Home Game: A Football Playing Refugee Stuck In Immigration Limbo

Madiama Diop is a 29-year-old defender for the Würzburg Panthers, but only when they play at home. Diop has been training with the team all season, busting his bones on the field and bonding over beers off the clock. But because he's a Senegalese refugee seeking asylum in Germany, he isn't allowed to leave a few mile radius around the town he was assigned to—so away games are off limits for him. In Germany this is called "Residenzpflicht" ("residential obligation"), a law that makes sure refugees seeking asylum can't move around freely in the country to have a jolly good time, but rather stay put in whatever neck of the woods they were assigned to. To leave his district, Madiama Diop would need a permit from the local government, but they said playing football qualifies as having a jolly good time, so: no.

Refugee organizations and NGOs have been protesting this rule for years, calling it a human rights violation and demanding that the regulation, unique in Europe, be axed.

And now the Panthers have gotten pretty pissed about it as well. They say Madiama is part of their team and as such should be able to play in all of their games. So they started a petition demanding that he be allowed to travel with them however far they need to go (and we are talking 50 miles max here, it's a regional league). So far, 20,000 people have signed it.

I spoke to Martin Riethmüller, who's been playing with the Panthers since 2008 and is one of the people behind the petition, to find out why he's gotten involved and if he thinks this might actually change things for refugees in Germany beyond this one case.

VICE Sports: You started an online petition for a guy you had just met a couple of months before on your football team. Why did you do that?

Martin Riethmüller: It was pretty much a no brainer. Madiama started coming to our trainings a couple of months ago as part of a program that lets people seeking asylum in Germany join sports teams. He immediately became part of our team, he gave it all he had, and he's just generally a great guy. With the Panthers it's like this: once you are part of the team, you are part of the family. So not being able to take one of our players to a game because of a moronic rule that is completely outdated and is only enforced this strictly in Bavaria anyways—that was nothing we would just accept as a team.

So it's not just about him being a good player and you wanting to win?

He learns really quickly and at 6'3" and 220 pounds he's got a good build for football, but it's not about him being a strong player or not. We would have done this for everyone who is on our team.

In Bavaria the enforcement of this rule is particularly strict, people seeking asylum can't even move freely around the state as long as their procedure is still ongoing. How big is the radius that Madiama is allowed to move in?

He isn't allowed to leave the district around Würzburg, in this case Mittelfranken.

You play in a local league.

Yes, we play on the state level, so it's not even about traveling in Germany, just about going to the next city. We are talking about Bamberg, that's an hour drive. We just won our conference, which means we are now in the playoffs against Erdingen. But in this last crucial game in Bamberg, Madiama couldn't play with us, because it was a few miles north of the district border and that was outside of his range. We then made a formal request to the local government to give him a special permit to join us in the game, but they made it quite clear this was not going to happen. They were like: "Why do you even bother with him. It's not even clear if he's allowed to stay here." It was very telling.

What would happen if he'd just up and go with you anyway?

He'd be violating his "residential obligation". I am not an expert on this, but the lawyers say it could be used against him in his asylum case and could lead to him getting deported (Note: Asylum seekers violating this rule are committing a crime and can be fined up to 2,500 euros or even sent to jail after multiple violations.)

Madiama joined your team through an organization called Sports Without Borders. How did that work?

Stephan Rinke, the founder of Sports Without Borders, just brought him to training one day. I'm the one who's usually taking care of the new guys, it's not an official thing, I just do it. So I started hanging out with him, picking him up before training. The guys in the team raised some money for his equipment, because that's pretty expensive. He lives in the asylum-seekers home in Würzburg, where the refugee protest marches started in 2012.

Refugees marched from Würzburg to Berlin andcamped out in front of the Brandenburg Gate, to fight for the right to move in Germany freely, among other things.

Yeah, once you see the living conditions there, you understand why. We've had guys on the team who weren't interested in refugee politics at all. After visiting Madiama, they said, "Holy shit, how can you lock people away in a place like that."

Were you involved in refugee politics before you started the campaign?

No, not at all. I mean, I was interested in the topic. My mom had a friend who was seeking asylum from Iraq, so that was something that was in my family. But me wanting to get involved, that's just because of Madiama. After just a year and a half in Germany he speaks better German than anyone I know who's been here that long. He also speaks Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. He fled from Senegal when he was 19, so for the last ten years he's just been shipped from one country to another, never allowed to settle down, work, or build a life.

So, what do you hope to achieve through the petition?

First of all, it's about Madiama being able to travel with us to the away games—and not just the upcoming final, but all games during the next season. It's about him being an equal member of the team. So we feel that if he's training with us, and still has the chance to do that during next season, he should be able to play in all games.

In the long run, it's obviously about more than that. We want to use the media attention around this right now to improve his chances at actually being able to stay in Germany. We have two lawyers who are taking care of his asylum petition right now. He's one of us, so we are going to walk this walk as a team.

Sounds like you have a very strong team spirit. Is that a football thing?

No, I think it's mostly the Panthers. I've been playing with the team for six years now and I've never experienced anything like this in another team before, it's spectacular. People are getting tattoos of their jersey numbers. If one of us is moving, everybody shows up. I literally had to force half of the team to stay at home the last time I moved because my apartment was already too crowded to even get the boxes and furniture out the door. We just get along really well.

Refugee organizations and NGOs like Pro Asyl and the Protestant Church have all called to axe this rule, claiming it's mostly there to bully refugees and deter asylum seekers from coming to Germany.

That's 100 percent the case. You just have to look at the situation right now. The enforcement of the rule is different from state to state. Exceptions can be made whenever there's a lot of media attention, like for the protest march in 2012. They say the rule is in place to keep people from going off the radar, but anybody who'd want to do that would do it anyways.

According to the hardliners advocating the rule, it's there to make sure the asylum seekers are available at all times and speed along their asylum process.

The officials are hiding behind the existing law. It's purely arbitrary. Whether or not exceptions are made is entirely up to the discretion of the individual case worker. If it would've been another day and another guy who just signed the petition, we wouldn't even be talking about this right now.

The ruling Grand Coalition has agreed to make regulations a bit laxer so that refugees can move freely within their own state. In most states this is already the case. It's pretty much just Bavaria and Saxony once again upping their profile as conservative hardliners by being tough on this. Do you hope your petition will help to move things along?

We were pretty surprised by how many waves we made with this. But sure, we all agree that this rule is ridiculously outdated and should go. So if we can get people thinking about this and help to make this a thing of the past, then we'd be very happy.

What's next for you?

We have the playoff game in September against the Erdingen Bulls, who are also supporting us on this by the way. That's going to be in Würzburg, so Madiama can join us. But if we win, the final match will most likely be an away game. After playing with us the entire season and busting his bones, he may not be allowed to play in the final, which would suck. We really need this to work.

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