#oim

#coronavirus #solidarité #Migrants

Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

Coronavirus : dans le camp de Malakasa en quarantaine, « personne ne manque de nourriture »

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/bd419e8944a543f4467dcfb7f8e9a31346119db8.jpeg

Le camp de Malakasa, situé à 38 kilomètres au nord-est d’Athènes, a été placé en “confinement sanitaire total” pour 14 jours après qu’un cas de coronavirus y a été détecté. Les autorités grecques et l’OIM doivent assurer l’approvisionnement des résidents en nourriture et produits d’hygiène. Des tests sont également effectués.

Plus personne n’entre ni ne sort du camp de Malakasa, en Grèce. Installé près d’un terrain militaire, à quelque 38 kilomètres au nord-est d’Athènes, ce camp – normalement ouvert – a été placé dimanche 5 avril en "confinement sanitaire total" pour 14 jours.

Un migrant afghan y a été testé positif au Covid-19, a annoncé le ministère des Migrations. Cet homme de 53 ans, souffrant déjà d’une maladie, s’est présenté de lui-même au dispensaire du camp après avoir ressenti des symptômes du Covid-19.

Il a été emmené dans un hôpital d’Athènes où il a été testé positif au nouveau coronavirus. Sa famille a été placée à l’isolement et un examen complet du camp est en cours, a ajouté le ministère.

Interrogée par InfoMigrants, Christine Nikilaidou, responsable des informations publiques de l’Organisation internationale des migrations (OIM) – qui gère le camp – confirme que les résidents sont soumis à des tests. Si elle affirme ne pas savoir exactement combien de tests ont déjà été effectués, elle avance que l’entourage proche de l’Afghan malade a été testé en priorité.
Distribution de nourriture et kits d’hygiène

L’immense majorité des 1 611 personnes qui vivent dans le camp de Malakasa est originaire d’Afghanistan. En temps normal, les allées de graviers du camp grouillent d’enfants qui courent. Mais, ces jours-ci, le camp semble désert. La pluie tombe en permanence et l’OIM incite les familles à rester à l’intérieur de leur conteneur.

Dans ces petits bâtiments posés sur le sol, les familles disposent de l’eau courante et de l’électricité mais les murs sont tachés d’humidité et le manque d’espace est criant.

Jusqu’à la fermeture du camp, les résidents pouvaient aller faire leurs courses dans les commerces de la ville ou à Athènes. Toute sortie étant désormais interdite, l’OIM assure se coordonner avec les autorités grecques pour permettre des distributions de nourriture et de kits d’hygiène aux résidents du camp.

"Ces distributions commenceront dans quelques jours. Les kits sont prêts mais nous attendons de recevoir les résultats des tests déjà effectués. Nous savons que, pour le moment, tout le monde a des provisions et personne ne manque de nourriture", affirme Christine Nikilaidou.

Le camp de Malakasa est le deuxième camp de migrant en Grèce à être placé en quarantaine en raison du coronavirus. Un foyer d’infection avait déjà été repéré jeudi dans le camp de Ritsona, à 80 km au nord d’Athènes, où 23 personnes ont jusqu’à présent été testées positives.

Comme de nombreux autres pays européens, la Grèce a imposé à sa population des mesures de confinement depuis le 23 mars. Les autorités grecques ont annoncé samedi qu’elles seraient étendues pour trois semaines, jusqu’au 27 avril.

►https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/23905/coronavirus-dans-le-camp-de-malakasa-en-quarantaine-personne-ne-manque
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/839727

Greece Quarantines Second Migrant Camp After COVID-19 Case Confirmed

Greece has quarantined a second migrant facility on its mainland after a 53-year-old man tested positive for the new coronavirus, the migration ministry said on Sunday.

The Afghan man lives with his family at the Malakasa camp, just north of Athens, along with hundreds of asylum seekers. He has been transferred to a hospital in Athens and tests on his contacts will continue as authorities try to trace the route of the virus.

Greece confirmed 62 new cases of COVID-19 later in the day, bringing the total in the country to 1,735 since its first case was reported in February. Seventy three people have died.

Last week, the Ritsona camp in central Greece was sealed off after 20 tested positive for the new coronavirus. It was the first such facility in the country to be hit since the outbreak of the disease. [L8N2BQ1V9]

Greece has been the main gateway into the European Union for people fleeing conflict in the Middle East and beyond. More than a million people reached its shores from Turkey in 2015-16.

At least 110,000 people currently live in migrant facilities - 40,000 of them in overcrowded camps on five islands.

“The number (of migrants and refugees) is very large, therefore it is a given, mathematically, that there will be confirmed cases,” Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi told Skai TV. “We have an emergency plan in place ... But it is more difficult to implement it on the islands.”

No cases have been recorded in camps on Greek islands so far.

The conservative government wants to replace all existing camps on islands with enclosed detention centers, but its plans have been met with resistance from local authorities and residents who want all facilities shut.

To contain the spread of the virus the government also wants new arrivals isolated from the rest of the migrants but most islands have not designated areas of accommodation, ministry officials said. About 120 people who recently arrived on Lesbos have not yet found a shelter, according to sources.
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Aid groups have urged Greece to evacuate the camps, warning the risk of the fast-moving virus spreading among people living in squalid conditions is high and containing an outbreak in such settings would be “impossible”.

