DANISH MINISTER PROPOSES A SPECIAL LAW FOR DESERTERS FROM SERBIAN ARMY
Deserters and conscientious objectors from the Serbian army who are refused political asylum in Denmark, may be granted temporary stay, if the parliament accepts a proposal from the Minister of Interior, Ms. Birte Weiss, to add a special "Serbian deserters" paragraph to the Foreigners Law in October. This is the latest attempt by the Minister to escape the corner she has driven herself into.
The handling of this situation is a very delicate matter and has been troubling the Danish asylum authorities and the Government for the last couple of years. The Minister is trying her best to find a way to avoid granting the deserters asylum according to the guidelines in the UNHCR Handbook (paragraph 171). This is probably because Denmark - and other countries in the European Union - fear a tide of asylum applications from the 200-300,000 deserters spread across Europe, if they follow the Handbook.
But there is another side to the Minister's problem. She is simply not able to send the people, who are refused asylum, back to Serbia, because of the Serbian authorities' policy of not accepting Serbian citizens who have sought asylum abroad (see FECL No.36: "2,300 deserters from the Serbian army face an uncertain future").
Therefore, Mrs Weiss has been searching for a way out of this dead-end. Her latest attempt was to propose a new provision in the Foreigners Law.
Under such a provision, the rejected deserters would be granted temporary stay in Denmark for up to three years, or until the situation in Serbian changes and the immediate obstacle to their return is removed.
Desperate attempt to avoid permanent residence permits
The Minister has been very creative in finding different solutions to the problem of rejected asylum seekers who - for various reasons - cannot be returned.
At one time, she advocated a liberal use of a paragraph in the Foreigners Law, according to which asylum can be granted on "humanitarian grounds" to applicants who do not qualify for refugee status under the 1951 Geneva Convention. Under this scheme, the persons concerned would have obtained permanent residence permits.
From the government's point of view, the Interior Minister's new proposal to introduce a special provision into the foreigner law has the great advantage that it would affect only deserters from the Serbian army who have applied for asylum before October 1995, and that it would not make them eligible for permanent residence permits.
The bill is to be presented to the Parliament in October.
Ministerial plans thwarted by Appeal Board?
Of the up to 2,700 refugees from the FRY (Serbia and Montenegro) whose cases have been moving through the Directorate for Foreigners, the majority have had their application turned down, mainly on the grounds that the FRY was no longer a country at war and that deserters from the Serbian army did not face serious persecution (see FECL No.29: "Highest Court on right of asylum for deserters").
However, within the last two weeks, the Refugee Board (instance of appeal) has handled twelve cases involving deserters from the FRY forces. The board's findings seem to indicate that there has been a change in the perception of the danger facing deserters in the event of forcible return to the FRY. The appeals of eight deserters were approved, decisions on three others were postponed pending further evaluation of evidence, and only one appeal was dismissed.
In at least two of the positive cases concerning two Kosovo-Albanians, the Refugee Board held that they had deserted from active service during the period of the 1991-92 war, which should "qualify" them for harsher punishment than if they had deserted during a non-war period. Secondly, the Board found that the benefit of the doubt concerning the character of the punishment feared should be to the appellants' advantage.
The judge said afterwards that the question of the ethnic persecution of the Albanian population in Kosovo was not considered, because the two first reasons constituted sufficient grounds to grant them asylum under de facto status.
Their lawyer had argued that they should be given refugee status according to the Geneva Convention, because the UNHCR Handbook clearly spells out the right to protection for deserters from internationally condemned wars. However, the Refugee Board - in line with the Directorate for Foreigners - did not find this argument relevant.
Mads Bruun Pedersen (Copenhagen)