This article was published by Al Jazeera International.
Europe’s increasingly hardline refugee policy is raising concerns about
the transparency of search and rescue in the Mediterranean, now that all
vessels operated by aid organisations have been put out of action.
Panamanian authorities informed Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Sunday
that they would revoke the registration of its vessel, the Aquarius, even as it
plied the waters with 58 rescued asylum-seekers on board. It was the last
non-state search and rescue vessel in operation.
“We’re looking for whatever flag will allow the ship to do its job…
We’re in this process [of applying] to all [EU] member states,” Apostolos
Veizis, head of MSF programmes in Greece, told Al Jazeera.
“Europe’s policy now is quite clearly pushbacks, border closure and
detention,” he added. MSF has publicly blamed Italy for pressing the Panamanian government to
revoke the Aquarius’ flag.
The far-right Italian government, which took office on June 1, has
impounded private search and rescue vessels, accusing the organisations that
operate them of collusion with smugglers.
And now that state-controlled coast guard vessels control search and
rescue in the Mediterranean, Italy is urging the rest of the European Union to
give them greater discretionary powers to process asylum-seekers offshore.
Earlier this month, the Italian and Austrian interior ministers floated
a plan to conduct rapid screenings at sea.
“For those who manage to make it into a European state’s
territorial waters and are then picked up by a ship, we should use the ships to
carry out the appropriate checks on whether they deserve protection,” said Austrian
Interior Minister Herbert Kickl, estimating that the process should take “a few
days”.
He did not clarify how rejected applicants would be disposed
of.
Human rights and aid organisations tell Al Jazeera they have their
doubts about the legal and moral rectitude of such a procedure.
“I think the main goal is to close the Mediterranean front. The
Libya-Italy route is where this mainly applies, and it would legalise the
return to Libya of a large number of people,” says Vasilis Papastergiou, deputy
head of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, Greece’s top human rights
watchdog. “This may greatly reduce the number of asylum applicants. But is that
the goal? If so, one can simply close the border or do pushbacks… It’s a form
of effectiveness that violates international agreements.”
Pushbacks are forced returns of potential asylum-seekers to countries
where they may face violence or persecution, and are illegal under the 1951
Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees, the main international pact
governing refugee rights.
Beyond the legal and ethical issues, many express doubts about the
practicalities of processing traumatized asylum-seekers on board a packed
vessel.
“I think you need to be prepared to ask… whether or not people being
held in potentially difficult conditions on board can give an accurate and
clear picture of why they are fleeing violence and why they need protection,”
says Susan Fratzke from the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, “whether
or not they would receive a fair hearing given their own mental state and given
the conditions they are in.”
“A
ship is not a place to process a proper asylum claim. To hold refugees in
detention is also not allowed,” says Axel Steier, head of the aid group Mission
Lifeline. Its eponymous ship was impounded by Maltese authorities last July,
after Italian authorities refused to let it dock and opened a judicial
investigation into the group. Al Jazeera witnessed the ship’s entry into
Valetta after it had spent six days at sea with 233 asylum-seekers on board,
its decks thronged with men, women and children.
Italy’s populist government has not only been instrumental in quashing
private search and rescue (see chart 1);
it has even prevented its own coastguard vessels from bringing asylum-seekers
on land. On August 20, Italian coastguard ship Diciotti was allowed to enter
Catania harbour after six days at sea, but 177 refugees, including 34 children,
were not allowed to disembark until other EU countries pledged to take them.
“The proposal is chilling… It is ludicrous to suggest in
this situation of mass influx that any asylum application, for eligibility or
admissibility, can be determined ‘in a few days’,” says Ariel Ricker, who
founded Advocates Abroad, a legal aid NGO with 250 lawyers active in Greece and
the Middle East. “Should this proposal become reality, then these officials may
find that this ‘ship of refugees’ will be flanked by ships of lawyers,
dedicated to refugee protection and exposure of ongoing illegality. Advocates
Abroad attorneys will certainly be present.”
Greek Migration Minister Dimitris Vitsas declined to comment
for this story, but in an interview for the Greek newspaper Epohi, he drew a distinction between
“well-meant” and “ill-meant” proposals within the EU.
A senior Greek government source who wished to remain
anonymous called the Austro-Italian proposal an “illegal stopgap that runs
against human rights and the Geneva Convention, and is practically extremely
difficult.”
A history
of bizarre proposals
Unorthodox proposals for dealing with the refugee crisis are nothing new
to Europe. Meetings of interior
ministers and government leaders at the height of the crisis in 2015 produced
bizarre proposals that revealed the level of panic in the room.
At that time, Greece was the
main conduit for refugees crossing the Aegean from Asia. Former Greek migration
minister Yannis Mouzalas recently revealed to Al Jazeera that he was accused of
failing to protect Greece’s– and Europe’s– external maritime borders, despite
the fact that member states weren’t at that time responding to the Hellenic
Coast Guard’s requests for additional patrol boats and thermal cameras.
“One delegate suggested, ‘Why
don’t you just sink the [refugee] boats?’ prompting the outburst, ‘I can’t
f***ing believe it!’ from EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica
Mogherini, before she stormed out of the room,” Mouzalas told Al Jazeera.