The camp in Malakasa, 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Athens, will be put into quarantine for two weeks, the ministry said on Sunday, adding that police guarding the site would be reinforced to ensure the restrictions are implemented.

A separate, enclosed facility started operating last month for migrants who arrived after March 1, the ministry said.

Greece has imposed a nationwide lockdown and banned arrivals from non-EU countries as well as Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain. The measures have hit its economy which is relying on tourism for a recovery after a decade-long debt crisis.

▻https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/05/world/europe/05reuters-health-coronavirus-greece-camp.html?searchResultPosition=5

COVID-19 : Διαμαρτυρία μεταναστών στη Μαλακάσα

Στο προσφυγικό κέντρο της Μαλακάσας μετανάστες διαμαρτύρηθηκαν και ζητούν να υποβληθούν σε τεστ για τον COVID-19. Η κυβέρνηση αποφάσισε τον υγειονομικό αποκλεισμό του κέντρου για 14 ημέρες, αφού ένας 53χρονος Αγφανός βρέθηκε θετικός στον ιό. Στο μεταξύ, ο Εθνικός Οργανισμός Δημόσιας Υγείας συνεχίζει την ιχνηλάτηση με στόχο τον εντοπισμό άλλων κρουσμάτων εντός της δομής φιλοξενίας, ενώ ειδικά συνεργεία απολυμαίνουν τους κοινόχρηστους χώρους.

https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/04/61/57/86/808x539_cmsv2_1b669fb6-0641-59da-8be6-dc0bc9825d60-4615786.jpg

Οι υγιείς μετανάστες και πρόσφυγες διαμένουν σε χώρο πλήρως απομονωμένο, ενώ η αστυνομία έχει ενισχύσει την παρουσία της στην περίμετρο του χώρου φιλοξενίας. Μετά την Ριτσώνα, η παλιά δομή της Μαλακάσας είναι το δεύτερο προσφυγικό κέντρο που μπαίνει σε καραντίνα με στόχο να περιοριστεί η εξάπλωσης της πανδημίας.

https://static.euronews.com/articles/stories/04/61/57/86/808x539_cmsv2_e2155601-db5f-51ff-9f90-f180ad8bc1d2-4615786.jpg

–-> Commentaire de Vicky Skoumbi reçu via mail via la mailing-list Migreurop :

Aujourd’hui, c’était le deuxième jour d’une quarantaine de quatorze jours pour l’ancien camp de réception de Malakasa – celui qui se trouve juste à côté du nouveau camp fermé destinés à ceux qui sont arrivés après le 1 mars. A cet ancien camp géré par l’OIM mis sous quarantaine suite au recensement d’un cas de coronavirus -voir mail précédent- les migrants ont organisé une protestation juste derrière les barbelés pour réclamer un dépistage généralisé dans le camp –voir la vidéo sur ►https://gr.euronews.com/2020/04/06/covid-19-diamartyria-metanaston-sti-maklakasa

Jusqu’à maintenant les seules personnes dépistées ont été la famille du malade et quelques contacts. 1.611 personnes habitent dans le camp, la plupart en containers de six personnes, mais il y a 133 personnes qui sont logés dans des espaces communs et 116 dans des abris de fortunes- voir photo.

Pour les personnes qui ne sont pas logés en containers, il y 30 toilettes chimiques et 16 douches, tandis que chaque container dispose de sa propre toilette et d’une douche.

D’après le quotidien grec Journal de Rédacteurs (Efimerida tôn Syntaktôn : ▻https://www.efsyn.gr/ellada/ygeia/237999_poly-liga-kai-poly-arga-ta-metra-kai-sti-malakasa) les autorités ont fait trop peu et trop tard. Trois jours avant que le malade de 53 ne soit transféré à Athènes, un cas suspect d’une femme enceinte présentant tous les symptômes n’a pas été dépisté et aucune mesure n’a été prise.

How my dream of freedom died in Greece’s ‘holding pens’

Ahmed fled Syria only to end up in the Malakasa refugee camp, where more than 1,000 people are being denied basic human rights.

When Ahmed landed in darkness on the Greek island of Lesbos he was convinced that the road ahead could not be as hard as the one he had just travelled.

But, instead of the volunteers and blankets that have met hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers before him, he was greeted by a jeering crowd of locals and had to be rescued by police. “It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had,” he said. “I felt that my dream of Greece was a false one.”

Ahmed was among the more than 2,000 refugees who have arrived in Greece since the beginning of March, when the country suspended all access to asylum.

Their experiences, from seeing their children drowned at sea to being attacked by angry islanders, separated from family and dumped in remote detention camps, offer a month-long, nightmarish vision of what Europe would look like with no asylum rights.

Greece shut off access after Turkey opened its borders in February and encouraged refugees to cross in a bid to pressure the European Union for more aid money in support of its military involvement against Russia and the Assad regime over the Syrian enclave of Idlib.

Born in Syria’s capital, Damascus, Ahmed fled his home to escape military service with the regime. The 30-year-old told his story from inside the Malakasa detention camp in central Greece.

He spent the past four years in Turkey, where he met and married his wife, Hanin. Their precarious life and their wedding were documented in a Guardian photo essay last year.

