/post

En fait, en regardant mieux « notre » carte je me rends compte que peut-être le centre que nous avons identifié comme « #Feres » est en réalité le centre que les auteur·es appellent Poros... les deux localités sont à moins de 5 km l’une de l’autre.
J’ai écrit aux auteur·es...

Réponse de Bernd Kasparek, 12.03.2020 :

Since we have been in front of Poros detention centre, we are certain that it is a distinct entity from the Feres police station, which, as you rightly observe, is also often implicated in reports about push-backs.

Réponse de Lena Karamanidou le 13.03.2020 :

Feres is located here: ▻https://goo.gl/maps/gQn15Hdfwo4f3cno6​ , and it’s a much more modern facility (see photo, complete with ubiquitous military van!). However, ​I’m not entirely certain when the new Feres station was built - I think there was an older police station, but then both police and border guard functions were transfered to the new building. Something for me to check in obscure news items and databases!

‘We Are Like Animals’ : Inside Greece’s Secret Site for Migrants

The extrajudicial center is one of several tactics Greece is using to prevent a repeat of the 2015 migration crisis.

https://i.imgur.com/pow2oHS.png

The Greek government is detaining migrants incommunicado at a secret extrajudicial location before expelling them to Turkey without due process, one of several hard-line measures taken to seal the borders to Europe that experts say violate international law.

Several migrants said in interviews that they had been captured, stripped of their belongings, beaten and expelled from Greece without being given a chance to claim asylum or speak to a lawyer, in an illegal process known as refoulement. Meanwhile, Turkish officials said that at least three migrants had been shot and killed while trying to enter Greece in the past two weeks.

The Greek approach is the starkest example of European efforts to prevent a reprise of the 2015 migration crisis in which more than 850,000 undocumented people passed relatively easily through Greece to other parts of Europe, roiling the Continent’s politics and fueling the rise of the far right.

If thousands more refugees reach Greece, Greek officials fear being left to care for them for years, with little support from other members in the European Union, exacerbating social tensions and further fraying a strained economy. Tens of thousands of migrants already live in squalor on several Greek islands, and many Greeks feel they have been left to shoulder a burden created by wider European indifference.

The Greek government has defended its actions as a legitimate response to recent provocations by the Turkish authorities, who have transported thousands of migrants to the Greek-Turkish border since late February and have encouraged some to charge and dismantle a border fence.

The Greek authorities have denied reports of deaths along the border. A spokesman for the Greek government, Stelios Petsas, did not comment on the existence of the site, but said that Greece detained and expelled migrants in accordance with local law. An act passed March 3, by presidential decree, suspended asylum applications for a month and allowed immediate deportations.

But through a combination of on-the-ground reporting and forensic analysis of satellite imagery, The Times has confirmed the existence of the secret center in northeastern Greece.

Presented with diagrams of the site and a description of its operations, François Crépeau, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, said it was the equivalent of a domestic “black site,” since detainees are kept in secret and without access to legal recourse.

Using footage supplied to several media outlets, The Times has also established that the Greek Coast Guard, nominally a lifesaving institution, fired shots in the direction of migrants onboard a dinghy that was trying to reach Greek shores early this month, beat them with sticks and sought to repel them by driving past them at high speed, risking tipping them into water.

Forensic analysis of videos provided by witnesses also confirmed the death of at least one person — a Syrian factory worker — after he was shot on the Greek-Turkish border.
A Secret Site

When Turkish officials began to bus migrants to the Greek border on Feb. 28, a Syrian Kurd named Somar al-Hussein had a seat on one of the first coaches.

Turkey already hosts more refugees than any other country — over four million, mostly Syrians — and fears that it may be forced to admit another million because of a recent surge in fighting in northern Syria. To alleviate this pressure, and to force Europe to do more to help, it has weaponized refugees like Mr. al-Hussein by shunting them toward the Continent.

Mr. al-Hussein, a trainee software engineer, spent that night in the rain on the bank of the Evros River, which divides western Turkey from eastern Greece. Early the next morning, he reached the Greek side in a rubber dinghy packed with other migrants.

But his journey ended an hour later, he said in a recent interview. Captured by Greek border guards, he said, he and his group were taken to a detention site. Following the group’s journey on his mobile phone, he determined that the site was a few hundred yards east of the border village of Poros.

The site consisted principally of three red-roofed warehouses set back from a farm road and arranged in a U-shape. Hundreds of other captured migrants waited outside. Mr. al-Hussein was taken indoors and crammed into a room with dozens of others.

His phone was confiscated to prevent him from making calls, he said, and his requests to claim asylum and contact United Nations officials were ignored.

“To them, we are like animals,” Mr. al-Hussein said of the Greek guards.

After a night without food or drink, on March 1 Mr. al-Hussein and dozens of others were driven back to the Evros River, where Greek police officers ferried them back to the Turkish side in a small speedboat.

Mr. al-Hussein was one of several migrants to provide similar accounts of extrajudicial detentions and expulsions, but his testimony was the most detailed.

By cross-referencing drawings, descriptions and satellite coordinates that he provided, The Times was able to locate the detention center — in farmland between Poros and the river.

A former Greek official familiar with police operations confirmed the existence of the site, which is not classified as a detention facility but is used informally during times of high migration flows.

On Friday, three Times journalists were stopped at a roadblock near the site by uniformed police officers and masked special forces officers.

The site’s existence was also later confirmed by Respond, a Sweden-based research group.

https://i.imgur.com/0nz4Xwl.png

Mr. Crépeau, now a professor of international law at McGill University, said the center represented a violation of the right to seek asylum and “the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and of European Union law.”
Violence at Sea

Hundreds of miles to the south, in the straits of the Aegean Sea between the Turkish mainland and an archipelago of Greek islands, the Greek Coast Guard is also using force.

On March 2, a Coast Guard ship violently repelled an inflatable dinghy packed with migrants, in an incident that Turkish officials captured on video, which they then distributed to the press.

The footage shows the Coast Guard vessel and an unmarked speedboat circling the dinghy. A gunman on one boat shot at least twice into waters by the dinghy, with what appeared to be a rifle, before men from both vessels shoved and struck the dinghy with long black batons.

It is not clear from the footage whether the man was firing live or non-lethal rounds.

Mr. Petsas, the government spokesman, did not deny the incident, but said the Coast Guard did not fire live rounds.

The larger Greek boat also sought to tip the migrants into the water by driving past them at high speed.
Forensic analysis by The Times shows that the incident took place near the island of Kos after the migrants had clearly entered Greek waters.

“The action of Greek Coast Guard ships trying to destabilize the refugees’ fragile dinghies, thus putting at risk the life and security of their passengers, is also a violation,” said Mr. Crépeau, the former United Nations official.
A Killing on Land

The most contested incident concerns the lethal shooting of Mohammed Yaarub, a 22-year-old Syrian from Aleppo who tried to cross Greece’s northern land border with Turkey last week.

The Greek government has dismissed his death as “fake news” and denied that anyone has died at the border during the past week.

An analysis of videos, coupled with interviews with witnesses, confirmed that Mr. Yaarub was killed on the morning of March 2 on the western bank of the Evros River.

Mr. Yaarub had lived in Turkey for five years, working at a shoe factory, according to Ali Kamal, a friend who was traveling with him. The two friends crossed the Evros on the night of March 1 and camped with a large group of migrants on the western bank of the river.

By a cartographical quirk, they were still in Turkey: Although the river mostly serves as the border between the two countries, this small patch of land is one of the few parts of the western bank that belongs to Turkey rather than Greece.

Mr. Kamal last saw his friend alive around 7:30 a.m. the next morning, when the group began walking to the border. The two men were separated, and soon Greek security forces blocked them, according to another Syrian man who filmed the aftermath of the incident and was later interviewed by The Times. He asked to remain anonymous because he feared retribution.

During the confrontation, Mr. Yaarub began speaking to the men who were blocking their path and held up a white shirt, saying that he came in peace, the Syrian man said.

Shortly afterward, Mr. Yaarub was shot.

There is no known video of the moment of impact, but several videos captured his motionless body being carried away from the Greek border and toward the river.

https://i.imgur.com/wplW6zN.png

Several migrants who were with Mr. Yaarub at the time of his death said a Greek security officer had shot him.

Using video metadata and analyzing the position of the sun, The Times confirmed that he was shot around 8:30 a.m., matching a conclusion reached by Forensic Architecture, an investigative research group.

https://i.imgur.com/BPsvclq.png

Video shows that it took other migrants about five minutes to ferry Mr. Yaarub’s body back across the river and to a car. He was then taken to an ambulance and later a Turkish hospital.

https://i.imgur.com/Z3hjrhH.png

An analysis of other footage shot elsewhere on the border showed that Greek security forces used lethal and non-lethal ammunition in other incidents that day, likely fired from a mix of semiautomatic and assault rifles.
E.U. Support for Greece

Mr. Petsas, the government spokesman, defended Greece’s tough actions as a reasonable response to “an asymmetrical and hybrid attack coming from a foreign country.”

Besides ferrying migrants to the border, the Turkish police also fired tear-gas canisters in the direction of Greek security forces and stood by as migrants dismantled part of a border fence, footage filmed by a Times journalist showed.

Before this evidence of violence and secrecy had surfaced, Greece won praise from leaders of the European Union, who visited the border on March 3.

“We want to express our support for all you did with your security services for the last days,” said Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, the bloc’s top decision-making body.

The European Commission, the bloc’s administrative branch, said that it was “not in a position to confirm or deny” The Times’s findings, and called on the Greek justice system to investigate.

►https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/world/europe/greece-migrants-secret-site.html

►https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/world/europe/greece-migrants-secret-site.html

#Mohammed_Yaarub #décès #mourir_aux_frontières

Grécia nega existência de centro de detenção “secreto” onde os migrantes são tratados “como animais”

New York Times citou vários migrantes que dizem ter sido roubados e agredidos pelos guardas fronteiriços, antes de deportados para a Turquia. Erdogan compara gregos aos nazis.

Primeiro recusou comentar, mas pouco mais de 24 horas depois o Governo da Grécia refutou totalmente a notícia do New York Times. Foi esta a sequência espaçada da reacção de Atenas ao artigo do jornal norte-americano, publicado na terça-feira, que deu conta da existência de um centro de detenção “secreto”, perto da localidade fronteiriça de Poros, onde muitos dos milhares de migrantes que vieram da Turquia, nos últimos dias, dizem ter sido roubados, despidos e agredidos, impedidos de requerer asilo ou de contactar um advogado, e deportados, logo de seguida, pelos guardas fronteiriços gregos.
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“Para eles somos como animais”, acusou Somar al-Hussein, sírio, um dos migrantes entrevistados pelo diário nova-iorquino, que entrou na Grécia através do rio Evros e que diz ter sido alvo de tratamento abusivo no centro de detenção “secreto”.

“Não há nenhum centro de detenção secreto na Grécia”, garantiu, no entanto, esta quarta-feira, Stelios Petsas, porta-voz do executivo grego. “Todas as questões relacionadas com a protecção e a segurança das fronteiras são transparentes. A Constituição está a ser aplicada e não há nada de secreto”, insistiu.

Com jornalistas no terreno, impedidos de entrar no local por soldados gregos, o New York Times entrevistou diversos migrantes que dizem ter sido ali alvo de tratamento desumano, analisou imagens de satélite, informou-se junto de um centro de estudos sueco sobre migrações que opera na zona e falou com um antigo funcionário grego familiarizado com as operações policiais fronteiriças. Informação que diz ter-lhe permitido confirmar a existência do centro.

▻https://www.publico.pt/2020/03/11/mundo/noticia/grecia-nega-existencia-centro-detencao-secreto-onde-migrantes-sao-tratados-a

#paywall

Greece : Rights watchdogs report spike in violent push-backs on border with Turkey

A Balkans-based network of human rights organizations says that the number of migrants pushed back from Greece into Turkey has spiked in recent weeks. The migrants allegedly reported beatings and violent collective expulsions from inland detention spaces to Turkey on boats across the Evros River.

Greek officers “forcefully pushed [people] in the van while the policemen were kicking them with their legs and shouting at them.” Then, the migrants were detained, forced to sign untranslated documents and pushed back across the Evros River at night. Over the next few days, Turkish authorities returned them to Greece, but then they were pushed back again.

This account from 50 Afghans, Pakistanis, Syrians and Algerians aged between 15 and 35 years near the town of Edirne at the Greek-Turkish border was one of at least seven accounts a network of Balkans-based human rights watchdogs says it received from refugees over the course of six weeks, between March and late April.

The collection of reports (▻https://www.borderviolence.eu/press-release-documented-pushbacks-from-centres-on-the-greek-mainland), published last week by the Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), with help from its members Mobile Info Team (MIT) and Wave Thessaloniki, consists of “first-hand testimonies and photographic evidence” which the network says shows “violent collective expulsions” of migrants and refugees. According to the network, the number of individuals who were pushed back in groups amount to 194 people.
▻https://twitter.com/mobileinfoteam/status/1257632384348020737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12

Without exception, according to the report, all accounts come from people staying in the refugee camp in Diavata and the Drama Paranesti pre-removal detention center. They included Afghans, Pakistanis, Algerians and Moroccans, as well as Bangladeshi, Tunisian and Syrian nationals.

In the case of Diavata, according to the report, migrants said police took them away, telling them they would receive a document known as “Khartia” to regularize their stay temporarily. The Diavata camp is located near the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki.

Instead, the migrants were “beaten, robbed and detained before being driven to the border area where military personnel used boats to return them to Turkey across the Evros River,” they said. Another large group reported that they were taken from detention in Drama Paranesti, also located in northern Greece, some 80 kilometers from the border with Turkey, and expelled in the same way.

While such push-backs from Greece into Turkey are not new, the network of NGOs says the latest incidents are somewhat different: “Rarely have groups been removed from inner-city camps halfway across the territory or at such a scale from inland detention spaces,” Simon Campbell of the Border Violence Monitoring Network told InfoMigrants.

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/477d9959f60efe3115741cccd16f265ccb9511e4.jpeg

“Within the existing closure of the Greek asylum office and restriction measures due to COVID-19, the repression of asylum seekers and wider transit community looks to have reached a zenith in these cases,” Campbell said.

Although Greece last month lifted a controversial temporary ban on asylum applications imposed in response to an influx of refugees from Turkey, all administrative services to the public by the Greek Asylum Service were suspended on March 13.

The suspension, which the Asylum Service said serves to “control the spread of COVID-19” pandemic, will continue at least through May 15.

▻https://twitter.com/GreekAsylum/status/1248651007489433600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12

Reports of violence and torture

The accounts in the report by the network of NGOs describe a range of violent actions toward migrants, from electricity tasers and water immersion to beatings with batons.

According to one account, some 50 people were taken from Diavata camp to a nearby police station, where they were ordered to lie on the ground and told to “sleep here, don’t move.” Then they were beaten with batons, while others were attacked with tasers.

They were held overnight in a detention space near the border, and beaten further by Greek military officers. The next day, they were boated across the river to Turkey by authorities with ’military uniform, masks, guns, electric [taser].’"

Another group reported that they were “unloaded in the dark” next to the Evros River and “ordered to strip to their underwear.” Greek authorities allegedly used batons and their fists to hit some members of the group.

Alexandra Bogos, advocacy officer with the Mobile Info Team, told InfoMigrants they were concerned about the “leeway afforded for these push-backs from the inner mainland to take place.”

Bogos said they reached out to police departments after they learned about the arrests, but police felt “unencumbered” and continued transporting the people to the Greek-Turkish border. “On one occasion, we reached out and asked specifically for information about one individual. The answer was: ’He does not appear in our system’,” Bogos said.

▻https://twitter.com/juliahahntv/status/1246165904406261773?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12

An Amnesty report (▻https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur01/2077/2020/en) from April about unlawful push-backs, beatings and arbitrary detention echoes the accusations in the report by the network of NGOs.

History of forcible rejections

Over the past three years, violent push-backs have been documented in several reports. Last November, German news magazine Spiegel reported that between 2017 and 2018 Greece illegally deported 60,000 migrants to Turkey. The process involved returning asylum seekers without assessing their status. Greece dismissed the accusations.

In 2018, the Greek Refugee Council and other NGOs published a report containing testimonies from people who said they had been beaten, sometimes by masked men, and sent back to Turkey (►https://www.gcr.gr/en/news/press-releases-announcements/item/1028-the-new-normality-continuous-push-backs-of-third-country-nationals-on-the-e).

UN refugee agency UNHCR and the European Human Rights Commissioner called on Greece to investigate the claims. In late 2018, another report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), also based on testimonies of migrants, said that violent push-backs were continuing (►https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/18/greece-violent-pushbacks-turkey-border).

It is often unclear who is carrying out the push-backs because they often wear masks and cannot be easily identified. In the HRW report, they are described as paramilitaries. Eyewitnesses interviewed by HRW said the perpetrators “looked like police officers or soldiers, as well as some unidentified masked men.”

Simon Campbell of the Border Violence Monitoring Network said the reports he receives also regularly describe “military uniforms,” which “suggests it is the Greek army carrying out the push-backs,” he told InfoMigrants.

Last week, the Spiegel published an investigation into the killing of Pakistani Muhammad Gulzar (►https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-turkish-border-the-killing-of-muhammad-gulzar-a-7652ff68-8959-4e0d-910), who was shot at the Greek-Turkish border on March 4. “Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the bullet came from a Greek firearm,” the authors wrote.

Violations of EU and international law

Push-backs are prohibited by Greek and EU law as well as international treaties and agreements. They also violate the principle of non-refoulement, which means the forcible return of a person to a country where they are likely to be subject to persecution.

In March, Jürgen Bast, professor for European law at the University of Gießen in Germany, called the action of Greek security forces an “open breach of the law” on German TV magazine Monitor.

Greece is not the only country accused of violating EU laws at the bloc’s external border: On top of the 100 additional border guards the European border and coast guard agency Frontex deployed to the Greek border with Turkey in March, Germany sent 77 police officers to help with border security.
Professor Bast called Berlin’s involvement a “complete political joint responsibility” of the German government. “All member states of the European Union...including the Commission...have decided to ignore the validity of European law,” he told Monitor.

In response to a request for comment from InfoMigrants, a spokesperson for EU border and coast guard agency Frontex would confirm neither the reports by the three NGOs nor the existence of systematic push-backs from Greece to Turkey.

“Frontex has not received any reports of such violations from the officers involved in its activities in Greece,” the spokesperson said, adding that its officers’ job is to “support member states and to ensure the rule of law.”

Coronavirus used as a pretext?

On the afternoon of May 5, as the network of NGOs published their report on push-backs, police reportedly rounded up 26-year-old Pakistani national Sheraz Khan outside the Diavata refugee camp. After sending the Mobile Info Team (MIT) a message telling them “Police caught us,” he tried calling the NGO twice, but the connection failed both times.

MIT’s Alexandra Bogos told InfoMigrants that Khan has not been heard of since and he has not returned to the camp. “We have strong reasons to believe that he may have been pushed back to Turkey,” Bogos said.

A day later, the police arrived in the morning and “started removing tents and structures set up in an overflow area” outside the Diavata camp.

Simon Campbell of the Border Violence Monitoring Network said the restrictive measures taken as a response to the coronavirus pandemic have been used to remove those who have crossed the border.

“COVID-19 has been giving the Greek authorities a blank cheque to act with more impunity,” Campbell told InfoMigrants. “When Covid-19 restrictions lift, will we have already seen this more expansive push-back practice entrenched, and will it persist beyond the lockdown?”

►https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/24620/greece-rights-watchdogs-report-spike-in-violent-push-backs-on-border-w

Spaces of Detention at the Greek-Turkish Land Border

Guest post by Lena Karamanidou, Bernd Kasparek and Simon Campbell. Lena Karamanidou is a researcher at the Department of Economics and Law, Glasgow Caledonian University. Her recent work has focused on the EU border agency Frontex, pushbacks and border violence at the Greek-Turkish land border. Simon Campbell is a field coordinator with the Border Violence Monitoring Network, a collective of organisations and initiatives based in South Eastern Europe documenting pushbacks and violence within state borders. Bernd Kasparek is an undisciplined cultural anthropologist, with a focus on migration and border studies, europeanisation, racism and (digital) infrastructures. His book “Europa als Grenze” (Europe as Border), an ethnography of the European border agency Frontex is forthcoming in Summer 2021.

https://i.imgur.com/41du4Cs.png https://i.imgur.com/YE7w1xs.png

The local coach from Alexandroupoli to Orestiada, the two largest towns in Evros, the region of the Greek-Turkish border, passes outside two border guard stations: Tychero and Neo Cheimonio [images 1 & 2]. Their function as detention spaces is barely discernible from the road; without the Hellenic police signs and vehicles outside, the Tychero border guard station could be mistaken for the wheat warehouse it once was. The train between the two cities, though, passes behind the Tychero facility; from there you can see a gated structure at the back of the station, resembling prison railings, which may have been used as a kind of ‘outside space’ for detainees. Reports by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and the Greek Council for Refugees criticised the absence of outside space and conditions of detention (described sarcastically as ‘best of the best’ by a police officer interviewed by one of the authors in 2011).

https://i.imgur.com/p2O52aC.png

Although the Greek government announced the closure of the Tychero station in 2013, after several critical reports on conditions of detention there, it continued to be used as a detention space. While detention facilities may be perceived as stable, permanent or at least long-term structures at the core of European border regimes, their histories in Evros suggest temporal, spatial and functional disruptions. The creation of detention facilities since the 1990s appeared to be ad hoc, reflecting the increasing significance of the area as a key entry point to the European Union and the Europeanisation of border management both nationally and locally.

https://i.imgur.com/Lmi4KcE.png

Spaces for detention were created out of existing facilities such as cells in local police stations and in border guard stations. The latter were established in 1999 - some of which are housed together with police stations, like in the towns of Feres [image 3] and Soufli, and others in separate facilities as in the villages of Tychero, Isaakio and Neo Cheimonio. While it is difficult to find specific information on their history, some detention facilities emerged early in the 2000s, for example in the village of Venna in the Rhodopi prefecture near the boundary with Evros. The Fylakio facility [image 4] was established as a detention centre in 2007 before being renamed a pre-removal centre following legal reforms in 2012. Yet, detention capacity in the area never quite met the needs imposed by the extensive use of detention as an instrument of control. Until the early 2010s, ad hoc, makeshift structures and centres were used at different times in Feres and at the villages of Dikaia, Vrissika [image 5], Elafochori [image 6] and Peplos – all now closed, as well as the one in Venna. The #Venna, #Peplos, #Vrissika, #Elafochori and #Tychero facilities, as well as the temporary Feres structure referred to in the 1999 CPT report, were all repurposed wheat warehouses, formerly property of a state agricultural agency closed down in the early 1990s.

https://i.imgur.com/0e87BYa.png https://i.imgur.com/xWAmqss.png

The facilities mentioned above are official ones. Their function can be traced in official documents – Greek, European and international - as well as in reports by NGOs and human rights organisations and research. However, they are not the only spaces where people may be detained in the area. One example of a ‘quasi-official’ place is the detention facility in Poros [image 7]. Originally a military structure that was converted into a ‘reception’ facility where screening, identification and debriefing procedures took place in 2012, by the late 2010s the centre had fallen into obscurity. From 2015 until 2020, there was little evidence of its use other than a few administrative documents and media reports, and it is unclear when its function switched from a reception to a detention facility. It was only in 2020, through research, investigations and journalism that the Poros facility became ‘known’ again, coinciding with the border spectacle in Evros that year. The government denied that the facility was ‘secret’ – ‘if the New York Times know about it, then I don’t see how such a detention centre can be a secret’, stated the government spokesman. Yet, the CPT described the facility as ‘semi-official’ and supported claims that it was used as a holding facility prior to pushbacks, given ‘the complete absence of any registration of detention’.

https://i.imgur.com/wSM966T.png

To date, Poros is probably the only facility whose use as a ‘hidden’ detention centre was revealed . Testimonial evidence collected by NGOs and research organisations (for example here, here and here) suggests that detention in informal facilities prior to pushbacks may be a common practice in the area. These sites are used to hold groups captured within the footfall area of the border, but also to receive detainees transferred from across the Greek interior, from urban areas, police stations, and pre-removal detention facilities. Their aggregate role in pooling people-on-the-move prior to pushbacks to Turkey is also intimated by their bare functional layout [image 8]. Several testimonies of people who have been pushed back from Evros to Turkey refer to detention in buildings that did not appear to be police or border guard stations, and were not properly equipped with toilets, running water or beds. The holding cells recounted in these testimonies were composed of fenced yards, portacabins, warehouses, garages, and even animal pens:

“the room did not look like a normal prison or police station but more like a stable”

“They drove us to an old room close to the river. It was a stable. It didn’t have a proper floor, but dirt”.

https://i.imgur.com/PQ4MqvE.png

This unofficial repurposing of agrarian or semi-industrial outbuildings for detention in some senses mirrors the improvised architecture Greek authorities used to expand its official sites in Evros from the 90s onwards. Yet without the formal authorisation, nor the visual signifiers demarcating these sites, the web of new – and possibly old - unofficial detention centres are extremely difficult to locate. People detained there often do not know the exact location because of the way they are transported. Speaking to people who had likely been detained in Tychero, testimonies published by the Border Violence Monitoring Network described how “since the vehicle had no windows, the respondent could not see the building from the outside.” For researchers and investigators, geolocating these sites has become a near impossible task, not only because of the secrecy that characterises the practices of pushbacks and the risks of in situ research, but also because of multiple potential locations and a large number of buildings that could serve as informal detention facilities.

Detention in Greece has been a core technique for governing migration, reflecting policies of illegalisation and criminalising unauthorised entry, even if deportations, which provided one of the key reasons for detention, were not feasible. However, the linkages between detention and pushbacks at the Greek – Turkish border illustrate how the governance of borders relies on assemblages of both formal and informal practices and infrastructures. The proliferation of these structures, often concealed by their benign outward appearance as farm buildings, fits in with the dispersed geography of pushbacks - and the way detention is increasingly serving as a temporal stage within the execution of violent removals.

▻https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/centre-criminology/centreborder-criminologies/blog/2021/05/spaces-detention

« Ελευθερία » ζητούν οι πρόσφυγες στη Μόρια
Πρωτοφανή επεισόδια σημειώθηκαν σήμερα στη Μυτιλήνη,

μετά τη μαζική πορεία προσφύγων που ξεκίνησαν το πρωί από τον καταυλισμό ζητώντας να σταματήσει ο εγκλεισμός τους και να επιταχυνθούν οι διαδικασίες χορήγησης ασύλου. Η λέξη « ελευθερία » κυριαρχεί στα αυτοσχέδια πλακάτ.

Ακολουθεί φωτορεπορτάζ από τη δυναμική κινητοποίηση τουλάχιστον 2.000 προσφύγων, μεταξύ των οποίων πολλές γυναίκες και παιδιά, και τα επεισόδια με τις αστυνομικές δυνάμεις που προχώρησαν επανειλημμένα στη χρήση χημικών.

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« Λάδι στη φωτιά » οι σημερινές διαδηλώσεις

Η διαμαρτυρία Αφγανών και τα επεισόδια της Δευτέρας με την αστυνομία.

Στις 4 το απόγευμα έληξε η διαμαρτυρία των Αφγανών προσφύγων έξω από το Δημοτικό Θέατρο Μυτιλήνης ενάντια στο νέο νόμο για το Άσυλο, που σύμφωνα με τα λεγόμενά τους, τους υποχρεώνει σε νέο εγκλωβισμό- καθώς πλέον έχουν προτεραιότητα οι νεοεισερχόμενοι αιτούντες άσυλο.

Ειδικότερα, συγκρούσεις μεταξύ Αφγανών που διαμένουν στο ΚΥΤ ης Μόριας, ανδρών και γυναικών κάθε ηλικίας και της Αστυνομίας σημάδεψαν τις σημερινές κινητοποιήσεις, οι οποίες είναι από τις λίγες φορές που έλαβαν χώρα εκτός του ΚΥΤ.

