The practice of church asylum in Germany is facing growing challenges, as an Afghan national sheltered in a church in Berlin was apprehended by plainclothes police officers to be deported to Sweden. The man had just stepped outside of the church briefly, and was reportedly only days shy of having his case automatically transferred to authorities in Germany.
The Afghan national living in church asylum in Berlin had previously stayed for around ten years in Sweden where he had been reportedly working as a nurse.
However, when authorities in Sweden decided to withdraw his residency permit and issue a deportation order to Afghanistan, he fled to Germany to seek safety, eventually ending up in church asylum at the Lutheran Dreieinigkeits-Gemeinde in the suburb of Steglitz in the capital city.
As a convert to Christianity, the man — and others like him — could face the death penalty for apostasy there under the Taliban regime, according to the pastor who had been looking after him, Gottfried Martens.
"The police didn't break into our church," Martens told the daily taz newspaper in Berlin, highlighting that authorities are exploring increasingly creative ways to interfere in church asylum cases.
"[He] moved just a few meters away from the church's own garden, he was probably not even aware that he was no longer on the church grounds," Martens added.
This is when he was apprehended by plainclothes police officers, who reportedly had been observing the church from a car.
The man has since been flown out to Sweden alongside other deportees, where their fate will next be decided by the authorities.
According to reports in the daily tabloid BILD newspaper, he has now been banned from reentering Germany for five years.
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Spat between Hamburg and Berlin
Authorities in both the capital Berlin and in the northern city of Hamburg have confirmed that the Afghan national was sent back to Sweden alongside two other men from Afghanistan, who also are believed to be Christian converts.
This took place under the so-called Dublin Regulation of the European Union; this is a piece of EU law, which stipulates that asylum seekers have to lodge their claim in the first EU member state they enter and that this country remains in charge of all things pertaining to their asylum case for at least six months.
Authorities in Hamburg, which were in charge of the deportations to Sweden, had been pushing Berlin to detain the men so they could be deported before this six-month deadline was due to expire, creating a spat between the mayors of the respective cities.
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Church asylum in Berlin, is generally regarded more positively, as it is historically linked to the city's divided past, where the church played a role in supporting opposition to the Communist authorities governing East Germany before the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990. So, authorities in the capital were reportedly reluctant to follow the order from Hamburg and refused to enter the church building itself, according to information provided by Martens.
This is why as a compromise of sorts, police officers had to wait for the right moment and apprehend the Afghan national when he technically was no longer on church property.
According to reports, he was detained wearing only shorts, completely unprepared and unaware of what he was walking into.
The man was just days shy of passing the six-months mark when his Dublin case would have been automatically transferred to German authorities.
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Church asylum: a legal no-mans-land
Church asylum is regulated in a sort of legal grey zone in Germany: Authorities generally tend to respect the fact that church parishes can provide shelter, food and support to a limited number of people who otherwise might face deportation.
Only in extreme cases do they typically work with authorities to facilitate a deportation; in other cases, they have been known to try to block interventions by police peacefully, for example by forming human chains around a church.
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In this case in Steglitz, the men were allowed to sleep inside the church building and were looked after directly by members of the congregation who were supportive of meeting the men's basic needs. This meant that they didn't need to leave the church property for anything, and so in theory were able to stay within the church confines.
Other Lutheran churches tend to have a looser interpretation of what church asylum entails, with many actually providing accommodation in the church's own apartments, but then expecting those seeking church asylum to provide for themselves.
This means that they can go shopping and that children can attend school while authorities generally respect the unique status they enjoy.
This latest case in Berlin now raises questions over whether people seeking protection in churches will still be able to rely on the provisions of church asylum, or whether more apprehensions, detentions and deportations are likely to occur in the future.