But the couple were unable to make ends meet and Hanin, by now pregnant, made the journey by dinghy to Lesbos six months ago, with Ahmed promising to follow. She arrived safely and gave birth to their daughter, who is now two months old. Ahmed has yet to meet his child.

His first week on Lesbos was spent camping in a fenced-off area of the port city of Mytilene before he was shipped off, along with 450 other new arrivals, on a Greek navy vessel.

Amelia Cooper, a case worker at the Lesbos Legal Centre who spoke to some of those detained at the port, said: “The suspension of the right to seek asylum was followed by deliberate attempts to isolate new arrivals and prevent their access to lawyers, journalists and members of the European parliament.”

In the middle of last month, Greek authorities began work on two sites, one in Malakasa, where 1,340 people have been sent, and another near the border with Bulgaria in Serres, which is housing 600 people. A video of Malakasa shows white tents behind a chainlink fence topped with razor wire. A Greek contractor who posted the video on 28 March, with construction work still going on, acts as narrator: “The money is flowing. These illegal strays are good business.”

“These sites are fundamentally different,” said Belkis Wille from Human Rights Watch. “They are open-air prisons, filled with people who have been denied their basic rights and are being held as de facto detainees without any legal framework.”

Most people in Malakasa and Serres are thought to be holding a deportation order from the Greek police. Refugees say they were forced to sign this Greek-language document despite being unable to read it. Under European law everyone is entitled to an individual assessment of their claim for protection but these documents declare that the accused must be deported for illegally entering Greece.

For the past four years, the larger flow of people across the eastern Aegean has been reduced by an arrangement between the EU and Ankara that saw Turkey get €6bn in aid in return for restricting crossings. Under this deal, Greece has returned 2,000 new arrivals. Since early March, Turkey has stated that even this deal is dead.

Ahmed said the uncertainty of the situation was unbearable: “I lived through four years of war in Syria. This month is worse than those four years: can you imagine?”

Conditions at the Serres site, where tents are packed tightly together behind fences on a dry riverbed, are even worse than at Malakasa. Detainees say they have no electricity to even charge a phone. The Serres police union said in a statement that the site was “totally unsuitable”.

Spyros Leonidas, mayor of the nearest village, Promaxonas, said the camp was “unfit for animals, let alone people”. “There are newborns and pregnant women among the people. And there is no hot water,” he said.

The fate of those in detention remains unclear.

The Greek government has said that the suspension of asylum will be lifted , and the EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, said last week she had received assurances that those who arrived in March would be able to apply for asylum.

However, Greece’s migration and asylum minister, Notis Mitarakis, subsequently said that people who had been issued with deportation orders would not be granted an asylum process.

None of the detainees reached by the Observer had been notified of any change in their access to asylum. The Greek asylum service is closed until 10 April 10 because of the Covid-19 crisis.

Vassilis Papadopoulos, a lawyer and former senior official at the migration ministry under the previous government, said that Ahmed and the other detainees were “being made an example of” to show there was a tough new policy.

“What happened in March brought the numbers [of crossings] down so they’re going to keep doing it, even if they say something different,” he added.

►https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/how-my-dream-of-freedom-died-on-the-road-to-greeces-gulag

–-> commentaire de Vicky Skoumbi reçu via mail, le 06.04.2020:

Dans un article du Guardian sont décrites les conditions de vie inhumaines et les violations systématiques de droits fondamentaux dans les centres fermés de Malakassa et Serres. Ces centres ont été créés récemment pour que ceux et celles qui sont arrivés après le 1 mars y sont détenus en vue d’une expulsion ou d’un renvoi forcé vers la Turquie. Il s’agit de véritables prisons à ciel ouvert, où le manque d’eau courante et l’absence totale de toute mesure d’hygiène créent les conditions idéales pour une propagation généralisée de coronavirus. Le camp à l’endroit dit Klidi de Serres, construit au milieu de nulle part sur le lit d’une rivière asséchée, expose les personnes qui y sont détenus même au risque d’inondation. Vu l’extrême urgence de la situation- en Grèce les derniers jours des très fortes pluies sont tombées- j’aimerais vous rappeler l’appel à fermer immédiatement ce camp (en grec) et dont la traduction en français se trouve en PJ. Merci de partager.

#Malakassa #Serres #Klidi

Coronavirus en Grèce : deux camps de réfugiés en quarantaine

Ritsona et Malakasa, deux camps de réfugiés de la région d’Athènes, ont été mis en quarantaine après le dépistage de plusieurs cas de coronavirus. Les ONG craignent la propagation du virus dans des lieux pas du tout adaptés aux règles d’hygiène ni de distanciation sociale.

« Les paniers repas distribués ne sont pas suffisants et ne couvrent pas les besoins nutritionnels de la population », explique Parwana, une réfugiée afghane, dans une vidéo publiée sur le groupe facebook (▻https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=external&v=969395506808816) d’une initiative solidaire. « Nous manquons également de médicaments, alors que des personnes vulnérables qui ont besoin de suivre des traitements résident dans le camp. »

Depuis jeudi, le camp de Ritsona, au nord-est d’Athènes, où vit cette adolescente, a été mis en quarantaine après le dépistage de 23 cas de coronavirus parmi les demandeurs d’asile. Les tests ont été effectués après qu’une résidente du camp, une Camerounaise de 22 ans, a été détectée positive au lendemain de son accouchement le 28 mars dans un hôpital athénien. Les 23 demandeurs d’asile atteints du virus ont été mis à l’isolement pour éviter la contamination des autres résidents.

