/2020

Schiavone: «#Lamorgese ammetta che l’Italia sta facendo respingimenti illegali»

«Le riammissioni informali dei richiedenti asilo non hanno alcuna base giuridica», spiega Gianfranco Schiavone, del direttivo dell’Asgi, Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sull’immigrazione. Nel 2020 sono state riammesse in Slovenia 1301 persone. «Sostenere, come ha fatto la ministra dell’interno Lamorgese durante l’interrogazione del deputato di Leu, Erasmo Palazzotto, che la Slovenia e soprattutto la Croazia siano “Paesi sicuri” nonostante le prove schiaccianti della violenza esercitata dalla polizia croata sulle persone in transito, ha dell’incredibile, un’affermazione indecorosa»

Quelle che il governo italiano chiama “riammissioni” in realtà altro non sono che respingimenti illegali dei profughi che arrivano dalla Rotta Balcanica a Trieste e Gorizia. Pakistani, iracheni, afghani, e talvolta anche siriani che avrebbero diritto di chiedere asilo nel nostro Paese ma neanche mettono piede sul suolo italiano che già sono in marcia per fare forzatamente la Rotta Balcanica al contrario: all’Italia alla Slovenia, dalla Slovenia alla Croazia, dalla Croazia alla Bosnia.

Lo scorso 13 gennaio il deputato di Leu, Erasmo Palazzotto durante la sua interrogazione ha ricordato alla ministra dell’Interno Lamorgese quanto sia disumano quello che sta succedendo in Bosnia, alle porte dell’Europa e di come testimoni il fallimento dell’Unione nella gestione dei flussi migratori sottolinenando che "Il nostro Paese deve sospendere le riammissioni informali verso la Slovenia e porre la questione in sede di Consiglio Europeo per gestire in maniera umana questo fenomeno. Va messa la parola fine a questa barbarie”. Ma Lamorgese sembra ancora continuare a non curarsi di quello che avviene dentro i nostri confini. Nel 2020 sono state respinte illegalmente in Slovenia 1301 persone.

«Quello che succede al confine italiano sono veri e propri respingimenti illegali», spiega Gianfranco Schiavone, del direttivo di Asgi, Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione. «Anche nel 2018 si erano registrati casi di respingimenti illegittimi ma in numero contenuto. Allora la risposta fu principalmente quella di negare i fatti. In ogni caso, oggi, il fenomeno dei respingimenti illegali è aumentato enormemente in termini di quantità ma soprattutto nella loro rivendicazione ideologica. Mentre in passato la giustificazione poggiava sulla tesi che non si trattasse di richiedenti asilo oggi si tende a giustificare (pur usando volutamente un linguaggio ambiguo) che si possono respingere anche i richiedenti perchè la domanda di asilo si può fare in Slovenia».

Stando a quanto ha affermato la ministra le riammissioni sono possibili in virtù dell’accordo bilaterale firmato dai due Paesi, Italia e Slovenia, nel 1996. Si tratta di “riammissioni” effettuate non in ragione del ripristino dei controlli alle frontiere interne, mai formalmente avvenuto, ma in applicazione dell’Accordo bilaterale fra il Governo della Repubblica italiana e il Governo della Repubblica di Slovenia sulla riammissione delle persone alla frontiera, firmato a Roma il 3 settembre 1996, che contiene previsioni finalizzate a favorire la riammissione sul territorio dei due Stati sia di cittadini di uno dei due Stati contraenti sia cittadini di Stati terzi.

«In primis», spiega Schiavone, «occorre rilevare come tale accordo risulti illegittimo per contrarietà al sistema costituzionale interno italiano e per violazione di normative interne. È infatti dubbia la legittimità nell’ordinamento italiano dell’Accordo bilaterale fra il Governo della Repubblica italiana e il Governo della Repubblica di Slovenia e di ogni altro analogo tipo di accordi intergovernativi per due ordini di ragioni: nonostante abbiano infatti una chiara natura politica, essi non sono stati ratificati con legge di autorizzazione alla ratifica ai sensi dell’art. 80 Cost.;in quanto accordi intergovernativi stipulati in forma semplificata, in ogni caso essi non possono prevedere modifiche alle leggi vigenti in Italia (altro caso in cui l’art. 80 Cost. prevede la preventiva legge di autorizzazione alla ratifica) e dunque essi neppure possono derogare alle norme di fonte primaria dell’ordinamento giuridico italiano. In ogni caso, anche volendo prescindere da ogni ulteriore valutazione sui profili di illegittimità dell’Accordo di riammissione è pacifico che ne è esclusa appunto l’applicazione ai rifugiati riconosciuti ai sensi della Convenzione di Ginevra (all’epoca la nozione di protezione sussidiaria ancora non esisteva) come chiaramente enunciato all’articolo 2 del medesimo Accordo. Del tutto priva di pregio sotto il profilo dell’analisi giuridica sarebbe l’obiezione in base alla quale l’accordo fa riferimento ai rifugiati e non ai richiedenti asilo giacché come è noto, il riconoscimento dello status di rifugiato (e di protezione sussidiaria) è un procedimento di riconoscimento di un diritto soggettivo perfetto i cui presupposti che lo straniero chiede appunto di accertare. Non v’è pertanto alcuna possibilità di distinguere in modo arbitrario tra richiedenti protezione e rifugiati riconosciuti dovendosi comunque garantire in ogni caso l’accesso alla procedura di asilo allo straniero che appunto chiede il riconoscimento dello status di rifugiato. A chiudere del tutto l’argomento sotto il profilo giuridico, è il noto Regolamento Dublino III che prevede che ogni domanda di asilo sia registrata alla frontiera o all’interno dello Stato nel quale il migrante si trova. Una successiva complessa procedura stabilita se il Paese competente ad esaminare la domanda è eventualmente diverso da quello nel quale il migrante ha chiesto asilo e in ogni caso il Regolamento esclude tassativamente che si possano effettuare riammissioni o respingimenti di alcun genere nel paese UE confinante solo perchè il richiedente proviene da lì. Anzi, il Regolamento è nato in primo luogo per evitare rimpalli di frontiera tra uno stato e l’altro. Violare, come sta avvenendo, questa fondamentale procedura, significa scardinare il Regolamento e in ultima analisi, il sistema europeo di asilo. È come se fossimo tornati indietro di trent’anni, a prima del 1990».

Inoltre secondo la ministra "la Slovenia aderisce alla Convenzione di Ginevra e che la stessa Slovenia, come la Croazia sono considerati Paesi sicuri sul piano del rispetto dei diritti umani e delle convenzioni internazionali. Pertanto le riammissioni avvengono verso uno stato europeo, la Slovenia, dove vigono normative internazionali analoghe a quelle del nostro paese”.

«Lamorgese», continua Schiavone, «ha fatto una figura veramente imbarazzante che ricade sul nostro Paese. Bisogna avere il coraggio di ammettere che abbiamo fatto una cosa illegale riammettendo i richiedenti asilo in Slovenia e da là, attraverso una collaudata catena, in Crozia e infine in Bosnia. E anche se nell’audizione dice tre parole, solo un piccolo inciso, sul fatto che non possono essere riamessi i migranti che hanno fatto richiesta d’asilo, nei fatti la sostanza non cambia. Infine sostenere che la Slovenia e soprattutto la Croazia siano “Paesi sicuri” nonostante le prove schiaccianti della violenza esercitata dalla polizia croata sulle persone in transito ha dell’incredibile. Un ministro non può permettersi di dire che quelli sono Paesi sicuri, perchè per i migranti della Rotta Balcanica non lo sono. E alla domanda “come finirà la questione?” La ministra non è stata in grado di formulare nessuna risposta chiara sul fatto che verrà posta fine alla pratica delle riammissioni dei richiedenti. Ed è forse questa la cosa più grave».

▻http://www.vita.it/it/article/2021/01/18/schiavone-lamorgese-ammetta-che-litalia-sta-facendo-respingimenti-ille/158020

“They punched me because I asked to stop the hot air - pushback from Trieste to Bihac”

Date and time: September 16, 2020 01:00
Location: San Dorligo della Valle, TS, Italy
Coordinates: 45.607175981734, 13.85383960105
Push-back from: Croatia, Italy, Slovenia
Push-back to: Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia
Demographics: 6 person(s), age: 25-35 , from: Bangladesh, Algeria
Minors involved? No
Violence used: beating (with batons/hands/other), exposure to air condition and extreme temperature during car ride, dog attacks, forcing to undress, destruction of personal belongings, theft of personal belongings
Police involved: Italian Army officers, one army van and one army car; several Italian police officers, one police van; several Slovenian police officers, one police van and several Croatian police officers (masked), one german shepard,, one police van.
Taken to a police station?: yes
Treatment at police station or other place of detention: detention, fingerprints taken, photos taken, personal information taken, papers signed, denial of access to toilets, denial of food/water
Was the intention to ask for asylum expressed?: Yes
Reported by: Anonymous Partner

Original Report

The respondent, an Algerian man, left the city of Bihac (BiH) on 2nd September, 2020 in a group with five other Algerians, aged between 22 and 30 years old. After 12 days of travel they arrived in Trieste (ITA). They entered into Italy near the municipality of San Dorligo della Valle (45.607871, 13.857776), in the early morning on the 14th September. While the group was walking along a the SP12B road, they were tracked down by a military convoy, composed of a car and a van. The three military officers onboard stopped them at the side of the road and called the Italian police, who arrived shortly after with a van.

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The captured group were then transferred with the van to a police station in Fernetti [exact location], a site with a military tent erected for identification procedures of people on the move and asylum seekers. The respondent claims that he found himself together with many around 60 other people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, in addition to a person from Morocco. Many of the people held at the site, according to him, were minors or had been fingerprinted previously in Greece.

