Arşiv

📂 2001

2001 — Rejection of Requests for Continuing Treatment, Referral for Psychiatric Examination at the Judge’s Initiative, and a State Institution’s Explicit Objection to the Court’s Assessment Main court cases: Oberverwaltungsgericht Berlin — OVG 6 S 52.00; Verwaltungsgericht Berlin — VG 32 A 594.00 and VG 32 A 487.01. This folder contains court decisions, medical certificates, correspondence from lawyers and the embassy, my applications for social and medical assistance, and letters from state institutions showing how the events that began in 1998–2000 continued in 2001. The documents show that my illnesses, my need for continuing treatment, and my struggle to obtain assistance were recorded in writing at the time. Here, I explain the contents of those documents, the contradictions between them, and their consequences for my life. To provide a fuller understanding of the events, I also include certain experiences I personally lived through that are not separately reflected in the documents in this folder. These testimonies form part of the folder’s explanatory account; where a separate written or technical record exists, I identify it. The documented events and my direct testimony together serve to explain this history. On 17 January 2001, Oberverwaltungsgericht Berlin rejected my appeal against the decision of 23 October 2000 concerning social and medical assistance. The court questioned my need for financial assistance, the information concerning my identity, and the circumstances in which my passport had been lost. Thus, the legal struggle continuing at the end of 2000 also resulted, at the beginning of 2001, in the failure to provide the urgent protection I had requested. During the same period, doctors were documenting my physical illnesses and my need for continuing treatment. A medical certificate dated 6 January 2001 listed chronic gastritis, bronchial asthma, impaired bowel function, haemorrhoids, and depression, and stated that treatment under continuous medical supervision was necessary. A certificate dated 11 January recorded an acute infection, acute bronchopneumonia, and an acute depressive syndrome. The doctor explicitly stated that there was no institution covering the treatment costs and that I could not pay those costs myself. The certificates from March also documented my physical illnesses, stating that there had been no significant improvement despite treatment and that continuing monitoring and treatment were necessary. I was approaching the court because of my physical illnesses, pain, and lack of treatment. There was documentary support for this request. Nevertheless, in his letter dated 4 September 2001, Judge Pannicke stated that, on his own initiative, he had arranged for a medical treatment voucher to be issued for a single consultation with a neurologist-psychiatrist. He requested a certificate concerning the severity of the mental illness, the necessary treatment, and whether there were medical obstacles to returning to Azerbaijan. He also asked me to inform him within one week which doctor I had consulted and when the certificate would be available. At that time, people around me pressured me by saying that the court wanted to help me and that, for this purpose, I had to provide a document linking my mental condition to the question of returning to Azerbaijan. I experienced this as pressure to direct my account along a particular line in order to obtain assistance. My principal request was for treatment and accommodation assistance because of the health condition that had developed and worsened in Germany. When I asked Dr Bikadorov for a certificate, he told me that he could not provide an opinion without observing me for six months and that the law did not permit him to do so. I explained that the court was requesting the certificate. Initially, he did not believe what I said and wanted to see the court’s letter. After reading it, he told me to come on a specified date to collect the certificate. I personally experienced this conversation and record it here as my direct testimony. I also question the purpose of the judge’s requirement to know in advance which doctor I was consulting. If the court needed a medical opinion, what specific necessity justified requesting information about the doctor beforehand? When numerous documents concerning my physical illnesses already existed, why was a certificate based on a single psychiatric consultation being requested in this particular direction? On 13 September, I received the medical treatment voucher and consulted a neurologist-psychiatrist. On 20 September 2001, I submitted the requested certificate to the court. In my letter, I specifically asked that the certificate be used only for the court proceedings. I expressly stated my fear that other institutions learning of this information would create a danger for me. I had submitted that certificate to obtain assistance and protection. I had not consented to its widespread dissemination. I maintain my allegation that the information was subsequently widely disseminated, and I accuse Judge Pannicke of causing that outcome. My objection concerns both the confidentiality of the information and how it was subsequently used in my life. I state that the certificate I submitted identified an acute risk of suicide. Nevertheless, on 17 October 2001, the court rejected my urgent application for social and medical assistance. In its decision, the court did not accept the suicide risk I had reported as established. It proceeded on the assumption that my illnesses involved relatively low treatment costs and that, because I had paid for some previous medical consultations, I could also pay the subsequent costs. I consider this conduct biased and dangerous to my life. The court itself requested the certificate, and I complied with that request, but the protection I sought in response to the serious danger I had reported was not provided. Obtaining the certificate did not result in any concrete measure to protect me. I describe the effect of this refusal on my life as follows: it was as though a warning about the risk of suicide was insufficient and the danger was being allowed to materialise. This is not a sentence the judge said word for word; it is my assessment of the effect his decision and the failure to provide protection had on me. I accuse this approach of further worsening my crisis. An important documentary basis for this objection also appears in the correspondence of another state institution. On 24 October 2001, the office of the Berlin Senate’s Commissioner for Foreigners sent a letter to the Sozialamt stating that my illnesses required continuing medical supervision. The institution did not find the court’s assessment that previous treatments had not been very expensive convincing and explained that some doctors, including those at a medical practice for homeless people, had treated me free of charge. It strongly urged that necessary medical assistance not be refused. In my application dated 25 October, I again wrote that I had continuing illnesses, could not pay the treatment costs, and that access to emergency care alone did not meet this need. In its letter dated 15 November 