L’accès au camp est désormais interdit, sauf au personnel de l’agence sanitaire publique et de l’Organisation International des migrations (OIM) en charge du camp. Les demandeurs d’asile ne peuvent plus sortir et reçoivent des paniers repas et des objets de première nécessité distribués par l’OIM, alors qu’en temps normal ils reçoivent une assistance financière du Haut-Commissariat aux Réfugiés (UNHCR) et peuvent aller faire leurs courses à la ville la plus proche, qui se trouve à huit kilomètres...

À Ritsona, les conditions de vie ne sont pas les plus mauvaises parmi les 30 camps établis en Grèce continentale : quelque 2700 personnes logent dans 195 conteneurs et 222 dans des petits appartements qui disposent d’une cuisine, d’une douche et de toilettes. La quarantaine, l’absence d’activités, les paniers repas peu fournis, le manque de médicaments, les difficultés à voir un médecin et le report des rendez-vous pour la demande d’asile rendent toutefois le quotidien des demandeurs d’asile de plus en plus éprouvant.

Malakasa, « une bombe à retardement »

Dimanche, un deuxième camp a été mis en quarantaine, celui de Malakasa à 38 km au nord-est d’Athènes. Un Afghan de 53 ans qui s’était présenté de lui-même dans la clinique du camp, toussant et avec de la fièvre, a été diagnostiqué positif au coronavirus après avoir été transporté dans un hôpital athénien.

La famille du réfugié a été mise à l’isolement et le camp bouclé par des renforts de police. Selon Human Rights Watch (HRW), les conditions sont déplorables dans ce centre où ont notamment été transférées toutes les personnes arrivées après le 1er mars sur les îles grecques en face de la Turquie. La Grèce avait alors suspendu le droit d’asile face à la menace d’Ankara de laisser passer les réfugiés en Europe. D’après HRW, qui a recueilli plusieurs témoignages, dans chaque tente vivent jusqu’à dix demandeurs d’asile. Les mesures de distanciation sociale et les gestes barrières ne peuvent donc pas être appliqués. Dans un communiqué du 26 mars, le syndicat de la police d’Athènes et de l’Attique dénonce aussi le manque d’hygiène à Malakasa. « C’est une bombe à retardement, tous les moyens sanitaires de base manquent… »

▻https://www.courrierdesbalkans.fr/deux-camps-de-refugies-en-quarantaine-en-Grece

#coronavirus #solidarité #migrants

Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

Via Migreurop

Il me semble qu’en ce qui concerne le camp de Malakasa, il y a une erreur due au fait qu’actuellement à Malakasa il y a deux camps, un camp fermé destiné à ceux qui sont arrivés après le 1 mars et où en effet les conditions sont terribles, et un camp plus ancien, le camp ouvert géré par l’OIM où la grande majorité est dans de containers pour 6 personnes avec toilette et douche. Comme je vous ai écrit dans un mail précédent
1.611 personnes habitent dans le camp, la plupart en containers de six personnes, mais il y a 133 personnes qui sont logés dans des espaces communs et 116 dans des abris de fortunes
Et c’est bien ce camp ouvert qui a été mis en quarantaine, il ne faudrait pas confondre les deux camps
Merci de transmettre

Il me semble qu’en ce qui concerne le camp de Malakasa, il y a une erreur due au fait qu’actuellement à Malakasa il y a deux camps, un camp fermé destiné à ceux qui sont arrivés après le 1 mars et où en effet les conditions sont terribles, et un camp plus ancien, le camp ouvert géré par l’#OIM où la grande majorité est dans de #containers pour 6 personnes avec toilette et douche.
1’611 personnes habitent dans le camp, la plupart en containers de six personnes, mais il y a 133 personnes qui sont logés dans des espaces communs et 116 dans des abris de fortunes
Et c’est bien ce camp ouvert qui a été mis en quarantaine, il ne faudrait pas confondre les deux camps

–-> Commentaire de Vicky Skoumbi, reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop, le 08.04.2020

Greece’s Malakasa migrant camp: What life is like during the coronavirus lockdown

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/f87b7930045e5b0711edc9d79954179fe4006ffa.jpeg

On April 5, the Malakasa camp near Athens was placed in “full sanitary isolation” for 14 days, after a migrant tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Greek authorities and the UN migration agency are providing the camp’s residents with both food and hygiene products. But residents told us: “We feel like we’ve been completely abandoned.”

For the next 14 days, no one is allowed to enter or leave Greece’s Malakasa migrant camp. Located on a vast military field, 38 kilometers northeast of Athens, the camp has been placed in “full sanitary isolation” after an Afghan migrant living there tested positive for COVID-19, Greece’s ministry of migration announced earlier this week.

The 53-year-old man, who was already suffering from another illness, visited the camp clinic after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. The man was then taken to a hospital in Athens where he tested positive for the coronavirus. The ministry said that his family had been placed in quarantine, and that officials were screening the camp to get a full overview of the gravity of the situation.