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The people detained in the tent were seperated by nationality. Each person of the transit group was questioned and processed individually in a separate, smaller tent, described as a small silo, the others had to wait in a small room which he describes as a “prison-room”. Personal data was gathered, fingerprints were recorded and photos of their faces were taken. The respondent clearly expressed the will to seek asylum in Italy.

The assigned translator for the respondent and his group, of Moroccan origin, was already attending to one person from Morocco who was present when they arrived. The respondent overheard the translator suggesting to this person that he should declare himself as a minor. The police officers also searched him and confiscated his phone, a power bank and a watch, which were put inside a plastic bag. After that, the respondent had to sign 3 different documents, one of them – an identification and domicile paper – hidden and preserved by the respondent.

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When they deport you, they make you sign this paper so that they can say you accept it. And of course, you sign it. who care about you? They just say: ‘sign’ and you sign, because you don’t have power and there is no one listening to you.”

The captured transit group remained in the police station from 08:00 until 17:00. The food was distributed collectively and due to a massive amount of people, some were left without. At some point the respondent requested to go to the
toilet and he was taken outside, which allowed him to understand the area where he was. The respondent saw a reception center in front of him.

At the end of the identification procedure, the police took five of the Algerians from the transit group. The sixth person was taken away however, the respondent stating this was because he had been fingerprinted in Greece. Some other Moroccans who were present in the tent were also kept there, which the respondent suggests was due to help from the translator in assisting their access to asylum.

“Translator plays a big role. Maybe 80%”

The remaining five people from Algeria were put inside a van. The respondent claims that he clearly saw the officers carrying the bag with his personal items, which he thought they would return to him once left at the next destination. The vehicle did not have either windows or light and the respondent described experiencing difficulties to breath during the ride. At this point the people-on-the-move received a small bottle of water and a small cracker for the first time since the apprehension.

“They play with you. You just think just when is it finish.”

Once they were sitting inside the van, the group realized that they were about to be deported to Slovenia and they asked what was going on. The police officers reassured them that they would stay in Trieste. The van then moved on: inside it was very hot and from the ventilation came out hot air. The respondent knocked on a window to attract the attention of the agents, who stopped the van, got out of the vehicle and opened the hatch to ask for explanations of why they were knocking on the window.

There was a squabble, and one of the two officers punched the respondent, but was immediately stopped by his colleague who invited him to calm down. After the incident, they continued to drive and they arrived in an area, which was described as a road border crossing (likely Pesek-Kozina) between Italy and Slovenia. There, the group found a Slovenian police van with police officers waiting for them. They were transferred very quickly from the Italian police van to the Slovenian van: according to the respondent, officers were looking around with circumspection, as if they were worried about being noticed during the operation ongoing.

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Once the captured transit group were transferred to the Slovenian police van, they were taken in a police station, in Kozina, Slovenia. Here the respondent asked for his personal belongings, but the Slovenian police replied that the Italian police had not given them anything. The respondent doesn’t know if his belongings were kept by the Italian police officers or if the Slovenian police officers lied to him, keeping his belongings.

In the station in Kozina, the officers took the prints of their thumbs of both hands, and realized that the respondent was already registered in the police database, due to previous entrance he had made into Slovenia (on this occasion he had also signed some documents). Later on, the group was transferred from Kozina to Ljubljana for a Covid-19 screening. After that, they returned to Kozina, where
they spent the night detained. They stayed in this this location for what the respondent estimated to be a whole night. During this detention the group members could use the toilet and were handed another small bottle of water but were not provided with any food.

The next morning (15th September) the group were transferred to Croatia, through the Socerga/Pozane border crossing. Here the Slovenian police photographed the documents that they had signed and threw them away in the garbage, before giving the group over to the regular Croatian police. The respondent, also in this occasion, managed to hide one Italian document, putting it inside his underwear (see previous photograph).

The respondent identified the van that they were put in afterwards to be a Croatian police vehicle. Concerning the ride to Croatia he described that the driver was driving very bumpy, braking very sharply at any given moment.

“you know, they really try to make you hate yourself. For what you have done and so you never try again to cross border to Croatia.”

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“If they deport you in the day you stay in the police car all day till it gets night. If they deport you in the night, they let you go directly.”

In Croatia they had to wait for 15 hours, from 10:00 to 01:00 the next day (16th September) in the van. During this time they were not provided with any food or water and just left alone in the car. While they were waiting several other people-on-the-move were brought into the van by Croatian police officers, including a Bangladeshi man. Finally, at around 01:00 two Croatian police officers drove the van to the border of Bosnian territory, about 10 kilometers out of Bihac.

When they arrived to this location, the respondent described that a Croatian officer wearing a dark uniform and a black ski-mask with a big German Shepherd told them to leave the van and line up in a file. The group-members were then told to get undressed to their boxers and a T-shirt. The officer took all of the clothes in a bin bag and set them on fire. Another officer was waiting behind the wheel of the vehicle during the procedure. The men then had to line up in a row, crowded closely together. The policeman yelled: “haide, go,go,go,go” and let the dog off the leash, which immediately snapped at the arm of the man in the last position in the row. The other men were able to run away in this way, but the last one apparently received a severe wound in his arm. The respondent then walked another 24 hours back to Velika Kladusa, where he started his journey.

▻https://www.borderviolence.eu/violence-reports/deport-from-trieste

The legal battle to hold the EU to account for Libya migrant abuses

‘It’s a well known fact that we’re all struggling here, as human rights practitioners.’

More than 6,500 asylum seekers and migrants have been intercepted at sea and returned to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard so far this year. Since the EU and Italy began training, funding, equipping, and providing operational assistance to the Libyan Coast Guard in 2017, that number stands at around 40,000 people.

Critics say European support for these interceptions and returns is one of the most glaring examples of the trade-off being made between upholding human rights – a fundamental EU value – and the EU’s determination to reduce migration to the continent.

Those intercepted at sea and returned to Libya by the Libyan Coast Guard – predominantly asylum seekers and migrants from East and West Africa – face indefinite detention, extortion, torture, sexual exploitation, and forced labour.

This year alone, thousands have disappeared beyond the reach of UN agencies after being disembarked. Migration detention in Libya functions as a business that generates revenue for armed groups, some of whom have also pressed asylum seekers and migrants into military activities – a practice that is likely a war crime, according to Human Rights Watch.

All of this has been well documented and widely known for years, even as the EU and Italy have stepped up their support for the Libyan Coast Guard. Yet despite their key role in empowering the Coast Guard to return people to Libya, international human rights lawyers have struggled to hold the EU and Italy to account. Boxed in by the limitations of international law, lawyers have had to find increasingly innovative legal strategies to try to establish European complicity in the abuses taking place.

As the EU looks to expand its cooperation with third countries, the outcome of these legal efforts could have broader implications on whether the EU and its member states can be held accountable for the human rights impacts of their external migration policies.

“Under international law there are rules… prohibiting states to assist other states in the commission of human rights violations,” Matteo de Bellis, Amnesty International’s migration researcher, told The New Humanitarian. “However, those international rules do not have a specific court where you can litigate them, where individuals can have access to remedy.”

In fact, human rights advocates and lawyers argue that EU and Italian support for the Libyan Coast Guard is designed specifically to avoid legal responsibility.

“For a European court to have jurisdiction over a particular policy, a European actor must be in control... of a person directly,” said Itamar Mann, an international human rights lawyer. “When a non-European agent takes that control, it’s far from clear that [a] European court has jurisdiction. So there is a kind of accountability gap under international human rights law.”
‘The EU is not blameless’

When Italy signed a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2017 with Libya’s internationally recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) “to ensure the reduction of illegal migratory flows”, the agreement carried echoes of an earlier era.

In 2008, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi signed a friendship treaty with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi that, among other things, committed the two countries to working together to curb irregular migration.

The following year, Italian patrol boats began intercepting asylum seekers and migrants at sea and returning them to Libya. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights, an international court based in Strasbourg, France – which all EU member states are party to – ruled that the practice violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The decision, in what is known as the Hirsi case, was based on the idea that Italy had established “extraterritorial jurisdiction” over asylum seekers and migrants when it took them under their control at sea and had violated the principle of non-refoulement – a core element of international refugee law – by forcing them back to a country where they faced human rights abuses.

Many states that have signed the 1951 refugee convention have integrated the principle of non-refoulement into their domestic law, binding them to protect asylum seekers once they enter a nation’s territory. But there are divergent interpretations of how it applies to state actors in international waters.

By the time of the Hirsi decision, the practice had already ended and Gaddafi had been toppled from power. The chaos that followed the Libyan uprising in 2011 paved the way for a new era of irregular migration. The number of people crossing the central Meditteranean jumped from an average of tens of thousands per year throughout the late 1990s and 2000s to more than 150,000 per year in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

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Reducing these numbers became a main priority for Italy and the EU, and they kept the lessons of the Hirsi case in mind as they set about designing their policies, according to de Bellis.

Instead of using European vessels, the EU and Italy focused on “enabling the Libyan authorities to do the dirty job of intercepting people at sea and returning them to Libya”, he said. “By doing so, they would argue that they have not breached international European law because they have never assumed control, and therefore exercised jurisdiction, over the people who have then been subjected to human rights violations [in Libya].”

The number of people crossing the central Mediterranean has dropped precipitously in recent years as EU policies have hardened, and tens of thousands of people – including those returned by the Coast Guard – are estimated to have passed through formal and informal migration detention centres in Libya, some of them getting stuck for years and many falling victim to extortion and abuse.

“There is always going to be a debate about, is the EU responsible… [because] it’s really Libya who has done the abuses,” said Carla Ferstman, a human rights law professor at the University of Essex in England. “[But] the EU is not blameless because it can’t pretend that it didn’t know the consequences of what it was going to do.”