2001, the same state institution confirmed that, despite its intervention, a medical treatment voucher for continuing medical supervision had not been provided. The letter stated that the Sozialamt was prepared to cover costs only for emergencies and hospital treatment. It requested an assessment of whether the refusal of continuing medical assistance created an acute danger to my health and potentially to the health of other people. On 29 November, the Gesundheitsamt assessed the documented illnesses as largely non-serious and requested further explanations concerning the necessity of my frequent visits to doctors. The documents themselves reveal these contradictions: doctors were calling for continuing treatment; the court assumed that I could pay the costs; another state institution explicitly objected to that assessment and confirmed that assistance had not been provided. My allegations concerning bias and responsibility are based on this documentary sequence. I do not limit these events to individual decisions by a single judge. I allege systematic and planned conduct whereby a person seeking help for physical illnesses was psychologically destabilised through deprivation, after which his complaints were redirected towards psychiatry. I regard the use of psychiatric information against me and the discrediting of my demands for truth and my rights as part of this allegation. This is my explicit position; its grounds must be assessed through the specific decisions, correspondence, and consequences. I do not accept presenting my deterioration to the point of a suicide attempt in 2004 separately from the preceding years of untreated illness, deprivation, and unsuccessful efforts to obtain protection. I accuse Judge Pannicke’s conduct and the decisions of state institutions of forming part of the chain of events that drove me into that crisis. I also express my position concerning my subsequent severe psychological distress within this sequence. I also record, so that it remains part of the historical record, a conversation I personally had with a state psychologist. According to the words I remember from this person, who assessed the situation of foreign nationals, he said that it would not be possible to remove the events that had occurred in detention from my mind. He then called me a “walking bomb,” saying that I could “explode” at any moment, that they would prevent this, and that they would place these things “inside an invisible fortress.” When I replied, “Through your new acts of terror?” he said angrily, “I see that your tongue is still very long,” and “First, we will cut out your tongue.” I understood these words as a threat and a message intended to silence me. What I write about this conversation is my direct testimony. At that time, audio and video recording devices were not as widespread and accessible as they are today. In particular, a person like me, living on the streets and deprived of financial means, had no access to such equipment. Consequently, I have no audio or video recording of that conversation. I want my testimony concerning the marks this event left on my memory and my life to be preserved in the archive. The medical materials from 2002 included in this folder document subsequent developments and must be considered according to their own dates. The central content of the 2001 folder is this: documented physical illnesses and the need for continuing treatment; unsuccessful applications for social and medical assistance; the demand for a psychiatric certificate at the judge’s initiative; the rejection of urgent protection after that certificate was submitted; and another state institution’s official objection to the court’s assessment. This explanatory account is intended to preserve those documents, my personal testimony, and my firm position concerning responsibility together in the archive. I denounce the desperate situation into which the state placed me as a deliberately and prejudicially constructed plan: placing a person in dependence on others for survival, food, and somewhere to sleep, calculated to force that person into enslavement and into becoming a plaything in their hands. I did not freely choose my own surroundings; the denial of the opportunity to work and the failure to provide social and medical assistance forced me into a circle in which I depended on the will of others. My accusation is that, through these deprivations, the state took away not only my means of subsistence but also my freedom to choose the direction of my life. The situation I faced at the end of 2001 was that of a person being rendered helpless and controlled, deprived of dignity and independence. Legal Provisions I Maintain Were Violated in the Events Documented for 2001 German law • Basic Law, Article 1(1): protection of human dignity. • Basic Law, Article 2(1): free development of personality and personal autonomy. • Basic Law, Article 2(2): protection of life and physical integrity. • Basic Law, Article 19(4): effective judicial protection against violations by public authorities. • Basic Law, Article 20(3): binding the judiciary and executive authorities to law and justice. • Basic Law, Article 103(1): the right to be heard in court. • Administrative Court Procedure Act (VwGO), § 86(1): examination of the facts by the court on its own initiative. • VwGO, § 108(1)–(2): assessment of the proceedings as a whole, reasons for the court’s conclusions, and the opportunity to address the material relied upon. • VwGO, § 123: interim judicial protection. International human-rights law • European Convention on Human Rights, Article 2: right to life. • Article 3: prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment. • Article 8: protection of private life, personal integrity, and confidential medical information. • Article 13: right to an effective remedy. • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 12: right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including access to medical care. Additional Criminal-Law Provisions Relevant to My Allegations • German Criminal Code (StGB), § 223: bodily ill-treatment or damage to health. • StGB, § 240: coercion through violence or threats of serious harm. • StGB, § 225: mistreatment of persons under protection, where the required vulnerability and care or custody relationship existed. I invoke these provisions concerning my allegations of deliberate harm and coercion; their specific elements must be assessed under the law applicable in 2001. Rome Statute — Reference Concerning the Wider Alleged Course of Events • Article 6: genocide, requiring specific intent to destroy a protected national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part. • Article 7, including Article 7(1)(k): crimes against humanity, requiring the specified acts to form part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. • Article 11: temporal jurisdiction. The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over acts committed in 2001, before the Statute entered into force on 1 July 2002. I retain this reference for the assessment of subsequent events and their historical context, without presenting genocide or crimes against humanity as already established.