Christine Nikilaidou, a spokewoman for the UN migration agency (IOM), told InfoMigrants that all camp residents were currently being tested. She could not specify exactly how many tests had been carried out so far, but she said that the people who had been in contact with the ill Afghan had been given priority.

‘Feel completely abandoned’

The vast majority of the 1,611 people living in the Malakasa camp are from Afghanistan. Under normal circumstances, the gravel paths that run through the camp are full of children playing with each other. But after the lockdown went into force, the camp feels totally deserted. For days, rain has been pouring down non-stop, and the IOM has told all camp residents to stay inside.

Although residents live in fitted shipping containers that contain both running water and electricity, the space inside them is cramped and the walls are often stained with mold from the humidity.

Souad* lives with her husband and three children in one of the containers. On Sunday, she abruptly woke to the sound of loudspeakers. “I went to the window and saw police cars driving through the camp and a voice announcing that we had been placed in lockdown and wouldn’t be allowed to go out anymore,” she told InfoMigrants.

Souad, who comes from a Middle Eastern country she did not want to identify, said that aside from that, the camp’s residents have not received much information about the situation. “We are completely isolated and no one has told us what we should do, we feel like we’ve been completely abandoned. My husband has health problems related to high blood pressure and diabetes, and we don’t have enough medication,” she said.

Food distribution and hygiene kits

Prior to the lockdown, camp residents would either do their grocery shopping in Malakasa village, or in Athens. But after the camp went into lockdown and all outings were banned, IOM and Greek authorities are in charge of providing the camp’s residents with both food and hygiene products.

“These distributions will start in a few days. The kits are ready but we are waiting to receive the results of the tests that we’ve already carried out. We know that for the moment, everyone has provisions, and no one is running out of food,” Nikilaidou said.

Souad confirmed that her family has enough food to last them for at least another few days, but said their biggest concern is the lack of access to medication and protective gear, such as gloves and masks. “They don’t let us out and they don’t provide us with what we need to protect ourselves from COVID-19. All they did was give each family a bottle that contained a cleaning liquid, that’s all I have with my husband and my three children to deal with the virus,” she said.

Malakasa is the second migrant camp in Greece to have been placed in full lockdown due to the coronavirus. Last Thursday, an outbreak was detected in the Ritsona camp, 80 kilometers north of Athens, where 23 people have tested positive so far.

Like many other European countries, Greece went into lockdown on March 23. On Saturday, April 4, the government announced the lockdown would be extended for another three weeks, until April 27.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/24010/greece-s-malakasa-migrant-camp-what-life-is-like-during-the-coronaviru

En #France...

https://i.imgur.com/YhD8ilJ.jpg

A #Bordeaux :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/837948

A #Marseille :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/834243
#Rosiers

#Roms. « Ils vont mourir de #faim, pas du #coronavirus », s’alarment les associations
►https://seenthis.net/messages/840307

#Etudiants_confinés : « Certains confient ne pas avoir mangé depuis deux ou trois jours »
►https://seenthis.net/messages/843879

A #Clichy-sous-Bois, cette photo, terrible. Distribution d’#aide_alimentaire : 190 personnes la première fois, 490 la deuxième, 750 la troisième.
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/844788

Coronavirus : l’aide alimentaire confrontée à l’arrivée de nouveaux publics
►https://seenthis.net/messages/846221

À #Pantin, un réseau inédit de solidarité aide ceux qui ont faim
►https://seenthis.net/messages/850647
#Seine-Saint-Denis

Thierry Robert : « Nous arrivons à la fin des stocks alimentaires en Seine-Saint-Denis »
►https://seenthis.net/messages/856458

Vendée. Précarisés, les étudiants affluent à la #distribution_alimentaire de l’Université de La Roche-sur-Yon :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/897746

En #Inde

#Chaos and hunger amid India #coronavirus lockdown:
►https://seenthis.net/messages/836508

En #Italie

#Mafia distributes food to Italy’s struggling residents
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/841843

#UK / #Angleterre

UK hunger crisis: 1.5m people go whole day without food
►https://seenthis.net/messages/841846

En #Mauritanie

#Coronavirus : en #Mauritanie, le calvaire des exilés et réfugiés :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/845403

En #Grèce
... dans les #hotspots...
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/848116
#Moria #Lesbos

En #Suisse, à #Genève :
Le nouveau visage de la #pauvreté
►https://seenthis.net/messages/850334

En #Bosnie
Des demandeurs d’asile bloqués dans un camp de réfugiés géré par l’#IOM (#OIM) dénoncent avoir faim...

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L600xH438/1m9BXCtpng-ff8a5-99431.png

Au #Liban :

« Je veux rentrer au Soudan, je peux à peine manger à ma faim ! » :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/859555#message863668

Novembre 2020 :
« On a plus peur de mourir de faim que du virus » chez les exilés de Saint-Denis
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/884577

Greece quarantines Ritsona migrant camp after finding 20 corona cases

A migrant camp north of the Greek capital Athens has been placed under quarantine after 20 asylum seekers there tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

The developments occurred after a 19-year-old female migrant from the camp gave birth in hospital in Athens, where she was found to be infected. Authorities then conducted tests on a total of 63 people also staying at the government-run Ritsona camp outside Athens, deciding to place the facility under quarantine after nearly a third of the tests came back positive. Meanwhile, health officials will continue to conduct tests on residents of the camp.