Η διαδήλωση έφτασε περίπου στις 10.30 το πρωί, σχεδόν στην είσοδο της πόλης της Μυτιλήνης, λίγο μετά το δημοτικό καταυλισμό του Καρά Τεπέ. Εκεί τους περίμενε ισχυρή Αστυνομική δύναμη που δεν τους επέτρεψε να συνεχίζουν. Μια ομάδα περίπου 1000 από τους διαδηλωτές τότε έφυγε μέσω γειτονικών χωραφιών με σκοπό να φτάσουν πίσω από το εργοστάσιο της ΔΕΗ στο δρόμο της βόρειας παράκαμψης και από εκεί να μπουν για να διαμαρτυρηθούν στην πόλη. Στην πορεία τους άναψαν φωτιές για αντιπερισπασμό. Ας σημειωθεί εδώ ότι προς στιγμή η φωτιά έκαιγε και σε κτήματα που γειτνιάζουν με τις εγκαταστάσεις του εργοστασίου της ΔΕΗ. Οι φωτιές επεκτάθηκαν και τότε άρχισαν οδομαχίες προκειμένου να μην ενισχυθεί ο αριθμός όσων προσπαθούσαν να φτάσουν στην πόλη.

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Με ρίψη δακρυγόνων απωθήθηκε ο μεγάλος αριθμός των νεαρών κυρίων Αφγανών που είχαν μείνει στο δρόμο και πίεζαν τις Αστυνομικές δυνάμεις να περάσουν. Ενώ το κλείσιμο του δρόμου δεν επέτρεπε και την έξοδο των οχημάτων της Πυροσβεστικής από τις εγκαταστάσεις της υπηρεσίας που βρίσκονται στην περιοχή.

Την ίδια ώρα περίπου 500 άτομα που κατάφεραν και μπήκαν στην πόλη από τη βόρεια συνοικία της ενισχυμένη με νεαρούς Αφγανούς πάντα που βρισκόταν στην πόλη κατάλαβαν το δρόμο της Προκυμαίας μπροστά στο Δημοτικό Θέατρο της πόλης ενώ κάποιοι έστησαν και σκηνές.

Σύμφωνα με επιβεβαιωμένες πληροφορίες του ΑΠΕ η κινητοποίηση ήταν γνωστή στις Αστυνομικές αρχές από την Παρασκευή για αυτό και το Σαββατοκύριακο υπήρξε ενίσχυση της αστυνομικής δύναμης με προσωπικό από την Αθήνα.

Εδώ η συνεχής ενημέρωση του « Ν », με έξτρα φωτογραφίες και βίντεο.

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▻https://www.stonisi.gr/post/6677/ladi-sth-fwtia-oi-shmerines-diadhlwseis-pics

Manifestation à Lesbos : incidents entre forces de l’ordre et migrants

Les forces anti-émeutes ont fait usage de gaz lacrymogènes lundi sur l’île grecque de Lesbos contre des migrants qui manifestaient contre une nouvelle loi durcissant les procédures d’asile en Grèce, a-t-on appris de source policière.

Brandissant des banderoles sur lesquelles on pouvait lire en anglais « Freedom » (liberté), quelque 2.000 migrants réclamaient l’examen de leur demande d’asile, que certains attendent depuis des mois voire des années, et protestaient contre les conditions de vie à proximité et à l’intérieur du camp de Moria, le plus grand des camps de Grèce.

Ils avaient parcouru une distance d’environ 7 km entre le camp de Moria et le port de Mytilène, quand des policiers anti-émeutes leur ont barré la route en lançant des gaz lacrymogènes, selon la même source.

Toutefois, des centaines de demandeurs d’asile ont réussi à atteindre le port pour y manifester, a constaté une correspondante de l’AFP.

Le Haut commissariat des réfugiés de l’ONU (HCR) en Grèce souligne les « retards significatifs » pris par les services grecs de l’asile, avec près de 90.000 demandes en souffrance dans un pays qui compte actuellement 112.300 migrants sur les îles et sur le continent, selon les chiffres du HCR.

« L’accumulation significative des candidatures à l’asile et les graves retards pris dans les procédures d’asile contribuent de manière importante aux conditions dangereuses de surpopulation observée sur les îles », a déclaré à l’AFP Boris Cheshirkov, porte-parole de la section grecque du HCR.

Face au nombre constant d’arrivées de demandeurs d’asile sur les îles grecques en provenance de la Turquie voisine, le gouvernement de droite a fait voter une loi, entrée en vigueur en janvier, prévoyant des délais brefs pour examiner les demandes d’asile, en vue de renvoyer les demandeurs non éligibles ou déboutés dans leurs pays d’origine ou vers la Turquie voisine.

Dans les camps, des dizaines de milliers de migrants, arrivés avant janvier, protestent contre les retards importants dans le traitement de leurs demandes d’asile, les empêchant de quitter les îles.

« Les autorités donnent la priorité à ceux qui sont arrivés récemment » et non pas aux demandeurs d’asile qui attendent depuis longtemps, a souligné Boris Cheshirkov.

La majorité des 19.000 migrants attendant au camp de Moria, dont la capacité est de 2.700 personnes, « vivent dans des conditions terribles, sans accès à l’eau ou l’électricité », a-t-il rappelé.

Le HCR-Grèce a appelé « les autorités à mettre en place des procédures justes et efficaces pour identifier ceux qui ont besoin d’une protection internationale en respectant les normes et les garanties adéquates ».

La situation est devenue explosive à Lesbos, Samos, Kos, Chios et Leros, sur la mer Egée, où vivent 42.000 demandeurs d’asile pour 6.200 places.

Les bagarres entre demandeurs d’asile y sont en outre fréquentes, et au moins quatre personnes ont perdu la vie ces derniers mois.

▻https://information.tv5monde.com/info/manifestation-lesbos-incidents-entre-forces-de-l-ordre-et-migr

Réfugiés : à Lesbos, une situation explosive et une #chasse_à_l'homme

Après une montée de tensions aux relents xénophobes et une manifestation violemment réprimée, l’île grecque a été le théâtre de #heurts les habitants et les migrants, qui s’entassent en nombre dans des camps insalubres.

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« Allez, allez ! Courez ! » hurlent des voix en anglais. Puis aussitôt, en grec : « Cassez-vous d’ici ! » Les images qui circulent sur les réseaux sociaux, où l’on voit des hommes en colère à la poursuite de migrants, sont aussi glaçantes que le ciel gris qui enveloppe Lesbos. Après deux jours de fortes tensions, cette île située à l’extrémité orientale de la Grèce a été le théâtre d’une véritable chasse à l’homme en ce début de semaine.

Tout a commencé lundi, avec une manifestation de migrants très durement réprimée par les forces de l’ordre. Puis mardi soir, des habitants excédés sont à leur tour sortis dans la rue, revendiquant leur droit de « prendre la situation en main ». Ce n’est pas la première fois que des tensions explosent sur l’île, devenue depuis quatre ans une prison à ciel ouvert pour les réfugiés, coincés sur ce bout de terre européen en attendant le résultat de leur demande d’asile. Mais les événements de ce début de semaine constituent une dérive inédite et inquiétante.
« Plus de toilettes ni d’électricité »

Comme toutes les îles grecques qui font face à la Turquie, Lesbos se retrouve en première ligne de l’afflux migratoire vers l’Europe. Et malgré un deal controversé conclu entre Bruxelles et Ankara en 2016, les arrivées n’ont jamais cessé. Elles sont même reparties à la hausse : en 2019, la Grèce est redevenue la première porte d’entrée en Europe, avec 74 000 arrivées en un an.

Sur les îles, la surpopulation tourne au cauchemar : les nouveaux venus se retrouvent « entassés dans des camps insalubres où il faut faire à chaque fois la queue pendant plusieurs heures pour manger, puis pour prendre une douche ou même aller aux toilettes », rappelle Tommaso Santo, chef de mission à Médecins sans frontières (MSF), joint par téléphone à Athènes.

A Lesbos, le camp de Moria, prévu pour 3 000 places, accueille désormais plus de 20 000 personnes, abritées tant bien que mal sous des tentes qui grignotent les champs d’olives environnants. « Dans l’extension la plus récente, il n’y a même plus de toilettes ni d’électricité », souligne le responsable de MSF. L’ONG gère une clinique de santé mentale sur l’île. Parmi les patients, on y croise notamment des enfants qui ne parlent plus, refusent de se nourrir. Parfois ils s’automutilent ou ont tenté de se suicider. C’est d’ailleurs pour protester contre cette précarité inhumaine que les réfugiés ont, une fois de plus, manifesté lundi à Lesbos.
« Climat de peur »

La colère des habitants n’est pas non plus surprenante. Eux aussi subissent la présence de ces camps insalubres, qui croulent sous les ordures, et autour desquels errent des désespérés condamnés à une attente qui semble sans fin. Mais pour certains observateurs, la montée de tension récente est aussi le résultat de la nouvelle donne politique : « Le retour au pouvoir des conservateurs de Nouvelle Démocratie, en juillet, a implicitement encouragé les pulsions les plus xénophobes. Ils ont fait campagne sur le durcissement des lois migratoires, ils ont promis de se montrer plus durs, et nous y voilà. Aujourd’hui, ce ne sont pas seulement les migrants qui sont ciblés, mais aussi les ONG qui les soutiennent et les habitants qui refusent de les chasser. Certains ont vu leurs maisons caillassées mardi soir », soupire Petros (1), volontaire pour une ONG locale qui dénonce « l’instauration d’un climat de peur ».

A partir de 2015, les Grecs avaient pourtant fait preuve d’une générosité exemplaire, en accueillant à bras ouverts les premières vagues de réfugiés malgré leurs propres difficultés économiques. Certes, le temps a joué dans la montée du ras-le-bol alors même que les partenaires européens de la Grèce n’ont pas tenu leurs promesses d’offres de relocalisations. Mais la nouvelle politique imposée par la droite grecque s’est effectivement traduite par une stigmatisation des candidats à l’asile dont les conditions d’admission ont été récemment durcies. En outre, ils se trouvent désormais privés de la carte sociale qui leur donnait accès aux soins gratuits. Malgré les demandes pressantes de MSF, le gouvernement de Kyriákos Mitsotákis refuse toujours d’évacuer de Moria 140 enfants qui ont besoin de soins médicaux urgents, indisponibles à Lesbos. Et la promesse de désengorger les îles en transférant des réfugiés en Grèce continentale s’effectue à un rythme ralenti.

Pendant ce temps, certains relèvent peu à peu la tête : les néonazis d’Aube dorée, qui avaient quasiment disparu de la scène publique ces dernières années, sont de retour depuis quelques mois. A Lesbos, leurs partisans recruteraient notamment parmi de jeunes hommes de « 18 ou 20 ans » : « Ils sont souvent vêtus de passe-montagnes et porteurs de bâton », décrit Petros, le volontaire grec. Des « pitsirikia », de très jeunes garçons, comme les a désignés un journal local. Ils étaient eux aussi dans les rues de Lesbos mardi soir.

▻https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2020/02/05/refugies-a-lesbos-une-situation-explosive-et-une-chasse-a-l-homme_1777401

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Commentaire reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop :

Climat explosif à Lesbos, retour en force de l’#Aube_Dorée
A Mytilène et à #Moria des milices d’extrêmes droite, font la chasse aux ONG et aux migrants -une camionnette appartenant à une ONG a été attaquée dans le village de Moria, tandis qu’un groupe de jeunes cagoulés et armés de bâtons faisait irruption dans les maisons pour vérifier la présence éventuelle de réfugiés, solidaires et des membres des ONG. Le soir du 4 février une maison abandonnée, toujours dans le village de Moria fut incendiée, heureusement les trois réfugiés qui s’y abritaient étaient partis à temps
A #Mytilène, chef-lieu de Lesbos, après la dispersion d’une manifestation anti-fasciste organisée principalement par des étudiants, un café fréquenté par ceux-ci, fut encerclé par un groupe portant des casques armé de bâtes qui ne se sont éloignés qu’après l’arrivée d’autres étudiants solidaires.

#extrême_droite #xénophobie #racisme

Refugee children amid crowds of protesters tear gassed on Lesbos

Tensions mount as asylum seekers living in Moria, a notoriously overcrowded Greek camp, rally against poor conditions.

Greek police have fired tear gas at thousands of refugees and migrants trapped on the overcrowded island of Lesbos, from where they are not allowed to travel to the mainland under a 2016 EU-Turkey deal aimed at curbing migratory flows.

In tense scenes on Monday, children and babies were caught up in plumes of tear gas during protests by about 2,000 people.

The clashes broke out around Moria, a notoriously cramped camp which was never designed to hold more than 3,000. Currently, there are nearly 20,000 people in and around the camp.

Protesters rallied against the continued containment of people on Lesbos island and the unbearable living conditions inside the camp.

In footage seen by Al Jazeera, children can be seen recovering from being hit with tear gas fired by riot police. Some wore face masks to protect themselves from inhalation.

Riot police fired the tear gas to try and quell protesters and prevent them from marching on foot to Mytilene, Lesbos’s capital more than four miles away.

But many Moria residents did reach the port city and continued protesting there on Tuesday.

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Abdul (not his real name), an Afghan refugee, told Al Jazeera: “I participated because people are dying in Moria and nobody cares. We feel like we don’t have a future here, if we wanted to die then we could have stayed in Afghanistan. We came here to look for a good future and to be safe, this is not a place for living.”

At least two people have died in Moria so far this year in stabbing attacks, according to local media.

In previous years, refugees at the camp have died in fires, because of extreme weather and as some - including babies - lack access to proper medical facilities.
Tense mood

The mood in the centre of Mytilene on Tuesday was tense as nearly 200 people, mainly men and women from Afghanistan, congregated in the central square.

“Freedom, Freedom,” they chanted, as well as “Lesbos people, we are sorry,” - an apparent apology to Greek residents for the highly charged atmosphere.

Franziska Grillmeier, a German journalist, told Al Jazeera that she witnessed families being tear gassed on Monday.

"Yesterday, as the people were trying to move the protest from Moria to Mytilene, the police tried to deter them by using roadblocks. Some families, however, broke through using the olive grove fields next to the camp and tried to find an alternative way to get to Mytilene. The police then started using heavy tear gas, throwing it into the fields by the olive grove, which also set some of the olive trees on fire.

“There were men holding their kids up, kids who were foaming at the mouth, kids having panic attacks and babies unable to breathe and dehydrating through the gas.”

She claimed the police reaction appeared to be excessive.

“There weren’t really any threats to the police at that point, it was just really a tactic of the police to immediately throw tear gas at people who were peacefully trying to make their way to Mytilene.”

Police reportedly detained dozens of protesters. Al Jazeera contacted the Ministry of Citizen Protection but had not received a response by the time of publication.

“I saw serious attacks on people, beatings with sticks. I also saw people screaming, holding their kids in the air and saying: ’Look what you’ve done’,” Grillmeier said.

Paolo Amadei, a freelance photographer from Italy, said: "There were police throwing gas, women and kids and infants got gassed and there were many kids crying.

“They (refugees) came in peace, that’s what I saw: they weren’t looking for a clash.”

Boris Cheshirkov, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told Al Jazeera he was concerned by the escalation, which has been “exacerbated by the dire conditions and long wait”.

He said UNHCR has urged the Greek government to transfer people to the mainland and explained that European solidarity and responsibility-sharing was now crucial.

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À Lesbos, des migrants manifestent et se heurtent aux forces anti-émeutes

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Les forces anti-émeutes ont fait usage de gaz lacrymogènes lundi sur l’île grecque de Lesbos contre des migrants, qui manifestaient contre une nouvelle loi durcissant les procédures d’asile en Grèce.

Brandissant des banderoles sur lesquelles on pouvait lire en anglais « Freedom », quelque 2 000 migrants ont manifesté ce lundi 3 février à Lesbos. Ils réclamaient l’examen de leur demande d’asile, que certaines attendent depuis des mois, voire des années, et protestaient contre les conditions de vie à proximité et à l’intérieur du camp de Moria, le plus grand de Grèce.

Les manifestants avaient parcouru environ 7 km entre le camp de Moria et le port de Mytilène, quand des policiers anti-émeutes leur ont barré la route en lançant des gaz lacrymogènes, rapporte une source policière citée par l’AFP. Des centaines de demandeurs d’asile ont toutefois réussi à atteindre le port pour y manifester.

Le Haut Commissariat des réfugiés de l’ONU (HCR) en Grèce souligne les « retards significatifs » pris par les services grecs de l’asile, avec près de 90 000 demandes en souffrance dans un pays qui compte actuellement 112 300 migrants sur les îles et sur le continent, selon les chiffres de l’organisation. Des retards qui participent aux conditions de vie désastreuses des exilés sur les îles grecques.

Situation explosive

La situation est devenue explosive à Lesbos, Samos, Kos, Chios et Leros, sur la mer Égée, où vivent 42 000 demandeurs d’asile pour 6 200 places. « À Lesbos on a des milliers de gens qui vivent hors des structures du camp de Moria, sous les arbres, sous de petites tentes », rapporte Boris Cheshirkov, porte-parole de la section grecque du HCR, joint par RFI. Sur ces îles, les bagarres entre demandeurs d’asile sont en outre fréquentes, et au moins quatre personnes ont perdu la vie ces derniers mois.

« La première chose à faire est de transférer plusieurs milliers de personnes sur le continent dans de meilleures conditions de vie, parce que si on ne réduit pas sérieusement le nombre de personnes sur les îles, il n’y aura pas de solution. En parallèle, il faut plus de personnel, plus de services, plus d’hygiène et des procédures administratives plus rapides. Dans le même temps, les pays européens peuvent faire beaucoup plus en ouvrant des places de relocalisation. Le HCR a notamment demandé à des États de prendre en charge une partie des enfants seuls. Il y a eu un programme de relocalisation, mais il a pris fin en 2017 », déplore Boris Cheshirkov.

Face au nombre constant d’arrivées depuis la Turquie voisine, le gouvernement grec de droite a fait voter une loi, entrée en vigueur en janvier, prévoyant des délais brefs pour examiner les demandes d’asile, en vue de renvoyer les demandeurs non éligibles ou déboutés dans leurs pays d’origine ou vers la Turquie.

Le HCR-Grèce a appelé « les autorités à mettre en place des procédures justes et efficaces pour identifier ceux qui ont besoin d’une protection internationale en respectant les normes et les garanties adéquates ».

▻http://www.rfi.fr/fr/europe/20200203-gr%C3%A8ce-lesbos-migrants-manifestent-heurtent-forces-anti-%C3%A9meute

Police arrests Greek extremists acting like “raid battalion” in Moria village (UPD)

Police on the island of Lesvos has arrested seven Greek extremists who were conducting street and house to Greeks and foreign nationals in the village of Moria. All members of the so-called “control squad” or “raid battalion” were wearing helmets and holding bats when they arrested on Thursday night.

All arrestees are men, police is looking for two more.

Authorities investigate illegal acts conducted by the extremists both in Moria and the wide area of Mytilini in recent days.

According to local media stonisi and lesvosnews.net, they are to appear before the prosecutor and face charges for violating gun laws and for setting up a criminal group acting like a “raid battalion.” Later it was reported that they will be charged also for violating “anti-racism laws. Authorities reportedly investigate also whether they were involved in criminal acts in the past, ANT1 reported.

UPDATE: According to latest information for the island, five of the arrestees are Greeks, one is Bulgarian national and one Albanian, all aged 17-24. The two still sought by the police are a Greek and a foreigner, both minors.

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Seized have been 5 wooden bats and one metal stick as well as full face mask, reports, levsosnews.net.

Although authorities have been denying the existence of such groups, a exclusive video captured them as they terrorized customers of a bar in downtown Mytilini two days ago. They men wear masks, black jackets and threaten the bar’s customers they “do not like.”

According to eyewitnesses, these young men were also checking Greeks and foreign nationals passing by the main commercial Ermou street.

The “squad” has also “raided” a cafeteria on the same street, where students, workers and volunteers of non-governmental organizations involved in the refugee crisis hang out.

These reports were also confirmed by police, local media stonisi stresses.

The same group of people, always with masks and bats, had reportedly conducted controls in the village of Moria on Tuesday night.

They checked in homes and shops for foreign nationals, asylum seekers, volunteers and NGO-workers. According to confirmed reports, they broke the car of an Italian NGO worker with two asylum-seekers on board. Police intervened following locals’ phone calls.

The atmosphere on the island is tense not only due to the asylum-seekers’ protest beginning of the week but also due to the objection of local authorities and residents to the government plans for closed accommodation centers.

Far-right extremists try to take advantage of the situation, fake news against refugees, migrants and asylum seekers are spread on daily basis.

A local group has reportedly also posted on internet calling on “armed violence” against the refugees.

Police on Lesvos has not been famous for its intervention against far-right extremists.

The last think the government wants, though, is a spark to provoke unprecedented situations on the island.

▻https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2020/02/07/lesvos-moria-extremists-greeks-arrests

Greece tightens rules for refugee NGOs

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The parliament in Athens has pushed through a law aimed at restoring order on the Aegean islands. The laws puts restrictions on non-government organizations, which have been accused of inciting migrants to stage violent protests.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday that NGOs will no longer be allowed to “operate unchecked” and in future they would be “strictly vetted,” the Greek newspaper, Proto Thema, reports.

Speaking at a celebration for the centenary of the Hellenic Coast Guard, Mitsotakis said “Most NGOs do a great job. They are helpful in tackling the problem. But we know, we know it, beyond any doubt, that there are some who do not fulfill the role they are claiming. We will not tolerate this anymore.”

NGOs providing medical, legal and other assistance to migrants on the Greek Aegean islands include Oxfam, the Danish Refugee Council, Doctors of the World, European Lawyers in Lesbos, Terre des Hommes, Refugee Support Aegean, Medecins Sans Frontieres and others.

The prime minister’s remarks came after the deputy migration minister, Giorgos Koumoutsakos, told Proto Thema Radio that the NGOs had sprung up “like mushrooms after the rain.” "Some behave like bloodsuckers," he said.

Inciting migrant protests

Koumoutsakos accused some of the organizations operating on the islands, where tens of thousands of migrants are stranded after arriving from Turkey, of abusing the volatile situation to get money directly from the European Union.

The deputy migration minister also suggested that some NGOs had incited thousands of migrants on Lesbos to hold a protest, which ended with police firing tear gas to disperse the people occupying the island capital Mytilini.

The government began transferring refugees from the overcrowded islands to the Greek mainland last year, but an estimated 42,000 people continue to suffer in squalid and unsafe conditions in and around the island camps.

Last week, the Greek government opened a tender for the construction of a floating barrier off Lesbos aimed at deterring migrants from crossing from the Turkish coast, which is about 10-12 kilometers away.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/22606/greece-tightens-rules-for-refugee-ngos
#ONG #associations #NGOs

New request for state of emergency on #Lesvos, #Chios, #Samos

The regional governor of the Northern Aegean, Kostas Moutzouris submitted a new call on Wednesday to declare a state of emergency on three islands, following two days of protest marches by asylum seekers demanding better living conditions and a quicker asylum procedure, and attacks by extremists in Lesvos.

“The government was wrong to reject our request to declare a state of emergency on Lesvos, Chios and Samos. If the current situation is not an emergency, then what is?” he asked.

“The government is imposing the creation of new migrant camps that will cost hundreds of millions and which, based on simple arithmetics, will not solve any problem – on the contrary, they will deteriorate it,” he added.

On Tuesday, a group of about 250 asylum seekers, mostly Afghan residents of Moria, rallied outside the Municipal Theater in the island’s capital Mytilene demanding “freedom” and shouting, “Lesvos people, we are sorry.” The police intervened to prevent protesters from blocking traffic. One woman was injured in a stampede as demonstrators fled the scene to avoid possible arrest.

On Monday riot police clashed with about 2,000 Afghan asylum seekers who tried to march to Mytilene. Reacting to the incident, residents of the village of Moria Tuesday barged into the Mytilene offices of the General Secretariat for Aegean and Island Policy demanding the closure of Moria, intensified sea patrols, and stricter monitoring of NGOs.

Despite the tension, the government on Tuesday rejected Moutzouris’ request.

Meanwhile, a group of about 20 youths wearing helmets and holding clubs attacked regulars at a bar in Mytilene where students and NGO employees were gathered.

The same group roamed the town of Mytilene after midnight asking locals and foreigners to identify themselves, according to eye witnesses who talked to the police.

Authorities believe the same individuals were in the village of Moria earlier in the afternoon checking if foreigners, asylum seekers or employees in NGOs lived or worked there.

The masked group smashed the car of an Italian national who works for an NGO. Two asylum seekers were passengers when the incident happened.

Police was alerted after the attacks.

▻http://www.ekathimerini.com/249223/article/ekathimerini/news/new-request-for-state-of-emergency-on-lesvos-chios-samos
#état_d'urgence

Crisis in Lesbos as more refugees arrive

Greek island a ‘powder keg ready to explode’ as boat landings lead to tensions with local people.

Greek authorities are struggling to cope with rising tension on islands where pressure from a new influx of refugees and migrants has reached a critical point.

Friction is growing between local people and asylum seekers landing in boats from Turkey. Last week the region’s most senior official likened the situation on Lesbos to a “powder keg ready to explode”. Kostas Moutzouris, governor of the north Aegean, said: “It’s crucial that a state of emergency is called.”

More than 42,000 men, women and children are estimated to be on Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos. Unable to leave because of a containment policy determined by the EU, they are forced to remain on the islands until their asylum requests are processed by a system both understaffed and overstretched.

Aid groups have repeatedly called for the islands to be evacuated. On Friday an estimated 20,000 refugees were on Lesbos, forced to endure the grim reality of Moria, a camp designed to host 3,000 at most.

“They are living in squalid, medieval-like conditions … with barely any access to basic services, including clean and hot water, electricity, sanitation and healthcare,” said Sophie McCann, Médecins Sans Frontières’ advocacy officer. “On a daily basis our medical teams are treating the consequential deterioration of health and wellbeing.”

But she added that the local people had also been given short shrift. “The Lesbos community has been abandoned by its own government for almost five years to deal with the consequences of a failed reception system. Like the refugee community, it is tired.”

As anti-immigrant sentiment has surged, vigilante groups believed to be infiltrated by supporters of the far-right Golden Dawn party have surfaced. On Friday seven men armed with wooden clubs were arrested in the hilltop village of Moria on suspicion of being members of a gang apparently linked to Golden Dawn.

“People have seen their properties destroyed, their sheep and goats have been slaughtered, their homes broken into,” said Nikos Trakellis, a community leader. “A few years back, when there were 5,000 on the island, things seemed bad enough. Now there’s a sense that the situation has really got out of hand.”

NGOs have also been targeted. In recent weeks cars have been vandalised. Foreigners perceived to be helping refugees have spoken of intimidation. Ciaran Carney, a volunteer filmmaker teaching refugees on the island, said: “There was a week when no one [in the NGOs] wanted to leave their flats. It definitely feels like it could explode and that no one knows what will come next.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/09/tensions-refugees-and-islanders-crisis-on-lesbos?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_G

Fin février...
Migrations : #affrontements à Lesbos et Chios entre policiers et habitants
►https://seenthis.net/messages/827607

Non solo Lesbos. L’estrema destra sbarca a #Chios

«Questo è solo l’inizio». A Chios non fanno che ripeterlo dopo l’incendio della scorsa notte. Doveva essere pirotecnico lo sbarco dei neonazisti sull’isola di Chios e così è stato, la notte del 3 marzo, intorno alle due, qualcuno ha appiccato il fuoco al deposito di Stay Human Odv, la Onlus che da aprile 2018 dà servizi e beni di prima necessità ai profughi del campo di Vial. A fronte di una capienza di 1.500 persone, il campo ne ospita oltre 6mila. Quattordici bagni in tutto, 7 per sesso. Come quasi tutti gli hotspot greci, sta in mezzo a un uliveto in rovina, per 30 km tutt’intorno il nulla. Gli episodi di autolesionismo e di tentato suicidio non mancano, specie tra i minori non accompagnati.