The challenge for human rights lawyers is how to legally establish that blame.
The accountability gap

Since 2017, the EU has given more than 91 million euros (about $107 million) to support border management projects in Libya. Much of that money has gone to Italy, which implements the projects and has provided its own funding and at least six patrol boats to the Libyan Coast Guard.

One objective of the EU’s funding is to improve the human rights and humanitarian situation in official detention centres. But according to a leaked EU document from 2019, this is something the Libyan government had not been taking steps to do, “raising the question of its own involvement”, according to the document.

The main goal of the funding is to strengthen the capacity of Libyan authorities to control the country’s borders and intercept asylum seekers and migrants at sea. This aspect of the policy has been effective, according to a September 2019 report by the UN secretary-general.

“All our action is based on international and European law,” an EU spokesperson told the Guardian newspaper in June. “The European Union dialogue with Libyan authorities focuses on the respect for human rights of migrants and refugees.”

The EU has legal obligations to ensure that its actions do not violate human rights in both its internal and external policy, according to Ferstman. But when it comes to actions taken outside of Europe, “routes for those affected to complain when their rights are being violated are very, very weak,” she said.

The EU and its member states are also increasingly relying on informal agreements, such as the Memorandum of Understanding with Libya, in their external migration cooperation.

“Once the EU makes formal agreements with third states… [it] is more tightly bound to a lot of human rights and refugee commitments,” Raphael Bossong, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin, told TNH. “Hence, we see a shift toward less binding or purely informal arrangements.”

Lawyers and researchers told TNH that the absence of formal agreements, and the combination of EU funding and member state implementation, undermines the standing of the EU Parliament and the Court of Justice, the bloc’s supreme court, to act as watchdogs.

Efforts to challenge Italy’s role in cooperating with Libya in Italian courts have also so far been unsuccessful.

“It’s a well known fact that we’re all struggling here, as human rights practitioners… to grapple with the very limited, minimalistic tools we have to address the problem at hand,” said Valentina Azarova, a lawyer and researcher affiliated with the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), a nonprofit organisation that pursues international human rights litigation.

Uncharted territory

With no clear path forward, human rights lawyers have ventured into uncharted territory to try to subject EU and Italian cooperation with Libya to legal scrutiny.

Lawyers called last year for the International Criminal Court to investigate the EU for its alleged complicity in thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean, and legal organisations have filed two separate complaints with the UN Human Rights Committee, which has a quasi-judicial function.

In November last year, GLAN also submitted a case, called S.S. and others v. Italy, to the European Court of Human Rights that aims to build on the Hirsi decision. The case argues that – through its financial, material, and operational support – Italy assumes “contactless control” over people intercepted by Libyan Coast Guard and therefore establishes jurisdiction over them.

“Jurisdiction is not only a matter of direct, effective control over bodies,” Mann, who is part of GLAN, said of the case’s argument. “It’s also a matter of substantive control that can be wielded in many different ways.”

GLAN, along with two Italian legal organisations, also filed a complaint in April to the European Court of Auditors, which is tasked with checking to see if the EU’s budget is implemented correctly and that funds are spent legally.

The GLAN complaint alleges that funding border management activities in Libya makes the EU and its member states complicit in the human rights abuses taking place there, and is also a misuse of money intended for development purposes – both of which fall afoul of EU budgetary guidelines.

The complaint asks for the EU funding to be made conditional on the improvement of the situation for asylum seekers and migrants in the country, and for it to be suspended until certain criteria are met, including the release of all refugees and migrants from arbitrary detention, the creation of an asylum system that complies with international standards, and the establishment of an independent, transparent mechanism to monitor and hold state and non-state actors accountable for human rights violations against refugees and migrants.

The Court of Auditors is not an actual courtroom or a traditional venue for addressing human rights abuses. It is composed of financial experts who conduct an annual audit of the EU budget. The complaint is meant to encourage them to take a specific look at EU funding to Libya, but they aren’t obligated to do so.

“To use the EU Court of Auditors to get some kind of human rights accountability is an odd thing to do,” said Ferstman, who is not involved in the complaint. “It speaks to the [accountability] gap and the absence of clear approaches.”

“[Still], it is the institution where this matter needs to be adjudicated, so to speak,” Azarova, who came up with the strategy, added. “They are the experts on questions of EU budget law.”

Closing the gap?

If successful, the Court of Auditors complaint could change how EU funding for Libya operates and set a precedent requiring a substantive accounting of how money is being spent and whether it ends up contributing to human rights violations in other EU third-country arrangements, according to Mann. “It will be a blow to the general externalisation pattern,” he said.

Ferstman cautioned, however, that its impact – at least legally – might not be so concrete. “[The Court of Auditors] can recommend everything that GLAN has put forward, but it will be a recommendation,” she said. “It will not be an order.”

Instead, the complaint’s more significant impact might be political. “It could put a lot of important arsenal in the hands of the MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] who want to push forward changes,” Ferstman said.

A European Court of Human Rights decision in favour of the plaintiffs in S.S. and others v Italy could be more decisive. “It would go a long way towards addressing that [accountability] gap, because individuals will be able to challenge European states that encourage and assist other countries to commit human rights violations,” de Bellis said.

If any or all of the various legal challenges that are currently underway are successful, Bossong, from SWP, doesn’t expect them to put an end to external migration cooperation entirely. “Many [external] cooperations would continue,” he said. “[But] policy-makers and administrators would have to think harder: Where is the line? Where do we cross the line?”

The Court of Auditors will likely decide whether to review EU funding for border management activities in Libya next year, but the European Court of Human Rights moves slowly, with proceedings generally taking around five years, according to Mann.

Human rights advocates and lawyers worry that by the time the current legal challenges are concluded, the situation in the Mediterranean will again have evolved. Already, since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, states such as Malta and Greece have shifted from empowering third countries to intercept people at sea to carrying out pushbacks directly.

“What is happening now, particularly in the Aegean, is much more alarming than the facts that generated the Hirsi case in terms of the violence of the actual pushbacks,” Mann said.

Human rights lawyers are already planning to begin issuing challenges to the new practices. As they do, they are acutely aware of the limitations of the tools available to them. Or, as Azarova put it: “We’re dealing with symptoms. We’re not addressing the pathology.”

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2020/08/10/Libya-migrant-abuses-EU-legal-battle

#justice

Sur ce passage frontalier entre l’Iran et la Turquie, voir aussi le film #My_Escape :
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyQAj3qIAsQ

Lake Van: An overlooked and deadly migration route to Turkey and Europe

On the night of 27 June, at least 61 people died in a shipwreck on a lake in Van, a Turkish province bordering Iran. The victims were asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, and the wreck shed light on a dangerous and often overlooked migration route used by people trying to move west from the border to major cities, such as Ankara and Istanbul, or further beyond to Europe.

Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in the world, around four million people. A significant majority – 3.6 million – are Syrians. Afghans are the second largest group, but since 2018 they have been arriving irregularly in Turkey and then departing for Greece in larger numbers than any other nationality.

Driven by worsening conflict in their country and an economic crisis in Iran, the number of Afghans apprehended for irregularly entering Turkey increased from 45,000 in 2017 to more than 200,000 in 2019. At the same time, the number of Afghans arriving in Greece by sea from Turkey increased from just over 3,400 to nearly 24,000.

During that time, Turkey’s policies towards people fleeing conflict, especially Afghans, have hardened. As the number of Afghans crossing the border from Iran increased, Turkey cut back on protections and accelerated efforts to apprehend and deport those entering irregularly. In 2019, the Turkish government deported nearly 23,000 Afghans from the country, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA.

Early on, travel restrictions put in place due to the coronavirus appeared to reduce the number of people entering Turkey irregularly. But seven months on, the pandemic is worsening the problems that push people to migrate. The economic crisis in Iran has only intensified, and the head of the UN’s migration agency, IOM, in Afghanistan has warned that COVID-19-induced lockdowns have “amplified the effects of the conflict”.

https://i.imgur.com/5eUS4Js.png

Like the victims of the wreck, most people travelling on the clandestine route through Van are from Afghanistan – others are mainly from Iran, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The lake, 50 kilometres from the border, straddles two provinces – Van and Bitlis – and offers a way for asylum seekers and migrants to avoid police and gendarmerie checkpoints set up along roads heading west.

Due to its 200-kilometre border with Iran, Van has long been a hub for smuggling sugar, tea, and petrol, according to Mahmut Kaçan, a lawyer with the Migration and Asylum Commission at the Van Bar Association. In recent years, a people smuggling industry has also grown up to cater to the needs of people crossing the border and trying to move deeper into Turkey. Lake Van – so large that locals simply call it ‘the sea’ – plays an important role.

“There have been a lot of refugees on ‘the sea’ in the last 10 years,” Mustafa Abalı, the elected leader of Çitören, a village close to where many of the boats set out across the lake, told The New Humanitarian, adding that the numbers have increased in the past two to three years.
‘Policy of impunity’

When the shipwreck happened, on 27 June, the picture that initially emerged was murky: Rumours circulated, but the local gendarmerie blocked lawyers and journalists from reaching the lake’s shore.

After two days, the Van governorship announced that security forces had found a missing boat captain alive and launched a search mission. It took weeks, but search teams eventually recovered 56 bodies from the wreck, which had come to rest more than 100 metres below the lake’s surface.

Abalı described the scene on the beach where the rescue teams were working. “I was crying; everyone was crying; even the soldiers were crying… We were all asking, ‘how could this happen?’” he said.

https://assets.irinnews.org/s3fs-public/styles/responsive_large/public/2020.10.20_turkey2.jpg?Ox1FrP8prgmEqTdqv0RZl1LneqVqFfFE&itok=zSX9OwYq#.jpg

The testimony the boat captain provided to police after he was detained on smuggling charges gave a few clues. On board with his cousin and 70 to 80 asylum seekers, he recalled how they left that night at around 9pm from Van city to cross the lake. He said he pushed out into the open water, with the lights off to avoid attention, but the waves were large and the boat capsized. The captain, the lone known survivor, said he managed to swim ashore.