The infections observed at Ritsona camp are now the first known cases among thousands of asylum seekers living across Greece, with most staying in overcrowded camps mainly on the Aegean islands. The Ritsona camp, however, is located on the Greek mainland, roughly 75 kilometers northeast of Athens, housing about 3,000 migrants.

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/89aa3369920fd14910408aeb35b4f9e8e92a6cf9.jpeg

Quarantine and isolation at Ritsona

The Greek migration ministry said that none of the confirmed cases at Ritsona had showed any symptoms thus far. However, in a bid to protect others, movement in and out of the Ritsona camp, will be restricted for at least 14 days; police forces will monitor the implementation of the measures.

According to the Reuters news agency, the camp has also created an isolation area for those coronavirus patients who might still develop symptoms.

’Ticking health bomb’

Greece recorded its first coronavirus case in late February, reporting more than 1,400 cases so far and 50 deaths. The country’s official population is 11 million. Compared to other EU countries at the forefront of the migration trend into Europe such as Italy and Spain, Greece has thus far kept its corona case numbers relatively low.

However, with more than 40,000 refugees and migrant presently stuck in refugee camps on the Greek islands alone, the Greek government has described the current situation as a “ticking health bomb.”

https://scd.infomigrants.net/media/resize/my_image_big/72ad7d62cc70c6c38c228380c5468669dbbf41bd.jpeg

Aid organisations stress that conditions in the overcrowded camps are inhumane, calling for migrants to be evacuated from the Greek islands. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis that Greece was ready to “protect” its islands, where no case has been recorded so far, while adding that he expects the EU to do more to help improve overall conditions in migrant camps and to assist relocate people to other EU countries.

“Thank God, we haven’t had a single case of Covid-19 on the island of Lesbos or any other island,” Mitsotakis told CNN. “The conditions are far from being ideal but I should also point out that Greece is dealing with this problem basically on its own. (…) We haven’t had as much support from the European Union as we want.”

►https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/23826/greece-quarantines-ritsona-migrant-camp-after-finding-20-corona-cases

#camp_de_réfugiés #asile #migrations #Athènes #coronavirus

Greece quarantines camp after migrants test coronavirus positive

Greece has quarantined a migrant camp after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said on Thursday, its first such facility to be hit since the outbreak of the disease.

Tests were conducted after a 19-year-old female migrant living in the camp in central Greece was found infected after giving birth at an Athens hospital last week. She was the first recorded case among thousands of asylum seekers living in overcrowded camps across Greece.

None of the confirmed cases showed any symptoms, the ministry said, adding that it was continuing its tests.

Authorities said 119 of 380 people on board a ferry which authorities said had been prevented from docking in Turkey and was now anchored off Athens, had tested positive for the virus.

Greece recorded its first coronavirus case at the end of February. It has reported 1,425 cases and 53 deaths, excluding the cases on the ferry.

It is the gateway to Europe for people fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, with more than a million passing through Greece during the migrant crisis of 2015-2016.

Any movement in and out of the once-open Ritsona camp, which is 75 km (45 miles) northeast of Athens and hosts hundreds of people, will be restricted for 14 days, the ministry said. Police would monitor movements.

The camp has an isolation area for coronavirus patients should the need arise, sources have said.

Aid agencies renewed their call for more concerted action at the European level to tackle the migration crisis.

“It is urgently needed to evacuate migrants out of the Greek islands to EU countries,” said Leila Bodeux, policy and advocacy officer for Caritas Europa, an aid agency.

EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said it was a stark “warning signal” of what might happen if the virus spilled over into less organised facilities on the Greek islands.

“(This) may result in a massive humanitarian crisis. This is a danger both for refugees hosted in certain countries outside the EU and for those living in unbearable conditions on the Greek islands,” she said during a European Parliament debate conducted by video link.

More than 40,000 asylum-seekers are stuck in overcrowded refugee camps on the Greek islands, in conditions which the government itself has described as a “ticking health bomb”.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said Greece is ready to protect its islands, where no case has been recorded so far, but urged the EU to provide more help.

“The conditions are far from ideal but I should also point out that Greece is dealing with this problem basically on its own... We haven’t had as much support from the European Union as we wanted,” he told CNN.

▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-greece-camp/greece-quarantines-camp-after-migrants-test-coronavirus-positive-idUSKBN21K

#coronavirus #solidarité #migrants

Voir compile des effets délétères indirects de la pandémie :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/832147

EU : Athens can handle Covid outbreak at Greek camp

The European Commission says Greece will be able to manage a Covid-19 outbreak at a refugee camp near Athens.

“I think they can manage,” Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for home affairs, told MEPs on Thursday (2 April).

The outbreak is linked to the Ritsona camp of some 2,700 people who are all now under quarantine.

At least 23 have been tested positive without showing any symptoms. Greek authorities had identified the first case after a woman from the camp gave birth at a hospital earlier this week.

“This development confirms the fact that this fast-moving virus does not discriminate and can affect both migrant and local communities,” Gianluca Rocco, who heads the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Greece, said in a statement.

Another six cases linked to local residents have also been identified on the Greek islands.

Notis Mitarachi, Greece’s minister of migration and asylum, said there are no confirmed cases of the disease in any of the island refugee camps.