«Ieri stavamo smistando le scarpe» dice Musli Alievski, il fondatore della Onlus nata nel 2016. È un giovane macedone di origini rom, suo padre, in odore di pulizia etnica, prese la famiglia e scappò in Italia prima della guerra. Dopo la minaccia di Erdogan di «aprire i rubinetti», da circa una settimana sull’isola sono arrivati «quelli di Alba Dorata e i celerini». «Questo era il posto di partenza di tutto, dove portavamo le donazioni, dove prendevamo quello che serviva da portare al centro, sopra c’erano gli appartamenti dei volontari, tutto distrutto». L’incendio è doloso a detta della stessa polizia, che però ora ha altri problemi: gli isolani sono esasperati, la settimana scorsa hanno aggredito i militari che trasportavano i materiali per allestire un altro hotspot, più grande, in vista di un esodo dato ormai per imminente.

Sporgerete denuncia per l’incendio?

Per ora no, il clima è teso e vogliamo evitare ritorsioni e vendette sugli isolani che ci aiutano. In più sull’isola sono arrivati squadroni di celerini e di cosiddetti «volontari a difesa delle isole». Hanno già aggredito la polizia.

Come mai la destra aggredisce la polizia?

Perché a differenza di Lesbo, qui non ci sono grandi Ong. Non c’è Msf, l’Unhcr non opera direttamente, tutto è amministrato dai militari. E il malcontento degli isolani, eccitati dall’arrivo degli squadroni da fuori, si riversa anche su di loro. Ma non mi sento di incolpare la gente di qui, non è che si sono svegliati all’improvviso neonazisti, sono solo esasperati. Il problema è della politica europea, non della popolazione greca.

Perché c’è bisogno di voi volontari?

Tanto per cominciare i migranti non hanno più accesso gratuito alle visite mediche specialistiche. Un bambino iracheno ha scoperto di essere praticamente cieco solo dopo che lo abbiamo fatto visitare da un oculista. I bambini qui hanno tutti i denti neri per carenza di vitamine. Nei centri viene dato cibo precotto scaduto, senza tracciabilità, né lista di ingredienti. La stessa aggressività degli adulti spesso è causata banalmente dall’assenza di vitamine nel loro organismo.

Avete paura?

Più che impauriti dall’aggressione della destra, siamo delusi dalla reazione dell’Europa ai ricatti di Erdogan. L’Europa deve agire non perché impaurita o minacciata, ma perché consapevole che chi sbarca a Lampedusa non sbarca in Italia, chi sbarca a Chios non sbarca in Grecia: sbarca in Europa.

Si parla molto degli scafisti libici, poco di quelli turchi.

Sono criminali quanto i libici. C’è un disegno chiaro: quelli che scappano dal Medio Oriente prima finiscono nelle mani degli imprenditori turchi del tessile, lavorano nelle fabbriche, anche delle catene di abbigliamento low cost, poi raggiungono il distretto di Çeşme. Lì, chi non ha soldi per la traversata, lascia i familiari in pegno ai trafficanti. Una traversata di 15 minuti in motoscafo costa circa 2mila euro, i ricatti durano anni.

E dall’Africa i migranti come finiscono nella rete dei trafficanti turchi?

Gli africani che arrivano in Grecia sono per lo più nigeriani e somali. Quelli che non passano dalla Libia di solito sono quelli con più disponibilità economica. Una volta arrivati in Tunisia, Algeria e Marocco, prendono un visto di 70 euro, poi un volo per Istanbul, si trasferiscono a Çeşme o a Smirne, e da lì partono insieme agli altri che scappano dal Medio Oriente, chi da guerre, chi da persecuzioni. Selezionare i rifugiati, distinguere tra chi ha diritto a migrare e chi no, non può ridursi a una mera questione di leggi.

Come racimolano il denaro necessario?

Spesso dietro la traversata di un giovane c’è l’investimento dell’intero villaggio, una sorta di crowdfunding, si investe sul ragazzo più giovane e robusto, sperando che arrivi, trovi lavoro, e mandi soldi con MoneyGram o Western Union. Come nelle corse dei cavalli, si punta su quello che può farcela.

▻https://ilmanifesto.it/non-solo-lesbo-lestrema-destra-sbarca-a-chios-e-brucia-le-scorte-per-i-r
#extrême_droite

Migrante in fin di vita all’ospedale di Fiume, sarebbe stato raggiunto da colpi di pistola esplosi dalla polizia

„A riportare la notizia è il quotidiano croato Dnevnik.hr che ha registrato il grave ferimento dell’uomo, di cui non si conoscono ancora le generalità, ieri pomeriggio nella zona del Gorski Kotar. La vicenda confermata anche dal ministro degli Interni di Zagabria, Davor Bozinovic“

Nella zona del Gorski kotar, ieri 16 novembre la Polizia croata avrebbe sparato ad un migrante che sarebbe ricoverato in fin di vita, nell’ospedale di Fiume, a causa di una grave ferita al ventre. A riportare la notizia è il quotidiano croato Dnevnik.hr in questo articolo dove spiega come le forze dell’ordine croate avrebbero esploso colpi d’arma da fuoco (non viene riferito il numero) dopo il rintraccio di un gruppo di una quindicina di migranti nella zona del monte Tuhobic e, presumibilmente, provenienti dalla rotta balcanica.

Al momento non si hanno notizie sulle generalità dell’uomo, né sulla sua età. Il Dnevnik riporta che l’uomo, assieme agli altri compagni di viaggio, si stava dirigendo verso il confine con la Slovenia, tentando di entrarvi illegalmente. La notizia del ferimento del migrante e il suo trasferimento all’ospedale del capoluogo quarnerino, è stata confermata, come riportato sempre dal media croato, anche dal ministro degli Interni di Zagabria Davor Bozinovic. Da quanto riportato dai media croati e sloveni, dovrebbe venir aperta un’inchiesta per far luce sul grave fatto di cronaca.

http://1.citynews-triesteprima.stgy.ovh/~media/horizontal-hi/66845043819838/nevoso-confine-slovenia-croazia-foto-giraldi-2.jpg

▻http://www.triesteprima.it/cronaca/rotta-balcanica-croazia-slovenia-migrante-ferito.html

Croazia: la polizia spara sui migranti

Uno è stato ridotto in fin di vita. Aperta una inchiesta per stabilire cosa sia successo durante il pattugliamento nel Gorski Kotar.

Spari sui migranti in una zona impervia del Gorski Kotar, non lontano dal monte Tuhobić, ad alcuni chilometri di distanza dalla più vicina arteria stradale. Tutto è avvenuto ieri pomeriggio, quando la polizia croata ha aperto il fuoco contro un gruppo di sospetti clandestini, una quindicina, che avrebbero cercato di raggiungere la Slovenia. Uno di loro è stato raggiunto al torace ed è in gravissime condizioni. È stato operato d’urgenza nell’ospedale di Fiume.
Il ministro dell’Interno croato, Davor Božinović ha spiegato che i poliziotti erano in servizio di pattugliamento per il controllo della frontiera: aperta un’inchiesta per stabilire le circostanze che hanno portato ad aprire il fuoco contro i migranti e se ciò sia stato giustificato dagli eventi. Alla domanda se anche i migranti fossero armati, il ministro ha detto che non c’è ancora una risposta. Tutti i componenti il gruppo di migranti sono stati fermati. Da diverso tempo le organizzazioni umanitarie e per i diritti umani imputano alla polizia croata un comportamento violento nei confronti di profughi e migranti che arrivano in Croazia dalla Bosnia ed Erzegovina, da pestaggi a respingimenti oltre confine in modo violento. Finora però non era mai giunta notizia di un impiego di armi da fuoco.

▻https://capodistria.rtvslo.si/news/croazia/croazia-la-polizia-spara-sui-migranti/505185

Et l’article avec la nouvelle dans un journal croate :
Doznajemo : Ranjavanju migranta prethodio je napad na policajce. Kamenjem ih gađala veća skupina migranata

Ilegalni migrant koji je teško ozlijeđen u subotu kasno popodne u Gorskom kotaru još uvijek je životno ugrožen. Očevid radi utvrđivanja okolnosti tog incidenta još je u tijeku. Neslužbeno doznajemo da su ga policajci nakon ranjavanja nosili nekoliko kilometara, sve dok ga nije preuzela služba Hitne pomoći.

Ministar unutarnjih poslova Davor Božinović kazao je da je dovršen očevid u slučaju ranjavanja migranta koji se u KBC-u Rijeka s prostrijelnom ranom u predjelu prsnog koša i trbuha bori za život, javlja N1.

’Odvjetništvo uz stručnu pomoć policije provodi kriminalističko istraživanje i u ovom trenutku rano je govoriti o rezultatima tog istraživanja. Eventualno bih u ovom trenutku mogao kazati da nije utvrđeno da je korištenje vatrenog oružja bilo usmjereno prema konkretnoj osobi, s namjerom djelovanja prema osobi", izjavio je ministar unutarnjih poslova Davor Božinović.

Prema neslužbenim informacijama, nakon incidenta u kojem je teško ozlijeđen migrant policajci su ga s nepristupačnog terena nosili sve do vozila Hitne pomoći, kojim je nakon toga prebačen u KBC Rijeka.
Napali policajce kamenjem?

Neslužbeno doznajemo da je riječ o djelatniku specijalne policije koji je nedavno spasio migranta kojemu je prijetilo smrzavanje nakon što ga je njegova grupa neadekvatno odjevenog ostavila u šumama Gorskog kotara na niskim temperaturama.

Također, neslužbeno se doznaje da je do ozljeđivanja stradalog migranta došlo nakon pucanja u zrak nakon što je veća grupa migranata vrlo blizu mjesta incidenta kamenjem i drugim priručnim sredstvima napala policajce. Policajac koji je upotrijebio vatreno oružje tada je nekoliko puta na hrvatskom i engleskom jeziku upozorio da je riječ o policiji te da je primoran koristiti oružje. Potom je ispalio dva metka u zrak iz oružja koje nije bilo usmjereno prema migrantima. Kad je krenuo prema njima, policajac se spotaknuo te pritom i ozlijedio, a u tom trenutku njegovo je oružje još jednom opalilo, no nije bilo usmjereno prema migrantima, već je moguće da se hitac odbio od tvrde površine te tako ozlijedio migranta, što će utvrditi istraga.
Ranjen u prsni koš i trbuh

Očevid je na mjestu događaja završio, no istraga je još uvijek u tijeku, a ranjeni muškarac i dalje je u životnoj opasnosti.

’’Bolesnik je u jedinicu intenzivnog liječenja zaprimljen po učinjenom hitnom operativnom zahvatu. Prilikom ranjavanja zadobio je višestruke ozlijede toraksa i abdomena koje su opasne po život. U bolesnika se i dalje provode mjere intenzivnog liječenja’’, kazala je anesteziologinja riječkog KBC-a dr. sc.Vlasta Orlić Kabrić.

Višestruke ozljede, pretpostavlja se, nastale su od metka ili od odbijanja metka o tvrdu podlogu te potom ranjavanja. Zbog incidenta je sinoć u Rijeku stigao ministar unutarnjih poslova Davor Božinović. ’’Došlo je do ozljeđivanja vjerojatno zbog uporabe vatrenog oružja, po tome će postupati nadležno županijsko državno odvjetništvo’’, rekao je ministar i kazao da ne može govoriti o detaljima.
Kiša otežava očevid

Mjesto nesreće udaljeno je pet kilometara od posljednjeg šumskog puta kojim se može doći vozilom. Osim teško pristupačnog terena, očevid otežavaju i veoma loše vremenske prilike, odnosno vrlo gusta kiša koja pada u tom dijelu Gorskoga kotara.

Stanovnici Gorskog kotara već neko vrijeme imaju problema s migrantima koji uspiju pobjeći policajcima na granici s Bosnom i Hercegovinom. ’’U početku su ljudi bili susretljivi. I sami su rekli da bi trebalo pomoći ljudima. Ali, eto, kako prolazi već nekoliko godina, pogotovo u zimskom periodu, postajali su nekako agresivniji’’, govori David Bregovac, načelnik općine Fužine.

Je li skupina na koju je naišla policijska ophodnja bila naoružana, jesu li nasrnuli na policajce, zašto je policija koristila vatreno oružje, kako je grupa ilegalaca uspjela ući tako duboko u Hrvatsku – samo su neka od pitanja na koja bi istraga koja je u tijeku trebala dati odgovor.

▻https://dnevnik.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/migrant-upucan-u-gorskom-kotaru-bori-se-za-zivot-ima-prostrijelnu-ranu-prsno

Croatian police fire on illegal migrants near Slovenian border

Croatian police fired on a group of illegal migrants trying to reach neighboring Slovenia late on Saturday, leaving one man critically injured, officials in the northern Adriatic town of Rijeka said.

Croatian Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic told reporters that the group was probably trying to cross into Slovenia, but did not say how many people were in the group or give their nationalities.

Croatia is on a route taken by many migrants from the Middle East and central Asia trying to reach wealthier EU states. Some cross into Croatia from Bosnia undeclared.

“Police officers were preventing the passage of a group which most probably wanted to reach Slovenia,” Bozinovic told media late on Saturday, adding that one man was wounded probably due to the use of firearms.

A doctor at the Rijeka Clinical Hospital Centre said the man in a critical condition had suffered gunshot wounds.

“The patient was admitted for urgent surgery after sustaining gunshot wounds in the area of thorax and stomach,” the doctor told Reuters by telephone on Sunday. “He is in a life-threatening condition and intensive medical treatment is continuing.”

Bozinovic said regional authorities would investigate the incident, which took place in the mountainous Gorski Kotar area close to Rijeka, which is around 20 km (12 miles) from the Slovenian border.

Croatia, which wants to join the EU’s border-free Schengen area, has to convince Brussels that it is able to effectively manage the bloc’s external border, a particularly sensitive issue since Europe’s 2015 migrant crisis.

Neighboring Bosnia, which has become a migrant hot-spot since 2018, has repeatedly accused Croatia of returning migrants to Bosnia even when they are found deep in its territory. Many migrants have been complaining of brutality of Croatian police officers, allegations that Croatia has dismissed.

▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-croatia/croatian-police-fire-on-illegal-migrants-near-slovenian-border-idUSKBN1XR0I

Croatian police shoot and seriously injure refugee

The nationality of the injured migrant has not yet been reported. The incident occurred in a wooded area of the Gorski Kotar region, between Croatia and Slovenia, on one of the routes that many migrant and refugees stuck in Bosnia take to reach Western Europe. Croatian media say that a group of 17 migrants, after being sighted while illegally crossing the woods, allegedly refused to peacefully hand themselves over to the police and began to throw rocks and other objects at the security forces. According to the official version given by the police, one policeman tripped while shooting in the air and the bullet ricocheted and hit one of the migrants. The Croatian police immediately gave first aid to the injured man and took him on foot for three kilometres to the nearest ambulance. The migrant has been hospitalised and undergone two surgeries. He is still in critical condition. Human rights organisations have expressed serious doubts about the official version of the incident and say that weapons are being used ever more frequently against migrants and have called for the interior ministry to prevent similar incidents.

▻http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/generalnews/2019/11/18/croatian-police-shoot-and-seriously-injure-refugee_87deadaa-f86c-4c27-b7fb

Croatie : la police tire sur un groupe de migrants, un homme entre la vie et la mort

Un homme a été touché par un tir de la police croate dans la nuit du samedi 16 au dimanche 17 novembre, dans la région montagneuse du Gorski Kotar. Selon un médecin de l’hôpital de Rijeka, ce dernier est aujourd’hui dans un état critique.

Le ministre croate de l’Intérieur, Davor Božinović, a déclaré que l’homme « a été blessé » alors que « la police protégeait la frontière », essayant d’« empêcher un groupe de migrants [sans donner leur nombre ni leur nationalité] de passer en Slovénie ». Mais l’ONG Are You Syrious explique que ces tirs ont eu lieu « très à l’intérieur du territoire croate », loin de la frontière. La ville de Rijeka se situe effectivement à une vingtaine de kilomètres de la Slovénie.

La Croatie, qui veut intégrer l’espace Schengen, doit convaincre Bruxelles qu’elle est capable de prendre en charge la frontière extérieure de l’UE, notamment depuis le début de la crise des migrants en 2015. « Ce n’est pas la première fois que la protection des frontières en Croatie a des conséquences fatales ou quasi-fatales », rappelle Are You Syrious. Le 21 novembre 2017, une Afghane de 6 ans est morte quelques minutes après une opération de refoulement illégale de la police croate à la frontière avec la Serbie. Le 30 mai 2018, deux réfugiés de 12 ans, un garçon et une fille, ont été atteints au visage par des tirs de cette même police.

►https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/courrierdesbalkans-fr-fil-info-refugies-2019-novembre

Croatian police fire on irregular migrants near Slovenian border

Croatian police on Friday fired on a group of migrants trying to irregularly reach neighboring Slovenia, local officials said. One man was critically injured. Thousands of migrants trying to reach western Europe are stuck in the Balkans.

A migrant is fighting for his life after being shot by police on Friday, doctors in the Croatian port of Rijeka said Sunday. The unidentified migrant reportedly suffered multiple bullet wounds to his chest.

“The patient was admitted for urgent surgery after sustaining gunshot wounds in the area of thorax and stomach,” a doctor at the Rijeka Clinical Hospital Center told news agency Reuters. “He is in a life-threatening condition and intensive medical treatment is continuing.”

The incident happened when Croatian police fired on a group of irregular migrants trying to reach neighboring Slovenia. As AP reports, Croatian police said they fired the shots “to protect Croatia’s borders.”

The Croatian interior minister Davor Bozinovic told media that “police officers were preventing the passage of a group which most probably wanted to reach Slovenia.” He further said that one man was wounded probably due to the use of firearms. Bozinovic did not say how many people were in the group or give their nationalities.

The interior ministry said regional authorities would investigate the incident, which took place in the mountainous Gorski Kotar area close to Rijeka, a Croatian port city around 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Slovenian border.

Critical situation

Rights groups have repeatedly accused Croatian authorities of using excessive force against migrants irregularly entering from neighboring Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, both non-EU countries. The EU-member state Croatia has repeatedly denied the charges.

Croatia, which wants to join the EU’s border-free Schengen area, has to convince Brussels that it is able to effectively manage the bloc’s external border. This is a particularly sensitive issue since Europe’s 2015 so-called migrant crisis.

Croatia is on the so-called Balkan route taken by many migrants from the Middle East and central Asia trying to reach wealthier EU states. Some of those migrants cross into Croatia from Bosnia undeclared. In recent months, more and more refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe via the southern/western Balkan route: EU border agency Frontex registered 8,400 border crossings in the first 10 months of 2019 - an 82% increase compared to the same period last year.

Storm sweeps through migrant camp in Bosnia

In Croatia’s neighboring state Bosnia and Herzegovina, a storm on Friday blew many tents away in a bleak makeshift camp for migrants who are trying to reach western Europe. Migrants staying in the Vucjak camp near the border with Croatia were appealing for help on Saturday after spending a sleepless night looking for shelter.

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/7a8793850a90e7f1cbd9886d68235a0da082d2ea.jpeg

On Friday, hundreds of locals protested against the migrants’ presence and demanded the closure of overcrowded refugee camps and the relocation of the migrants from the city area.

The European Union and numerous international organizations have repeatedly called for the closure of the Vucjak camp, which is located on a former landfill and is near a minefield left over from Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Hundreds of migrants have been staying there with almost no facilities since the authorities in northwestern Bosnia set up the camp earlier this year. Bosnia, which has become a migrant hot-spot since 2018, has repeatedly accused Croatia of returning migrants to Bosnia even when they are found deep in its territory.

This practice called “pushbacks” is prohibited under the Geneva Refugee Convention, which provided the principle of nonrefoulement.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/20899/croatian-police-fire-on-irregular-migrants-near-slovenian-border

https://i.imgur.com/aH58oUx.png https://i.imgur.com/kW9ERID.png https://i.imgur.com/50B1mXZ.png

►https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Press-Briefing-19th-November-2019-1.pdf

voir aussi:
14/10/2019: “[they] started beating men with sticks, they beat me on my shoulder and back”

Date and time: October 14, 2019 03:00
Location: South east of #Komesarac, Croatia
Coordinates: 45.09186791983132, 15.769071046238082
Push-back from: Croatia
Push-back to: Bosnia
Demographics: 35 person(s), age: 2 - 45 (including minors aged 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8) , from: Palestine, Syria, Iraq
Minors involved? Yes
Violence used: beating (with batons/hands/other), kicking, threatening with guns, forcing to undress, destruction of personal belongings, theft of personal belongings
Police involved: 10 Croatian officers dressed in blue uniforms with gunns, 2 police cars, 3 vans, 6/7 officers in camourflage uniform
Taken to a police station?: yes
Treatment at police station or other place of detention: detention, no translator present, denial of access to toilets, denial of food/water
Was the intention to ask for asylum expressed?: Yes
Reported by: Border Violence Monitoring

Original Report

A Syrian family joined a group of 35 people (mostly families from Syria and Palestine and a few single men from Iraq), and attempted to cross the Bosnian-Croatian border. They started walking from Velika Kladuša and walked for a day and a half through the woods and mountains. Once they were inside Croatian territory they decided to take a rest in the woods. The group fell asleep only to be woken up at 03:00 in the morning of 14th October 2019 by rapid gun fire and shouts of, “Freeze!”.

They family noticed ten men in blue uniforms of Croatian police surrounding them, firing shots in the air:

“like in a movie, they forced all men to lie down on their stomachs with our hands behind our heads, women no, they were just standing aside”.

Not long after, the police ordered them to make a line and start walking, while police was escorting the line on both sides, pointing their guns at them.

“We walked maybe 30 minutes, we reached a place with a hole already waiting for us, the fire was already burning, ready for our stuff. They took everyone’s backpacks, bags and sleeping bags and for single men they took jackets also. Everything was burned. I asked if I can take my baby’s food from the bag and they said no, took my backpack and threw it in the fire.”

They were searched over their clothes and had their phones taken away from them. Some phones were thrown on the ground and stomped-on with police boots while some were just taken away and never returned. Two police cars and three vans arrived, everyone was forced to go inside them and driven for an hour to the police station where they were detained for two hours with no food, water, access to toilet or the presence of a translator.

“They didn’t even talk to us, we asked them to take our fingerprints, one man in the group spoke good English and he explained to the police what we want (referring to asylum claim). The police was just laughing and didn’t do anything.”

Instead, the transit group were again put in the three police vans which drove for around one hour and a half to the border-area, where they were made to go out of the vans and saw six to seven police in camouflage uniforms waiting for them.

“Commandos in camouflage color started beating men with sticks, they beat me on my shoulder and back [he shows a picture of the bruises from his phone] and kicking us in our knees or behind our knees, yelling at us to start walking faster. They were walking behind us, beating and yelling for a few hundred meters than they stopped and we were told to continue by ourselves.”

Once returned to BiH, the group walked for four to five hours to reach Velika Kladuša, where they took the bus to Sedra camp, close to Bihac.

▻https://www.borderviolence.eu/violence-reports/october-14-2019-0300-south-east-of-komesarac-croatia

v. aussi la liste publiée par Borderviolence.eu des push-back avec utilisation d’armes :
Push-back reports from Croatia with gun violence
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/802420#message812396
►https://www.borderviolence.eu/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-of-Firearms-use-1.pdf

La côte atlantique, nouveau point de départ de jeunes marocains

Ces dernières semaines, plusieurs embarcations transportant des jeunes marocains sont parties des villes de Salé, Casablanca, ou encore Safi, pour rejoindre le sud de l’Espagne ou les Canaries. Pour Ali Zoubeidi, docteur en droit public, spécialiste dans le trafic illicite de migrants au Maroc, les départs depuis ces villes situées sur la côte atlantique du pays sont nouveaux, et révèlent le désarroi d’une jeunesse qui, faute de perspectives, se tourne vers un « eldorado » européen.
Entre fin septembre et début octobre, les corps de 16 personnes ont été repêchés au large de Casablanca, au nord-ouest du Maroc. Les victimes, tous de jeunes marocains, étaient montées à bord d’une embarcation pneumatique, espérant rejoindre le sud de l’Espagne par l’océan Atlantique. Sur la soixantaine de personnes qui se trouvaient à bord, seules trois ont survécu.

Quelques semaines plus tard, une vidéo publiée sur les réseaux sociaux fait le tour de la presse marocaine. Elle montre Anouar Boukharsa, un sportif marocain détenteur de plusieurs prix de taekwondo régionaux et nationaux, lancer sa médaille à la mer depuis un bateau de fortune en direction des Canaries. Parti de la plage de Souira, au sud de la ville de Safi, avec une dizaine de jeunes marocains comme lui originaires de la région, il est arrivé le 23 octobre à Lanzarote, une île de l’archipel espagnol, après quatre jours de voyage.

Si le Maroc est devenu ces dernières années une route migratoire majeure, avec des départs s’organisant le plus souvent depuis la côte méditerranéenne, ces deux événements illustrent la présence d’autres points de départ se situant du côté Atlantique. Ali Zoubeidi, docteur en droit public spécialiste dans le trafic illicite de migrants au Maroc, travaille sur l’émergence de ces nouvelles traversées. Il répond aux questions de la rédaction d’InfoMigrants.

Les départs depuis la côte atlantique du Maroc sont-ils nouveaux ?

La route atlantique depuis le sud du pays en direction des Canaries avait déjà été réactivée, avec des points de départ dans la région de Tiznit, ou près de Dakhla. On connaissait déjà aussi la route du nord, avec des embarcations qui partent des villes d’Asilah ou de Larache, sur la côte atlantique, pour rejoindre la mer Méditerranée puis le sud de l’Espagne.

Mais ce que l’on voit émerger maintenant, et c’est très récent, ce sont des points de départ dans le centre, à partir de villes comme Safi - d’où est parti le champion de taekwondo - pour aller aux Canaries, ou de Salé et de Casablanca pour rejoindre la Méditerranée et ensuite le sud de l’Espagne. Ce sont des trajets de plusieurs jours, très dangereux, à bord d’embarcations de pêche traditionnelles ou de bateaux pneumatiques qui sont mis à l’eau sur des plages sauvages, par exemple à Souira, au sud de Safi.

Les points de départ au sud concernent à la fois des Marocains et des migrants originaires d’Afrique subsaharienne. Ces derniers se retrouvent pour certains au sud du pays après avoir été refoulés du nord par les autorités. [Les autorités marocaines avaient commencé en août 2018 à refouler de force des migrants vers le sud du pays afin de les « soustraire aux réseaux mafieux » du nord, NDLR.]

Au centre, depuis Safi, Salé, ce sont surtout de jeunes marocains qui partent vers l’Europe.

Comment expliquer ces départs de jeunes marocains ?

Même s’il n’y a pas encore de chiffres et données précises sur les départs depuis ces nouvelles zones, ce que l’on observe, c’est vraiment le désespoir de la jeunesse marocaine. Ce sont souvent des jeunes qui décident de quitter le pays en trouvant l’issue la plus proche pour atteindre l’Europe, « l’eldorado ». Dans les vidéos qui sont apparues ces dernières semaines, on a vu plusieurs personnes originaires de Safi partir du sud de leur ville, dont des sportifs. Certains jettent à l’eau leurs médailles, d’autres leurs diplômes. C’est révélateur d’une absence de perspectives pour la jeunesse marocaine, tant au niveau économique, de la santé, qu’au niveau sportif et culturel. Ils savent qu’ils peuvent mourir pendant le trajet, mais ils ne se posent pas la question de ce qu’il pourra ensuite se passer une fois en Espagne.

C’est vraiment présenté comme une aventure, un challenge entre jeunes. Ce sont aussi des jeunes qui souffrent de l’absence de voie légale d’immigration. Ils se voient refuser des visas pour des raisons économiques, même quand il s’agit pour eux simplement de faire du tourisme ou d’effectuer un déplacement temporaire. Et puis, il y a la mise en scène. On fait des vidéos pendant le passage irrégulier, on se vante pour montrer qu’on y arrive, on fait des dédicaces à sa famille, ses amis : c’est le moment où l’on peut dire « j’ai réussi quelque chose ». Et cela devient un facteur d’attraction pour d’autres. C’est aussi de la publicité dont se servent ensuite les réseaux mafieux.

Comment s’organisent ces départs ? Quels sont les dangers ?