The shipwreck was the deadliest on Lake Van, but not the first. In December 2019, seven asylum seekers died in a wreck on the lake. After that incident, authorities only issued one arrest warrant, which expired after 27 days, and the suspected smuggler was released.

Kaçan, from the Van Bar Association, said the handling of that case pointed to a “policy of impunity” that allows the smuggling industry to flourish in Van. “It’s not a risky job,” he said, referring to the chances of getting caught and the lack of punishment for those who are.

That said, the case against the captain from the 27 June shipwreck is ongoing, and at least eight other people have now been detained in connection with the incident, according to Kaçan.

A report from the Van Bar Association alleges that this impunity extends to the Iran-Turkey border, but according to Kaçan it‘s unlikely smugglers bringing people into Turkey – sometimes in groups of up to 100 or 200 people – would pass the frontier entirely undetected. Turkey is building a wall along much of it, and there’s a heavy military and surveillance presence in the area. “Maybe not all of them, but some of the officers are cooperating with the smugglers,” Kaçan said. “Maybe [the smugglers] bribe them. That’s a possibility.”

After a lull during the initial round of pandemic-related travel restrictions in March and April, migration across the Iran-Turkey border began to pick up again in May, according to people TNH spoke to in Van. Smugglers are even advertising their services on Instagram – a sign of the relative freedom with which they operate.

TNH contacted a Turkish-speaking Iranian smuggler through the social media platform. The smuggler said he was based in the western Iranian city of Urmia, about 40 kilometres from the Turkish border, and gave his name as Haji Qudrat. On a video call, Haji Qudrat counted money as he spoke. “Everyone knows us,” he said. “There’s no problem with the police.” He turned the phone to show a room full of 20 to 30 people. “They’re all Afghans. Tonight they’re all going to Van,” he added.

TNH asked both the Turkish interior ministry and the Van governorship for comment on the allegations of official cooperation with people smugglers and possible bribery, but neither had responded by the time of publication.
A cemetery on a hill

While crossing into Turkey from Iran doesn’t seem too problematic, the situation for asylum seekers in Van is not so relaxed.

The region is the second poorest of Turkey’s 81 provinces – many people who enter irregularly want to head west to Turkey’s comparatively wealthier cities to search for informal employment, reunite with family members, or try to cross into Greece and seek protection in Europe, according to a recent report by the Mixed Migration Centre.

Under Turkey’s system for international protection, non-Europeans fleeing war or persecution are supposed to get a temporary residency permit and access to certain services, such as medical care. But they are also registered to a particular city or town and are required to check in at the immigration office once a week. If they want to travel outside the province where they are registered, people with international protection have to first apply for permission from authorities. Even if it is granted, they are required to return within 30 days.

Since the uptick in border crossings in 2018, it has become more difficult for Afghans to access international protection in Turkey, and Turkish authorities have occasionally apprehended and deported large numbers of Afghans – especially single men – without allowing them to apply for protection in the first place.

As a result, many prefer to avoid contact with Turkish authorities altogether, using smugglers to carry on their journeys. In September, news channels aired footage of a minibus that had been stopped in the province. It had the capacity to hold 14 passengers, but there were 65 people inside, trying to head west.

Buses carrying asylum seekers on Van’s windy, mountainous roads frequently crash, and every spring, when the snow melts, villagers find the corpses of those who tried to walk the mountain pass in the winter. Their bodies are buried in a cemetery with the scores who have drowned in Lake Van.

The cemetery is on a hill in Van, the city, and it is full of the graves of asylum seekers who died somewhere along the way. The graves are marked by slabs, and most of the people are unidentified. Some of the slabs simply read “Afghan” or “Pakistan”. Others are only marked with the date the person died or their body was found. The cemetery currently has around 200 graves, but it has space for many more.

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/10/20/turkey-afghanistan-migrants-refugees-asylum

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https://i.imgur.com/iNt9THU.png

#Van #lac #Lac_Van #cimetière

Vidéo postée sur FB par Eleonora Camilli :

Intanto ad Agadez.
Ricevo direttamente questo video da un ragazzo de Sudan. Da questa mattina i migranti stanno lasciando il centro a 15km da Agadez e marciano verso la città.

“Dopo due anni e dopo essere passati per l’inferno in Libia -mi dice Mustafa- non vediamo prospettive, non sappiamo cosa ne sarà di noi”

▻https://www.facebook.com/eleonora.camilli.77/videos/10221620468684506

Niger : des migrants incendient un centre d’hébergement en signe de protestation

http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/aefimagesnew/imagecache/rfi_16x9_1024_578/sites/images.rfi.fr/files/aef_image/guetto_ou_vivent_des_migrants_maliens_0.jpg

Des demandeurs d’asile de retour de Libye ont incendié leur centre d’hébergement près d’#Agadez, où vivent un millier de personnes dans l’attente de la délivrance d’une carte de réfugiés.

Amenés de force après un #sit-in de #protestation de plusieurs jours devant les locaux du Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies pour les refugiés (HCR) d’Agadez, des demandeurs d’asile ont mis le feu à leur #centre_d’hébergement, un camp situé à 15 km d’Agadez et où vivent un millier de personnes dans l’attente d’une éventuelle #carte_de_réfugiés.

« 80% du #centre_d'accueil détruit par une minorité de réfugiés du Darfour à Agadez qui ne veulent entendre parler que de #réinstallation en Europe. Détruire l’espace d’asile au Niger ou ailleurs est plus facile que de le construire et de le protéger. C’est un triste jour pour la protection des réfugiés au Niger », écrit sur son compte Twitter Vincent Cochetel, envoyé spécial du HCR pour la situation en Méditerranée centrale.

https://i.imgur.com/IhbsTc2.png

▻https://twitter.com/cochetel/status/1213519641563320322?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E12
►http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20200104-niger-migrants-incendie-camp-hebergement-agadez

Selon plusieurs sources, les demandeurs d’asile exigent, entre autres, un statut de réfugiés avec délivrance immédiate de leur carte, des soins de qualité et une meilleure collaboration avec le HCR et les autres partenaires humanitaires.

Le gouverneur d’Agadez estime que les migrants ont posé de « faux problèmes ». Le centre dispose d’eau, de nourriture, d’un médecin. Toujours selon le gouverneur, plus de 160 cartes de réfugiés ont récemment été délivrées. « Le processus de détermination est très avancé », indique le #HCR. D’autres cartes seront bientôt distribuées par les autorités nigériennes, apprend-on.

Après l’#incendie de ce camp, le gouverneur de la région a dénoncé « l’ingratitude des réfugiés ». Une enquête est en cours pour déterminer l’ampleur des dégâts. Les auteurs de cet acte seront poursuivis. Malgré cet incident, précise une source du HCR, plusieurs centaines de réfugiés à la merci de l’harmattan seront relogés. Il a fait cinq degrés à Agadez ce samedi.

►http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20200104-niger-migrants-incendie-camp-hebergement-agadez
#feu

Commentaire de #Sophia_Bisio sur FB :

Non, Monsieur Cochetel, un camp qui brûle n’est pas un jour triste plus triste que les autres pour la protection des réfugiés.

Comme tout système de camp où l’on trie et isole les indésirables, le camp HCR d’Agadez était une prison à ciel ouvert pour le millier de réfugié.e.s soudanais.es qui y vivaient, ou plutôt y survivaient.

Car ces camps ne sont pas des lieux de vie mais bien des lieux de survie.

Lorsque j’avais visité ce camp en décembre 2018, plusieurs centaines de personnes y survivaient péniblement, après avoir fui la guerre dans leur pays et le chaos libyen pour la plupart d’entre elles. Installé en plein désert, isolé de tout, à 15 km de la ville, le camp était exposé au vent et aux tempêtes de sable, déclenchant chez de nombreuses personnes des troubles respiratoires. Les conditions sanitaires étaient épouvantables. Des familles entières s’entassaient sous des tentes en plastiques inadaptées au climat désertique, dans lesquelles, l’été, la température pouvait atteindre 70 degrés. Pas d’eau courante. Pas de travail. Pas d’école pour les enfants. Pas de perspectives d’avenir.

Déjà en 2018, des résidents du camp se joignaient aux manifestations devant les bureaux du HCR dans la ville d’Agadez pour protester contre leurs conditions de vie et la lenteur de la procédure de réinstallation. En décembre 2019, après un an de plus d’attente dans la poussière du désert, ce sont plusieurs centaines de résident.e.s du camp qui se sont rassemblés pour une grande marche jusqu’au centre-ville afin d’organiser à nouveau un sit-in devant les bureaux du HCR, avant d’être une fois de plus renvoyé.e.s à la poussière.

Hier, le camp brûlait, incendié, selon la version relayée par le HCR, par une minorité énervée de Soudanais du Darfour. Représentant spécial du Haut Commissariat aux réfugiés pour la Méditerranée centrale, Monsieur Cochetel s’indignait alors contre ces personnes qui « détruisent l’espace d’asile », ajoutant : « c’est un triste jour pour la protection des réfugiés au Niger ».

Non, Monsieur Cochetel, un camp qui brûle n’est pas un jour triste plus triste que les autres pour la protection des réfugiés.

C’est un signal.

Le signal que ces hommes et ces femmes qu’on tente d’invisibiliser et de réduire au silence peuvent encore se rendre visibles.

Le signal que ces politiques migratoires, par lesquelles l’humanitaire tend à devenir le cheval Troie des pires politiques sécuritaires, doivent être dénoncées et combattues avec celles et ceux qui les subissent.