“We have only one affected camp, that is on the mainland, very close to Athens where 20 people have tested positive,” he said.

Over 40,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are stuck on the islands. Of those, some 20,000 are in Moria, a camp on Lesbos island that is designed to house only 3,000.

It is unlikely conditions will improve any time soon with Mitarachi noting major changes will only take place before the year’s end. He said the construction of new camps on the mainland first have to be completed.

“We do not have rooms in the mainland,” he said, when pressed on why there have been no mass evacuations from the islands.

He placed some of the blame on the EU-Turkey deal, noting anyone transferred to the mainland cannot be returned to Turkey. Turkey has since the start of March refused to accept any returns given the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the deal, Mitarachi noted 10,000 people had still been transferred to the mainland so far this year. He also insisted all measures are being taken to ensure the safety of the Greek island camp refugees.

In reality, Moria has one functioning faucet per 1,300 people. A lockdown also has been imposed, making any notions of social distancing impossible.

He said all new arrivals from Turkey are separated and kept away from the camps. Special health units will also be dispatched into the camps to test for cases, he said.

Mitarachi is demanding other EU states help take in people, to ease the pressure.

Eight EU states had in early March pledged to take in 1,600 unaccompanied minors. The Commission says it expects the first relocations to take place before Easter at the latest.
The money

Greece has also been earmarked some €700m of EU funds to help in the efforts.

The first €350m has already been divided up.

Around €190m will go to paying rental accommodation for 25,000 beds on the mainland and provide cash assistance to 90,000 people under the aegis of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

Another €100m will go to 31 camps run by the International Organization for Migration. Approximately €25m will go to help families and kids on the islands through the UNHCR.

And €35m is set to help relocate others out of the camps and into hotels.

The remaining €350m will go to building five new migrant centres (€220m), help pay for returns (€10m), support the Greek asylum service (€50m), enforce borders (€50m), and give an additional €10m each to Frontex and the EU’s asylum agency, Easo.

▻https://euobserver.com/coronavirus/147973

–-----

Avec ce commentaire de Marie Martin, reçu via la mailing-list Migreurop, le 03.04.2020 :

Des informations intéressantes issues de l’article de Nikolak Nielsen, paru dans EuObserver aujourd’hui sur les fonds de l’UE dédiés à l’accueil et aux transferts depuis les hotspots.

C’est assez paradoxal de voir la #Commissaire_européenne affirmer que le Grèce pourra gérer un éruption du Covid19, laissant presque penser à un esseulement de la Grèce.

En vérité, l’article indique, chiffres à l’appui, que plusieurs actions sont financées (700M euros dédiés dont 190M pour le UNHCR afin de payer des hébergements à hauteur de 25 000 lits sur la péninsule et de l’assistance financières à 90 000 personnes réfugiées).
Ces #financements s’ajoutent aux engagements début mars membres de relocaliser des mineurs isolés dans d’autres pays de l’UE (8 Etats membres).

Toutefois, si l’UE ne fait donc pas « rien », les limites habituelles au processus peuvent être invoquées avec raison : #aide_d'urgence qui va essentiellement au #HCR et à l’#OIM (100M pour l’OIM et les 31 camps qu’elle gère et 25M d’aide pour les familles et les enfants dispatchés sur les îles, via le UNHCR), 35M serviront à soutenir la relocalisation hors des camps dans des #hôtels.

Le reste des financements octroyés s’intègrent dans la logique de gestion des #hotspots :

350M euros serviront à construire 5 nouveaux centres
10M pour financer les retours
50M pour soutenir l’administration grecque dédiée à l’asile (sans précision s’il s’agit de soutien à l’aide juridique pour les demandeurs d’asile, d’aide en ressources humaines pour l’administration et l’examen des demandes, ou du soutien matériel dû dans le cadre de l’accueil des demandeurs d’asile)
10M pour #Frontex
10M pour #EASO

#retour #aide_au_retour #renvois #expulsions #argent #aide_financière #IOM

ping @deka - citations de Camille ! C’est grace à toi aussi, merci pour tout soutien pendant les recherches !

source : ►https://inkyfada.com/fr/2020/03/20/financements-ue-tunisie-migration

Camille c’est @deka ?

Non, malheureusement j’ai pas encore réussi à convaincre Camille de joindre SeenThis...mais j’essaie toujours ;-) @deka c’est un prêtre très intéressé au sujet, AI Interview No 1 dans le mémoire M2, ensemble avec Camille on a beaucoup discuté

La Grèce débute les « retours volontaires » de « migrants économiques »

Un premier vol transportant des « migrants économiques » retournant « volontairement » dans leur pays d’origine, est parti d’Athènes jeudi, dans le cadre d’un programme de l’Union européenne. Au total, 5 000 personnes se verront proposer des incitations au départ de 2 000 euros.

Quelque 134 migrants irakiens ont « volontairement » quitté Athènes jeudi 6 août pour rejoindre leur pays d’origine. Des photos de leur embarquement dans l’avion montrent des hommes aux visages masqués. Certains brandissent fièrement leur passeport et agitent les bras en guise d’adieu.