Je dirais qu’il y a vraiment des réseaux criminels impliqués dans environ 85% des cas. Le reste étant des amateurs qui s’auto-organisent. Je soulignerais aussi l’importance de la communauté locale, des gens qui habitent sur la côte : dans les quartiers populaires, des pêcheurs sont impliqués. Il y a également des opportunistes, qui n’y connaissent rien, qui prennent contact avec des jeunes via les réseaux sociaux et les arnaquent. Début septembre, pour le cas du naufrage au large de Casablanca d’une embarcation qui se dirigeait vers le sud de l’Espagne, il s’agissait clairement d’une arnaque. Il est extrêmement compliqué de rejoindre les côtes espagnoles depuis Casablanca.

Il y a également eu le cas de migrants qui avaient été mis dans une embarcation et emmenés d’une côte marocaine à une autre. On leur avait dit de rester cachés pour ne pas être repérés. Au-delà des arnaques, ce sont des routes très dangereuses, autant lorsqu’on part du centre vers les Canaries que du centre vers le sud de l’Espagne. Et, souvent, les jeunes qui partent n’ont pas le réflexe de penser à des numéros de secours qu’ils pourraient appeler en cas de détresse.

La vidéo du champion de taekwondo, et deux jours avant la photo d’un ancien footballeur lors de sa traversée, sont des signaux d’alarme pour le pays. Le Maroc renforce ses capacités et forme des acteurs à lutter contre ces départs et ces réseaux. Mais il faudra aussi des programmes pour travailler sur les causes profondes qui poussent ces jeunes à partir.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/20425/la-cote-atlantique-nouveau-point-de-depart-de-jeunes-marocains

#migrants_marocains #jeunes #jeunesse #Asilah #Larache #Salé #Casablanca #Safi

Casi 60 muertos en el naufragio de una patera que venía a Canarias

Al menos 57 inmigrantes de varias nacionalidades han muerto tras naufragar este miércoles su embarcación en aguas del Atlántico a la altura de #Nuadibú (470 kilómetros al norte de Nuakchot), en Mauritania.

Al menos 57 inmigrantes de varias nacionalidades han muerto tras naufragar este miércoles su embarcación en aguas del Atlántico a la altura de Nuadibú (470 kilómetros al norte de Nuakchot), en Mauritania, según fuentes policiales en esta ciudad.

Otros 74 ocupantes de esa misma patera lograron salir con vida tras nadar hasta llegar a la costa de Mauritania, y fueron ellos los que dieron detalles del naufragio.

La embarcación había partido el pasado jueves desde las costas de Gambia con destino a las Islas Canarias, llevando a bordo un total de 150 ocupantes de distintas nacionalidades.

La embarcación, que al parecer viajaba siempre cerca de las costas, golpeó un arrecife y volcó; una vez en el agua, solo los que sabían nadar pudieron llegar hasta la costa y salvar la vida.

Tras encontrar a los supervivientes, las autoridades mauritanas les llevaron hasta un lugar seguro de Nuadibú, donde les proporcionaron cuidados, víveres, ropa y mantas.

No hay esperanza de encontrar a nuevos supervivientes, según las fuentes, pero continúa el rastreo para tratar de encontrar los cadáveres, que en algunos casos han sido arrojados a tierra por el oleaje.

Estos últimos serán enterrados esta misma noche en un lugar al exterior de la ciudad.

▻https://www.laprovincia.es/sucesos/2019/12/04/60-muertos-naufragio-patera-iba/1233464.html
#Mauritanie

Il naufragio di ieri al largo delle coste mauritane in cui 60 migranti hanno perso la vita mi ha riportato indietro al 2006, quando più di 50.000 migranti avevano intrapreso la rotta delle Canarie con un tragico bilancio di più di 5000 morti nell’Oceano Atlantico.
In quegli anni andavo spesso alle Canarie per capire quello che succedeva. Su quelle isole e a Melilla, ho cominciato a lavorare sulle politiche di esternalizzazione.
Che i migranti partano sempre più a sud, dal Gambia questa volta, sapendo che il viaggio é lunghissimo (più di 10 giorni di traversata) e pericolosissimo, si spiega anche con il tentativo di chiusura totale delle altre rotte, quella libica e marocchina, da parte della UE e per la presenza delle navi di Frontex al largo delle coste senegalesi e mauritane.

▻https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10220667545986599&set=a.1478670974789&type=3&theater

#Sara_Prestianni #Gambie

Mauritanian coast guard intercepts boat carrying around 190 migrants, IOM says

A boat carrying around 190 migrants was intercepted by the Mauritanian coast guard on Friday, the UN migration agency said. This comes less than two days after 63 migrants drowned when their vessel sank in the same waters en route from The Gambia. The country’s president has vowed to crack down on people traffickers.

After the recovery of five additional bodies, the death toll from last Wednesday’s sinking of a fishing boat rose to 63 over the weekend, according to news agencies AP and dpa. The boat was headed northward toward Spain’s Canary Islands from the small coastal town of Barra in the Gambia.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said at least 150 people were traveling on the boat. According to one of the survivors, the boat may have been carrying up to 200 people, as rfi reported. Around 80 survived by swimming ashore.

Separately, the Mauritanian coast guard on Friday intercepted a vessel carrying around 190 Gambian migrants headed for Spain’s Canary Islands, a Mauritanian security source told news agency AFP.

Initial estimates said the boat was carrying between 150 and 180 migrants. They are in the process of being identified by the local authorities, said Laura Lungarotti, chief of the IOM in Mauritania.

Uptick in attempted crossings

The incidents are indicative of a resurgence in the number of people willing to risk the perilous and poorly monitored sea passage along West Africa’s coast to Spain’s Canary Islands, which was a major route for those seeking jobs and a better life in Europe until Spain stepped up patrols in the mid-2000s, Reuters writes.

“It is part of this trend of an increasing number of people passing through this route because the central Mediterranean route has been stopped due to the Libya situation,” Lungarotti told Reuters.

In Italy, the number of migrant arrivals dropped significantly after the Italian government focused its policies on stopping migration to its shores from Libya in 2016.

From January to December this year, some 14,000 people arrived irregularly in Europe via the central Mediterranean route, down from nearly 25,000 in 2018.

Recently, however, there has been a rise in migrant boats departing from Libya: In late November, at least 9 boats with more than 600 migrants on board were discovered on the central Mediterranean route in only 48 hours, according to IOM.

The Canary Islands are located roughly 1,000 kilometers north of Mauritania’s capital on the Atlantic coast, Nouakchott, and some 1,600 kilometers north of the capital of The Gambia, Banjul.

According to IOM, some 158 people are known to have died trying to reach the Canary Islands so far this year. That’s almost four times as many as last year, when 43 people died.

’National tragedy’

“To lose 60 young lives at sea is a national tragedy and a matter of grave concern to my government,” Gambian President Adama Barrow said on national television. “A full police investigation has been launched to get to the bottom of this serious national disaster. The culprits will be prosecuted according to law,” AFP cited Barrow as saying.

Last Wednesday’s sinking off Mauritania with at least 63 deaths was one of the deadliest incidents along this route in recent years. According to IOM, it is the largest known loss of life along the so-called western migration route this year, and this year’s sixth deadliest migrant capsizings globally.

The boat was attempting to reach the Canary Islands when their boat hit a rock. 87 people survived the disaster by swimming ashore, IOM said.

President Barrow further said funds had been sent to Mauritania to cater to the immediate needs of the survivors admitted to hospital and to finance their repatriation. According to IOM, more than 35,000 Gambian migrants left the small country of just over 2 million and arrived in Europe between 2014 and 2018.

The Gambia to crack down on traffickers

On Saturday, Barrow vowed to punish people traffickers as the country mourned the deaths of the Europe-bound migrants. Barrow pledged to “fast track prosecution of cases involving human trafficking.” Law enforcement officials were “instructed to increase surveillance and arrest... criminals involved in human trafficking,” he said.

A 22-year oppressive rule of former President Yahya Jammeh, Barrow’s predecessor, adversely affected the country’s economy. This contributed to the high number of people trying to migrate to Europe, many of whom ended up stranded in Libya and Niger. Since Jammeh was forced to cede power in 2017, however, some Gambians have started to return.

In regards to the boat intercepted by the Mauritanian coast guard on Friday, Barrow said “Arrangements have been made to transport them” back to Banjul.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/21407/mauritanian-coast-guard-intercepts-boat-carrying-around-190-migrants-i

Una patera con 26 personas llega a #Tenerife y otras 152 son rescatadas en Alborán y cerca de Gran Canaria

Salvamento Marítimo traslada este sábado al puerto de Almería a 49 varones que habían quedado aislados dos días por el mal tiempo.

Una embarcación de Salvamento Marítimo ha rescatado esta noche a una patera con al menos 26 inmigrantes a 50 millas (92 kilómetros) de la isla de Gran Canaria. El equipo de emergencias ha trasladado a los ocupantes de la embarcación precaria al puerto de Arguineguín, una localidad del municipio de Mogán (Gran Canaria) de unos 2.500 habitantes. En otra operación en el mar de Alborán han sido rescatadas 126 personas, de las que 49, todos varones, estaban aislados desde la tarde del pasado jueves en la isla de Alborán por el mal tiempo.

Según la agencia Efe, que cita fuentes del servicio 112 de Canarias, los rescatados cerca de Gran Canaria son 22 hombres y cuatro mujeres. Según Europa Press, que atribuye la información a fuentes de Cruz Roja, son 24 varones, uno de ellos menor de edad, y cuatro mujeres, entre las que hay una embarazada. Además, otra patera con 26 migrantes de origen subsahariano ha llegado esta madrugada al muelle de Los Abrigos de Granadilla de Abona, un municipio de Tenerife de unos 48.400 habitantes. De estos, nueve son hombres —hay un menor de 16 años— y 17 mujeres, entre las que hay una embarazada y una niña de cinco años.

Una vez en tierra, el Servicio de Urgencias Canario (SUC) y Cruz Roja asistieron a los ocupantes de las dos pateras, todos en aparente buen estado de salud. Sin embargo, al menos cuatro personas de la patera rescatada a 50 millas de Gran Canaria han tenido que ser derivados a centros sanitarios por patologías leves. De la otra infraembarcación, tres inmigrantes han sido trasladados a ambulatorios por el mismo motivo.

La operación en aguas de Alborán comenzó en la mañana de este sábado cuando la embarcación Salvamar Spica ha emprendido rumbo a la isla de Alborán para recoger a 49 varones, según ha informado un portavoz de Salvamento Marítimo a Efe . Estos hombres llegaron a la isla de Alborán en patera el pasado jueves sobre las 18.30 horas pero su traslado había sido imposible por el mal tiempo.

Cuando la Salvamar Spica se dirigía en su búsqueda, el destacamento naval de la Armada en Alborán ha alertado al centro coordinador de Salvamento Marítimo del avistamiento de otra patera a media milla náutica (unos 900 metros) de la isla de Alborán.

La Salvamar Spica ha recogido a 77 personas, entre ellas 21 mujeres y cuatro menores, de esta patera y posteriormente ha transbordado a los 49 varones llegados a la isla de Alborán y que fueron atendidos desde el jueves por el destacamento naval de la Armada.

La embarcación de rescate se dirige hacia el puerto de Almería, al que está prevista su llegada sobre las 19.10 horas.

El aumento de las llegadas de inmigrantes a Canarias ha llevado al colapso a los centros de acogida en esta comunidad. La falta de plazas en los albergues, dependientes de la Secretaría de Estado de Migraciones, ha llegado a tal punto que se han tenido que habilitar habitaciones en un hotel en Las Palmas para mujeres embarazadas y con niños pequeños. Solo hay 200 plazas de acogida en albergues temporales de Tenerife y Gran Canaria, pero en 2019, 1.470 inmigrantes han llegado a las islas.

La media en los últimas cuatro meses se sitúa en 400 llegadas cada mes, muchas de ellas en pateras en condiciones pésimas. La cifra está muy lejos de los casi 40.000 que arribaron en esta comunidad entre 2005 y 2006 en la llamada crisis de los cayucos, pero existe un aumento con respecto al año pasado —de un 12%— que se debe al reforzamiento de la seguridad en el norte de Marruecos. La dificultad de realizar esa ruta ha aumentado el número de embarcaciones precarias que se dirigen a Canarias para tratar de llegar a territorio español o europeo.

Este pasado miércoles, al menos 63 inmigrantes de varias nacionalidades murieron tras naufragar su patera en aguas del Atlántico a la altura de Nuadibú (470 kilómetros al norte de Nuakchot), en Mauritania, según confirmó la Organización Internacional para las Migraciones (OIM) en un comunicado. Entre los fallecidos había un niño y siete mujeres. Otros 83 ocupantes de esa misma patera lograron salir con vida tras nadar hasta llegar a la costa de Mauritania, y fueron ellos los que dieron detalles del naufragio. La embarcación precaria había partido el pasado jueves desde las costas de Gambia con destino a las islas Canarias, llevando a bordo entre 150 y 180 ocupantes.

▻https://elpais.com/politica/2019/12/07/actualidad/1575708520_470358.html

43 muertos en la patera hundida que venía a Canarias

La oenegé Caminando Fronteras informa de que hay 21 supervivientes, que fueron rescatados por la marina marroquí - La embarcación se hundió a 24 kilómetros de la costa de Tan-Tan.

Un total de 43 personas han fallecido al naufragar una patera que se dirigía al Archipiélago, según ha informado la periodista e investigadora en Migraciones y Trata de Seres Humanos, Helena Maleno, en su cuenta de Twitter. La oenegé Caminando Fronteras ha apuntado que 21 personas han sido rescatadas con vida por los servicios de rescate marroquí.

La agencia Efe informaba esta tarde de que dos personas habían muerto y al menos 19 habían desaparecido al hundirse a unos 24 kilómetros de la costa de Tan-Tan, en Marruecos, una patera que se dirigía hacia Canarias, según explicó Salvamento Marítimo, con la información que recibió de los servicios de rescate de Rabat.

España envió de urgencia esta mañana hacia la zona a una embarcación de rescate desde Lanzarote, a unos 200 kilómetros de distancia, la Salvamar Al Nair, tras recibir a través de las ONG llamadas telefónicas de socorro de los propios inmigrantes, que pedían auxilio porque su neumática se estaba hundiendo.

La periodista amplió esta información y asegura que el número de fallecidos asciende a 43 y que sólo dos cadáveres habían sido recuperados.

▻https://www.laprovincia.es/sucesos/2020/04/03/43-muertos-patera-diria-canarias/1271515.html

Austrian Presidency document: “a new, better protection system under which no applications for asylum are filed on EU territory”

A crude paper authored by the Austrian Presidency of the Council of the EU and circulated to other Member States’s security officials refers disparagingly to “regions that are characterised by patriarchal, anti-freedom and/or backward-looking religious attitudes” and calls for “a halt to illegal migration to Europe” and the “development of a new, better protection system under which no applications for asylum are filed on EU territory,” with some minor exceptions.

See: Austrian Presidency: Informal Meeting of COSI, Vienna, Austria, 2-3 July 2018: Strengthening EU External Border Protection and a Crisis-Resistant EU Asylum System (►https://www.statewatch.org/news/2018/jul/EU-austria-Informal-Meeting-%20COSI.pdf)

The document was produced for an ’Informal Meeting of COSI’ (the Council of the EU’s Standing Committee on Operational Cooperation on Internal Security) which took place on 2 and 3 July in Vienna, and the proposals it contains were the subject of numerous subsequent press articles - with the Austrian President one of the many who criticised the government’s ultra-hardline approach.

See: Austrian president criticises government’s asylum proposals (The Local, ▻https://www.thelocal.at/20180715/austrian-president-criticises-governments-asylum-proposals); Austrian proposal requires asylum seekers to apply outside EU: Profil (Reuters, ▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-austria/austrian-proposal-requires-asylum-seekers-to-apply-outside-eu-profil-idUSKB); Right of asylum: Austria’s unsettling proposals to member states (EurActiv, ▻https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/right-of-asylum-austrias-unsettling-proposals-to-member-states)

Some of the proposals were also discussed at an informal meeting of the EU’s interior ministers on Friday 13 July, where the topic of “return centres” (▻http://statewatch.org/news/2018/jul/eu-ciuncil-returns.htm) was also raised. The Luxembourg interior minister Jean Asselborn reportedly said that such an idea “shouldn’t be discussed by civilized Europeans.” See: No firm EU agreement on Austrian proposals for reducing migration (The Local, ▻https://www.thelocal.at/20180713/no-firm-eu-agreement-on-austrian-proposals-for-reducing-migration)

The Austrian Presidency paper proposes:

"2.1. By 2020

By 2020 the following goals could be defined:

Saving as many human lives as possible;
Clear strengthening of the legal framework and the operational capabilities of FRONTEX with respect to its two main tasks: support in protecting the Union’s external border and in the field of return;
Increasing countering and destruction of people smugglers’ and human traffickers‘ business models;
Significant reduction in illegal migration;
More sustainable and more effective return measures as well as establishment of instruments that foster third countries’ willingness to cooperate on all relevant aspects, including the fight against people smuggling, providing protection and readmission;
Development of a holistic concept for a forward-looking migration policy (in the spirit of a “whole of government approach“) and a future European protection system in cooperation with third countries that is supported by all and does not overburden all those involved – neither in terms of resources nor with regard to the fundamental rights and freedoms they uphold.

2.2. By 2025

By 2025 the following goals could be realised:

Full control of the EU’s external borders and their comprehensive protection have been ensured.
The new, better European protection system has been implemented across the EU in cooperation with third countries; important goals could include:
no incentives anymore to get into boats, thus putting an end to smuggled persons dying in the Mediterranean;
smart help and assistance for those in real need of protection, i.e. provided primarily in the respective region;
asylum in Europe is granted only to those who respect European values and the fundamental rights and freedoms upheld in the EU;
no overburdening of the EU Member States’ capabilities;
lower long-term costs;
prevention of secondary migration.
Based on these principles, the EU Member States have returned to a consensual European border protection and asylum policy.”

And includes the following statements, amongst others:

“...more and more Member States are open to exploring a new approach. Under the working title “Future European Protection System” (FEPS) and based on an Austrian initiative, a complete paradigm shift in EU asylum policy has been under consideration at senior officials’ level for some time now. The findings are considered in the “Vienna Process” in the context of which the topic of external border protection is also dealt with. A number of EU Member States, the EU Commission and external experts contribute towards further reflections and deliberations on these two important topics.”

“...ultimately, there is no effective EU external border protection in place against illegal migration and the existing EU asylum system does not enable an early distinction between those who are in need of protection and those who are not.”

“Disembarkment following rescue at sea as a rule only takes place in EU Member States. This means that apprehensions at sea not only remain ineffective (non-refoulement, examination of applications for asylum), but are exploited in people smugglers’ business models.”

“Due to factors related to their background as well as their poor perspectives, they [smuggled migrants] repeatedly have considerable problems with living in free societies or even reject them. Among them are a large number of barely or poorly educated young men who have travelled to Europe alone. Many of these are particularly susceptible to ideologies that are hostile to freedom and/or are prone to turning to crime.

As a result of the prevailing weaknesses in the fields of external border protection and asylum, it is to be expected that the negative consequences of past and current policies will continue to be felt for many years to come. As experience with immigration from regions that are characterised by patriarchal, anti-freedom and/or backward-looking religious attitudes has shown, problems related to integration, safety and security may even increase significantly over several generations.”

See: Austrian Presidency: Informal Meeting of COSI, Vienna, Austria, 2-3 July 2018: Strengthening EU External Border Protection and a Crisis-Resistant EU Asylum System (pdf)

►https://www.statewatch.org/news/2018/jul/eu-austrian-pres-asylum-paper.htm

#Autriche

Germany proposed a new automatic relocation scheme for asylum seekers (▻https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-sets-out-plan-for-automatic-relocation-of-asylum-seekers), according to which requests for international protection would be evaluated at the external borders of the European Union. The proposal was presented last week to EU member states, with the aim of making progress in the reforming of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), ahead of the German Presidency of the Council of the EU in the second part of next year. The document proposes the initial evaluation of cases at EU’s external borders, a new regime for determining which member state is responsible for the further processing of the application, and measures to prevent asylum seekers’ migration from one member state to another. The proposal that initial assessments of all cases should be made at the external borders is very problematic, since it determines that “clearly false and unfounded” requests would be denied immediately at the external border, as well as the fact that measures including restricting freedom of movement could be used in such proceedings. Moreover, the question of what would be the exact procedure of determining which states are responsible for processing applications for asylum also arises. According to the German plan, the key role in this would be reserved for European Asylum Support Office (EASO), which the Commission already proposes to transform into the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA), that would then decide which member state is responsible for the further processing of applications. This decision would be based on factors such as the size of the population of the member state, their GDP and so on.

Reçu via Inicijativa dobrodosli, mail du 04.11.2019.

Refugees trapped on Kos: An unspeakable crisis in reception conditions

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Hundreds of refugees are forced to live in boxes made out of cardboard and reed or makeshift sheds inside and outside of the Kos hotspot, in the utmost precarious and unsuitable conditions, without access to adequate medical and legal assistance. Since last April, the Kos hotspot, located on a hill at the village of Pyli, 15km outside of the city, is overcrowded, while the number of transfers of vulnerable refugees from the island to the mainland is significantly lower[1] compared to other islands, therefore creating an unbearable sense of entrapment for the refugees. RSA staff visited the island recently, spoke with refugees[2] living at the hotspot and visited the surrounding area. The images and testimonies cited in this document point out an unspeakable crisis in reception conditions.

A former military camp in the village of Pyli serves as the Kos hotspot, despite intense protests residents; it started operating in March 2016 following the implementation of the toxic EU – Turkey Deal. According to official data, a place designed for a maximum occupancy of 816 people and 116 containers is now accommodating 3.734 people. Given the lack of any other accommodation structure on the island, the above number includes those living in makeshift sheds inside the hotspot as well as in crumbling abandoned buildings and tents outside of it. This severe overcrowding has led the authorities to use the Pre-removal Centre as an area for the stay for asylum-seekers– who are under restriction of their freedom of movement – including vulnerable individuals, women and families.

According to UNHCR, the majority of asylum-seekers come from Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Palestine and Iraq, while children make up for 27% of the entire population. This data points out that, despite the dominant opposite and unfounded rhetoric, most of the newcomers are refugees, coming from countries with high asylum recognition rates.

“We are living like mice”

Two large abandoned buildings stand outside the hotspot; they are accessible only through debris, trash and a “stream” of sewage. RSA met with refugees who live there and who described their wretched living conditions. “Here, we are living like mice. We are looking for cardboard boxes and reeds to make ourselves a place to sleep. At night, there is no electricity. You look for an empty space between others, you lay down and try to sleep”, says an English-speaking man from Cameroon, who has been living in one of these abandoned buildings for two months. It is an open space full of holes in the walls and a weathered roof of rusty iron[3].

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Cardboard rooms

African refugees, men and women have found shelter in this utterly dangerous setting. They have made a slum with big cardboard rooms, one next to the other, where the entrance is not visible. As the refugees sleeping in this area mention, there is cement and plaster falling off of the roof all the time. A vulnerable female refugee from Africa described to us her justified fear that her living conditions expose her to further danger.

“The police told us to go find somewhere to sleep, there is no room at the hotspot. I am scared in here among so many men, because there is no electricity and it gets dark at night. But, what can I do? There was no room for me inside”.

A blanket for each person

The situation for Afghan families living in rooms of the other abandoned building, a few meters away, is similar. “When we take our children to the doctor, he writes prescriptions and tells us to buy them by ourselves. No one has helped us. When we arrived, they gave only one blanket to each one of us. Us women, we don’t even have the basics for personal hygiene”, says a young Afghan who has been living here for a month with her daughter and her husband. “They give us 1.5lt of water every day and pasta or potatoes almost daily”, says a young Afghan.

In that space we met with refugees who complain about snakes getting indoors, where people sleep. Many try to shut the holes in the abandoned buildings to deter serpents from entering and to protect themselves from the cold. “We shut the holes but it is impossible to protect ourselves, this building is falling apart, it is really dangerous”, says a man from Afghanistan.

There are no toilets outside of the hotspot; a cement trough is used as a shower for men, women and children, along with a hose from the fields nearby. There, they collect water in buckets and take it to their sheds. Alongside the road leading to the hotspot, refugees are carrying on their shoulders mattresses they have found in the trash, to put them in their tents and sheds.

According to UNHCR, following a request by the Reception and Identification Authority, 200 tents were donated to the hotspot. This said, the Authorities have yet to find an appropriate space to set them up.

Unbearable conditions inside the hotspot

At the moment, there is not really a “safe zone” for unaccompanied minors, despite the fact that there is a space that was designed for this purpose, as families seem to be living in UNHCR tents in that space. The area is not completely protected and according to reports adults, who use the hygiene facilities, can enter there.

Due to the overcrowding, lodgings have been set up in almost every available space, whereas, according to testimonies, there are serious problems with electricity, water supply, sewage disposal and cleanliness. The refugees mention that there is only one public toilet for those not living in a container, lack of clothing, shoes and hygiene products. Some told us that they left the hotspot because of the conditions there, in search of a living space outside of it. Such is the case of a Syrian refugee with his son, who are sleeping in a small construction near the hotspot entrance. “I found two mattresses in the trash. It was so filthy inside and the smell was so unbearable that I couldn’t stand it. I was suffering of skin problems, both me and the child”, he says. Tens of other refugees are sleeping in parks and streets downtown and depend upon solidarity groups in order to attend to their basic needs.

Several refugees told us that they are in search of ways to work, even for free, in order to be of use. “I want to do something, I can’t just sit around doing nothing, it is driving me crazy. Would you happen to know where I could be of help? They say they don’t need me at the hotspot, is there anything I could do for the town of Kos? Clean, help somehow?”, a young Palestinian asks.

Inadequate access to medical care

Refugees living in the hotspot point out the inadequate or non-existent medical care. “We queue up and, if we manage to get to a doctor, they tell us to drink water, a lot of water, and sometimes they give paracetamol. There is no doctor at night, not even for emergencies. If someone is sick, the police won’t even call an ambulance. Take a taxi, they tell us. The other day, my friend was sick with a high fever, we called a taxi, but because the taxi wouldn’t come to the hotspot entrance, we carried him down the road for the taxi to pick us up”, says a young refugee.

According to reports, at this moment there is only one doctor at the hotspot and only one Arab-speaking interpreter among the National Public Health Organization (NPHO) staff; during the summer, because of the limited NHPO staff, there were serious delays in medical tests and vulnerability screenings. Also, Kos hospital is understaffed, with whatever the consequences might be for the locals and the refugees in need of medical care[4].

Not having a Social Security Number makes things even worse for those in need of medication, as they have to pay the entire price to buy it. The amount of 90 EURO that they receive as asylum-seekers from the cash program (cash card), especially when they have a health issue, is not enough. Such is the testimony of a woman from Africa, living in one of the abandoned buildings outside the hotspot. “It is dangerous here, we are suffering. It is difficult in these conditions, with our health, if you go to the hospital, they won’t give you medication. They will write you a prescription and you will have to buy it with your own money”, she tells us.

Problems with free access to medical care for the thousands of newcomers increased sharply since July 2019 because the Foreigner Health Card system did not work and the Minister of Labor revoked[5] the circular on granting a Social Security Number to asylum-seekers, since the matter has yet to be regulated.

Under these circumstances, survivors of a shipwreck (caused by the Coast Guard ramming a refugee boat near Kos resulting in the death of a 3-year old boy and a man) were transferred last week. According to the press, the 19-year old mother of the child, a few hours after the shipwreck and while still in shock, grave mourning and exhaustion, was transferred to the Reception and Identification Centre in order to be registered.

Repression and police brutality

According to the testimonies of at least four refugees, their protests are mostly dealt with repression, while there are reports on use of police violence in these situations. “Every time there is an issue, we go to the police and tell them do something, you have to protect us. They tell us to go away and if we insist, they start yelling and, if we don’t leave, they beat us”, says a minor Afghan who is living in the hotspot with his family. “If we complain, no one listens to you. It is a waste of time and you risk getting in trouble”, a 41-year old man from Africa, who has been living for the past six months inside the hotspot in a shed made of cardboard boxes, explains to us. ”A month ago, when we had the first rain, people were complaining, but it did nothing other than the riot police coming over”, they are telling us.