▻https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2538844326358556&set=a.1562653620644303&type=3&theater
#Vincent_Cochetel #Cochetel

More than a thousand asylum seekers take part in mass sit-in in Niger

More than a thousand asylum seekers have been taking part in a mass sit-in in front of the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Agadez in northern Niger since December 16. They are protesting the terrible living conditions that they are forced to endure while waiting for the UNHCR to examine their cases, and are calling for better conditions and an acceleration to the entire process.

A majority of the residents of the UN camp for asylum seekers in Agadez in northern Niger walked the 15 kilometres into town to take part in a protest on December 16.

Nearly 1,600 asylum seekers are still waiting for refugee status. The large majority of them — more than 1,400 — are Sudanese. Others hail from the Central African Republic, Chad and Pakistan. Most of them arrived in 2017 and they blame both the UNHCR and Nigerien authorities for the extremely difficult conditions in the camp.

▻https://observers.france24.com/en/20191224-niger-asylum-seekers-take-part-mass-sit-protest

violent attack from the nigerian authorities to the sudanese refugees sit in front of the UNHCR ,january 4

▻https://twitter.com/AbdullahJalba2/status/1213706424729112576
#vidéo

Thread de Eric Reidy sur twitter, 05.01.2019

Security forces forcefully dispersed a peaceful sit-in in front of #UNHCR's office in Agadez, Niger yesterday (Jan. 4). Many people were injured & 100s of people’s phones & belongings were confiscated.
2/ Sudanese asylum seekers, many from Darfur, have staged a sit-in in front of the #UNHCR office in since Dec. 16 when they walked out en masse from a UNHCR administered camp 15km outside of #Agadez.
3/ In a statement the asylum seekers said they had been completely neglected. Many suffered from psychological conditions & chronic diseases worsened by the harsh desert environment & that treatment by UNHCR staff & the handling of their asylum claims led to a total loss of trust

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhTGGLVAAI4DdQ?format=jpg&name=small#.jpg

4/ The Sudanese asylum seekers started arriving in Agadez in late 2017, seeking safe-haven from war & exploitation in #Libya. The population peeked at around 2,000. Tensions arose w the host population & the Nigerien gov viewed the Sudanese w suspicion & as a security threat.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENhTGqGUwAAl_mL?format=jpg&name=small#.jpg

5/ In May 2018, the Nigerien gov deported 135 ppl back to Libya in violation of int law. UNHCR lobbied hard to prevent any further deportations & reached an agreement w authorities in #Niger to establish the camp outside of Agadez to reduce tensions

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/special-report/2018/07/05/destination-europe-deportation

6/ At some point, the relationship between the asylum seekers & UNHCR appears to have broken down leading to the recent protests, which have now ended with security forces using violence & the camp outside of #Agadez being burned down.

7/ I’m still piecing everything together, but it’s important to keep in mind that this is a vulnerable population. Many have been displaced multiple times & experienced violence & tragedy in the past. They have been seeking safety for yrs & still haven’t found it. (Will update)

▻https://twitter.com/Eric_Reidy/status/1213802520490831872

Niger breaks up Sudanese refugees sit-in as fire destroys their camp
▻https://www.sudantribune.com/local/cache-vignettes/L500xH282/agadez_camp_destroyed_by_sudanese_from_darfur_on_4_january_2020_tadres…jpg

Niger’s authorities forcibly broke up a sit-in of Sudanese refugees outside UNHCR office in the arid area of Agadez, while some of them reportedly set ablaze the camp once returned by the police.

Hundreds of Sudanese refugees in Niger had staged a sit-in outside the office of the UN agency for refugees in Agadez on 16 December to protest the bad conditions in the camp. Also, they blamed the UNHCR officials for neglecting them pointing to the long delay in the processing of asylum requests.

For their part, the international officials asked the refugees to end the protest and return to their camps first before to deal with their demands. However, the Sudanese who had fled the insecurity in Libya refused to regain the camp.

On Saturday morning, local officials and police and security officers surrounded the sit-inners and asked them to take the vehicles they brought with them to return to their camp 15 km from Agadez.

Refugees who requested anonymity told Sudan Tribune that the security forces beat the refugees and shoved them to the vehicles when they refused the orders to evacuate the site.

Photos and videos of the raid showed protesters severely injured on the head and legs.

Aid workers in the area said the local authorities three days ago had informed the UNHRC of their plan to disperse the sit-in.

Tragic development

Once the authority forcibly moved the first batch of protesters back to the camp, a huge fire tore through the refugee camp and reduced it to ashes.

When asked about the authors of the blaze some refugees said “irresponsible” refugees were desperate and set fire on the camp to protest the forced return to the camp.

The tents were highly flammable, aid workers said.

For his part, Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean Situation, said in a tweet on Saturday that the Sudanese refugees destroyed the camp because they demand to be resettled in Europe.

“80% of the reception centre destroyed by a minority of refugees from Darfur in Agadez who only want to hear about resettlement to Europe,” said Cochetel.

“Destroying the asylum space in Niger or elsewhere is easier than building and protecting it. It is a sad day for refugee protection in Niger,” he added.

The authorities arrested many refugees while others fled in the desert and their whereabouts are unknown.

Also, it is not clear what the Nigerien authorities will do for the over 200 refugees who were waiting outside the UNHCR office to be transported to the camp.

Refugees say they fear that they would be transported to Madama on the border between Niger and Libya.

On 7 May 2018, Nigerien police deported 135 Sudanese refugees to Madama and expelled to Libya as they had already protested the bad conditions in Agadez camp. The move had been denounced by critics as a violation of international law.

▻https://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article68808

Niger: Sudan refugee sit-in violently dispersed

https://www.dabangasudan.org/uploads/cache/article_detail_image/uploads/media/5e130abf11e6f.jpeg

Niger security forces broke up the sit-in set up by Sudanese refugees in front of the offices of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Agadez on Saturday, reportedly using excessive violence.

Speaking to Radio Dabanga from Agadez, a refugee reported that 453 refugees were detained. 230 refugees suffered various injuries. Army officers and policemen stole 670 mobile phones from them.

Their camp reportedly burned down completely. Hundreds of refugees, among them children, women, disabled, and seniors, spent Sunday night in the arid desert in the freezing cold. There are shortages of water, food, and medicines.

The refugees called on the international community to intervene urgently and save them from the conditions in which they live. They also demand their resettlement procedures be completed.

Three weeks ago, thousands of refugees left the refugee camp in Agadez in protest against the failure to complete their resettlement procedures and the deteriorating conditions in the camp.

The Sudanese refugees in Niger have been a topic in the peace talks in Juba during the past weeks.

Last year, Niger’s authorities sent Sudanese refugees back to Libya, the country they fled from to Niger.

▻https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/niger-sudan-refugee-sit-in-violently-dispersed

Agadez/Incendie #centre_humanitaire : 335 demandeurs d’asile interpellés

Après l’incendie du centre d’hébergement survenu hier matin et attribué à un groupe de demandeurs d’asile, M.Seini, Procureur de la République près le tribunal de grande instance d’Agadez a tenu un point de presse auquel la presse privée n’était pas conviée.

Dans le souci d’informer nos lecteurs, nous vous livrons son contenu.

 » le 16 décembre 2019, plusieurs dizaines de demandeurs d’asile ont entrepris une marche de protestation qui les a conduit devant le bureau local du HCR Agadez. Ils avaient décidé d’occuper illégalement les espaces publics aux abords dudit bureau et maintenu un sit-in qui a perduré jusqu’au 4 janvier 2020.
Vu qu’ils occupaient ces espaces en violation de la loi, la question a été inscrite au menu de la réunion du conseil de sécurité régional du 2 janvier 2020. Au cours de cette réunion, il a été décidé de faire respecter la loi notamment de les faire déguerpir. Et au besoin de les ramener sur leur site d’hébergement. C’est ainsi que le 4 janvier 2020, les autorités régionales et municipales se sont déplacées sur les lieux accompagnées des forces de sécurité. Après sommation donnée par le maire, les agents de sécurité ayant constaté que ces gens n’ont pas obtempéré, ont alors intervenu pour les embarquer et ramener sur leur site d’hébergement. Une fois là-bas, dès qu’ils étaient descendus des bus et camions qui les transportaient, ils ont mis le feu au centre et en même temps s’en sont pris aux forces de l’ordre en leur jetant des projectiles. Il ressort des constatations faites par les services que sur les 331 habitations qu’ils appellent RHU, 290 sont complétement calcinées. Ainsi que l’infirmerie. Des pare-brises de bus ont été cassés et deux personnes légèrement blessées. 162 téléphones portables, 31 couteaux et 12 barres de fer ont été pris sur les manifestants. Parmi eux, 335 identifiés comme meneurs de l’incendie ont été interpellés et mis à la disposition des enquêteurs de la police.
Voyez-vous ! Ces gens qui sont sensés être là pour avoir la protection se comportent ainsi jusqu’à commetre des infractions graves à la loi pénale notamment attroupement non armé sur la voie publique, la rébellion, la destruction volontaire des biens meubles et immeubles, publics, et l’incendie volontaire de lieu servant d’habitation.
Donc, malgré leur nombre très élevé, et au vu de la gravité des faits qui leur sont reprochés, nous avons décidé de les poursuivre pour qu’ils répondent de leurs actes. Compte tenu du fait qu’ils sont des étrangers, des avis de poursuite seront notifiées aux autorités compétentes ».

A Agadez, beaucoup de gens s’inquiètent du sort de centaines d’autres demandeurs d’asile qui n’ont plus de toit et parmi eux des femmes et des enfants.

Pour Athan, un de ces demandeurs d’asile : » le Haut Commissariat aux Réfugiés (HCR) d’Agadez est l’unique responsable de ce qui nous arrive à Agadez ».

