who denounce the situation of refugees and also the conditions of the reception center employees. Some of the members of this assembly worked there and were fired for internally or publicly denouncing the poor conditions, or for trying to advise the refugees on their own.
Today they are organizing a party with music, food and children’s games for residents in Tegel, at the other end of the old airport. They want to offer a safe escape space to people housed in Terminal C. “There are catastrophic hygienic conditions, outbreaks of diseases, people continue to live in a space of four square meters,” says Lehmann. “We are talking about an airport, a completely paved space where the stores are installed, which seems like an absolutely improvised solution. There are many security guards who, of course, do not have good working conditions either. “Everyone is very dissatisfied and just doesn’t know what is going to happen to them.”
The Berlin Office for Refugee Affairs asks for understanding in the face of the challenge of housing so many people. “Our legal mandate is to house everyone. Obviously, the more people come, the more forced we are to lower standards. This is what we are seeing here in Tegel. It is not a normal situation. It is due to the number of people who have arrived in a relatively short time,” argues Mrs. Hebbinghaus, in charge today of guiding us through the esplanade converted into a camp.
Lack of transparency
The Tegel refugee center has an annual budget of more than 400 million euros, making it the best funded in the country. The German Red Cross manages the camp with that money, which also serves to pay, among other things, the rental of the space, the catering and a private company that is in charge of the security of the perimeter and the interior of the venue.
Social organizations with experience in hosting refugees consider that this budget should allow for much better conditions. “We don’t know where all that money is going. If you use the budget of 400 million to accommodate 5,000 people, we are talking about an individual cost of between 240 and 300 euros per day. With that money, the Berlin Government could provide luxury apartments for refugees,” explains Emily Barnickel, a social worker at the NGO Berlin Refugee Council, with some sarcasm.
Reports of poor conditions, combined with the huge budget, support accusations of a lack of transparency in the use of public money and suspicions about the profit margin that private companies offering the services of the Tegel refugee center are making.
Suspicions are increasingly being raised across Germany about the private management of refugee reception centres. ARD public television and the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung recently published an investigation about the British company Serco. Specializing in border control, military services and security, Serco has won public contracts in different parts of Germany to manage refugee reception centers.
Documents leaked from within the company point to a profit margin of more than 50% in some cases, which would explain the terrible conditions in which refugees live in these centers. This also raises doubts about the tenders for granting contracts and suspicions of possible personal interests of the corresponding political leaders.
Despite all the criticism received by Tegel, the mayor-governor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, of the conservative CDU party, does not dare to rule out an expansion of the number of places in the refugee center. Wegner has governed since April last year with the Social Democrats of the SPD in the so-called “grand coalition.” The Greens, today in opposition, are very harsh on the situation in Tegel. The environmentalist regional deputy Jian Omar, born in Syrian Kurdistan and who received political asylum in Germany after arriving on a student visa in 2005, is one of the most critical voices of the center. In an interview with the weekly Der SpiegelOmar summarizes the situation with a warning: “Tegel is a powder keg that can explode at any moment.”
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