Izjava iniciative prosilcev za azil La Lutte de la Liberte, 6. 8. 2019, Azilni dom Vič

Je mets ici les passages qui m’intéressent particulièrement... et notamment sur la #frontière_sud-alpine

Push-back from Italy

Chain push-backs from Italy are comparatively rare. Yet notably one report (see 1.1: ▻https://www.borderviolence.eu/violence-reports/august-5-2019-0700-fernetti-italy conducted last month provided evidence of this sequential phenomena of expulsion from Italy back to BiH, via Slovenia and Croatia; drawing into question why such uncommon and illegal procedure was conducted by Italian police officers. The transit group was initially apprehended by Italian police officers in a small village on theoutskirts of Trieste from where they described being brought to a government building. Both in Italy and later in Slovenia, the transit group in question was detained, made to give their fingerprints, had their pictures taken and were asked to sign paperswritten in languages that they did not understand.

“We asked the woman, what was on the paper because it was in Italian. She didn’t translate and we didn’t understand what we signed.” “I told the translator that they have to find a solution. They can’t just bring us back to Slovenia, knowing that we were in Italy. And they said, we are just migrants, we are not tourists.”Once they arrived in Croatia, the transit group was detained in a police station and interviewed one at a time before being brought to the border with Bosnia-Herzegovina where the group had their phones individually broken with a hammer by a Croatian police officer. They were then told to walk through a forest into Bosnia-Herzegovina. The chronology of events above alludes also to the complicit nature of preliminary actors within the wider pushbacks. Arguably initiators such as Slovenia and Italy -who often afford groups with translators and legal documents -have an intimate relationship to the violence and terror that accompanies subsequent push-backs from Croatia to BiH. The feigning of due process by these countries, despite prior knowledge of violent chain refoulement, forms a central part of their conceit. Italy and Slovenia mask their actions in a malaise of procedures (regularly untranslated or explained), in order to hide the institutionalisation of illegal chain pushbacks. The nature of chain pushbacks are defined by these bit-part processes, which simultaneously imitate regular procedures, while providing ample space for state authorities to deviate from legal obligations.

(pp.6-7)
#Italie #push-back #Slovénie #refoulement

And on the

Construction of further fencing along Slovenian-Croatian border

This August the Slovenian government authorized the construction (▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-slovenia/slovenia-erects-more-border-fence-to-curb-migrant-inflow-idUSKCN1VC19Q) of a fence 40 kms long on the banks of the river Kolpa, on the border with Croatia. The security device, installed by Serbian firm LEGI SGS, will add up to an already existing fence, making the barrier a total of 219km long. The exact location of the construction was not made public, and a spokeswoman for the interior ministry said itwill be a temporary measure to prevent people crossing the border. She did however directly cite migration as a threat to the security of citizens’ in her statement, arguably reinforcing the ideological bordering that accompanies this further fencing. Theconstruction is part of an escalating approach to border security which includes the deployment of military (▻https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2019/07/slovenia-deploy-soldiers-boost-border-patrols-migrants-190721191235190.ht), stationed on the border since 2016, and bolstered this year alongside regular police forces.

The opposition party NSi demanded tighter control (▻https://balkaninsight.com/2019/07/05/slovenia-opposition-demands-tighter-border-controls-with-croatia) sat the border with Croatia in July, and there seems little, or no will to challenge the mainstream rhetoric on migration. These demands, as BVMN reported last month (▻http://www.nonamekitchen.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Final-Report-July-2019.pdf), coincided with concerns of Italy building a wall on the border with Slovenia, were the ongoing joint border not to stem movement from Slovenia into Italy. Thus it seems somewhat ironic to observe the construction of a barrier on Slovenia’s Southern border, preempting the machinations of Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

Unfortunately, the domino effect being played out between these states only feeds into Croatia’s intensifying security measures. While interior minister David Bozinovic was plethoric, stating that “what Slovenians are doing, is their own decision” (▻https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/38042-migrants), his assertion that a joint European solution would be more welcome rings fairly hollow when viewed in tandem with the heightened repression around pushbacks this month and the already complicit role of Frontex. To this end, there seems to be no escape from the vicious circle of reborderization and loss of human rights in Europe, shown most recentlyby Slovenia’s harder borders.

Allegations of smuggling made against asylum centerstaff in Ljubljana

A statement (▻https://push-forward.org/novica/izjava-iniciative-prosilcev-za-azil-la-lutte-de-la-liberte-6-8-2019-az) by the asylum seekers initiative La lutte de la Liberté, and released at the beginning of August highlights what may be a serious case of abuse by security personnel in the asylum seekers camp Vič, Slovenia. According to the group, a resident in the camp called Ibrahim witnessed a number of security guards smuggling migrants out of the camp with cars in exchange for money. After the incident, which took place at the beginning of July, Ibrahim told the director of the camp who flatly denied the allegations, yet simultaneously removed two guards from their posts, causing great suspicion. In retaliation, other guards started to mob Ibrahim resulting in a series of episodes of violence culminating in a fight, for which Ibrahim was taken to a detention centre in #Postojna.

Ibrahim has now been released and three security guards in the camp are under investigation, a source from InfoKolpa shared. Even though the actual occurrence of smuggling remains a supposition, the event highlights an important grey zone in which camp staff are operating, and the potential for systemic abuse of the asylum system. It can be argued that such cases can only emerge in the void left by inaccessible procedures and it is well known that extremely long waiting times are built into the asylum system in Slovenia. The behaviorof the security guards, in a position of absolute power over the migrants, can be explained by the fact that they are virtually invisible to the outside world, unless the migrants can organizethemselves as in this case. There has already been proof of violent behaviorby the guards in Vic, as shown in this video (▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4GP0qLTsg0

) taken some six months ago.

People on the move, for their part, are in a position of structural and individual disadvantage, susceptible to many types of violence. As the statement correctly underlines, regardless of some staff being amenable, one person abusing a position of power is enough to ruin the life of someone held captive in a protracted asylum system. Infact, evidence would go further to suggest that in this case it seems like the guards were more of an organizedmob, rather than rogue individuals.

The waiting period for asylum which reaches nine months maximum in theory (with only 18 euros a month granted to applicants by the state), makes the tenure of asylum seekers even more precarious, adding to the poor or nonexistent measures taken to integrate them into society: asylum seekers have no access to welfare, assistance in access to work or social housing and their placement in the detention center in Postojna is decided arbitrarily bythe police. The entire Slovenian asylum system goes thus into inquiry, if viewed through thelensof this case, which both expounds its flaws and the potential corruption within.

(pp.18-20)

#murs #barrières_frontalières #militarisation_des_frontières