La visite prévue demain mardi 7 janvier 2020 à Agadez de Mme Alexandra Morelli, représentante du HCR au Niger apportera t-elle une solution à ce problème ? Attendons de voir.

https://airinfoagadez.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG-20200105-WA0015-820x461.jpg

Demandeurs d’asile soudanais à Agadez : La grande désillusion

L’installation d’une antenne du Haut Commissariat pour les Réfugiés à Agadez en Mai 2016 a contribué fortement à l’afflux de demandeurs d’asile de plusieurs nationalités. La majorité d’entre eux, après avoir fui leur pays en guerre, cas du Darfour au Soudan, se sont retrouvés piégés dans l’imbroglio libyen. C’est ainsi que près de 3000 soudanais ont cherché refuge à Agadez, une ville du nord Niger.
Sur place, l’espoir d’une vie meilleure s’est peu à peu transformé en un véritable cauchemar. D’aucuns parmi ces prétendants à l’asile, las d’attendre, posent des actes désespérés sous forme des signaux.
Le 14 avril dernier, un jeune soudanais a tenté de mettre fin à ses jours en se tailladant le cou. D’autres s’attaquent aux biens d’autrui pour se nourrir. Des actes contraires à la loi et au bon sens. Pourquoi et comment en est-on arrivé à ce stade ?
APAC–Niger a mené l’enquête sur un drame que tente vaille que vaille de minimiser à l’opinion et les autorités en charge de la question et les ONG concernées.

----------------

Depuis la dégradation de la situation sécuritaire en Libye les ressortissants soudanais ont connu des difficultés à mener une vie tranquille, ils ont alors choisi d’immigrer vers le Niger. « Notons que la première grande vague est arrivée à Agadez en 2017. Tous ces migrants ont transité par la frontière du sud libyen, Sebha et Mourzouk en passant par Madama et Dirkou à la frontière avec le Niger », selon M. Soukeyrajou Yacouba, responsable à la Direction régionale d’état civil.
Dès leur arrivée à Agadez ils ont été pris en charge par l’Organisation Internationale pour la Migration (OIM) et le Haut Commissariat pour les Réfugiés (HCR) appuyés par des ONG comme l’APBE (Action pour le Bien-être) et COOPI une ONG Italienne.
Après l’enregistrement et l’enrôlement biométrique, dénommé BIMS, les migrants qui le désirent font une demande d’asile au niveau de la Direction de l’état-civil. « L’asile est octroyé par l’état du Niger seul habilité à le faire car le Niger reste souverain sur cette question, les migrants ayant fui la guerre pour des raisons sécuritaires sont priorisés par rapport à ceux qui ont fui pour des raisons économiques, d’autre part les mineurs non accompagnés très vulnérables bénéficient d’un traitement particulier vu leur situation, on trouve très souvent des cas de tortures sur les migrants venant de la Libye », a expliqué à APAC M. Soukeyrajou Yacouba. « C’est un long processus qui demande de la patience », explique un commis du service de l’état-civil. Une patience que n’ont plus aujourd’hui les Soudanais présents à Agadez.

Déception et désolation au quotidien

Malgré tous les efforts des ONG pour leur venir en aide, leurs cris de détresse s’amplifient. Ils crient leur ras-le-bol à qui veut les écouter. Dans le camp ou dans les rues d’Agadez. Ils ne s’en cachent point. « Si j’avais su que je me retrouverai dans une telle situation à Agadez, j’aurais préféré rester d’où je viens. Au moins là bas, j’étais dans une communauté humaine, j’avais le moral. A Agadez, nous sommes loin de la ville. Comme si nous sommes des animaux. Nous sommes abandonnés à nous-mêmes ici. On n’a pas accès aux soins les plus élémentaires. On n’a pas une ambulance qui peut rapidement évacuer un malade vers la ville. Chaque soir, nous sommes dans la hantise que Boko Haram nous attaque. », nous a confié Mahmoud H, un jeune soudanais de 22 ans.

Venus d’abord par petits groupes à Agadez, le nombre de demandeurs d’asile soudanais n’a fait que croitre au fil de mois jusqu’à atteindre presque 3000 personnes. Toutes sont en quête de protection et d’un mieux-être au Niger après avoir fui la guerre au Darfour et les sévices en Libye. Mais hélas, pour beaucoup, c’est la grande désillusion : « nous avons quitté l’enfer libyen pour tomber dans l’enfer d’Agadez. Ici aussi nous sommes mal vus ! C’est la suspicion et la haine dans tous les regards », disent-ils.

Assis à même le sol d’un des hangars du centre d’accueil pour les réfugiés inauguré en mars 2017, Aly, est démoralisé. Il ne parle pas. Il observe. Dans ses yeux, aucune lueur. Ni de joie, ni d’espoir. Il refuse de regarder ses “ cochambriers”.
Il nous confie en aparté. “ Ma place n’est pas ici. Pas sous ce hangar. Pas avec ces gens-là. On se bagarre tous les temps. Je ne suis pas comme eux et personne ne veut me comprendre. J’ai un statut que je n’ai pas choisi et qui fait que bien qu’étant homme, ma place n’est pas avec les hommes”.

L’aveu d’Aly est clair mais non encore avoué. Un de ceux avec qui il partage le hangar balance le secret d’Aly : “ C’est un pédé ! C’est haram ! On ne veut pas de lui sous le même toit que nous”, dit-il rageur. Comble de cynisme ! Summum de l’intolérance, il dit menaçant à notre adresse : “On ne mange pas avec lui ! Il est malade. C’est un fils de Sheitan ! ”.

Comment se fait-il que Aly, bien qu’ayant un statut particulier soit mis avec des hommes qui n’ont aucun respect pour son choix de vie ? “ Où voulez-vous qu’il soit ? Avec les femmes ? ”, nous répond calmement un agent du centre. “ Est-ce qu’il a même avoué au HCR son statut ! Je ne crois pas ! », a fait remarquer l’agent.
Joint par le reporter de APAC Niger, le service du HCR Agadez dit ceci : « nous n’avons pas eu de cas pareil ! »

Assiatou, est elle aussi une jeune femme du Darfour. Sa vie est un drame grandeur nature. Elle a tout perdu au Soudan du sud. Parents et conjoint.
En Libye, elle a souffert vingt-sept mois les affres de violences sexuelles. “Les hommes sont cruels. Le sexe, partout et toujours le sexe. Comment puis-je me protéger quand on ne te demande aucune permission avant d’abuser de ton propre corps ? Dites-moi comment dire non à un homme drogué et violent qui a le droit de vie et de mort sur toi ? Mon corps de femme m’a permis de survivre jusqu’à aujourd’hui mais au prix de maints viols et supplices. De 2012 à aujourd’hui, j’ai porté trois grossesses que je n’ai jamais désirées. Deux sont mortes en Libye et j’ai le dernier ici avec moi ! Ne me demandez pas qui en est le père, je vous jure que je l’ignore !”.
Son statut de femme éprouvée et allaitante fait qu’elle est mieux traitée que les autres. « Elle a beaucoup besoin de soutien surtout moral », fait remarquer une volontaire humanitaire trouvée sur place.

À Agadez, Aly et Assiatou ont trouvé plusieurs centaines d’autres demandeurs d’asile. Tout comme eux, ils ont fui dans la douleur. Le Soudan d’abord, et la Libye ensuite. Hélas, leur rêve de liberté, leur espoir d’un lendemain meilleur se meurt aujourd’hui à Agadez.
Au contact de dures réalités, Aly et Assiatou ne croient plus aux organisations internationales d’Agadez. « Elles font de la discrimination entre nous et les Erythréens ! Ce n’est pas normal », a fait le jeune soudanais Aly.

« Ces soudanais ne sont pas reconnaissants…. »

Ces demandeurs d’asile ignorent-ils que depuis la fin d’année 2017, 1.450 réfugiés, dont 1.292 Soudanais, sont arrivés dans la cité du nord du Niger jusqu’à atteindre le chiffre record de 3000 aujourd’hui ? Bien-sûr que non ! Devant leur afflux, et prises au dépourvu, les organisations humanitaires présentes à Agadez ne savent plus où donner de la tête. « On ne peut que s’occuper des personnes considérées comme « les plus vulnérables ». C’est-à-dire les femmes, les enfants et les malades », explique un agent du HCR en poste à Agadez.

Et pourtant de l’avis d’un agent de la Direction de l’Etat-civil, « Leur situation s’améliore de plus en plus. Tenez bien ! Au début, les hommes vivaient en pleine rue, juste en face de nos locaux, des fois sous 42° de chaleur. Ils n’avaient même pas accès aux toilettes et faisaient leurs besoins à l’air libre ou dans des parcelles vides. Mais aujourd’hui, ils mangent bien, dorment bien et se promènent sans problème dans la ville d’Agadez ».

Mais bon nombre de soudanais joints par APAC réfutent ces dires. Ils soulignent « qu’ils manquent de tout : nourriture, soins de santé, espaces sanitaires adéquats et même qu’ils n’ont droit à aucune intimité ».
« C’est un site temporaire », nous a répondu à ce sujet Davies Kameau, chef de bureau UNHCR Agadez. « Nous attendons que les soudanais soient d’abord reconnus comme demandeurs d’asile par le Niger », a t-il poursuivi.

Pour beaucoup de ces soudanais, le droit à l’asile leur est refusé au Niger et : « ce n’est pas normal. C’est un déni de droit clair et simple ! On fait des faveurs aux autres mais pas nous ! », a dénoncé lui aussi Hadji, un soudanais trentenaire.

Le statut de réfugié peine à leur être accordé

« Vous n’êtes pas sans savoir qu’il n’y a pas encore eu de session de la Commission nationale d’éligibilité (CNE) pour le cas d’Agadez mais il y a eu une commission d’éligibilité délocalisée à Tahoua pour statuer sur le cas de demandes jugées urgentes. Six ont été accordées et une rejetée. (…). C’est vrai que les gens ont l’impression que ça traîne mais en vérité c’est le souci de bien faire qui fait que le processus prend du temps », affirme. Soukeyrajou Yacouba à APAC.