Huge delays in the asylum process

Many of those we met have yet to receive the threefold document and still have no access to the cash program. Newcomers have only received their “Restriction of Freedom Decision”, valid for 25 days; several have told us that the information on the asylum process is incomplete and they are having difficulty understanding it. At the end of the 25 days, they usually receive a document titled “Service Note of Release” where there is mention of the geographical restriction on the island of Kos. Lately, a notification for the intention to claim asylum is required.

According to reports, at the moment there is a large number of people whose asylum process has not advanced (backlog). “Some of us have been here for 4-6 months and we haven’t even had a pre-interview[6] or an interview yet”, says a woman from Cameroon who is living in the hotspot.

Arrivals have particularly increased in the past months, while refugees arriving in smaller islands, such as Kalymnos, Symi, are transferred to the Kos and Leros hotspots. According to UNHCR, a recent transfer of refugees from Kos to the mainland took place on 6 October and concerned 16 individuals. [7]. Due to the fact that in Kos the geographic restriction was not usually lifted in the past months, hundreds of people are trapped in these extremely precarious conditions. This appears to be happening because of the delays in the asylum process and the lack of medical staff, resulting to vulnerable individuals not being identified, combined with the lack of available space in the mainland structures and the prioritization of other islands that have hotspots.

In Kos, there is free legal aid by four lawyers in total (a Registry lawyer, Metadrasi, Greek Refugee Council, Arsis), while there is great lack of interpreters both in the hotspot and the local hospital.

Lack of access to education

With regard to the refugees children’s education, evening classes in the Refugee Reception and Education Centres (RREC) have yet to start. According to UNHCR data, more than 438 children of school and pre-school age – aged 5 to 17-years old – are living in the hotspot[8] .

In total, 108 children attend the Centre of non-typical education (KEDU) of Arsis Organization near the hotspot, funded by UNHCR. Any educational activity inside the hotspot, take place as part of an unemployment program by the Manpower Employment Organization. According to reports, the kindergarten providing formal education that operated in the previous two years inside the hotspot under the Ministry of Education is now closed as safety reasons were invoked.

Detention: bad conditions and detention of vulnerable individuals

The Pre-removal Centre next to the hotspot, with a capacity of 474 people, is currently detaining 325 people. According to UNHCR observations, the main nationalities are Iraq, Cameroon, Egypt, Syria and Pakistan.

According to reports, newcomers in nearby islands that are transferred to Kos are also detained there until they submit their asylum claim. Also, people who have violated the geographic restriction are also held there. Among the detainees, there are people who have not been subjected to reception procedures process due to shortcomings of the Reception and Identification Authority[9]. Characteristically, following his visit to Kos in August 2019, Philippe Leclerc, the UNHCR Representative in Greece, reported: “I also visited the pre-removal centre on Kos, which since May 2019 has broadly been used as a place for direct placement in detention, instead of reception, of asylum-seekers, including women and those with specific needs, some of whom without prior and sufficient medical or psychosocial screening, due to lack of enough personnel”.

In the context of the pilot project implemented in Lesvos, even extremely vulnerable individuals are being detained, despite the fact that there is no doctor in the Pre-removal Centre. An African refugee with a serious condition told us “I was in the Pre-removal Centre for three and a half months. I almost collapsed. I showed them a document from my country’s hospital, where my condition is mentioned, I asked them for a doctor, but they brought a nurse. Now I sleep in a room made of cardboard and reed outside of the hotspot”.

According to complaints by at least two people who have been detained at the Pre-removal Centre, the police broke the camera of their mobile phones, that resulted in the phones not functioning and them losing their contacts and the only means of communication with their families. “Inside the Pre-removal Centre we didn’t have access to a doctor nor to medication. There was a nurse, but we were receiving no help. Also, we didn’t have access to a lawyer. When we complained, they transferred us to another wing, but all the wings were in an equally bad condition. Many times those who complained were being taken to the police station”, says a 30-year old man from Gambia.

►https://rsaegean.org/en/refugees-trapped-on-kos

800 migrants arrive in Greece within 48 hours, living conditions described as ’horrible’

Migrant arrivals to Greece continue unabated: Nearly 800 migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece in just 48 hours this week, marking the highest pace of arrivals in 40 months. The Council of Europe during a visit to migrant camps on the Greek islands warned of an explosive situation and described living conditions there as ’horrible.’

On Wednesday, the Greek coastguard registered the arrival of 790 migrants in just 48 hours. As state media reported, the migrants arrived by land and by sea on boats at Alexandropouli on the mainland and the islands of Samos and Farmakonisi.

The country has not seen this many arrivals of migrants via sea since the EU-Turkey deal came into effect in March 2016. The number of migrants arriving in Greece in the first ten months of this year has already overshot last year’s figure of around 50,500.

According to the latest UNHCR figures, 55,348 migrants have arrived, 43,683 of them by sea, between the start of 2019 and Sunday.

Dramatic situation

The surge has led to dramatic overcrowding in camps on the Greek Aegean islands, where the migrant population has more than doubled over the past six months, according to the German press agency dpa. Even before, the camps were packed at more than twice their capacity. Outbreaks of violence and fires at the EU-funded island camps have further escalated the situation.

During a visit to Greek island camps on Wednesday, Dunja Mijatovic, the Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe, said she had witnessed people queuing for food or to use a bathroom for more than three hours at refugee camps for asylum seekers on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Samos and Corinth.

“The people I have met are living in horrible conditions and in an unbearable limbo,” she said at a news briefing on Thursday; adding the migrants were struggling to cope with overcrowding, lack of shelter, poor hygiene conditions and substandard access to medical care.

“I saw children with skin diseases not treated. I heard about no medications or drugs at all available to these people. No access to health, no proper access to health and many other things that are really quite shocking for Europe in the 21st century,” Mijatovic continued.

Relocation

To ease the overcrowding, the Greek government has already started relocating people to the mainland. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that 20,000 migrants would be moved by the end of the year. With the current resurgence of arrivals, however, decongestion is not in sight. Mijatovic urged the authorities to transfer asylum seekers from islands to the mainland as soon as possible. “It is an explosive situation”, she said. “This no longer has anything to do with the reception of asylum-seekers,” she said. “This has become a struggle for survival,” she concluded at the end of her visit.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/20526/800-migrants-arrive-in-greece-within-48-hours-living-conditions-descri

Sur l’île de #Samos, une poudrière pour des milliers d’exilés confinés à l’entrée de l’UE

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Avec 6 000 migrants pour 650 places, le camp grec de Samos est une poudrière ravagée par un incendie à la mi-octobre. Alors que la Grèce redevient la première porte d’entrée dans l’UE, autorités comme réfugiés alertent sur la catastrophe en cours. Reportage sur cette île, symptôme de la crise européenne de l’accueil.

La ligne d’horizon se fond dans le ciel d’encre de Samos. L’île grecque des confins de l’Europe est isolée dans la nuit d’automne. Sur le flanc de la montagne qui surplombe la ville côtière de Vathy, des lumières blanches et orange illuminent un amas de blocs blancs d’où s’élèvent des voix. Elles résonnent loin dans les hauteurs de cyprès et d’oliviers, où s’égarent des centaines de tentes. Ces voix sont celles d’Afghans et de Syriens en majorité, d’Irakiens, de Camerounais, de Congolais, de Ghanéens… Pour moitié d’entre eux, ce sont des femmes et des enfants. Un monde au-dehors qui peine à s’endormir malgré l’heure tardive.

À deux kilomètres des côtes turques, l’île de Samos (Grèce) est rejointe en Zodiac par les exilés. © Dessin Elisa Perrigueur

Ils sont 6 000 à se serrer dans les conteneurs prévus pour 648 personnes, et la « jungle » alentour, dit-on ici. Ce camp est devenu une ville dans la ville. On y compte autant de migrants que d’habitants. « Samos est un petit paradis avec ce point cauchemardesque au milieu », résume Mohammed, Afghan qui foule ces pentes depuis un an. Les exilés sont arrivés illégalement au fil des mois en Zodiac, depuis la Turquie, à deux kilomètres. Surpeuplé, Vathy continue de se remplir de nouveaux venus débarqués avec des rêves d’Europe, peu à peu gagnés par la désillusion.

À l’origine lieu de transit, le camp fut transformé en 2016 en « hotspot », l’un des cinq centres d’identification des îles Égéennes gérés par l’État grec et l’UE. Les migrants, invisibles sur le reste de l’île de Samos, sont désormais tous bloqués là le temps de leur demande d’asile, faute de places d’hébergement sur le continent grec, où le dispositif est débordé par 73 000 requêtes. Ils attendent leur premier entretien, parfois calé en 2022, coincés sur ce bout de terre de 35 000 habitants.

Naveed Majedi, Afghan de 27 ans rencontré à Vathy. © Elisa Perrigueur
Naveed Majedi, un Afghan de 27 ans, physique menu et yeux verts, évoque la sensation d’être enlisé dans un « piège » depuis sept mois qu’il s’est enregistré ici. « On est bloqués au milieu de l’eau. Je ne peux pas repartir en Afghanistan, avec les retours volontaires [proposés par l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations de l’ONU – ndlr], c’est trop dangereux pour ma vie », déplore l’ancien traducteur pour la Force internationale d’assistance à la sécurité à Kaboul.

Le camp implose, les « habitations » se négocient au noir. Naveed a payé sa tente 150 euros à un autre migrant en partance. Il peste contre « ces tranchées de déchets, ces toilettes peu nombreuses et immondes. La nourriture mauvaise et insuffisante ». Le jeune homme prend des photos en rafale, les partage avec ses proches pour montrer sa condition « inhumaine », dit-il. De même que l’organisation Médecins sans frontières (MSF) alerte : « On compte aujourd’hui le plus grand nombre de personnes dans le camp depuis 2016. La situation se détériore très vite. Le lieu est dangereux pour la santé physique et mentale. »

Il n’existe qu’une échappatoire : un transfert pour Athènes en ferry avec un relogement à la clef, conditionné à l’obtention d’une « carte ouverte » (en fonction des disponibilités, de la nationalité, etc.). Depuis l’arrivée en juillet d’un premier ministre de droite, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, celles-ci sont octroyées en petit nombre.

Se rêvant dans le prochain bateau, Naveed scrute avec obsession les rumeurs de transferts sur Facebook. « Il y a des nationalités prioritaires, comme les Syriens », croit-il. Les tensions entre communautés marquent le camp, qui s’est naturellement divisé par pays d’origine. « Il y a constamment des rixes, surtout entre des Afghans et des Syriens, admet Naveed. Les Africains souvent ne s’en mêlent pas. Nous, les Afghans, sommes mal perçus à cause de certains qui sont agressifs, on nous met dans le même sac. » Querelles politiques à propos du conflit syrien, embrouilles dans les files d’attente de repas, promiscuité trop intense… Nul ne sait précisément ce qui entraîne les flambées de colère. La dernière, sanglante, a traumatisé Samos.

Le camp était une poudrière, alertaient ces derniers mois les acteurs de l’île dans l’indifférence. Le 14 octobre, Vathy a explosé. Dans la soirée, deux jeunes exilés ont été poignardés dans le centre-ville, vengeance d’une précédente rixe entre Syriens et Afghans au motif inconnu. En représailles, un incendie volontaire a ravagé 700 « habitations » du camp. L’état d’urgence a été déclaré. Les écoles ont fermé. Des centaines de migrants ont déserté le camp.

L’Afghan Abdul Fatah, 43 ans, sa femme de 34 ans et leurs sept enfants ont quitté « par peur » leur conteneur pour dormir sur la promenade du front de mer. Les manifestations de migrants se sont multipliées devant les bureaux de l’asile. Des policiers sont arrivés en renfort et de nouvelles évacuations de migrants vers Athènes ont été programmées.

Dans l’attente de ces transferts qui ne viennent pas, les migrants s’échappent quand ils le peuvent du camp infernal. Le jour, ils errent entre les maisons pâles du petit centre-ville, déambulent sur la baie, patientent dans les squares publics.

« Nous ne sommes pas acceptés par tous. Un jour, j’ai voulu commander à dîner dans une taverne. La femme m’a répondu que je pouvais seulement prendre à emporter », relate Naveed, assis sur une place où trône le noble Lion de Samos. Un homme du camp à l’air triste sirote à côté une canette de bière. Une famille de réfugiés sort d’un supermarché les bras chargés : ils viennent de dépenser les 90 euros mensuels donnés par le Haut-Commissariat pour les réfugiés (HCR) dans l’échoppe où se mêlent les langues grecque, dari, arabe et français.

D’autres migrants entament une longue marche vers les hauteurs de l’île. Ils se rendent à l’autre point de convergence des réfugiés : l’hôpital de Samos. Situé entre les villas silencieuses, l’établissement est pris d’assaut. Chaque jour entre 100 et 150 demandeurs s’y pressent espérant rencontrer un docteur, de ceux qui peuvent rédiger un rapport aidant à l’octroi d’un statut de « vulnérabilité » permettant d’obtenir plus facilement une « carte ouverte ».

Samuel et Alice, un couple de Ghanéens ont mis des semaines à obtenir un rendez-vous avec le gynécologue de l’hôpital. © Elisa Perrigueur

La « vulnérabilité » est théoriquement octroyée aux femmes enceintes, aux personnes atteintes de maladies graves, de problèmes psychiques. Le panel est flou, il y a des failles. Tous le savent, rappelle le Dr Fabio Giardina, le responsable des médecins. Certains exilés désespérés tentent de simuler des pathologies pour partir. « Un jour, on a transféré plusieurs personnes pour des cas de tuberculose ; les jours suivants, d’autres sont venues ici, nombreuses, en prétextant des symptômes, relate le médecin stoïque. On a également eu beaucoup de cas de simulations d’épilepsie. C’est très fatigant pour les médecins, stressés, qui perdent du temps et de l’argent pour traiter au détriment des vrais malades. Avec la nouvelle loi en préparation, plus sévère, ce système pourrait changer. »

En neuf mois, l’établissement de 123 lits a comptabilisé quelque 12 000 consultations ambulatoires. Les pathologies graves constatées : quelques cas de tuberculose et de VIH. L’unique psychiatre a démissionné il y a quelques mois. Depuis un an et demi, deux postes de pédiatres sont vacants. « Le camp est une bombe à retardement, lâche le Dr Fabio Giardina. Si la population continue d’augmenter, on franchira la ligne rouge. »

Dans le couloir où résonnent les plaintes, Samuel Kwabena Opoku, Ghanéen de 42 ans, est venu pour sa femme Alice enceinte de huit mois. Ils ont mis longtemps à obtenir ce rendez-vous, qui doit être pris avec le médecin du camp. « Nous, les Noirs, passons toujours au dernier plan, accuse-t-il. Une policière m’a lancé un jour : vous, les Africains [souvent venus de l’ouest du continent – ndlr], vous êtes des migrants économiques, vous n’avez rien à faire là. » Ils sont les plus nombreux parmi les déboutés.
Le maire : « L’Europe doit nous aider »

Samuel, lui, raconte être « menacé de mort au Ghana. Je devais reprendre la place de mon père, chef de tribu important. Pour cela, je devais sacrifier le premier de mes fils, eu avec mon autre femme. J’ai refusé ce crime rituel ». Son avocate française a déposé pour le couple une requête d’urgence, acceptée, devant la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme. Arrivés à Samos en août, Samuel et Alice ont vu le gynécologue, débordé, en octobre pour la première fois. L’hôpital a enregistré 213 naissances sur l’île en 2019, dont 88 parmi la population migrante.

Des ONG internationales suisses, françaises, allemandes sillonnent l’institution, aident aux traductions, mais ne sont qu’une quinzaine sur l’île. « Nous sommes déconnectées des autorités locales qui communiquent peu et sommes sans arrêt contrôlées, déplore Domitille Nicolet, de l’association Avocats sans frontières. Une situation que nous voulons dénoncer mais peu de médias s’intéressent à ce qui se passe ici. »

Une partie de la « jungle » du camp de Vathy, non accessible aux journalistes ni aux ONG. © Elisa Perrigueur

Chryssa Solomonidou, habitante de l’île depuis 1986 qui donne des cours de grec aux exilés, est en lien avec ces groupes humanitaires souvent arrivés ces dernières années. « Les migrants et ONG ont rajeuni la ville, les 15-35 ans étaient partis à cause de la crise », relate-t-elle. Se tenant droite dans son chemisier colorée au comptoir d’un bar cossu, elle remarque des policiers anti-émeute attablés devant leurs cafés frappés. Eux aussi sont les nouveaux visages de cette ville « où tout le monde se connaissait », souligne Chryssa Solomonidou. En grand nombre, ils remplissent tous les hôtels aux façades en travaux après une saison estivale.

« J’ai le cœur toujours serré devant cette situation de misère où ces gens vivent dehors et nous dans nos maisons. C’est devenu ici le premier sujet de conversation », angoisse Chryssa. Cette maman a assisté, désemparée, à la rapide montée des ressentiments, de l’apparition de deux univers étrangers qui se croisent sans se parler. « Il y a des rumeurs sur les agressions, les maladies, etc. Une commerçante vendait des tee-shirts en promotion pour 20 euros. À trois hommes noirs qui sont arrivés, elle a menti : “Désolée, on ferme.” Elle ne voulait pas qu’ils les essayent par peur des microbes », se souvient Chryssa.

Il y a aussi eu cette professeure, ajoute-t-elle, « poursuivie en justice par des parents d’élèves » parce qu’elle voulait faire venir des migrants dans sa classe, ce que ces derniers refusaient. L’enseignante s’est retrouvée au tribunal pour avoir appelé les enfants à ignorer « la xénophobie » de leurs aînés. « Ce n’est pas aux migrants qu’il faut en vouloir, mais aux autorités, à l’Europe, qui nous a oubliés », déplore Chryssa.

« L’UE doit nous aider, nous devons rouvrir les frontières [européennes – ndlr] comme en 2015 et répartir les réfugiés », prône Giorgos Stantzos, le nouveau maire de Vathy (sans étiquette). Mais le gouvernement de Mitsotakis prépare une nouvelle loi sur l’immigration et a annoncé des mesures plus sévères que son prédécesseur de gauche Syriza, comme le renvoi de 10 000 migrants en Turquie.

Des centaines de migrants ont embarqué sur un ferry le 21 octobre, direction Athènes. © Elisa Perrigueur

Les termes de l’accord controversé signé en mars 2016 entre Ankara et l’UE ne s’appliquent pas dans les faits. Alors que les arrivées en Grèce se poursuivent, la Turquie affirme que seuls 3 des 6 milliards d’euros dus par l’Europe en échange de la limitation des départs illégaux de ses côtes auraient été versés. Le président turc Erdogan a de nouveau menacé au cours d’un discours le 24 octobre « d’envoyer 3,6 millions de migrants en Europe » si celle-ci essayait « de présenter [son] opération [offensive contre les Kurdes en Syrie – ndlr] comme une invasion ».

À Samos, où les avions militaires turcs fendent régulièrement le ciel, ce chantage résonne plus qu’ailleurs. « Le moment est très critique. Le problème, ce n’est pas l’arrivée des familles qui sont réfugiées et n’ont pas le choix, mais les hommes seuls. Il n’y a pas de problèmes avec les habitants mais entre eux », estime la municipalité. Celle-ci « n’intervient pas dans le camp, nous ne logeons pas les réfugiés même après les incendies, ce n’est pas notre job ».

L’édile Giorgos Stantzos multiplie les déclarations sur Samos, trop éclipsée médiatiquement, selon les locaux, par la médiatisation, légitime, de l’île de Lesbos et de son camp bondé, avec 13 000 migrants. Au cours d’un rassemblement appelé le 21 octobre, Giorgos Stantzos a pris la parole avec les popes sur le parvis de la mairie de Samos. « Nous sommes trop d’êtres humains ici […], notre santé publique est en danger », a-t-il martelé sous les applaudissements de quelques milliers d’habitants.

La municipalité attend toujours la « solution d’urgence » proposée par l’État grec et l’UE. Bientôt, un nouveau camp devrait naître, loin des villes et des regards. Un mastodonte de 300 conteneurs, d’une capacité de 1 000 à 1 500 places, cernés de grillages de l’OTAN, avec « toutes les facilités à l’intérieur : médecins, supermarchés, électricité, etc. », décrypte une source gouvernementale. Les conteneurs doivent être livrés mi-novembre et le camp devrait être effectif à la fin de l’année. « Et le gouvernement nous a assuré qu’il organiserait des transferts de migrants vers le continent toutes les semaines d’ici la fin novembre pour désengorger Samos », précise le maire Giorgos Stantzos.

Sur les quais du port, le soir du 21 octobre, près de 700 Afghans, Syriens, Camerounais, Irakiens… ont souri dans le noir à l’arrivée du ferry de l’État aux lumières aveuglantes. Après s’y être engouffrés sans regret, ils ont fait escale au port du Pirée et voulu rejoindre des hébergements réquisitionnés aux quatre coins du continent. Quelque 380 passagers de ce convoi ont été conduits en bus dans le nord de la Grèce. Eux qui espéraient tant de cette nouvelle étape ont dû faire demi-tour sous les huées de villageois grecs : « Fermez les frontières », « Chassez les clandestins ».

Boîte noire :

L’actuel camp de conteneurs de Vathy, entouré de barbelés, n’est accessible qu’avec l’autorisation du gouvernement, et il est donc uniquement possible de se rendre dans la « jungle » de tentes alentour.

Dès le 10 octobre, nous avons formulé des demandes d’interviews avec le secrétaire de la politique migratoire, Giorgos Koumoutsakos (ou un représentant de son cabinet), la responsable du « hotspot » de Samos et/ou un représentant de l’EASO, bureau européen de l’asile. Le 15 octobre, nous avons reçu une réponse négative, après les « graves incidents » de la veille. Nous avons réitéré cette demande les 20 et 23 octobre, au cours de notre reportage à Samos. Avec un nouveau refus des autorités grecques à la clef, qui évoquent une « situation trop tendue » sur les îles.

▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/311019/sur-l-ile-de-samos-une-poudriere-pour-des-milliers-d-exiles-confines-l-ent

#Pham_Thi_Trà_My

“Mi dispiace mamma. Il mio viaggio all’estero non è riuscito. Mamma ti voglio tanto bene!
Sto morendo perché non riesco a respirare …
Vengo da Nghen, Can Loc, Ha Tinh, Vietnam …
Mi dispiace, mamma.”

Questo è l’ultimo, straziante, SMS che una ragazza ventiseienne vietnamita, di nome Pham Thi Trà My ha inviato, presumibilmente dall’interno del TIR dell’orrore, martedì scorso, 22 Ottobre 2019.

Un messaggio carico di disperazione, un ultimo pensiero per la persona a lei più cara, la mamma.

La sua mamma.

E’ drammatico questo messaggio, perché ci fa comprendere che quei 39 migranti asiatici hanno sentito giungere la loro morte; ne hanno sofferto; hanno pensato; hanno avuto tutto il tempo per comprendere che la loro fine si andava, inesorabilmente, avvicinando.

E tutto questo è terribile. Terribile. Terribile.

Non sopporto più questa disumanità, non sopporto chi continua a dire aiutiamoli a casa loro, non sopporto chi continua a gioire (ma come cazzo si fa a gioire?) di questi tragici eventi.

Io, lo dico francamente, sto imparando ad odiare!

Ad odiare voi indifferenti, voi complici, voi misera gente che vi girate dall’altra parte.

Ci state riuscendo.

State riuscendo a trasformarmi, piano piano.

State riuscendo a trasmettermi il vostro odio ma, sappiate, lo utilizzerò solo contro voi.

Contro voi che pensate di essere gli unici ad avere diritto alla vita e spero, per questo, un giorno siate puniti!

Perdonaci, se puoi, Pham Thi Trà My…

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Sur les #Vietnamiens à #Calais :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/590886

Essex lorry deaths: Vietnamese families fear relatives among dead

At least six of the 39 people found dead in a lorry trailer in Essex may have been from Vietnam.

The BBC knows of six Vietnamese families who fear their relatives are among the victims.

They include Pham Thi Tra My, 26, who has not been heard from since she sent text messages on Tuesday saying she could not breathe.

A man was earlier arrested at Stansted Airport on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people.

The 48-year-old from Northern Ireland is the fourth person to be arrested in connection with the investigation.

Two people from Warrington are being held on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people and the lorry driver is in custody on suspicion of murder.

Ms Tra My’s brother, Pham Ngoc Tuan, said some of the £30,000 charge for getting his sister to the UK had been paid to people smugglers and her last-known location had been Belgium.

The smugglers are understood to have returned money to some families.

Meanwhile, relatives of Nguyen Dinh Luong, 20, have also said they fear he is among the 39 victims.

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Ms Tra My’s brother told the BBC: "My sister went missing on 23 October on the way from Vietnam to the UK and we couldn’t contact her. We are concerned she may be in that trailer.

“We are asking the British police to help investigate so that my sister can be returned to the family.”

The last message received from Ms Tra My was at 22:30 BST on Tuesday - two hours before the trailer arrived at the Purfleet terminal from Zeebrugge in Belgium.

Her family have shared texts she sent to her parents which translated read: "I am really, really sorry, Mum and Dad, my trip to a foreign land has failed.

“I am dying, I can’t breathe. I love you very much Mum and Dad. I am sorry, Mother.”

Ms Tra My’s brother told the BBC her journey to the UK had begun on 3 October. She had told the family not to contact her because “the organisers” did not allow her to receive calls.

“She flew to China and stayed there for a couple days, then left for France,” he said.

“She called us when she reached each destination. The first attempt she made to cross the border to the UK was 19 October, but she got caught and turned back. I don’t know for sure from which port.”

The BBC has passed details of Ms Tra My, who is from Nghen town in Can Loc district of Ha Tinh province area of Vietnam, to Essex Police, along with details of other people claiming to have information.

The BBC also knows of two other Vietnamese nationals who are missing - a 26-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman.

The brother of the 19-year-old said his sister called him at 07:20 Belgian local time (06:20 BST) on Tuesday, saying she was getting into a container and was turning off her phone to avoid detection.

He has not heard from her since.

He said a people smuggler returned money to the family overnight, and the family of the 26-year-old who she was travelling with also received money back.

A spokesman from the Vietnamese Embassy in London confirmed they had been in contact with Essex police since Thursday.

They said Vietnamese families had appealed to them for help finding out if their relatives were among the victims but added they had not yet received any official confirmation.

The victims of the trailer were 31 men and eight women and Essex Police initially said they were all believed to be Chinese.

They were found at an industrial estate in Grays at 01:40 BST on Wednesday.

At a press conference on Friday evening Deputy Chief Constable Pippa Mills said the force was working with the National Crime Agency, the Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Border Force and Immigration Enforcement.

She said she would not be drawn on any further detail about the nationalities of the victims until formal identification processes had taken place.

“We gave an initial steer on Thursday on nationality, however, this is now a developing picture,” she said.

Police have confirmed the scene at Waterglade Industrial Estate in Eastern Avenue was closed on Friday.

Essex Police also urged anyone fearing their loved ones may have been in the lorry to get in touch.

“I can’t begin to comprehend what some of you must be going through right now. You have my assurance that Essex Police will be working tirelessly to understand the whole picture to this absolute tragedy,” said Det Ch Con Mills.

She also urged anyone living illegally in the UK who may have information to come forward, without fear of criminal action being taken against them.

GPS data shows the refrigerated container trailer crossed back and forth between the UK and Europe in the days before it was found.

It was leased from the company Global Trailer Rentals on 15 October. The company said it was “entirely unaware that the trailer was to be used in the manner in which it appears to have been”.

Essex Police said the tractor unit (the front part of the lorry) had entered the UK via Holyhead - an Irish Sea port in Wales - on Sunday 20 October, having travelled over from Dublin.

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Police believe the tractor unit collected the trailer in Purfleet on the River Thames and left the port shortly after 01:05 on Thursday. Police were called to the industrial park where the bodies were discovered about half an hour later.

Temperatures in refrigerated units can be as low as -25C (-13F). The lorry now is at a secure site in Essex.

A spokesman for the UN International Organization for Migration said the discovery of bodies in Essex did not necessarily indicate a major shift in migration patterns.

