A Catholic church in Germany has forced out four Roma families from the Balkans including five children and a six-month-old baby who had been sheltering there since early July.
After a month of wrangling, the St. Emmeram community center in Regensburg, Bavaria, pressed trespassing charges, stopped providing food and banned refugee helpers from bringing provisions themselves, DW.com reported.
Last night, the refugees left the community centre voluntarily after a police presence gathered outside.
A spokesman for the church, Jakob Schoetz, told Christian Today that the families "wanted to stay in Germany forever," adding that "this is a question for the Government not the Catholic Church." The spokesman said that church representatives had only ever told the families that, "We can help you, but only for a few days".
In a statement, the diocese confirmed that what it called a "protest action" had now ended. "The final 16 people have left the community centre and are on their way to the authorities, who will clear up the remaining business. The community centre is now once again available for church use. The necessary restoration work can begin."
The families have now returned to government accommodation. "We said to this group, you have to talk to the Government," Schoetz told Christian Today. "We waited five weeks and daily we spoke to them, saying go back to the government accommodation".
On Friday, the diocese said it had "no other choice than to increase the pressure" by pressing trespassing charges, though it added that "an emergency doctor is reachable" for the families, who made up the 16 people, down from a peak of 50 sheltering at the centre in mid-July.
On Thursday, the Roma families made what the diocese claimed were "non-satisfiable conditions".
Stephan Dünnwald of the Bavarian Refugee Council told DW that the refugees had asked for some kind of guarantee that they could stay in the country.
According to a statement on Sunday by the Bavarian Refugee Council, three of the families said that, with a "lack of alternatives," they would like to return to their home countries (Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo), while the fourth said they would like to go back to the state of Baden-Württemberg, where they have "residential tolerance status."
In return for their voluntary agreement to leave, they asked the church to supply food until their return could be organised, as well as for help from the Catholic charity Caritas.
The Refugee Council condemned the church's actions as "outrageous" and criticised its inaction in helping the families secure safe passage home.
"They could find a way if they wanted to guarantee the voluntary exit from the country," said Gotthold Streitberger of the Bavarian Refugee Council.
Streitberger told DW that he had been prevented from entering the centre at the weekend. He added that the church had threatened the security guards with dismissal if they did not stop food being taken in. "Some people came with food, and the security guards said politely that it can't be taken in, so they tried to set it down outside, and the children wanted to come out and take it, but that was banned too," he said.
Meanwhile the church's priest, Michael Fuchs, accused the refugees of exploiting their own children. "While parents in need normally try to keep their children out of conflicts and publications, these children have been used from the beginning as banner holders, as photo objects on the protest front, and yes, in concrete threats even as potential orphans through the suicide of their parents," he said. "Just for the sake of the children, the parents' actions must now end quickly."
Streitberger pointed out that a month-long stand-off was responsible for tensions running high. "You have to remember there was a period of around eight or ten days when the area was completely kettled by police – a huge police presence, and there was no access possible at all," he told DW. "And in that time of course [the refugees] were in despair, and it came to some escalation, and someone did say that then they would only leave as a corpse and that their children would be orphans ... but that was about ten days ago and they took that back."
