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I
HENNING CHRISTOPH—POTO ARCHIV
Sant from ‘M’ to hope in Wist 6ermany:.A fearful refugee begins a new life in Frankfurt
Ticket to Loneliness
‘Airplane children’ descend on Germany
A tiny dark-haired girl in a pageboy haircut stood in the Frankfurt Main Airport, clutching her battered suitcase. She appeared terrified of the gleaming terminal with its brightly lit, endless corridors and its booming flight announcements that seemed to come from the sky. She did not say a word but just stared silently into space, as if she were a visitor from another world.
She was. The girl, a 6-year-old named Besna, is from a mountain village in Afghanistan. Only hours before, her parents separated her from her five brothers and \	sisters and put her alone on an airplane to
1	what they hoped would be a better life.
I	"She looked so lonely I wanted to hug her
and take her home,” a policeman remembers. He had known immediately why she was there. He had seen many like her.
Besna is one of thousands of Third World 'hildren who have arrived alone in West Germany recently; they are put on air-planes by parents desperate to save them from war and economic woes. Others come as their family’s last hope for survival. "Go to West Germany, study and work,” said one Sri Lankan mother to her 10-year-old son. "Then send us money to get us out of this hell.” In the past year almost 4,000 "airplane children”—about 10 a day— have entered the country. Since the ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war, arrivals from that region have tapered off. But the number of children escaping Eritrea, Lebanon, Turkey, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka has continued to swell.
West Germany has become the promised land thanks to its excellent social-welfare services and an unusual gap in otherwise tight immigration laws: children under 16 can enter the country without visas. If authorities deem their passports legitimate (only about 10 percent of the children are sent back because of false papers), the government accepts responsibility for the children.
Their first stop, while awaiting clearance by West Germany’s Federal Border Police, is a spacious playroom at Frankfurt airport’s office complex, equipped with a television, video and various toys. The refuses are then driven to a group home in the countryside. They are housed in quarters luxurious beyond their parents’ wildest dreams—two or three to a room with pri-
vate showers. Staff members give them German-language lessons, teach them how to play pool or soccer and take them trekking in the neighboring woodland. Translators and social workers help the children adjust. Other welfare workers hunt for schools and foster homes that will anchor them in their new country.
But even as the social-service system strives to accommodate the flow, West German authorities are trying to stem it. Since most of the children arrive on Aeroflot or Balkan Air flights, the police are asking those airlines to accept only children who can show "entry certificates” obtained from a West German Embassy. So far, their pleas have been ignored. The government is also considering new legislation that would require an entry visa for every foreigner regardless of age. An offending airline would be fined and required to fly the children back at its own expense. The bill, however, is not expected to pass before the end of this year.
No questions: In the meantime, parents keep putting their kids on planes. And like many victims, they are attracting vultures. Profiteers are charging parents as much as three times the price of the scheduled airfare to get their children out with no questions asked. Subramaniam is a 10-year-old boy from Sri Lanka—the homeland of about 70 percent of the airplane children who have entered West Germany in the past seven months. His father, who was a prosperous farmer before Indian troops shelled his land, somehow raised the $2,800 needed to secure the boy’s ticket; the nor-
mal price of the ticket is $900. West German officials know that the child trafficking is a racket, but don’t know how it’s run. "If a group of 20 children come off a plane from Sri Lanka, they will all have tickets with consecutive numbers,” says Frankfurt Border Police chief, Lt. Col. Klaus Severin. "You can’t tell me that 20 families decided to send off their children on the same day.” For the children, overwhelmed by grief and loss, the trip is a wrenching separation from the life they left behind. Besna frequently cannot stop crying despite efforts by grown-ups to console her. Rarely is there someone nearby who can speak her native language. Social workers hope that, because of her youth, she will pick up German quickly. They try to get the children to think of the future instead of the past, but that is not always easy. Besna will soon be moved to a church-run children’s home while waiting to be placed in foster care. In a few weeks she’ll start school. Ten-year-old Subramaniam, who has survived a beating by the Indian Army and witnessed looting, gun battles and massacres, is dressed in new slacks and a shirt provided by the child-care authorities. He will also be starting school soon. Excited about his future, he has still not forgotten his past. "My mommy said she would come here soon,” he says. Social worker David Veera-singam says he has heard that before. "They say that to make their children happy,” he says. "But they won’t come. They have no money.”
Nina Darnton with Catherine Field in Frankfurt
NEWSWEEK : AUGUST 28, 1989 43