“These are the kind of random crimes that occur every day in the world somewhere,” he said. “They get huge attention when they do but they don’t necessarily indicate a big shift in migration or patterns in any place in particular. It’s just the condition of what happens when this many people are engaging this many criminal groups to reach a destination, which of course we deplore.”

Detectives are still questioning the lorry driver, Mo Robinson, of County Armagh in Northern Ireland, on suspicion of murder. He was arrested on Wednesday.

Two other people were also earlier arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

The man and woman, both 38, from Warrington, Cheshire, are also being held on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people.

Police officers were seen at the couple’s home address in Warrington, with a police van and two squad cars parked outside.

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Sources say the GPS data shows it left Monaghan in the Republic of Ireland on 15 October before crossing over to Northern Ireland and then returning south to Dublin
From Dublin, it crossed over to Holyhead in Wales overnight on 16 October
That evening, it travelled to continental Europe from Dover to Calais in France
Between 17 and 22 October, it moved between various cities in Belgium and France, including Dunkirk, Bruges and Lille
On 22 October, it made its final crossing from #Zeebrugge to #Purfleet

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▻https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-50185788

*Essex lorry deaths: The Vietnamese risking it all to get to the

UK*

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An hour’s drive inland from the French coast, a dozen Vietnamese men nurse tea over a smoking campfire, as they wait for a phone call from the man they call “the boss”. An Afghan man, they say, who opens trailers in the lorry-park nearby and shuts them inside.

Duc paid €30,000 ($33,200; £25,000) for a prepaid journey from Vietnam to London - via Russia, Poland, Germany and France. It was organised, he says, by a Vietnamese contact back home.

“I have some Vietnamese friends in UK, who will help me find jobs when I get there,” he told me. “These friends help me get on lorries or container trucks to go across the border.”

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Security is much less tight in the nearby lorry park than around the ports further north. But few people here have managed to get past the border controls.

We were told there is a two-tier system in operation here; that those who pay more for their passage to Britain don’t have to chance their luck in the lorries outside, but use this base as a transit camp before being escorted on the final leg of their journey.

A Vietnamese smuggler, interviewed by a French paper several years ago, reportedly described three levels of package. The top level allowed migrants to ride in the lorry cab and sleep in hotels. The lowest level was nicknamed “air”, or more cynically “CO2” - a reference to the lack of air in some trailers.

A local volunteer in the camp told us that they’d seen Vietnamese and British men visiting migrants here in a Mercedes. And that once migrants arrived in the UK, some went to work in cannabis farms, after which all communication stopped.

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Duc tells me he needs a job in the UK to pay back the loan for his journey.

“We can do anything,” he says, “construction work, nail bars, restaurants or other jobs.”

A report by one of France’s biggest charities described smugglers telling Vietnamese migrants that refrigerated lorries gave them more chance of avoiding detection, and giving each of them an aluminium bag to put over their heads while passing through scanners at the border.

No one here had heard about the 39 people found dead this week.

This journey is about freedom, one said.

▻https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50190199

More Vietnamese families fear relatives are among the 39 UK truck victims

Two Vietnamese families have said they are scared relatives may be among the dead. Both of the suspected victims come from Ha Tinh, an impoverished province where many of the country’s illegal migrants come from.

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More Vietnamese families came forward Saturday saying their relatives may be among the 39 people found dead in a container truck east of London.

Police initially believed all victims were Chinese but later announced this may not be accurate and that investigations were still a “developing picture.”

At least two Vietnamese families have now said they are worried their relatives, who may have been carrying falsified Chinese passports, are among the dead.

The Vietnamese Embassy in London said Friday it contacted police about a missing woman believed to be one of the dead after a family in Vietnam informed them about their daughter who had been missing since the lorry was found.

The Embassy said it was working with British authorities over the case, Vietnamese media reported.

Up to 10 of the victims may have originally come from Vietnam, according to unconfirmed reports. The BBC reported it had been in contact with six Vietnamese families, all who believe their relatives are among the 39 victims found in Grays, Essex on Wednesday.

Read more: Opinion: It’s time to end human trafficking

’Something unexpected happened’

The father of a 20-year-old Vietnamese man said he is scared his son is among the dead. He told the Associated Press that he had not been able to reach his son Nguyen Dinh Luong since last week.

“He often called home but I haven’t been able to reach him since the last time we talked last week,” Nguyen Dinh Gia said. “I told him that he could go to anywhere he wants as long as it’s safe. He shouldn’t be worry about money, I’ll take care of it.”

Gia said his son left home in Ha Tinh province, central Vietnam, to work in Russia in 2017 then on to Ukraine. He arrived in Germany in April 2019 before making his way to France. He had been living in France illegally since 2018.

The 20-year-old told his family he wanted to go to the United Kingdom (UK), and that he would pay £11,000 (€12,700). Last week, he told his father he wanted to join a group in Paris that was trying to enter England.

Several days ago, his father received a call from a Vietnamese man saying, “Please have some some sympathy, something unexpected happened,” Gia told AFP.

“I fell to the ground when I heard that,” Gia said. “It seemed that he was in the truck with the accident, all of them dead.”

The family said they shared the information with Vietnamese authorities.

Read more: Opinion: EU’s immigration policy is stuck in a rut

’I’m dying because I can’t breathe’

Hoa Nghiem, a human rights activist from Vietnamese civic network, Human Rights Space, said on Friday one of the victims may have been 26-year-old Pham Thi Tra My.

Tra My had sent a text message to her mother saying she was struggling to breathe at around the same time as the truck was en route from Belgium to the UK.

“I’m so sorry mom and dad....My journey abroad doesn’t succeed,” she wrote. “Mom, I love you and dad very much. I’m dying because I can’t breathe .... Mom, I’m so sorry,” she said in a message confirmed by her brother Pham Manh Cuong.

Cuong had received a message from his sister on Wednesday saying, “Please try to work hard to pay the debt for mummy, my dear.”

No confirmation

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a press briefing Friday in Beijing that Britain has not officially confirmed the identities or nationalities of the victims. She added that China is also working with Belgium police since the shipping container in which the bodies were found was sent from England to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

“The police said that they were urgently carrying out the verification work and the identities of the victims cannot be confirmed at present,” said Tong Xuejun, a Chinese consular official in London.

Both suspected victims come from the impoverished province of Ha Tinh where many of the country’s illegal migrants come from. Many who try to reach the UK end up working in nail salons or cannabis farms.

▻https://www.dw.com/en/more-vietnamese-families-fear-relatives-are-among-the-39-uk-truck-victims/a-50997473

Vietnamese woman suspected killed in UK truck disaster

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A father has reported to Vietnamese authorities that his 26-year-old daughter may have been one of the 39 found dead in a container truck in England.

#Pham_Van_Thin, of Can Loc District in the central Ha Tinh Province, sent a letter Friday to the People’s Committee of Nghen Town, saying his daughter was likely one of the 39 people found dead in a container truck in the Waterglade Industrial Park, Grays Town.

“My daughter, Pham Thi Tra My, left Vietnam on October 3, 2019, then travelled to China, France and England,” Thin wrote in the letter, which had My’s photo attached. She was described as 1.5 meters tall and weighing around 46 kilograms.

Thin asked the Nghen People’s Committee to verify that he is My’s father, in order to initiate legal procedures to identify and bring his daughter’s body back to Vietnam.

At his home in Nghen Town, Thin’s family members confirmed that he had indeed submitted an application to the authorities to verify that My was missing, but refused to provide further information on her overseas travel.

The Nghen Town People’s Committee has passed on Thin’s letter to the Can Loc District’s Department of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, which, in turn, will report to authorities with jurisdiction over the matter, said Bui Viet Hung, Vice Chairman of the committee.

“Thin’s family has three children, of which My is the youngest. My had worked overseas in Japan for three years, and only last month completed procedures to go to China,” Hung said.

A senior official of the Ha Tinh Provincial Department of Foreign Affairs, who did not wish to be named, said Friday afternoon that he had received a phone call from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Consular Department asking to verify the case of a Vietnamese worker from Ha Tinh Province suspected missing in the UK.

The Ha Tinh Provincial Department of Foreign Affairs has contacted authorities of Can Loc District, where a person has allegedly been reported missing, to verify the information.

According to an authorized source, My had used an emigration ring led by a resident of Nghe An Province to go to China. After getting there, she obtained forged Chinese citizenship documents and left for Europe.

One of My’s relatives has reportedly contacted the Vietnamese Association in the U.K., a non-profit organization, to request their assistance in bringing her body home.

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, U.K. emergency services discovered the bodies of 38 adults and one teenager, suspected immigrants, after being alerted that there were people in a refrigerated container truck at the Waterglade Industrial Park in Grays, Essex County, east of London.

Staff of the Chinese Embassy in London have arrived at the scene to help police verify whether the victims were Chinese citizens.

Three people, including truck driver, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and manslaughter, the British police said on Friday, the first indication from officials that the deaths were linked to human smuggling.

In 2000, 58 Chinese migrants were found dead in a refrigerated truck in Dover, Britain’s busiest port. The authorities said they had asphyxiated in the container, in which cooling and ventilation were switched off.

▻https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/vietnamese-woman-suspected-killed-in-uk-truck-disaster-4002594.html

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Traduction et commentaire d’une étudiante de mon master, vietnamienne :

He said: "It is possible that all 39 “Chinese-like-people” who were suffocated in the car in the UK were Vietnamese. Even the majority of them are probably Nghe An-Ha Tinh by participating in a smuggling transfer service. If they send a message to their family, the family will pay about 1 billion VND (35.000£) for the Vietnamese smugglers. If they NEVER text again, it looks like family members get a refund for the deposit. A terrible contract."
The photos are captured in a Facebook group for recruiting and supporting Vietnamese in a foreign country (maybe England, I’m not sure). People are posting information of their relatives who left at the same time with the lorry and didn’t contact anymore. All of them were born in 1999, 2000 and from Ha Tinh, Nghe Anh (2 poor cities in the center of Vietnam). The last photo is a message of a woman saying that she has people in contact with the invesgators and there are already 20 people identified as Vietnamese.

Majority of 39 UK truck victims likely from Vietnam - priest

YEN THANH, Vietnam (Reuters) - The majority of the 39 people found dead in the back of a truck near London were likely from Vietnam, a community leader from the rural, rice-growing community where many of the victims are believed to have come from told Reuters on Saturday.

The discovery of the bodies - 38 adults and one teenager - was made on Wednesday after emergency services were alerted to people in a truck container on an industrial site in Grays, about 32km (20 miles) east of central London.

Police have said they believe the dead were Chinese but Beijing said the nationalities had not yet been confirmed. Chinese and Vietnamese officials are now both working closely with British police, their respective embassies have said.

Father Anthony Dang Huu Nam, a catholic priest in the remote town of Yen Thanh in northern-central Vietnam’s Nghe An province, 300km (180 miles) south of Hanoi, said he was liaising with family members of the victims.

“The whole district is covered in sorrow,” Nam said, as prayers for the dead rang out over loudspeakers throughout the misty, rain-soaked town on Saturday.

“I’m still collecting contact details for all the victim’s families, and will hold a ceremony to pray for them tonight.”

“This is a catastrophe for our community.”

Nam said families told him they knew relatives were travelling to the UK at the time and had been unable to contact their loved ones.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday that it had instructed its London embassy to assist British police with the identification of victims.

The ministry did not respond to a request for further comment regarding the nationalities of the dead.

Essex Police declined to elaborate as to how they first identified the dead as Chinese.
‘BEAUTIFUL DAY’

In Yen Thanh, Nghe An province, dozens of worried relatives of 19-year-old Bui Thi Nhung gathered in the family’s small courtyard home where her worried mother has been unable to rise from her bed.

“She said she was in France and on the way to the UK, where she has friends and relatives,” said Nhung’s cousin, Hoang Thi Linh.

“We are waiting and hoping it’s not her among the victims, but it’s very likely. We pray for her everyday. There were two people from my village travelling in that group”.

In comments under a photo uploaded to Nhung’s Facebook account on Monday, two days before the doomed truck was discovered, one friend asked how her journey was going.

“Not good,” Nhung replied. “Almost spring,” she said, using a term in Vietnamese meaning she had almost reached her destination.

Other photos on her account show her sightseeing in Brussels on Oct. 18.

“Such a beautiful day,” Nhung posted.

Nghe An is one of Vietnam’s poorest provinces, and home to many victims of human trafficking who end up in Europe, according to a March report by the Pacific Links Foundation, a U.S.-based anti-trafficking organisation.

Other victims are believed to come from the neighbouring province of Ha Tinh, Nam said, where in the first eight months of this year, 41,790 people left looking for work elsewhere, including overseas, according to state media.

The province was ravaged by one of Vietnam’s worst environmental disasters in 2016 when a steel mill owned by Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics contaminated coastal waters, devastating local fishing and tourism industries and sparking widespread protests.

Another suspected victim from Ha Tinh, 26-year-old Pham Thi Tra My, had sent a text message to her mother saying she could not breathe at about the time the truck container was en route from Belgium to Britain.

“That girl who said in her message that she couldn’t breathe in the truck? Her parents can’t breathe here at home,” Nam said.

▻https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-bodies/majority-of-39-uk-truck-victims-likely-from-vietnam-priest-idUKKBN1X503M

« Désolée maman, je suis en train de mourir, je ne peux plus respirer » : les SMS déchirants d’une jeune victime à l’agonie dans le camion de l’Essex

La jeune vietnamienne Pham Thi Tra My, 26 ans, avait parcouru la Chine puis la France dans ses tentatives pour atteindre la Grande Bretagne. Son périple se terminera dans le camion de Mo Robinson, comme celui de 38 autres ressortissants asiatiques.

https://www.sudinfo.be/sites/default/files/dpistyles_v2/ena_16_9_in_line/2019/10/25/node_148457/41103611/public/2019/10/25/B9721381770Z.1_20191025174218_000+G78EP8AR8.1-0.jpg?itok=CGTTADk51572021507#.jpg

27 octobre 2019 :
#Calais : huit migrants, dont des enfants, trouvés en hypothermie dans un camion frigorifique
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/808155

UK police: man arrested in Ireland is of interest in truck death investigation

British police said a man arrested in Dublin on Saturday is a person of interest in their investigation into the deaths of 39 people who were found in a truck container.

“A man arrested by the Garda at Dublin Port on Saturday 26 October is a person of interest in our murder investigation regarding the 39 people found dead in a lorry in Purfleet on Wednesday 23 October,” Essex Police said.

▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-bodies-ireland-idUSKBN1X70FX

The 39 people who died in the lorry were victims. Why does the law treat them as criminals?

As long as the justice system is focused on immigration status, not on ending modern-day slavery, desperate people will suffer.

What leads someone down the route where they find themselves locked into the back of a lorry, a beating heart in a metal box? What choices – or lack of them – have led someone to be reduced to a piece of human cargo? Can anyone who read the story of the 39 bodies found in the back of a lorry last week not feel the visceral terror of that cold, dark death and wonder at how we live in a world where a business model exists that thrives off this level of human desperation?

At the moment it is unclear whether this tragedy is the work of smuggling gangs – who are in a transactional arrangement with the people they are moving from place to place – or human traffickers, who are exploiting and profiting from their human cargo. In the end, does it even matter? Both are looking to profit from the very human desire to not only survive but to thrive. Across the world, trafficking and smuggling gangs are flogging promises and dreams and then using fear – of pain, of the authorities, of their debts, of their failure – to make vast amounts of money in the knowledge that they’re unlikely to get caught, and in the certainty that their victims are expendable.

One Vietnamese teenager I interviewed last year had, like last week’s victims, crossed the Channel in the back of a lorry. He described the experience to me: the pain of the jolting metal that tore into his skin; the stench of other silent bodies he was pressed up against; the poisonous diesel fumes; and the hunger and thirst that gnawed at his insides.

His journey towards that point had begun with a childhood of crippling and monotonous poverty and the belief that the only way to escape and honour his filial responsibility to provide for his parents was to follow the promise of work in the UK. He embarked on an overland journey across Europe where he was smuggled from safe house to safe house, fell under the control of criminal gangs and was raped, beaten and brutalised. By the time he reached France, he was told he had to pay back £20,000 – an amount he couldn’t even comprehend. His parents would be the ones who would suffer if he didn’t pay them back.

By his point his life was not in his hands. A chain of events had been set in motion that he had no control over. There was no way back: his only future was one where his sole reason for survival was to pay off his debts. He ended up being trafficked into a cannabis farm in Derbyshire.

In the eyes of the law there is a distinction between illegal work and modern slavery – with the former you are a criminal, and the latter a victim – but in reality the line is not so clearly defined. Many who are here to work move between the two. Across the UK, thousands end up being exploited and unpaid in our restaurants, car washes, agricultural fields, care homes, hotels and nail bars – visible but unseen.

Official statistics say up to 15,000 people are trapped in a form of modern slavery in the UK – although those working on the frontline believe this figure to be a huge underestimate. Our government says that with the 2015 Modern Slavery Act it is a global leader in cracking down on this practice, yet prosecutions remain low. In 2017-18 there were only 185 convictions for slavery and trafficking crimes – a fraction of the cases reported to the authorities.

Crucially, prosecutions require victims to come forward and testify. Yet their immigration status is often considered more of a priority than their exploitation. Traffickers tell their victims if they go to the police they will be arrested and detained, and more often than not they’re right. Recent research found over 500 victims of trafficking were arrested and sent to immigration detention centres last year. Even though police guidance tells officers how to identify cases of modern slavery, Vietnamese children found in nail bars or cannabis farms are still routinely arrested, charged and detained.

Even those who are recognised as victims of trafficking by the authorities are in for a rough ride. The government’s national referral mechanism, the framework for identifying and protecting victims of slavery, is sometimes considered by victims to be as traumatising as their trafficking. They can find themselves trapped in a legal limbo in a complex and under-resourced system for years at a time. And in the end victims are probably going to be removed back to the country where they were trafficked: according to the government’s own figures only 12% of victims of slavery are granted discretionary leave to remain.

All of this matters because it creates an environment in which the business of exploiting the desperation of human beings can thrive. Where the gangs know that British people will pay £8 in cash for a pedicure, or to get our car hand washed, without thinking too much about why. It’s a business model where people can be exploited for profit over and over again with the near certainty that in the end it will be the victim who the system comes down upon, for making the journey in the first place.

In 2004 the death of 23 Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay was a moment of reckoning – a human tragedy that, for many people, raised the spectre of modern slavery in the UK for the first time. Today, 15 years later, maybe these 39 deaths might do the same and remind us that our only chance of beating the business in flogging human lives is to try to understand how people come to be locked inside the backs of lorries in the first place.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/29/39-people-lorry-victims-law-criminals-immigration-slavery?CMP=share_btn

Des news, liens reçus via la mailing-list Migreurop:

Pour l’instant, l’identification de victimes vietnamiennes n’est toujours pas confirmée, bien que très probable. J’ajoute donc d’autres articles de presse à ceux déjà transmis :
En anglais :
▻https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50194118
▻https://www.afp.com/en/news/717/bored-and-broke-vietnam-migrants-risk-lives-riches-europe-doc-1lr1jf1
▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/20445/vietnamese-victim-paid-34-000-euros-to-be-smuggled-to-uk
▻https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5

En français :
▻https://www.liberation.fr/depeches/2019/10/27/immigration-l-europe-ou-l-illusion-d-un-eldorado-pour-de-jeunes-vietnamie
▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/20415/camion-charnier-a-londres-l-angoissante-attente-des-familles-vietnamie

En vietnamien (google translate fonctionne bien), deux articles très complets sur des témoignages de Vietnamiens en Europe :
▻https://news.zing.vn/nhung-con-ac-mong-tren-duong-toi-anh-cua-nguoi-viet-post1006586.html
▻https://news.zing.vn/vietnam-city-o-phap-ban-ngay-nau-an-dem-den-nhay-xe-container-post1006585.

En route vers le Royaume-Uni, enquête de terrain auprès des migrants vietnamiens

#France_terre_d'asile a réalisé une enquête de terrain auprès des migrants vietnamiens en transit dans le département du Pas-de-Calais, dans le cadre du projet d’aide aux victimes de traite des êtres humains mené par l’association.

L’étude analyse les parcours migratoires de ces migrants, les raisons de leur départ, leurs profils, leurs relations avec les réseaux de passeurs, les moyens d’emprise et de coercition exercés sur eux et leurs besoins afin d’améliorer leur accompagnement en France et en Europe.

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►https://www.france-terre-asile.org/toutes-nos-publications/details/1/209-en-route-vers-le-royaume-uni,-enqu%C3%AAte-de-terrain-aupr%C
#rapport

Precarious journeys: Mapping vulnerabilities of victims of trafficking from Vietnam to Europe

New research by ECPAT UK, Anti-Slavery International and Pacific Links Foundation traces the journeys made by Vietnamese children and adults migrating irregularly from Vietnam to the UK via Europe. The report, Precarious Journeys: Mapping Vulnerabilities of Victims of Trafficking from Vietnam to Europe, finds that the governments of countries on key trafficking routes routinely fail to protect Vietnamese children from trafficking, leaving them vulnerable to continued exploitation and abuse.

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Combating modern slavery experienced by Vietnamese nationals en route to, and within, the UK

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Vietnamese migrants are not ‘lured’ by traffickers. They just want a better future

The risks are known and won’t deter people. There will be more deaths in lorries unless Britain changes its immigration policy.

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Thirty-nine bodies found in the back of a refrigerated lorry in an Essex industrial park. Apart from shock and rage, this tragic news feels like deja vu. Almost two decades ago, in 2000, 58 Chinese people were found suffocated to death in Dover, in similar horrific circumstances. Those men and women banged on doors and screamed for their lives, the only two survivors revealed. The tragic deaths left families behind and communities back in Fujian province devastated.

Today, many of the 39 people, eight women and 31 men, are believed to have come from Vietnam, as families there desperately look for their missing loved ones.
The 39 people who died in the lorry were victims. Why does the law treat them as criminals?
Annie Kelly
Read more

I also felt deja vu listening to the response from British politicians and media. “Stop evil human traffickers”; “Stop international criminal networks”. I heard such phrases two decades ago from the home secretary, Jack Straw, and today his successor, Priti Patel, repeats the sentiment. While formal identification of the victims continues, Vietnamese people have mostly been portrayed as “unaware” trafficking victims sent to fill the nail bars and cannabis factories – as having no agency of their own and no control over their migratory decisions.

In reality, the Vietnamese young men and women who choose to travel on these dangerous routes only do so when they cannot come to Britain in formal ways. Having no alternatives, they contact “snakeheads” (smugglers), who are often perceived as “migration brokers” rather than criminals, who organise their transportation to Britain.

It appears that many of the 39 people may have come from the Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces of Vietnam, which have been hit by economic reforms. Three decades ago, in 1986, the Vietnamese government launched the Doi Moi economic reforms, which aimed to facilitate a transition from a centralised planning to a “socialist-oriented” market economy. From the 1990s onwards, the government boasted of Vietnam’s rise in GDP – what was not said was that the growth was built upon the low-cost labour of millions of Vietnamese, toiling in processing factories and assembling products for overseas companies. The inflow of foreign investment has been a big part of Vietnam’s economic liberalisation. In recent years, it has brought cash to the high-tech processing, manufacturing, agriculture, education and healthcare sectors. Since the start of this year, Vietnam has attracted foreign direct investment of more than $1.1bn (£850m), China alone bringing in $222m.

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Many of these changes have not been popular: large waves of anti-China protests happened in May 2014, in Ha Tinh and other places. And in 2018 there was popular opposition to legislation enabling special economic zones to grant land leases to foreign businesses for up to 99 years.

In 2016 Ha Tinh was also the site of the country’s worst environmental disaster, caused by a chemical spill from a steel factory, owned by a Taiwanese company, Formosa Plastics, that poisoned up to 125 miles of the northern coastline and ruined the fishing industry. Formosa Plastics was fined $500m by the Vietnamese government, but much of the compensation did not reach the affected fishermen.

The low labour cost in these provinces is the main attraction for Chinese and other foreign investors. For instance, a factory worker here earns around two-thirds of what a similar worker earns in China, and half the local population are under the age of 30.

Rather than wealth, foreign investment has brought mainly dead-end, low-paid jobs with few long-term prospects for young locals. The average wage in Vietnam is around $150 a month; in these provinces many don’t even earn that. Besides, unemployment is severe. Last year, GDP per capita in both Nhge An ($1,600) and Ha Tinh ($2,200) fell below the national average of $2,500. This is the context compelling tens of thousands of Vietnamese from these impoverished provinces to choose to migrate, to seek livelihoods for themselves and their families.

Families often depend on sons and daughters to find their way into advanced capitalist countries in the west, to work and be the breadwinners. Remittances from abroad also help sustain communities – Nghe An, for instance, brought in $225m a year, according to official estimates.

The 39 people were not “unthinking migrants” lured by traffickers, as the media has suggested. They were fighting for a future for their families, and lost their precious lives as Britain firmly kept its doors locked shut.

If the tragic deaths of these men and women truly sadden you, the best thing to do is oppose Britain’s anti-migrant policies. We need to dismantle the false categories of “economic migrants” and “genuine refugees”. Let our fellow human beings have the opportunity to live and work in the open – that is the only way forward.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/30/vietnamese-migrants-traffickers-deaths-lorries-britain-immigration-poli

Essex lorry deaths should be wake-up call for ministers, MPs say

Policies focused on closing borders counterproductive, says foreign affairs committee

The deaths of 39 people found in the back of a lorry in Essex should be wake-up call for the government to rethink its approach to migration, MPs have said.

Policies focused on closing borders will drive migrants to take more dangerous routes and push them into the hands of smugglers, the foreign affairs select committee says in a new report.

The human cost of irregular migration made international partnerships essential, including with the EU, the committee said.

The report comes just over a week after 39 people, now understood to be Vietnamese nationals, were found dead in the back of a lorry that had arrived in the UK via the port of Zeebrugge.

The driver, Maurice Robinson, has been charged with manslaughter and trafficking offences, and a police investigation into a suspected wider trafficking network continues.

Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the influential committee, said that until the UK left the EU it should continue to attend EU meetings on migration.

“The case of 39 people found dead in a lorry in Essex shocked us all. The full story won’t be clear for some time but this tragedy is not alone,” he said.

“Today, hundreds of families across the world are losing loved ones who felt driven to take the fatal gamble to entrust their lives to smugglers. This case should serve as a wake-up call to the Foreign Office and to government.

“The UK has been relatively isolated from the different migrant crises in recent years, but it’s wrong to assume that we are protected from their impact. The UK has a proud history of helping those fleeing conflict and persecution and cooperating with others to protect human rights. We should lead by example.”

The report also raised concern that deals with countries such as Libya, Niger and Sudan to limit migration risked fuelling human rights abuses.

It said such deals could be used as leverage by partner governments, as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had done recently when he threatened to “reopen the gates”.

The committee also said the fact that the Home Office was responsible for the UK’s response to irregular migration could lead to the “error of focusing on preventing migration to the exclusion of other goals such as preventing conflict and promoting stability and respect for fundamental human rights”.

It called for more effort to negotiate future close cooperation on migration policy with the EU and an immediate return of UK officials to EU-level meetings where irregular migration is discussed.

Other recommendations included the expansion of legal pathways to apply for asylum outside Europe and robust monitoring and safeguards to ensure UK funding for migration programmes in Libya did not contribute to human rights abuses.

Tugendhat said the committee’s inquiry had been cut short by the “uncertain nature of parliamentary business”, but that it hoped to return to the issues in the future.

Irregular migration is defined by the International Organization for Migration as the “movement of persons that takes place outside the laws, regulations, or international agreements governing the entry into or exit from the state of origin, transit or destination”.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/04/essex-lorry-deaths-should-be-wake-up-call-for-ministers-mps-say?CMP=Sha

France: Dozens of migrants found in back of truck near Italian border

The truck had been carrying 31 people, reportedly from Pakistan, when it was inspected by authorities in southern France. The latest discovery comes after dozens of migrants were found dead in a truck near London.

Officers carrying out a routine traffic check in southern France uncovered dozens of migrants in the back of a truck on Saturday, the public prosecutor’s office in Nice said.