D’après nos sources jusqu’à à cette date, le Niger refuse de se prononcer sur la finalité de ces demandes d’asile.
Pourquoi alors ? Joint par le reporter de APAC, Lawali Oudou, acteur de la société civile d’Agadez a expliqué : « Cela fait plusieurs mois que les négociations concernant le statut à accorder aux soudanais peinent à aboutir. C’est parce que les autorités du Niger ont peur de prendre cette lourde responsabilité surtout au sujet d’Agadez, une région instable et qui a connu deux rébellions armées ».
En effet, le prétexte de la sécurité explique le refus de l’Etat du Niger d’accorder le droit d’asile à ces soudanais. « Ils sont en lien avec des pays en guerre : la Libye, le Tchad, le Soudan. Ils sont arabophones, tout comme la majorité des terroristes. On a peur qu’ils installent des bases terroristes ici », a affirmé à notre confrère Le Point le député Mano Aghali. « Les populations d’Agadez commencent à manifester contre la présence de ces gens dans la ville d’Agadez. C’est pourquoi nous prions le HCR d’accélérer le processus pour trouver une solution », s’est alarmé quant à lui Rhissa Feltou, alors maire d’Agadez.
Mansour B. un jeune nigérien qui habite non loin du centre pour les réfugiés fait partie de ceux qui ne veulent plus des soudanais à Agadez. Et il le dit sans ambages : « ces soudanais ne sont pas reconnaissants vis-à-vis du Niger ». Il explique qu’ : « ils doivent remercier le Niger car aucun pays ne peut accepter ce qu’ils font ici à Agadez. Ils draguent nos femmes et nos filles souvent devant nos yeux ; ils coupent nos arbres et partent vendre le bois au marché pour acheter de l’alcool et de la drogue. Trop, c’est trop ! ».

Des griefs infondés selon les soudanais

Pour les soudanais, tous ces griefs sont infondés. « Nous sommes des civils et non des militaires. Nous n’avons aucun contact avec des groupes mafieux. Les autorités et même les populations locales nous comparent à des rebelles soudanais, pas comme des réfugiés. Si nous étions des combattants, on allait rester au pays pour nous défendre mais pas fuir comme des lâches », explique Al-Hassan.
En attendant que leur cas soit clair, les soudanais se rongent les ongles à une quinzaine de kilomètres d’Agadez. Des couacs surviennent des fois entre eux mais aussi avec les populations riveraines du centre.

Jusqu’à quand cette situation peut-elle tenir ? Un vent nouveau souffle au Soudan avec le changement de régime survenu. Peut-il augurer un lendemain meilleur pour tous ces jeunes soudanais bloqués aujourd’hui à Agadez ? L’Europe leur ouvrira t-elle un jour les bras ? Seront-ils laissés à Agadez pour qu’au fil du temps ils puissent se fondre à la population ?
Telles sont les questions qui taraudent les esprits à Agadez et auxquelles des réponses doivent être données.

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A Agadez, au Niger, des demandeurs d’asile ont incendié un centre d’accueil avant-hier.

Visite aujourd’hui de la représentante du HCR sur les lieux qui dit à la presse se « sentir trahie », et qui évoque le sentiment « d’une mère qui a cru en ses enfants ».

▻https://twitter.com/LeilaBeratto/status/1214565231684288517

Refugees in Niger Protest Against Delay of Resettlement and Dire Conditions

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Almost 1000 people have protested in front of the office of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Agadez, Niger, against the poor conditions in the UNHCR-run facility and the delay of resettlement procedures. The systemic isolation in the centre is considered a model for “outsourcing of the asylum system outside Europe”.

Hundreds of people, among them many refugees from Sudan, marched 18 km from the humanitarian centre where they are accommodated to the UNHCR headquarters to submit a memorandum bearing their demands to expedite their resettlement procedures and denounce the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the facility. The march turned into a sit-in and is part of on-going series of refugee protests in Niger since early 2019.

According to one of the protesters the facility is located in the middle of the desert lacking “the simplest means of life” as well as adequate education. Chronic disease is spreading among the refugees, many of which are unaccompanied who have been waiting in the facility for over two years, he added.

In 2017, UNHCR established an Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) in Niger for the evacuation of vulnerable people from Libya identified for resettlement to Europe and elsewhere. As of November 2019, 2,143 out of 2,913 of those evacuated by UNHCR have been resettled.

An increasing number of self-evacuated refugees have also arrived in Agadez from Libya with the hope of being resettled. Niger agreed to the ETM under the condition that all refugees would be resettled in Europe. However, as stated in a MEDAM police brief, for the self-evacuees, resettlement becomes increasingly unlikely and they were moved to a refugee camp outside the capital, which hampers local integration and their economic autonomy.

The network Alarm Phone Sahara commented. “This situation occurs in a context where European states are seeking to outsource the processing of cases of refugees, who have fled wars and persecution in countries like in East Africa, to countries far from the borders of Europe. The state of Niger is currently serving as a model for the outsourcing of the asylum system towards outside Europe, receiving considerable amounts of money from EU member states.”

Since 2017, a total of 4,252 persons have been evacuated from Libya: 2,913 to Niger, 808 to Italy and 531 to through the Emergency Transit Centre to Romania.

▻https://www.ecre.org/refugees-in-niger-protest-against-delay-of-resettlement-and-dire-conditions

Agadez/Incendie centre humanitaire : » Je me suis sentie trahie… », affirme #Alexandra_Morelli, représentante du HCR au Niger

En visite ce matin à Agadez, Mme Alexandra Morelli, représentante du HCR au Niger a répondu aux questions de Aïr Info :

Extrait :

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 » Je suis ici à Agadez pour apporter toute ma solidarité aux autorités locales et pour gérer ensemble cette crise. Pour comprendre profondément la nature et s’assurer qu’on continue à s’assurer qu’on continue à protéger et à donner de l’assistance aux victimes même parmi les soudanais de cet acte de vandalisme qui n’a pas de commentaires. Après l’incendie du site humanitaire ma réaction est celle d’une femme, d’une mère qui a cru en ses enfants, qui a tout fait avec le gouvernement du Niger pour leur garantir un espace de paix et de protection. Je me suis sentie trahie. C’est la première émotion humaine que j’ai eue, une émotion de douleur. Mais aujourd’hui, nous mettons les émotions de côté et on travaille avec le pragmatisme et la lucidité guidés par la solidarité et la loi du Niger ».

Interview réalisée par
Anicet Karim

▻https://airinfoagadez.com/2020/01/07/agadez-incendie-centre-humanitaire-je-me-suis-sentie-trahie-affirme-a

A protest dispersed, a camp burned: Asylum seekers in Agadez face an uncertain future

‘Nobody can believe this is happening… because there [are] children, there are women that are sleeping inside the camp.’

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Early in the morning on 4 January, security forces carrying long, wooden sticks arrived outside the office of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in the city of Agadez, Niger: 600 or more asylum seekers, mostly from Sudan, were gathered in the street in front of the office.

Since mid-December, they had been staging a sit-in to protest what they said was UNHCR’s “complete neglect” of their living conditions and the slow processing and mishandling of their asylum cases.

By the end of the day, security forces had dispersed the sit-in, dozens of demonstrators were allegedly injured, more than 330 were arrested, and the camp set up to house asylum seekers outside the city was almost entirely burned to the ground.

The events were only the latest in the more than two-year saga of the Sudanese in Agadez – a story that has always been part of a bigger picture.

The arrival of the Sudanese to the long-time migration hub in northern Niger, beginning in November 2017, followed on the heels of European policies aimed at curbing the movement of people from West Africa to Libya and onward to Italy, as well as the initiation of a programme by the EU and UNHCR – the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) – to evacuate people from Libyan detention centres, bringing them to Niamey, Niger’s capital, to await resettlement to Europe.

Against this backdrop, some Sudanese in Libya, facing violence, rampant abuse, exploitation, and even slavery, turned south to escape, spurred on by rumours of aid and safety in Niger, and the vague possibility of a legal way to reach Europe. But authorities in Niger, itself focal point of EU efforts to stem migration in recent years, were not enthusiastic about the arrival of the Sudanese and worried that the presence of UNHCR in Agadez was acting as a “pull factor”, attracting people to the city from Libya.

UNHCR is in a complicated position in Niger, according to Johannes Claes, an independent consultant and migration researcher who has followed the situation in Agadez since 2017.

The organisation has had to navigate between allaying government fears of a “pull factor” while providing protection and services to the Sudanese, running the ETM – the “human face” of the EU’s otherwise harsh migration policies – and responding to a growing number of refugees and Nigeriens displaced by conflicts along the country’s borders. “It hasn’t been easy for them to manage this,” Claes said. “That is quite obvious.”

Underlying the entire situation is a global shortage of refugee resettlement spots. UNHCR projects that 1.4 million refugees are in need of resettlement this year out of a population of nearly 26 million refugees worldwide. Last year, around 63,000 refugees were resettled through UNHCR-facilitated programmes, down from a high of 126,000 in 2016.

“UNHCR everywhere is just overwhelmed by the numbers because they are completely dependent on slots allocated in Europe and North America, and those are really very, very few,” said Jérôme Tubiana, an independent researcher focusing on conflict and refugees in Sudan and Niger.
Global resonance, local grievance

Caught between restrictive EU migration policies and the global lack of resettlement spots, UNHCR’s struggle to provide services, protection, and long-term stability to asylum seekers and refugees has not been limited to Niger.

In the past year, asylum seekers and refugees have protested in front of UNHCR offices in Libya, Lebanon, and elsewhere, and African asylum seekers in particular, including many Sudanese from Darfur, have accused UNHCR of discrimination and neglect. “[The protest in Agadez] was part of… a global story of frustration and a feeling of being, really, not treated as victims of war or mass crimes,” Tubiana said.

