AUSTRIA: A 15 year-old ethnic Albanian girl who threatened to kill herself following her family's deportation from Austria after five years of living there, speaks about her desperation

Record ID: 563135

  • Title: AUSTRIA: A 15 year-old ethnic Albanian girl who threatened to kill herself following her family's deportation from Austria after five years of living there, speaks about her desperation
  • Date: 13th October 2007
  • Summary: (EU) UNGENACH, AUSTRIA (OCTOBER 12, 2007) (REUTERS) ROAD SIGN FOR UNGENACH VILLAGE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN VILLAGE ARIGONA ZOGAJ GETTING OUT OF CAR AND HUGGING A FRIEND AS SHE IS SURROUNDED BY PHOTOGRAPHERS ZOGAJ HUGGING NEIGHBOURS ZOGAJ WALKING TOWARDS PARISH, SURROUNDED BY PHOTOGRAPHERS
  • Embargoed: 28th October 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Austria
  • Country: Austria
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA1VW957L0KYL9ZBVNTFVBPVDEM
  • Story Text: A 15 year-old ethnic Albanian girl who threatened to kill herself following her family's deportation from Austria after five years of living there, speaks about her desperation and why she decided to go into hiding.
    A Kosovo girl of 15 who went into hiding in Austria to avoid being deported with her father and four siblings said on Friday (October 12) she yearned to be reunited with them.
    Last month's expulsion of the ethnic Albanian Zogaj family and daughter Arigona's fight to stay in a land they saw as home after five years stirred an emotional debate about deporting foreigners who integrate only to lose appeals for asylum.
    Arigona Zogaj told Reuters on Friday (October 12) said she went into hiding in Vienna after a friend had warned her police that were waiting in front of her house. She feared the police would deport her to Kosovo.
    Arigona stayed with friends before putting herself in the care of a rural priest, a few dozen km (miles) from her home in central Austria, after officials announced she need not fear deportation pending a constitutional court ruling due in two months.
    She had threatened in a video message shown on television last week to kill herself if her family was not reunited.
    Appearing in public for the first time on Friday, she said she wanted her father and four siblings back from a Kosovo she said seemed foreign and without a future for them.
    Arigona said she hoped for a reunion on Saturday with her mother, who was also given a reprieve from deportation because she suffered a nervous breakdown a few weeks ago.
    Moved by the Zogaj case and several similar ones, Austria's president called on Thursday for asylum seekers with cases pending since before Jan. 1, 2000 to be granted residency, saying it was cruel to eject foreigners who had put down roots while waiting years for courts to issue rulings.
    Generally, courts should pay more attention to "humanitarian grounds" when dealing with foreigners who had mastered German, found jobs and settled into society, Heinz Fischer said.
    Members of his Social Democratic party, which heads the governing coalition under Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, backed the proposal, but their junior conservative coalition partners and far-right opposition parties rejected it.
    They insist the immigration law, amended in 2006 to toughen residency rules, be upheld to keep out economic migrants.
    Austria plans to set up a special asylum tribunal next year to overcome a backlog of more than 34,000 asylum cases.
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