Some 31 people, including three unaccompanied minors, were found in the truck during a vehicle spot-check at a toll booth near La Turbie, near the border with Italy.

Prosecutors said that all 31 people on board were Pakistani nationals. The driver of the truck, who is also from Pakistan, was arrested by French authorities.

The migrants were handed over to Italian authorities, the Nice-Matin newspaper reported.

Prosecutors will now try to determine whether a human smuggling ring is behind the operation. Should that prove not to be the case, the driver of the truck will be charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration, news agency AFP reported.

Concerns after UK migrant truck deaths

The discovery comes just days after French authorities in the northern port city of Calais pulled over a refrigerated truck carrying eight migrants. All those inside the truck, including four children, were taken to the hospital after exhibiting signs of hypothermia.

Border control agencies have been on high alert following the deaths of 39 migrants in the UK on October 23.

The migrants, who were determined to be Vietnamese nationals, had also been transported in a refrigerated truck when the vehicle was found east of London.

The alleged driver of the truck, a 25-year-old from Northern Ireland, has already been charged over the deaths. He faces 39 counts of manslaughter as well as human trafficking and immigration offenses.

▻https://www.dw.com/en/france-dozens-of-migrants-found-in-back-of-truck-near-italian-border/a-51094985
#ceux_qui_restent #vidéo #celles_qui_restent #celleux_qui_restent

#Spare_me_the_tears - Britain would have treated the Vietnamese nationals as criminals if they had not died in the lorry

Had the police found the desperate migrants in the back of the truck they would have been arrested and deported

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I waited a while before writing this column. The deferral was out of respect for the dead, grieving relatives and the shocked Essex officers who discovered the bodies.

But now it is time for uncomfortable, troublesome, questions: What if those thirty nine Vietnamese migrants found in the back of truck had been discovered still alive?

Would the tabloids have published those tender pictures of young victims, smiling, buoyant, sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, nieces and nephews, fathers and mothers?

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Would Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel have been as compassionate as they have been?

Would nationalist Brits have held back from their usual bellyaches about ‘uncontrolled migration’? Let’s not belabour the obvious. We know the answers.

It is believed that all of those who were found were Vietnamese. On Saturday, around one hundred people attended the service at the Church of the Holy Name and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in east London.

The Reverend Simon Nguyen remembered the 39 who were ‘seeking freedom, dignity and happiness’. Such a low attendance is indicative. The victims are only numbers in the current news cycle.

In 2000 when 58 bodies of Chinese migrants were found in the back of a lorry in Dover, some of us journalists and concerned actors such as Corin Redgrave and Frances de la Tour organised a vigil near Downing St. We wanted to remind people that behind the numbers were names, individual, special lives.

Nothing has been learnt since then. One Vietnamese contact tells me her people are now petrified: ‘Police will come to ask us questions maybe. We know nothing. We are the children of the boat people. Mrs Thatcher asked them to come during the war. Now we are afraid again’.

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Thatcher did indeed invite these migrants to settle in Britain and made sure that the tabloids ran their arrival as a good news story. It was a strategic move, her way of winning the PR battle against Vietnamese communists.

The refugees were welcomed and helped to settle. That was the only time I praised the iron lady. No Tory PM would dare to be that bold today.

In the UK, Australia, the US, many eastern European and EU nations too, most citizens and politicians feel for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants only when they perish at sea or in airless, light-less vehicles.

Alive they are a pestilence, dead they become pitiful innocents preyed on by traffickers. There are of course kind and generous people too, who do what they can, for the global wanderers desperately seeking a better life. But millions of others can only raise sympathy for bodies and really get exercised about the crimes, not the victims.

Journalists, politicians and commentators are now well into the whodunnit, madly exhilarating murder mystery, identifying the traffickers, the arrests and extraditions. They are sniffing around for other ploys that could be being used by criminal people smugglers.

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A Times investigation this week revealed that at least 15 pupils from Vietnam had vanished after enrolling at private schools. Apparently, this is something that the Human Trafficking Foundation is worried about too.

It fell upon Catherine Baker, the senior campaigns officer at Every Child Protected Against Trafficking to challenge the narrative: ‘ Victims are often criminalised instead of being protected and a hostile environment for people in the UK without immigration status makes those still trapped in exploitative situations nervous to seek help’.

Mercy is in short supply at the Home Office and Ms Patel, utterly benighted and scarily ideological, wants officials to get even tougher because she thinks suffering helps to deter others.

Charities are raising concerns about some devious new tactics being used by the Home office to catch and repatriate undocumented men and women.

Rapar, a Manchester based human rights charity has just discovered that minority community groups are being co-opted and paid thousands of pounds to help find and expel illegal migrants.

Fizza Qureshi, co-chief executive of the Migrants Rights Networks rightly warns that ‘these kinds of practices destroy trust within and between communities. It will leave many marginalised people wondering who they can turn to and trust in their time of need’.

Had the police found the distressed 39 in the back of the truck before they expired, they would all have been treated as criminals, interrogated, detained in abominable centres and sent back.

Few legal options are available to them. People will keep on trying and these inconvenient truths will continue to be avoided by Britain and other receiving nations.

And so the tragedies will go on.

▻https://inews.co.uk/opinion/uk-would-have-treated-vietnamese-migrants-as-criminals-if-they-had-lived-82

Grieve the Essex 39, but recognise the root causes

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In the wake of the deaths of 39 migrants in a lorry container, daikon*’s Kay Stephens writes on the global structures of capitalism and imperialism and the deadly border regimes that led to their deaths.

On 24 October, daikon*, a group of anti-racist creatives of east and south east Asian descent, organised a vigil outside the Home Office with SOAS Detainee Support and members of the Chinese community to grieve for the 39 people found dead in a truck container in Essex – 39 people who died horrific deaths in miserable conditions in a desperate attempt to reach the UK.

These deaths are no accident, but the direct result of global structures of capitalism and imperialism that marginalise, if not violently exclude, working-class undocumented migrants and people of colour. The mainstream’s response – calling for harsher borders, criminal justice for ‘greedy and unscrupulous’ traffickers and safe passage for ‘genuine’ refugees –fails to interrogate the global conditions that lead people to risk dangerous travel, and the deadly effects of border controls on all migrants.

The global context

Although initially identified as Chinese nationals, news is emerging that the majority of victims were from the neighbouring Vietnamese provinces of Nghệ An and Hà Tĩnh, both amongst the poorest regions in the country. In 2016, Hà Tĩnh suffered a water pollution disaster affecting over 200km of coastline, resulting in at least 70 tonnes of dead fish washing up on local shores. It was found that the Hà Tĩnh steel plant – a joint venture between the Taiwanese company Formosa, China Steel Corporation and Japan’s JFE Steel – had been discharging toxic waste into the ocean, devastating local marine life and directly affecting some 40,000 workers who relied on fishing and tourism for their livelihood. The affected communities have faced crackdowns on protest and are still seeking justice. Today, the region is a key site of people-smuggling to the UK.

We can see neo-colonial dynamics playing out here. Big corporations from richer countries come in to exploit resources and low labour costs to produce wealth for themselves. When they cut corners to maximise profit, local working-class communities bear the brunt of the fallout, often in the form of irreparable environmental damage. These same countries then benefit from a hyper-exploitable migrant workforce: Taiwan and Japan, for instance, are on the receiving end of Vietnamese labour export programmes. These are effectively systems of debt servitude, whereby migrants work long hours for low pay in often poor conditions in order to send remittances to support their families back home, on top of repaying debts incurred to obtain work abroad. In Taiwan, low wages and rampant abuse drive many workers to break away from their contracts and seek criminalised forms of work. In Japan, Vietnamese workers commonly report experiences of racism and social exclusion, with many even dying of overwork.

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This year, we also saw the inclusion of an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) style mechanism in EU-Vietnam trade deals. This effectively gives foreign investors the power to sue host governments when their court rulings, laws and regulations – many of which serve the public interest – undermine their investments. Globally, ISDS has been used by corporations to sue governments when hard-won social and environmental protections negatively impact their production and profits. Currently, two British oil firms are using ISDS to sue the Vietnamese government to avoid paying taxes in the country. With the EU-Vietnam trade deal, we can expect European corporations to continue to exploit this mechanism at the expense of the local environment and people, who may increasingly seek to build their lives elsewhere.

The UK response

It is in this context that smuggling networks develop and operate. Those seeking the prospect of a better life abroad may hire the services of smugglers who facilitate illegalised movement across borders. Many will incur debts to finance their journeys, and expect to undertake difficult work upon arrival at their destination. One response of the UK Home Office is to support IOM (International Organization for Migration) Vietnam, both in delivering propaganda campaigns that attempt to deter people from illegalised migration, and in criminal investigations aimed at prosecuting smugglers and traffickers – policies that do nothing to address the conditions that lead people to migrate. Politicians and commentators are also insisting that to avoid tragedies like the Essex 39, we need increased border security and continued collaboration with EU law enforcement and anti-trafficking units. Yet we have witnessed the prosecution of aid workers helping migrants to safety under EU trafficking laws, and there are countless reports of police brutality against migrants in EU border enforcement operations. In reality, tougher borders only lead migrants and smugglers to risk increasingly deadly and secretive migration routes in order to evade detection by improved security technology. Securitised responses also shift the smuggling industry away from community-based networks towards increasingly violent and highly organised criminal networks that are able to maximally exploit migrants’ vulnerability to increase their profit margins. In short, borders kill. If we want to prevent migrant deaths, we need to work towards the abolition of borders, starting with practical solidarity resisting borders in public life and our communities – refusing complicity in the hostile environment, visiting people in detention, and resisting immigration raids.

The impact of criminalisation

We should also be concerned about how an increased emphasis on anti-trafficking legislation may further endanger precarious migrant workers in the UK. In 2016, we saw ‘anti-trafficking’ police raids on massage parlours in Soho and Chinatown lead to the violent arrest of many migrant sex workers on immigration grounds. Whilst ostensibly aimed at addressing exploitation, these kinds of ‘rescue’ raids on brothels, nail bars and cannabis farms are basically indistinguishable from immigration raids, leading as they often do to the detention of migrant workers, who then either face deportation or a protracted legal battle to remain. Often underlying such operations are gendered and racialised assumptions of Asian migrant women as passive and helpless victims in need of rescue, and Asian men as unscrupulous and predatory traffickers, who control and exploit those helpless victims. The reality is that in the context of border regimes that push them into debt and underground economies, many migrants make a constrained choice to work under conditions that are to varying degrees exploitative or abusive in order to pay off debts to smugglers, send money to dependants, and indeed, to survive. The fact that the British state does not guarantee indefinite leave to remain, nor adequate social support to those it identifies as survivors of trafficking shows its fundamental failure to grasp the central role that borders and capitalism, rather than individual traffickers, play in producing conditions for exploitation and abuse.

Whatever their circumstances, we need to ensure migrants are able to assert labour rights and access safe housing, work, healthcare and other public, legal and social services – all without fear of immigration sanctions or criminal convictions. At a minimum, this means ending the ‘hostile environment’ which embeds immigration checks throughout public life, and decriminalising industries such as sex work whose criminalisation only pushes undocumented workers deeper into secrecy and silence.

As heart-breaking stories of victims continue to emerge, we must recognise that such deaths are an inevitability of the neo-colonial, securitised regimes being built globally, designed to marginalise working-class migrants and people of colour, who are rendered exploitable or disposable. Systemic analyses that centre anti-capitalism, no borders, building migrant workers’ rights globally, and the decriminalisation of sex work are not distractions but central to bringing an end to senseless deaths such as those of the Essex 39.

▻http://www.irr.org.uk/news/grieve-the-essex-39-but-recognise-the-root-causes

Lorry driver pleads guilty over role in Essex deaths

#Maurice_Robinson, 25, admits plotting to assist illegal immigration
A lorry driver charged with the manslaughter of 39 Vietnamese migrants found dead in a refrigerated trailer has pleaded guilty to plotting to assist illegal immigration.

Maurice Robinson, 25, who is known as Mo, was allegedly part of a global smuggling ring. He was arrested shortly after the bodies of eight females and 31 males were found in a trailer attached to his Scania cab in an industrial park in Grays, Essex, on 23 October.

The victims were identified later as Vietnamese nationals, with the youngest being two boys aged 15.

Robinson appeared at the Old Bailey in London via video link from Belmarsh prison for a plea hearing. He spoke to confirm his identity and British nationality.

Robinson admitted conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration between 1 May 2018 and 24 October 2019. The charge states that he plotted with others to do “an act or series of acts which facilitated the commission of a breach of immigration law by various persons”.

During the hearing before Mr Justice Edis, Robinson also admitted acquiring criminal property – namely cash – on the same dates. He was not asked to enter pleas to other charges, including 39 counts of manslaughter.

Police formally identified all 39 victims this month and informed their families. It has emerged, however, that relatives of the migrants found dead were told that neither the British nor Vietnamese governments would bear the costs of repatriating the bodies.

Police in Vietnam have arrested eight people suspected of being part of a ring responsible for smuggling Vietnamese people to Britain.

Essex police have launched extradition proceedings to bring Eamonn Harrison, 22, from Ireland to the UK. He appeared at Dublin’s central criminal court last Thursday after he was arrested on a European arrest warrant in respect of 39 counts of manslaughter, one count of a human trafficking offence and one count of assisting unlawful immigration.

Harrison is accused of driving the lorry with the refrigerated container to Zeebrugge in Belgium before it was collected in Essex by Robinson.

Robinson was remanded into custody until a further hearing on 13 December.

▻https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/25/lorry-driver-pleads-guilty-in-essex-deaths-case?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tw

Don’t call the Essex 39 a ‘tragedy’

Jun Pang on why the deaths of 39 undocumented migrants were entirely avoidable, and why borders are to blame.

https://newint.org/sites/default/files/u368/32602442016_69fb0da812_c%20%281%29.jpg

On 23 October, 39 people were found dead in the back refrigerated lorry in Essex, South East England, with media outlets reporting that the victims may have frozen to death in temperatures as low as -25°C.

The truck had crossed The Channel from Belgium, a route that has been used increasingly by migrants after the French government tightened restrictions on departures from Calais.

These 39 deaths were not a ‘tragedy’. They were not unavoidable. They were the direct result of British government policies that have made it impossible to enter the country using safe and legal means.

The conditions that produced these 39 deaths emerge from the same set of policies that deny asylum, justify indefinite immigration detention, charter deportation flights, and restrict migrants’ access to fundamental rights – that is, the so-called ‘Hostile Environment’.

The aim is to make the UK so inhospitable for migrants that they will not make the effort to try to enter. They are also the conditions that allow the Global North to continue to thrive off the exploitation of undocumented migrant workers.

‘The brutality of capitalism’

When I first heard of the deaths, I was reminded of the 2004 Morecambe Bay disaster, when 23 undocumented Chinese workers drowned while picking cockles off the Lancashire coast. These workers did not die of ‘natural causes’, they died because their gangmaster did not give them any information about how to work safely in the notoriously dangerous bay. He was willing to sacrifice these undocumented workers’ lives for the sake of a higher yield.

Chinese workers were described by one gangmaster as ‘a half-price... more punctual and productive workforce’. Did their employers imagine that Chinese people’s racialized ‘productivity’ somehow meant that they were also immune to the elements? One Morecambe Bay cockler later told journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai (who later wrote a book about Chinese migrant workers’ lives in the UK) that ‘he blamed the brutality of capitalism for the tragedy’.

At the end of 2018, China was one of the countries with the highest numbers of citizens in UK detention centres. Earlier this year, I visited a Chinese man in detention, who had come to the UK with the help of so-called ‘snakehead’ smugglers, who are often blamed for the deaths of undocumented migrants like the Essex 39. The man had fled to the UK for fear that he would be killed; he did not know how else he could enter.

The Home Office rejected his refugee application, detained him for more than a year (despite bundles of evidence from experts on his situation) and ended up deporting him – but not before first mistakenly deporting another man with the same surname.

One of the most heartbreaking things he had said to me was that he would rather work for £1 an hour in the detention centre for the rest of his life, than go home and face persecution.
Hierarchy of ‘desert’

It is not useful to speculate on the reasons why these 39 Vietnamese nationals decided to try to enter the UK. More important is to recognize that the UK border has long been a site of racialized, classed, and gendered violence for all migrants, regardless of the reasons for entering. In 1998, the New Labour government published ‘Fairer, Faster, and Firmer – A Modern Approach to Immigration and Asylum’, a White Paper which warned that ‘economic migrants will exploit whatever route offers the best chance of entering or remaining within the UK’. Two years later, in 2000, 58 Chinese nationals were found dead, having suffocated in the back of a lorry at Dover docks.

States often attempt to distinguish ‘economic migrants’ from ‘real refugees’ as a way to restrict legal entry at the border. Such categorization creates an arbitrary hierarchy of entitlement to international protection, absent of any consideration of the unequal distribution of resources across the Global North and Global South that often makes seeking employment overseas the only way that some people – and their families – can survive.

In theory, this hierarchy of ‘desert’ is illegitimate because human rights violations, including deprivation of socioeconomic rights, are not subject to ranking. In practice, the hierarchy also fails to give ‘priority’ to ‘real refugees’ due to the culture of disbelief around asylum applications. So migrants are forced to rely on smugglers to gain entry.

Smugglers facilitate the entry of migrants through different pathways. This entails significant risks, as states establish stronger barriers to entry, including visa restrictions, carrier sanctions, and interceptions at sea. The journeys do not stop; the conditions simply become more and more deadly.

Smuggling is different to trafficking, which is the forced movement of a person for the purpose of exploitation, including labour and sexual exploitation. Anti-trafficking policies, however, are often criticized for failing to protect, and sometimes causing direct harm to, undocumented migrants. In the UK survivors of trafficking are detained and in some cases deported; even after being recognized as survivors, they often do not receive adequate social support.

Part of the ‘anti-trafficking’ movement is also rooted in an anti-sex work politics that conflates sex work with sexual exploitation. This perspective presents all migrant sex workers as ‘victims’ requiring ‘saving’. In the end, this only pushes migrant sex workers into more insecure working conditions, subjecting them to the threat of arrest, detention, and deportation.

States often conflate smuggling and trafficking to introduce blanket restrictions on entry and to criminalize particular forms of work in order to eject unwanted migrants. But blaming migrants’ deaths on smugglers and traffickers does nothing but mask the structures of racism and capitalism that both restrict the movement of, and exploit, undocumented workers.

We do not at the time of writing know if the 39 people in the back of the lorry were hoping to come to the UK as workers; or whether they were being trafficked into labour exploitation. But the objectification of their ‘bodies’ reminded me of the way that migrants are only useful until they are not; and then, they are, quite literally, disposable.

A man is being questioned in connection with the murder of the Essex 39; but the blood is ultimately on the hands of the British state, and the global system of borders that entrenches exploitative and deadly relations of power.

▻https://newint.org/features/2019/10/25/dont-call-essex-39-tragedy
#terminologie #vocabulaire #mots #tragédie #pouvoir #capitalisme

Remember the dead
Justice for the living

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source : ▻https://twitter.com/UnityCentreGlas/status/1207378194401300480

"Pray for Me"

In October 2019, British police discovered a truck with 39 dead bodies. All from Vietnam. Who were they? How did they get there? The story of twins, one of whom died.

The father is sitting hunched over at the table, a lanky, 50-year-old farmer with leathery skin and hair that is more gray than it is black. It’s late January, the air is warm and dry. Light filters in through the grated window, as do sounds: the crowing of a rooster, the lowing of a cow. The father wipes his nose on his sleeve and takes another drag from his cigarette. There have been a great number of cigarettes since the large, white altar appeared in the house entry bearing the photo of a smiling, 19-year-old girl in a white blouse and a red-and-gold scarf draped around her neck. Her name was Mai. She was his daughter.

An acquaintance drops by, reaches for a stick of incense from the tray next to the altar, lights it and mumbles an Our Father. “Ah! You!” says the father in greeting and pours a glass of green tea. The guest sits down and says what everyone has been saying these days.

“My condolences.”

“Mai was such a good girl. It must be so deeply painful.”

“I wish for you and your family that you may one day overcome this pain.”

“May God help you.”

The father nods and the visitor puts on his motorcycle helmet and drives off.

The man and his wife cultivate two rice fields in addition to keeping three cows and a dozen chicken behind the house. The mother also distills liquor and the father used to take side jobs in construction – drilling wells or lugging sacks of cement. But since his daughter’s death, he has stopped taking any jobs, and his wife takes care of the fields and the animals on her own.

The father can no longer handle much more than receiving guests dropping by to express their sympathies. Even eating is a challenge.

Mai and her twin sister Lan had a dream: They wanted to get out of Vietnam and head to the West, to America or Europe. Two girls with the same round nose, the same high forehead and the same weakness for flannel shirts and jeans. Two girls who had shared a bed their entire lives, dyed their hair and put on red lipstick like popstars from South Korea. Two girls hoping for a better life.

The father says he understood the dream of his daughters. Here, in the countryside of central Vietnam, all the young people want to leave. But in the big cities of Vietnam, they are ridiculed as rubes with a funny accent, so they head overseas. His brother’s children are living in America; he has cousins in South Korea. Classmates of his daughters have made their way to Japan, Germany and England.

After finishing school, Mai and Lan applied to two American universities, but they were rejected. Then, a cousin put them in touch with a man from a neighboring village who was now living overseas. A smuggler.

The father was worried. He had heard how dangerous it could be to travel to the West illegally, especially for women. On the evening before their departure, he took them aside.

“I won’t let you go,” he said. “I can’t allow it.”

The sisters protested. “If we don’t go now, we might never get away.”

The father relented. When he thinks back to that discussion today, tears run down his face. He reaches for a cigarette.

Mai’s and Lan’s journey to a better life ended in a news report that circled the globe. On 23rd of October 2019, British police officers discovered 39 dead bodies in a container on the back of a truck in the county of Essex east of London. Mai was one of them.

Court documents show that a Northern Irish truck driver had hauled the container through France and Belgium before it was loaded onto a ferry in Zeebrugge for the crossing to England, disguised as a delivery of biscuits. Upon arrival in the port of Purfleet in Essex County, a second driver, also from Northern Ireland, picked up the container at 1:08 a.m. on that October night. A short time later, he turned into an industrial park, where he opened the container door.

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According to the London daily Evening Standard, the driver passed out after opening the refrigerator unit and discovering the bodies, although that suggestion remained unverified. The Daily Mail quotes emergency teams who said there were bloodied handprints. At 1:38 a.m., the ambulance was called.

Post-mortem examinations have come to the conclusion that the victims died of suffocation and overheating, likely during the nine-hour crossing to England. The container’s refrigeration system had been switched off.

The two truck drivers and three accomplices are now in custody, with their trial set to begin in Britain this autumn. Eight more suspects have been charged in Vietnam. Investigations into the unlawful migration network are continuing in both countries, but already it seems clear that the authorities have not managed to track down the leaders of the network. Only the foot soldiers will be hauled into court.

Reports of people who die on their way to Europe are usually about migrants from Africa or civil war refugees from the Middle East who drown in the Mediterranean. But the Essex tragedy is different.

All of the 39 people who died were from Vietnam, a country that has been at peace for decades – a place that is popular as a vacation destination and which is growing more prosperous by the year.

Still, the twin sisters Mai and Lan took off on this dangerous journey. What were they hoping for once they arrived in England? And was the container disaster in Essex an isolated case, or was it part of a dangerous migration movement that had managed to stay under the radar until then?

This article was researched over the course of several months. The ZEIT reporters traveled to Vietnam, England and Spain, with much of their reporting taking place long before SARS-CoV-2 arrived in these countries. Like so many other things, the virus has also slowed down irregular migration, and only in the coming weeks will it become clear what is stronger – the pandemic or the desire for millions of people to leave their homeland.
Spain

Around 9,900 kilometers from her parents’ home in Vietnam, Lan is sitting in a nail salon in a Spanish city not far from the Mediterranean. To protect their identities, the names of both Lan and her deceased twin sister Mai have been changed for this story, also Lan’s employer will not be identified. Lan, wearing jeans and a black hoodie, is filing a customer’s nails. She has a blue-and-white plaid fabric mask wrapped around her face, as do all of the workers here to protect themselves from the fumes and the fingernail dust. Winter is just coming to an end and the coronavirus has yet to arrive.

Lan bends silently over the left hand belonging to a young Spanish woman with dark brown hair and a cheek piercing, her fingers spread wide. Lan’s workspace is in the back, next to the massage chair with the footbath. On her table is a fan and a clamp-on desk lamp, from which a small electric nail file is hanging. On the wall is a poster of a woman naked from the waist up, her arms crossed to cover her breasts. Next to it are the words “Beauty Nails.”

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Spain. Lan is stuck here. The Vietnamese smuggler who organized the sisters’ trip last summer – he’ll be called Long – told them all about the wonders of England. He told them he lived there himself, though it would later turn out that he really lives in Germany.

Mai and Lan didn’t know much about England. They didn’t have a specific idea of the kind of life they wanted to live or the jobs they wanted to have, but they figured they would be granted residency and make lots of money. Then, they would return to Vietnam, get married and have children. That was the plan.

Long, the smuggler, told the girls that the trip he was organizing for them would be almost as comfortable as vacation. They would only have to make a choice regarding the last leg of the journey, from France to England. Would they rather travel in the cab of a truck, in a horse trailer or in a container?

The father chose the truck cab, the safest and most expensive method. The price: 1.1 billion Vietnamese Dong per sister, for a total equal to almost 88,000 euros. To get ahold of that much money, the father decided to take out a loan, with his property and that of his siblings as collateral.

It was a good investment, Long promised. He would take care of everything, including forged passports. And once they arrived in England, he said, one of his contacts would pick up the girls and help them find jobs. Jobs that would lead to a better life.

In the nail studio, Lan stands up from her stool and asks the customer to follow her and the two then sit down at a table near the entrance. The customer spreads her fingers out again and Lan walks over to a shelf where small, colorful bottles of nail polish are lined up. She pulls out two bottles, one white and one clear. The Spanish woman has requested a French manicure: clear nails with white tips.

The nail studio where Lan works is no different from thousands of others just like it in Europe. It is located in a shopping mall with glass entry doors and faux-marble floors. On the ground floor, young shoppers push past H&M while families eat pizza up in the food court. At Beauty Nails, a manicure and pedicure with no polish costs 32 euros. The husbands sit on chairs near the door, fiddling with their smartphones.

What remains invisible from the outside is the world that keeps the business going, the continued arrival of migrants who enter the country illegally. In many Western countries, nail studios are run by the Vietnamese, though the reason is more by chance than by design: In the 1970s, the Hollywood actress Tippi Hedren visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California. To help the people there build up new lives for themselves, she set up courses in nail care and even flew in her own manicurist to help teach them. That was how the first Vietnamese began filing and polishing nails for a living. They were so successful, that many of their compatriots followed their example, first in the United States and then in Europe. And they are still expanding the business, with the necessary personnel coming from their former homeland.

Only two of the five Vietnamese who are working in the nail studio on this day have valid residency papers, the boss and his longest-serving employee, both of whom have lived in Spain for a long time. The other three – a young man in his early 20s, a woman of the same age and Lan – are in the country without permission.

It’s not easy to trace the circuitous path the two sisters took on their way to Europe. Lan has only faint memories of the many people and places they encountered, while some of the details regarding the smugglers and their methods cannot be adequately verified. The ZEIT reporters tried to corroborate the stories told by the young woman by looking at passport stamps, pictures and social media posts. They compared Lan’s account with those from the families of other victims and discussed them with migration experts. They have come to the conclusion that Lan’s story is credible.
The Path to the West: Malaysia

The two sisters began their trip in late August of last year at the airport in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, 300 kilometers from their home village. Their mother had stayed home, with Long, the smuggler, insisting that there be no intimate hugs or even tears as the parents bid farewell. He was concerned that such scenes could have attracted the attention of the police. Only their father had joined them on the trip to the airport.

Mai and Lan had two, small trolley cases with them, one brown and the other white, in which they had packed T-shirts, collared shirts and a few articles of warm clothing. They also each had 500 USD and 700 euros in cash. Their plan was to pose as tourists heading off on a trip with their partners. At the terminal, they met two young Vietnamese men who were also on their way to the West. The twins were to fly with the two men to Malaysia. Their father thought they looked decent, and the fact that they were Catholic put his mind at ease.