Despite the global resonance, the trigger for the protest in Agadez appears to have been a local incident that took on symbolic significance as it spun through the rumour mill of a population that was already angry about the slow pace at which their asylum cases were being heard and desperate for information about their futures.

“The core of the problem is why the procedures are slow and why some people were informed… that their files had been lost,” a Sudanese asylum seeker in Agadez told TNH on 17 December, the day after around 600 people walked out of the camp where they were housed and set up the sit-in in front of the UNHCR office. “There is a complete lack of credibility… represented by the loss of the files,” the protesters said in a statement that circulated via text message.

“We know that these people are fighters, soldiers, and they came here because now they expect to go to Europe.”

UNHCR Niger confirmed that the government agency responsible for processing asylum requests had misplaced around five files several months earlier, but it said the files had been reconstituted and resubmitted for consideration. “From UNHCR’s side, we can strongly confirm that no registration files nor resettlement requests have been lost and that no one has to re-conduct interviews,” UNHCR Niger told TNH.

But by the time news about the files spread, the Sudanese had already been growing frustrated, disillusioned, and distrustful for quite some time, and UNHCR’s reassurances fell on deaf ears.
A shaky beginning

From the beginning, the position of the Sudanese in Agadez has rested on shaky ground.

Hundreds of thousands of West Africans, sharing a common language and cultural background with Nigeriens, have passed through the city en route to Libya over the years.

The Sudanese were the first group of outsiders to turn south from Libya in search of protection, and Nigerien authorities didn’t trust their motives. “We know that these people are fighters, soldiers, and they came here because now they expect to go to Europe,” Niger’s minister of interior, Mohamed Bazoum, told TNH in 2018.

But UNHCR has maintained that the Sudanese are not fighters. For the most part, they had been driven from their homes in Darfur by conflict and government-sponsored ethnic cleansing that began in the early 2000s. They had lived in camps for the displaced in Sudan or Chad before humanitarian funding ebbed or conflict followed them and they began criss-crossing the region in search of safety, stable living conditions, and better prospects for their futures. In the process, many had been tortured, trafficked, raped, or had witnessed and suffered various forms of violence.

At the peak in 2018, there were nearly 2,000 Sudanese in Agadez, and tensions with the local community simmered as they filled up limited UNHCR housing in the city and spilled into the streets. At the beginning of May, authorities arrested more than 100 of the Sudanese, trucked them to the Niger-Libya border, dropped them in the desert, and told them to leave.

The incident was a major violation of the international laws protecting asylum seekers, and in its aftermath, UNHCR, which had been caught off guard by the arrival of the Sudanese in the first place, scrambled to make sure it wouldn’t happen again and to carve out a space where the Sudanese and other asylum seekers would be safe.
‘It was a bit existential’

The government and UNHCR settled on a plan to open the camp – which UNHCR calls a humanitarian centre – 15 kilometres outside Agadez to de-escalate tensions, and the government eventually agreed to start hearing asylum claims from the Sudanese and others. But a message had already been sent: the number of Sudanese coming to Agadez slowed to a trickle and several hundred ended up returning to Libya or headed elsewhere on their own.

By last December, there were around 1,600 asylum seekers, mostly Sudanese, in Agadez, and 1,200 of them were housed at the humanitarian centre. According to UNHCR, 223 people had already received refugee status in Niger, and around 500 were set to have their cases heard in the coming months. Thirty-one of the most vulnerable had been transferred to Italy as part of a humanitarian corridor, and around 100 others were in line for refugee resettlement or other humanitarian programmes that would take them out of Niger.

“It’s not a humane situation.”

“It was slowly, slowly ongoing, but there was a process,” Alessandra Morelli, UNHCR’s head of office in Niger, told TNH. “Nothing was in the air or in… limbo.”

“We managed to stabilise a little bit a large group of people that for years were going from one place to another in [search] of protection,” Morelli added. “I think that was the success.”

But many of the Sudanese in Agadez saw the situation differently. The humanitarian centre was isolated and on the edge of the desert. In the summer, the weather was very hot and in the winter, very cold. There was little shade, and the insides of the tents boiled. Storms carrying billowing clouds of sand would blow out of the desert, blocking out visibility and blanketing everything in dust. Attempts to drill wells for water failed. “It’s not a humane situation,” one asylum seeker told TNH last April. “The way they treat us here they wouldn’t treat any person.”

“We saw… very high rates of mental illness, numerous suicide attempts, women miscarrying on a regular basis or having very, very… low-weight babies; people were wandering off into the middle of the desert due to mental illness or desperation,” a former UNHCR staff member, who worked for the organisation on and off for six years and spent eight months in Agadez, told TNH on condition of anonymity. “It was a bit existential.”

UNHCR partnered with organisations to provide psychological support and medical care to the asylum seekers. “[But] the level of service and the treatment that these people have been receiving… has been very low,” said Claes, the migration researcher. “It is very hard to service that camp. It is not an easy area to be operating, but it’s also not impossible,” he added.
Protest and dispersal

The low level of service, slow processing of asylum requests and lack of clear information about what was happening with people’s cases grated on the Sudanese.

“This is not the first time that people are expressing themselves as unhappy,” Claes said. “This was obviously the worst that we’ve seen so far, but it was not entirely unexpected that this would at some point get out of hand.”

When the sit-in began, UNHCR in Niger said the asylum seekers were pushing to be resettled to Europe. “Resettlement is a protection tool for the most vulnerable, not a right,” UNHCR Niger told TNH. “Most asylum seekers currently in Agadez are not among the most vulnerable refugees, and other more vulnerable cases will be privileged for resettlement.”

The claim that the protest was only about resettlement prompted the former UNHCR employee to speak out. “They keep rolling out resettlement as this kind of strawman to distract from the fact that these people have been neglected,” the former employee said. “They’ve been neglected because they’re not a priority for anybody.”

As the sit-in wore on, the governor of Agadez, Sadou Soloke, warned in a radio broadcast that the sit-in would be dispersed – forcibly if necessary – if the protesters did not return to the camp outside the city. “We can no longer stand by and watch them trample on our laws while they are being hosted by us,” the governor said of the asylum seekers.

The protesters did not seek the required authorisation before the sit-in began and “rejected any proposal for a friendly settlement”, Agadez mayor Maman Boukari told TNH in writing. “In accordance with the provisions of the law, we ordered the police to move the refugees,” he said.

“Nobody can believe this is happening… because there [are] children, there are women that are sleeping inside the camp.”

But the asylum seekers at the sit-in had no intention of returning to the camp before their grievances were addressed. The way they saw things, going back to the camp would only mean more waiting and uncertainty. “We expect disaster at any time because we have lost trust in the government and employees of UNHCR,” one demonstrater told TNH via text message on 3 January, anticipating the dispersal.

The following morning, security forces arrived with lorries and buses to take people back to the camp.
Aftermath

As the smoke settled from the fire at the humanitarian site, different versions of what transpired emerged.

According to asylum seekers at the sit-in, security forces forced people into the vehicles, beating those who didn’t comply, and severely injuring many. Mayor Boukari told TNH that no force was used to disperse the demonstration and that there were no recorded cases of injury.

Cell phone videos taken by asylum seekers show several instances of security forces hitting people with sticks or batons, and dragging them across the ground. Photos taken afterward show people with bloody wounds on their heads and bandaged limbs. But it is unclear from the videos and photos how widespread or severe the violence was, or what injuries people sustained.

Despite the different versions of events, one thing is certain: once back at the camp, a confrontation broke out between security forces and some of the asylum seekers. It appears – from accounts given to TNH by the mayor, UNHCR, and at least three asylum seekers – that an unknown number of people, angry at the dispersal of the sit-in, then started a blaze and burned most of the camp to the ground. Other accounts, that seem less credible, suggest the government used teargas at the camp and started the fire.

“The discussion of what Agadez will become is still on going with the government.”

“[Security forces] beat them… too much. When they’re back [from the sit-in], they hate everything and destroy it,” said one asylum seeker, who didn’t participate in the protest but was in the camp during the fire. “This is [a] crazy idea. Nobody can accept [it]. Nobody can believe this is happening… because there [are] children, there are women that are sleeping inside the camp,” the asylum seeker added.

Miraculously, no one was seriously injured in the fire.

In its aftermath, 336 people were arrested for arson and planning the sit-in. As of 30 January, 196 were still being held in custody, of which 61 had been formally charged, according to UNHCR. Other Sudanese who are not currently in custody are also expected to receive judicial summons, UNHCR added.

After several weeks, the government gave UNHCR permission to install temporary shelter for the people still staying at the camp – they had been sleeping outside in rough shelters they cobbled together or in communal buildings on the site that survived the fire.

But the future of the effort to create a space to protect asylum seekers and refugees in Agadez is still uncertain. UNHCR is transferring some asylum seekers from Agadez to housing in Niamey and another UNHCR centre near the capital. “The discussion of what Agadez will become is still on going with the government,” Morelli said.

In the meantime, the asylum seekers still don’t have any more certainty about their futures than they did before the protest started, and some have told TNH they feel even more vulnerable and disillusioned. UNHCR said the government will respect the status of people who have already been recognised as refugees and continue to review asylum claims from people who have submitted files.

That process has already dragged on for more than two years, and ambiguity about why it is taking so long and where exactly it is heading was at the root of the protest to begin with. Following the dispersal, one Sudanese asylum seeker told TNH that he feared persecution by authorities in Niger and had returned to Libya with two of his friends. Others do not want to return to the violence and chaos of Libya and feel they have no option but to stay in Niger.

“I’m still in UNHCR’s hands. What they tell me, I’m ready,” one asylum seeker told TNH. “People, they hate the situation… [but] there’s no other choice.”

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2020/02/10/Sudanese-asylum-seekers-Niger-Agadez-protest-EU-migration-policy