Mouzalas loaded two dozen
ambassadors from EU countries onto a coastguard vessel and sped them to the
international waterline between Greek and Turkish coasts. “This is the maritime
border,” he told them. “Tell me how to defend it.”
On two occasions, Mouzalas
travelled to the Netherlands to inspect floating platforms that would, if deployed,
house hundreds of refugees and the authorities that would process their asylum
claims. Greece never used these platforms, but the idea was still being
discussed earlier this year, Greek government sources tell Al Jazeera.
At the December 2015 EU
summit, Greece was asked to build a concentration camp for 50,000 refugees – a
proposal it parried with a suggestion that the EU subsidise refugee rentals in
Greece’s ample vacant real estate.
A year later, Czech
President Milos Zeman thought that Greece should populate its thousands of
rocky islets with refugees, a fate Greece has only ever imposed on political
exiles during the Cold War.
The Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman even suggested that the EU outsource its refugee problem entirely to Greece, in return for substantial debt relief.
The Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman even suggested that the EU outsource its refugee problem entirely to Greece, in return for substantial debt relief.
Rising fatalities
As these political battles play out in Europe, the fatality rate in
Mediterranean crossings is rising, even as the number of attempted crossings
falls.
The EU-Turkey statement in 2016 and a bilateral agreement whereby Italy
provided coast guard ships and training to Libya last year, have reduced
refugee flows to Europe by 96 percent compared to 2015. Over the same period fatalities have steadily mounted
from 0.37 percent of people crossing three years ago, to 2.2 percent so far
this year (see chart 2).
The pattern seems clear: the more Europe discourages asylum-seekers, the more desperate the attempts of those who continue to try. A UNHCR report this month called the Mediterranean “one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings”.
The pattern seems clear: the more Europe discourages asylum-seekers, the more desperate the attempts of those who continue to try. A UNHCR report this month called the Mediterranean “one of the world’s deadliest sea crossings”.
A separate Oxford University report earlier this month took a broadside at European
policymakers, saying recent migration policies “seek to limit irregular
migration regardless of the moral, legal and humanitarian consequences.”
Aid organisations,
including MSF and Lifeline, believe that giving national coast guards a
monopoly on search and rescue will deprive real asylum-seekers of protection
and make bad decisions unreviewable. “What we’re doing now is saying, ‘we follow
procedures, we are for the rule of law, we are for human rights’,” says the
MSF’s Veizis, “but in reality these things are defunct.”
Chart 1
Chronology: How Italy discontinued
private SAR
24 April Carmelo
Zuccaro, chief prosecutor of Catania, tells La Stampa he has evidence that NGOs
are working with smugglers to bring refugees to Italy.
1 June League
and Five Star Movement swear in govt in Rome. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini
immediately travels to Pozzallo, Sicily and declares that the island has become
a refugee camp for Europe, vows to send half a million undocumented migrants
home.
12 June Spain
allows 629 asylum seekers to be transferred from Aquarius to other boats and be
received in Valencia, after Aquarius is refused in Malta and Italy for days,
and its crew says the 3-5 day journey to Spain would be too dangerous.
27 June MV
Lifeline with 233 refugees berths in Malta after being refused for six days in
Italy and Spain. Macron implies private SAR helps smugglers. It is one of two
boats with refugees at the same time. A Danish cargo ship rescues 113.
29 June European
Council agrees to set up disembarkation platforms outside EU, closed centres in
EU, and strengthen Italy’s bilateral agreement with Libya by supplying LCG with
resources
4 July Boat
operated by NGO Proactiva Open Arms docks in Barcelona with 60 migrants after
being refused in Malta and Italy for four days.
17 July Italian
PM Giuseppe Conte writes to Tusk and Juncker asking them to set up a permanent
mediation mechanism to share burden of asylum seekers rescued in the
Mediterranean. Reported in Bloomberg.
30 July Italian
prosecutors in Trapani, Sicily, opened investigation into alleged smuggling
activities by 20 German workers on SAR ships.
15 August Aquarius
rescue ship allowed to dock in Malta with 141 asylum-seekers after 5 days at
sea, after pledges are made by France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain
to share caseload.
20 August Italian
CG ship Diciotti allowed to enter Catania harbour on Monday night after six
days at sea, but 177 refugees including 34 children were not allowed to
disembark until other EU countries pledged to take them. https://www.apnews.com/9e8d39de948642988cb76ae0ae3e8007
10 September MSF
reports more than 100 drowned after their dinghy sank off Malta. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/libya-more-100-dead-shipwreck
14 September Salvini,
Herbert Kickl, interior ministers of Italy, Austria, hold press conference
suggesting rapid screening of refugees at sea.
Chart 2
Recorded Mediterranean Deaths
Year / Fatalities / Annual
tally of Sea Arrivals / Percentage of fatalities
2015 3,771 / 1,015,078 / 0.37pc
2016 5,096 / 362,753 / 1.4pc
2017 3,119 / 172,301 / 1.8pc
2018 1,719 / 78,281 / 2.2pc
In 2015, with over a million refugees arriving
in Europe, fatalities amounted to 3,771, or 0.37 percent. Fatalities rose the
following year despite a two-thirds drop in arrivals, representing 1.4 percent.
Last year arrivals fell by half again, but fatalities rose to 1.8 percent. This
year fatalities have risen to 2.2 percent.
Source: UNHCR http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean
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