Mehdi Gohari cannot leave the two rooms where he lives with his wife and two children in the suburbs of Frankfurt. The furthest the 32-year-old Afghan can venture for a cigarette is the tiny patch of grass outside the window. If he so much as steps off the narrow strip of land, he could be arrested and deported from Germany as an illegal immigrant.
He and his family are under the protection of an ancient custom: the local church has granted them sanctuary. The small parish house and the patch of grass outside it are church property. Even though church sanctuary is not recognised in German law, this is still a religious country. No German policeman will venture here to drag them away.
Gohari, his wife Lailoma Mohammdi, and their children Husnia, seven, and Ali, one, are virtual prisoners.
They are one family among hundreds protected by a quiet revolution as parish churches across Germany open their doors to asylum seekers in an unprecedented challenge to EU rules they say are turning genuine refugees away.
Some 222 Protestant and Catholic churches are currently providing sanctuary to 411 people, according to the German Ecumenical Committee on Church Asylum. The overwhelming majority are asylum seekers like the Goharis.
“I want to thank the church,” Gohari says. “They didn’t have to help us, but they did. Perhaps they think they helped a family. But I tell you, they saved the lives of four people — five if you include my wife’s unborn child.”
Most asylum seekers offered sanctuary in German churches face deportation not because of the merits of their case, but under EU regulations that say refugees must seek asylum in the first EU country they enter. Many, like the Goharis, end up being shunted between EU countries that do not want to take them.
They first arrived in Greece. When they applied for asylum, the Greek authorities encouraged them to move on, Gohari says. “The officials told us, ‘It’s not our problem. Go somewhere else’,” he says.
It was the start of a six-year trek around Europe for the family. They tried Holland, but fled to Germany by bus days before they were due to be deported. They were facing expulsion from Germany when the church stepped in. The Miriamgemeinde, a Protestant church in Frankfurt, agreed to take them in last November. Thomas Volz, the local pastor, and his parishioners knew almost nothing of the Goharis’ case at the time. “I got an email at 10 am on a Monday morning asking if we could give sanctuary to a family,” says Volz. “If we agreed, we had to be ready to take them the next day.”
With families such as the Goharis often facing imminent deportation, churches have to act fast. Volz dragged some spare mattresses down from his house, while church board members bought sheets from a one-euro shop. There is no kitchen in the parish house, so they improvised one in a basement room, among the heating pipes. The Goharis have to dash across the grass to use the showers in the church youth centre. Volunteers take care of the family on a daily basis, escorting Husnia to school and doing their shopping. Their stay has cost the parish €3,000 so far and has been entirely funded by donations.
The Goharis are Hazaras, members of a Shia Afghan minority that faces persecution at the hands of the Taliban. Gohari says they fled after local Taliban members demanded he marry Husnia to one of them as soon as she was 13.
Once asylum seekers have been in Germany for six months, the EU’s rules no longer apply and their cases can be heard by the German authorities.
Even then, it remains dangerous for them to leave the church’s protection. Debate over immigration and asylum is charged in Germany. The Pegida anti-Islam movement has called for the expulsion of what it claims are economically motivated false asylum seekers.
Even the ancient principle of church sanctuary may be under threat. The number being given shelter by churches is now so high that Thomas de Maiziere, the interior minister, recently demanded a stop to the practice, comparing it with Islamic law — comments he was forced to retract after a public outcry. None the less, the government is demanding a review of sanctuary in six months’ time. Meanwhile, the Goharis face the hearing over their case for political asylum.
“People have asked me, ‘What do we do if they say no?’” says Volz. “I tell them, if that happens every Christian must decide for himself. We cannot keep them in sanctuary at the church if that happens. But we will not give the Goharis up to the police.”