The sisters left Vietnam with the feeling that a grand adventure lay ahead of them.

At the airport in Kuala Lumpur, the group was received by a Chinese woman, who drove them to a hotel outside of the city. Mai and Lan went out to eat and to have a look around, feeling like a couple of tourists. Later, the Chinese woman returned with red passports, telling the girls that they were to say they were from China from then on.

Mai and Lan learned a few sentences in Chinese from the woman and had to memorize their new names and places of birth. Mai’s new name was “Lili,” but Lan has forgotten hers. “It was so long,” she says.

The very next day, Lan had to continue the journey without her sister, with the smugglers saying that their identical dates of birth threatened to attract unwanted attention.

So, she flew with three or four other Vietnamese and the Chinese woman to the Azerbaijan capital of Baku. There, they boarded a plane bound for Istanbul. When they arrived, Lan presented her Chinese passport. Mai arrived two days later with a different group.

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Spain

At Beauty Nails, the hum of nail filers competes with the rattling of shopping carts outside in the mall. Every now and then, a customer walks in, triggering a flurry of orders from the boss in Vietnamese and the customer is taken to a free table.

Vietnamese acquaintances of Vietnamese acquaintances helped Lan get the job in the nail studio and she now spends six days a week here, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., with only Sundays off. It’s of no consequence to her whether it is cold and wintery outside or whether the sun warms the colorful building facades as it does on this spring-like Saturday. All Lan sees are broken nails, split nails, torn nails, nails with chipped polish and unpainted nails that are waiting to be filed and painted.

Lan guesses that she serves 20 customers a day, not many compared to the others, she says. She has been working here for more than two months, but she still hasn’t been paid. “It’s like an apprenticeship,” she later says after the workday is over and she can speak freely. “Plus, they take care of my lodging and food.”

Lan lives in a four-room flat on the fifth floor of an apartment building together with eight other Vietnamese, seven men and a woman. She and the other woman share a room in the apartment and sleep in the same bed. The apartment belongs to her boss and everyone who lives here works in one of his two nail studios. Late in the evening, once the workday is over, they cook together.

Lan speaks in short, hesitant sentences, frequently looking away in embarrassment. She says she doesn’t know how long her purported training program will last and she hasn’t yet managed to muster up the courage to ask.

She leaves her own nails unpainted. Polished nails aren’t particularly practical in her line of work, nor does she like the look of colored fingernails. In the first week, her fingers turned red and scaly, but now she washes her hands after every customer and uses lotion, which has helped.
The Path to the West: Turkey

In Istanbul, the sisters stayed in an old hotel. Along with the rooms for normal guests, there were hidden rooms in the basement and in the attic, Lan says, adding that around 30 Vietnamese and 20 people from China were staying in the hotel, migrants passing through. They all contributed money for the shopping and then cooked together in a kitchen in the attic. After just over a week in Turkey, they made their first attempt to leave the country. The smugglers drove them into a forest, but they were taken into custody by the Turkish police and brought to a police station, where they were held for around four hours. The Turks were friendly, Lan recalls. “We even taught them a bit of Vietnamese.”

Back in the city, Lan and the others waited a few days. Then they tried again.

The vehicle was a minivan, designed for seven people, but the seats had been removed and that evening, 27 people crammed inside: Vietnamese, Chinese, Iraqis and Iranians. Mai and Lan had to leave their suitcases back in the hotel and were only allowed to bring along plastic bags with a bit of food and clothing. After about three hours, they again reached the forest, where they proceeded to wait. At around 2 a.m., two Turkish men showed up with two folded up inflatable rafts. The group then walked for around four hours until they reached a river that was just a few meters wide. The Turks pumped up the boats and brought Lan and the others across to the other side. It only took a couple of minutes. And then, they were in Greece.
Vietnam

Nghe An, the home province of the two sisters in Vietnam, is neither particularly rich nor is it extremely poor. The life that Mai and Lan led there was largely confined to just a few square kilometers: There was their parents’ two-story home with its red roof; there was the Catholic church where the family – the twins, their parents and their two younger siblings – would worship; and there were the rice fields everywhere.

Sometimes, their father would drive Mai and Lan to the seaside, a 15-minute trip on the moped. At others, the twins would head out without him, driving around for a couple of hours on their own.

During their excursions, the sisters could see how their region was changing. In many villages, there were hardly any traditional, dark farmhouses with moss covering the walls. Most families have built multi-story homes in recent years, painted in bright colors like lemon yellow or sky blue. Surrounded by banana trees and high fences, stucco-decorated gables jut upward with Greek columns out front and wooden shutters on the windows. Money left over after the homes are complete tends to be spent on air conditioning.

The prosperity here comes from relatives living abroad, as everyone here knows. Mai and Lan were well aware of it too. There is even a term for these people who live somewhere in the West: Viet-Kieu, overseas Vietnamese.

Emigration has long been a feature of life in Vietnam. After communist North Vietnam won the war against the Americans in the mid-1970s and took over South Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of people fled the country in boats and were taken in primarily by France and the U.S. Later, many Vietnamese traveled as contract workers to socialist “brother states,” like the Soviet Union, East Germany, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. More recently, migrant workers have followed, most of them young and from rural areas. People like Mai and Lan.

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Today, almost every Vietnamese family has relatives living overseas, who regularly send money back home. According to the World Bank, remittances worth $16.7 billion were sent back to Vietnam from abroad last year, a total that is many times what the country received in official development assistance.

If the mother has to go to the hospital; if the son is to be sent to university; if the grandfather can no longer work: Many Vietnamese families are dependent on money from abroad. Those who earn that money thousands of kilometers away are smiling down from pictures hung in living rooms across the country – proud emigrants posing in front of famous Western tourist attractions like Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower and the Brandenburg Gate.

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What you don’t see in the pictures are the dangers encountered by many of the migrants who have left Vietnam in recent years.

On that October night in the English county of Essex, 31 men and eight women from several central Vietnamese provinces died in the white metal container. The ZEIT reporters were able to speak with the families of 38 of the 39 victims.

Such as the parents of 26-year-old Pham Thi Tra My. In the final minutes of her life, she was able to write her parents a text message. But only when the doors of the container were finally opened – long after all its occupants had died – did Tra My’s mobile phone once again find a signal and send her words to her family: “Mom and dad, I’m so sorry (…). I didn’t make it. Mom. I love you both. I’m dying because I can’t breathe (…). Mom, I’m so sorry.”

The dead body of Dang Huu Tuyen, 22, was also lying in the container. His parents had sent him to Laos to make money, but the wages paid at the construction sites there were too low, so Tuyen headed off to Europe. Even now, after the death of his son, Tuyen’s father says heading abroad is the best thing a young man can do.

Tran Hai Loc and his wife Nguyen Thi Van, both 35, also died in the container. In contrast to most parents, they decided to head abroad together to make more money so they could quickly return to their children in Vietnam. In the grandparents’ home, there is now an altar bearing a photo of the couple. The children, two and four years old, sometimes gaze at it uncomprehendingly.
The Path to the West: Greece

On the Greek side of the border, Lan says, they saw bushes with white tufts on them. Cotton. They reached a clearing that looked as though someone had just been camping there and the Turkish smugglers spread out a blanket for them to sit on.

The smugglers told the group they had to wait in the clearing until evening and that they had to stay as quiet as possible because of the possibility of police roaming through the forest. It was a chilly evening, Lan recalls, and Mai was shivering because she had left her warm clothing back at the hotel. They passed Lan’s jacket back and forth and embraced to keep warm. At around 7 p.m., they headed off again and kept going until midnight, when they stopped. The smugglers passed out bags of food and drinks, then they all stretched out on the ground and went to sleep.

When they woke up, they were picked up by a truck that had been modified for its very specific purpose. From the outside, Lan recalls, it looked just like a normal truck, with a cab up front and a large container in the back. But there was actually a hidden compartment, reachable through a metal hatch underneath. “We had to crawl under the truck so that we could climb in,” Lan says.

Around four hours later, they had to climb back out of the truck on a country road. From here, the smugglers said, it’s about 10 kilometers to the train station, and the group set out on foot. The Vietnamese, says Lan, stopped at a small bistro they passed for a bite to eat and they asked someone to call a taxi for them. The Chinese, though, she says, walked the entire way and were exhausted when they arrived.

“We Vietnamese,” Lan says, “are very smart.”

They took the train to Athens and separated into smaller groups, with the twins staying together with the two young Vietnamese men with whom they had flown to Malaysia. An accomplice of their smuggler picked them up at the train station in Athens and brought them to his apartment. Here, they had to wait two or three weeks until their new forged passports were ready, this time from China and South Korea.

It was a pleasant time for Mai and Lan. Mai posted a picture to her Facebook page showing the girls in front of the Academy of Athens, the setting sun shining on the building’s white columns and the twins smiling in each other’s arms. They were wearing T-shirts and jeans, both with belt bags slung over their shoulders. “This is the life,” Mai wrote, including a smiley.
Spain

It’s Sunday, Lan’s day off, and she wants to head out to the beach for the first time since arriving in Spain. Lan has lived in this city for several months, but still lives the life of a stranger. The language, the food, the streets, the buildings – none of it is familiar to her.

In the old city center, she climbs into a green-and-white electric bus that is so full on this summery spring day that she is only just able to find a seat. The bus drives through a suburb with broad streets and lush palms. Even though the sun is shining outside and it is 20 degrees Celsius, Lan is wearing a woolen roll neck sweater and a black-and-white plaid winter coat.

She begins talking about her apartment and about the eight other Vietnamese she lives with, saying she isn’t particularly interested in speaking or doing much with any of them, aside from church on Sunday, which they sometimes attend together. Her apartment mates offered to celebrate her birthday with her, but she declined. Her birthday reminds her too much of her twin sister, she says.

She gets off the bus at the last stop and follows three young Spaniards carrying a blanket and a ball. They walk past a white casino and a park full of picnicking families. Lan walks up a small embankment until the air begins to smell of salt and the ground gives way to damp sand, the waves splashing onto the shore. The sky is so blue it could have been painted.

“Just like the beach in Vietnam!” Lan yells.

A couple of young people in swimming suits bat a volleyball back and forth. Lan, though, pulls her coat up over her head: Like many Vietnamese women, she finds tanned skin to be ugly.

She stops, sits down in the sand and pulls her knees to her chin. When asked if she would like to return to Vietnam, she says that she regrets not having listened to her father’s warnings. “The price to come here was too high,” she says.

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Still, she doesn’t want to give up and go back. Her sister, she believes, would have wanted her to bring her journey to a successful conclusion, making it all the way to England to make enough money to help support her family.

It’s quite possible that Lan would also be working in a nail salon had she made it to England, though some Vietnamese migrants also end up at the illegal cannabis farms there. Experts have compiled reports about young men being locked into buildings for months on end so they can monitor the heat lamps and fertilize and water the plants. The only food that the drug dealers give them are frozen meals they can heat up in the microwave. In many instances, says the British Home Office, these migrants live in a form of “modern slavery.”

It seems likely, in other words, that Lan’s life in England would be no better than the one she has found in Spain. But at least she knows a few people in England who could help her. More than anything, though, Lan seems intent on reaching the goal that she and her sister had set for themselves.

“If I were to return to Vietnam now, I would just be a burden to my parents,” Lan says. “I would have to find a secure, well-paid job. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed my siblings and send them to school.”

In the months following the death of her sister, it seems almost as though Lan has packed up her feelings and set them aside. It’s as though she is bearing her pain just as disciplined as she is bearing her work at the nail salon. In her discussions with ZEIT about her journey and the death of her sister, she only began crying on one single occasion – when she was speaking about Mai dying in the container. “I can actually feel it when I think about her gasping for breath,” she says. “I can feel it with my own body.”
The Path to the West: Separation

In Athens, the smugglers once again wanted Mai to fly onward on her own. Mai resisted, afraid to be without her sister, but Lan reassured her, saying: “Go on ahead.” So, Mai flew to Palermo in Italy, where she looked around in the old town and went to the beach, before then boarding a plane to Spain and then a train to France.

In the meantime, Lan tried to leave Athens with a South Korean passport. She managed to make it through the security check at the airport, but she was detained on the plane. A customs official took her forged passport, leaving Lan to call her parents in tears. “If you have to, go to the police and come home,” her father told her. But after 24 hours, the Greek authorities let her go, though they held onto the fake passport.

A few days later, she spoke with her sister on the phone for the last time. It was the evening of Oct. 21 and Lan was still stuck in Athens. Mai, though, was at a train station in France, waiting for a man who was supposed to bring her to Belgium. From there, her smuggler had told her, she could head onward to England. Mai was thinking about staying in Belgium until Lan caught up with her, but Lan pushed her to keep going. It could be awhile until she got another forged passport, she said.

“Pray for me,” Mai said.

“I’m praying for you,” Lan responded.

That was the last time they spoke. Shortly before the crossing to England, Mai wrote her sister one last time via Facebook.

Oct. 22, 7:48 a.m.: “Lan, I’m leaving at 8.”

8:49 a.m.: “I’m leaving at 9.”

Mai’s father spent that day in Vietnam waiting for his daughter to get in touch after arriving in England. In vain. So, he tried calling her himself. And couldn’t reach her. Her father recalls that Long, the smuggler, tried to reassure him, saying that Mai had arrived safely in England and that he didn’t need to worry and that the father only had to hand over the money and Mai would be picked up and taken to an apartment.

The father tried to believe him and even told Lan. But then, on Oct. 23, news suddenly began spreading in the village. There had been an accident in England. Thirty-nine dead bodies in a truck. All of them Asian.

The father again called the smuggler. Is Mai really in England, he demanded? What about that container? Again, the father says, Long tried to convince him that everything was just fine. Mai had booked the most expensive of the travel options, after all, a seat in the cab. There was room for just two in the cab, not 39.

In the hours that followed, the father says, he paced in the living room like a madman. Only two, not 39 – that thought kept going through his head, he says. He told Lan the same thing. But why wasn’t he able to reach Mai? And why had Long also stopped answering his phone?

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Lan says she could also feel that something wasn’t right. She laid in bed without being able to sleep. She says she prayed and read the bible.

Days later, still in the dark about her sister’s fate, Lan flew from Greece to Spain with a forged South Korean passport, the next leg of the journey to England. After her arrival in Spain, Lan again wrote her sister over Facebook.

5:25 p.m.: “Don’t leave me alone.”

“We have to make it to make mom and dad happy.”

5:53 p.m.: “Call me.”

“Try your best to get me to England, too, so that we can see each other again.”

6:53 p.m.: “Call me and I’ll come to you.”

“We have to do all we can for our parents and our family.”

That night, Lan spoke with her mother on the phone. Her mother told her: “Leave your phone camera on so that I can watch over you as you sleep.”

It would take until Nov. 8 until the police in Essex brought an end to their uncertainty and released the names of the 39 people who had suffocated in the back of the truck.
Vietnam

For 40 days, Mai’s body lay in a wooden casket in England, the country where she so badly wanted to live. Then it was flown to Vietnam. On the morning of Dec. 2, 2019, a white ambulance brought the body to Mai’s hometown. Everyone was waiting for its arrival: parents, siblings, relatives, neighbors, former classmates, teachers and other members of the community. On videos of that day, you can see villagers crouched on their mopeds with colorful flags. When the ambulance finally arrived, they crowded around its tinted windows and pressed their hands against them – as if they were trying to grasp something that could no longer be grasped.

In the videos, you can also see Mai’s father standing silently to the side. All around him are the sounds of drumming, rattling, mourning and singing, but it looks as though he’s not making a sound. His mouth is open, his face frozen in place as he walks to his home in the middle of the funeral march – losing strength as he goes, until a relative has to pull him for the last few steps through the crowd.

Spain

The sun has already set on the beach when Lan’s phone rings and a photo of her father pops up on the screen. “Dad?” she says. “Are you still awake? It’s late over there.”

Lan and her father frequently talk on the phone several times a day. He always asks how she is doing and whether she has eaten. And he tells her she shouldn’t climb into a truck bound for England, and she shouldn’t go anywhere on her own.

On this day, too, Lan’s father had tried to reach her several times, but because she was speaking with a reporter, Lan didn’t want to stop to pick up the phone. He was worried.

“Everything is fine,” she says. “I’m at the beach.”

They talk for a few minutes and then she sets her phone aside. It has grown chilly and Lan has wrapped herself in her coat. Later, she will say that it was her birthday. She is now 20 years old.

She looks out at the sea as though she is looking for a ship to take her to the other side. “A Vietnamese friend who I met in Greece recently called me,” she says. “He’s in England. He crossed over in the truck, in the cab. He says it was quite comfortable.”
Vietnam

At the edge of the village that she had wanted to leave, just a few hundred meters from her childhood home, is Mai’s grave. The air is still, as is the sky. A low cement wall marks the area belonging to Mai’s family. Her grave is set slightly apart from those of her forbears, who lie close together. It’s also bigger, mightier, more admonishing. A small stone covering protects her photo from the sun and rain. The grave is surrounded by white flowers.
Spain

Lan receives her first wages at the nail salon after three months: 500 euros in addition to room and board. She is set to earn more money in the months to come: 600, 700, maybe even 1,000 euros. Finally, she will be able to send money home.

But then the pandemic arrives. And Beauty Nails has to close its doors.

A lockdown is imposed across Spain and Lan spends her days in the apartment with the other Vietnamese migrants. She sleeps, she cooks, she eats and she talks to her parents on the phone or exchanges messages with them. But really, she is waiting. Waiting for the country to reawaken so she can go back to fixing and polishing nails. And she is waiting for the borders to reopen so she can finish her journey to England.

▻https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2020-05/migration-vietnamese-dead-bodies-lorry-essex-grossbritannien-english

#parcours_migratoires #itinéraires_migratoires

Camion charnier en Angleterre : les 13 suspects interpellés en France mis en examen

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Les 13 personnes arrêtées mardi en France lors d’un coup de filet lié à l’enquête sur la mort de 39 migrants vietnamiens dans un camion frigorifique en octobre en Grande-Bretagne ont été mises en examen, a-t-on appris samedi de source judiciaire.

Elles ont toutes été mises en examen vendredi pour « traite des êtres humains en bande organisée », « aide à l’entrée ou au séjour en bande organisée » et « association de malfaiteurs ». Six d’entre elles sont également poursuivies pour « homicide involontaire ».

Sur les treize, douze ont été placées en détention provisoire et une sous contrôle judiciaire.

Ces suspects, majoritairement des Vietnamiens et des Français, ont été interpellés mardi en divers lieux de la région parisienne. Au même moment, treize autres personnes ont aussi été arrêtées en Belgique dans le cadre d’une opération de police internationale, coordonnée par l’organisme de coopération judiciaire Eurojust.

En Belgique, 11 personnes ont été écrouées après leur inculpation pour « trafic d’êtres humains avec circonstances aggravantes, appartenance à une organisation criminelle et faux et usages de faux », selon le parquet fédéral belge. Deux autres, inculpées des mêmes chefs, ont été remises en liberté.

Selon plusieurs sources proches de l’enquête, un homme soupçonné d’être un organisateur du réseau de trafic de migrants a par ailleurs été interpellé mercredi en Allemagne, dans le cadre d’un mandat d’arrêt européen émis par la France.

Le 23 octobre, les cadavres de 31 hommes et de huit femmes de nationalité vietnamienne, dont deux adolescents de 15 ans, avaient été découverts dans un conteneur dans la zone industrielle de Grays, à l’est de Londres. Le conteneur provenait du port belge de Zeebruges.

Selon une source judiciaire française, les enquêteurs ont pu déterminer grâce à des investigations techniques et des surveillances physiques que les migrants partaient de Bierne, dans le Nord de la France, vers Zeebruges.

Les personnes interpellées en Ile-de-France sont soupçonnées d’avoir hébergé et transporté des migrants par taxi entre la région parisienne et le Nord, selon cette source.

Le réseau a continué à oeuvrer après le drame, ainsi que pendant le confinement. Pendant cette période, les trafiquants se sont adaptés en aménageant les cabines des camions pour y dissimuler les candidats à la traversée de la Manche, à raison de trois ou quatre par voyage.

Le mois dernier, une arrestation avait déjà eu lieu en Irlande : celle du présumé organisateur de la rotation des chauffeurs participant au trafic.

Par ailleurs, dans l’enquête britannique, cinq personnes ont déjà été inculpées, dont Maurice Robinson, 25 ans, le chauffeur du camion intercepté à Grays. Début avril, ce dernier avait plaidé coupable d’homicides involontaires devant un tribunal londonien.

▻https://www.courrierinternational.com/depeche/camion-charnier-en-angleterre-les-13-suspects-interpelles-en-

Après trois ans d’enquête, deux restaurants étaient à l’origine d’un vaste trafic d’êtres humains

Un trafic international d’immigration irrégulière et de traite d’être humains a été démantelé après une enquête qui a démarré, il y a trois ans, dans deux restaurants de l’Aude. Deux ressortissants vietnamiens clandestins munis de faux papiers, qui remboursaient leur voyage, travaillaient dans ces deux établissements. Au total, dix-neuf personnes ont été interpellées à l’automne 2019 sur l’ensemble du territoire et treize d’entre elles sont en prison.

Une filière internationale vietnamienne de traite d’êtres humains et d’aide à l’entrée et au séjour d’étrangers en bande organisée a été dévoilée à la suite d’une enquête qui a débuté il y a trois ans dans l’Aude, rapporte La Dépêche du Midi. Menée par la Brigade mobile de Recherche (BMR) de la Direction interdépartementale de la police aux frontières (DIDPAF) de Perpignan, cette enquête de longue haleine a démarré fin 2017 dans deux restaurants.

Les enquêteurs ont d’abord constaté que deux ressortissants vietnamiens clandestins travaillaient dans les deux établissements de l’Aude et possédaient de faux papiers. Après de nombreux recoupements judiciaires et des contrôles dans plusieurs restaurants, les policiers ont mis en évidence l’existence d’un vaste réseau dans le sud de la France et la région de Grenoble (Isère), relate le quotidien. Depuis, sur l’ensemble du territoire, dix-neuf personnes ont été interpellées et treize d’entre elles ont été emprisonnées.

Les clandestins devaient rembourser 35 000 €

Concernant le mode opératoire, les migrants vietnamiens arrivaient sur le territoire français, munis de faux titres de séjour français et rejoignaient ensuite des restaurants. Les responsables se chargeaient de les héberger, mais également de « procéder aux démarches administratives susceptibles de justifier leur emploi », relate La Dépêche du Midi. En travaillant dans ces établissements, les clandestins remboursaient le coût de leur voyage, qui atteignait 35 000 €.

« 29 restaurants, 66 personnes sans titre de travail et 29 personnes porteurs de faux ou susceptibles de l’être sont visés par l’enquête », rapporte le quotidien régional. Au vu des nombreuses ramifications de ce réseau, l’Office Central pour la Répression de l’Immigration Irrégulière de l’Emploi d’Étrangers Sans Titre (OCRIEST) a poursuivi les investigations. Les enquêteurs sont parvenus à établir un lien entre ce réseau et 39 migrants vietnamiens retrouvés morts dans un camion frigorifique, à Londres, en 2019. Deux des victimes venaient de Grenoble.

À l’automne 2019, des interpellations ont eu lieu dans plusieurs régions. Il a alors été établi que les migrants auraient payé pour obtenir des passeports vietnamiens. Les policiers ont aussi trouvé « 125 000 € en espèces, l’équivalent de 100 000 € en tickets-restaurant, deux véhicules haut de gamme et des faux documents », précise le quotidien régional. Les personnes à la tête de ce réseau risquent 20 ans de prison et jusqu’à 3 millions d’euros d’amende.

▻https://www.ouest-france.fr/societe/faits-divers/aude-apres-trois-ans-d-enquete-deux-restaurants-etaient-a-l-origine-d-u

"Bete für mich"
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/893393

Migrants morts : jusqu’à 27 ans de prison pour les responsables

Quatre hommes ont été condamnés vendredi à Londres à des peines allant de 13 à 27 ans de prison pour la mort de 39 migrants vietnamiens retrouvés dans la remorque d’un camion en Angleterre en 2019.

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Les deux principaux prévenus, #Ronan_Hughes, un transporteur routier nord-irlandais de 41 ans, et #Gheorghe_Nica, un ressortissant roumain de 43 ans, accusés d’être les organisateurs du trafic, ont été condamnés respectivement à 20 et 27 ans de prison pour homicides involontaires et trafic de migrants.

Le premier avait plaidé coupable, le second l’avait été déclaré par la cour de l’Old Bailey à Londres le 21 décembre.

#Maurice_Robinson, le chauffeur qui conduisait le camion au moment de la découverte des corps, qui avait plaidé coupable, a quant à lui été condamné à 13 ans et quatre mois d’emprisonnement.

#Eamon_Harrisson, le chauffeur de 24 ans qui avait acheminé la remorque jusqu’au port belge de Zeebruges, affirmant qu’il ignorait la présence des migrants à son bord, s’est vu infliger 18 ans de prison.

Le 23 octobre 2019, les corps de 31 hommes et de huit femmes âgés de 15 à 44 ans avaient été découverts à bord d’une remorque dans la zone industrielle de #Grays, à l’est de Londres.

#Asphyxie et #hyperthermie

L’enquête a mis au jour une entreprise « sophistiquée » et « rentable » qui prospérait de longue date, a souligné le juge Nigel Sweeney, évoquant les tentatives désespérées des migrants de « joindre le monde extérieur au téléphone » ou de tenter d’échapper à la mort en essayant de briser le toit de la remorque.

Les victimes sont mortes d’asphyxie et d’hyperthermie dans l’espace confiné du conteneur.

Parmi elles, Pham Thi Tra My, 26 ans, avait envoyé un SMS glaçant à ses proches, quelques heures avant la découverte des corps : « Maman, papa, je vous aime très fort. Je meurs, je ne peux plus respirer ».

Dans un message diffusé à l’audience, un homme de 25 ans répétait à sa famille qu’il était « désolé » : « C’est Tuan. (...) Je ne vais pas pouvoir m’occuper de vous. (...) Je n’arrive pas à respirer. Je veux revenir dans ma famille. Je vous souhaite une bonne vie ».

Les migrants devaient débourser jusqu’à 13.000 livres sterling (14.000 euros) pour être acheminés en « VIP », c’est-à-dire avec un chauffeur au courant de leur présence.

Au total, sept voyages ont été identifiés entre mai 2018 et le 23 octobre 2019.

Un rêve qui s’évanouit

Nombre des victimes de ce drame étaient originaires d’une région pauvre du centre du Vietnam, où les familles s’endettent pour envoyer l’un des leurs au Royaume-Uni, via des filières clandestines, dans l’espoir qu’ils y trouvent des emplois rémunérateurs.

Dans leurs témoignages lus à l’audience par le procureur, les familles des victimes avaient raconté la douleur du deuil et le rêve d’une vie meilleure qui s’évanouissait. « Ca va être très dur pour moi de gagner de l’argent et d’élever notre enfant toute seule », a déclaré Nguyen Thi Lam, qui a perdu son mari dans le drame et n’a pour seules ressources que la culture du riz et un peu d’élevage.

Condamnations au Vietnam

Avant le procès à Londres, sept personnes ont été condamnées le 15 septembre au Vietnam pour leur rôle dans le trafic.

Un tribunal de la province de Ha Tinh (centre) a prononcé contre quatre Vietnamiens âgés de 26 à 36 ans des peines allant de deux ans et demi à sept ans et demi de détention. Ils ont été reconnus coupables d’avoir participé à différents degrés à « l’organisation du trafic illicite de migrants ». Trois autres ont été condamnés à des peines de prison avec sursis.

Des enquêtes ont également été ouvertes en France et en Belgique, 13 suspects ont été inculpés dans chacun de ces deux pays. Ils avaient été interpellés au cours d’une vaste opération de police internationale, coordonnée par l’organisme de coopération judiciaire #Eurojust.

▻https://www.tdg.ch/migrants-morts-jusqua-27-ans-de-prison-pour-les-responsables-149171245435