Il s’agit du « plus important retour sur une base volontaire de migrants économiques jamais mis en oeuvre dans notre pays, et le plus important en Europe cette année », a déclaré à la presse le porte-parole du gouvernement Stelios Petsas. Ces retours ont lieu dans le cadre d’un programme mis en place en mars par l’Union européenne dans le but de soulager la Grèce qui abrite 120 000 migrants et réfugiés. Ce programme était jusque-là resté en suspens à cause de la pandémie de coronavirus.

https://i.imgur.com/siSc1lT.png

▻https://twitter.com/YannisKolesidis/status/1291379911970693121

Au total, 5 000 migrants, originaires de différents pays, se verront proposer des incitations au départ volontaire de 2 000 euros (2 400 dollars) par personne pour retourner dans leur pays d’origine. Une aide censée leur permettre un nouveau départ, avait expliqué en mars la commissaire européenne aux affaires intérieures Ylva Johansson.

Pour faire partie de ce programme, les candidats doivent être entrés en Grèce avant le 1er janvier 2020, et être toujours présents sur les îles de Leros, Samos, Lesbos, Kos et Chios en mer Egée. Ils disposent d’un mois pour faire leur demande. Ce délai peut être prolongé d’un mois supplémentaire pour atteindre le nombre requis de candidatures si celles-ci sont peu nombreuses, a expliqué le ministère des Migrations.

« Le gouvernement grec leur mène la vie dure »

À l’image de ces 134 Irakiens, les migrants des camps grecs sont de plus en plus nombreux à envisager, résignés, un retour au pays, observe Yonous Muhammadi, le directeur de l’association Greek forum of refugees qui oeuvre aux côtés de migrants. "Jeudi, je me suis rendu au camp de Ritsona [à une heure au nord d’Athènes, NDLR] et j’ai dû répondre à beaucoup de questions de la part des migrants qui voulaient savoir comment faire pour rentrer chez eux’’, raconte-t-il, évoquant des personnes venues d’Afghanistan, du Pakistan et de pays africains.

« Il est pourtant clair que la situation dans leurs pays d’origine ne sera certainement pas meilleure qu’ici et, même, pour certains, qu’ils y seront en danger, mais ces personnes sont en souffrance. Elles envisagent le départ car le gouvernement grec leur mène la vie dure », poursuit-il affirmant que l’immense majorité des migrants continuent à vouloir rester en Europe.

Outre les conditions de vie effroyables dans les camps des cinq îles de la mer Égée, où s’entassent plus de 25 000 demandeurs d’asile pour 6 000 places et où le confinement ne cesse d’être prolongé, Athènes a récemment annoncé l’expulsion de 11 000 réfugiés de leur logement. Résultat : des migrants n’ont d’autres choix que de dormir dans les parcs du centre-ville ou entassés dans des appartements.

’’Parfois, on trouve 30 ou 40 personnes dans un seul appartement. Les propriétaires peuvent leur prendre 10 euros par personnes et par jour. Et la police, que nous avons prévenue, s’en moque’’, dénonce Yonous Muhammadi qui pointe le cynisme de l’État. ’’Les autorités n’expulsent pas les migrants du pays mais elles rendent leur quotidien impossible. C’est une stratégie pour dissuader ceux qui prévoient de venir, même s’ils envisagent de toute façon cette option en dernier recours."
« Je connais beaucoup d’Irakiens sur les îles et aucun ne veut retourner en Irak »

Malgré les difficultés du quotidien, un retour au pays semble pour certains être une décision inimaginable. Ce programme européen laisse ainsi Karim, un père de famille irakien demandeur d’asile depuis deux ans, très dubitatif. « Si des personnes veulent rentrer dans leur pays, c’est uniquement parce que c’est très compliqué de vivre de manière digne quand on est demandeur d’asile en Grèce », confie-t-il à InfoMigrants.

De son côté, le choix est fait. « Rentrer, ça voudrait dire mourir », explique Karim, qui a été menacé dans son pays par des milices après avoir vendu de l’alcool dans son magasin de la ville de Bassora. « Je connais beaucoup d’Irakiens sur les îles grecques et aucun d’entre eux ne veut retourner en Irak. »

En parallèle du programme de l’Union européenne, des « retours volontaires » sont également mis en place sous l’égide de l’Organisation internationale pour les migrations en coordination avec les autorités locales. En juillet, un groupe de Pakistanais avait déjà quitté Athènes par avion. Sur place, le décollage avait été suivi d’un regard attentif par le ministre grec des Migrations.

►https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/26504/la-grece-debute-les-retours-volontaires-de-migrants-economiques

IOM, Government of Greece Assist 134 Iraqi Migrants with Voluntary Return

https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/press_release/media/img_9955.jpg?itok=aBs3fiom#.jpg

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Greece and the Hellenic authorities, in coordination with IOM Iraq and the diplomatic corps, organized the voluntary return of 134 Iraqi nationals who wished to return home. They left Athens Thursday (6/8) on a flight to Baghdad International Airport, where the first group of passengers disembarked. The flight then continued to Erbil International Airport.

This is the first large group of migrants to voluntarily return from Greece since the COVID-19 movement restrictions were imposed. Among them were 80 men, 16 women and 38 children.

“This initiative is an important step towards resuming operations amid COVID-19 and providing migrants with an option to return in safety and dignity,” said Gianluca Rocco, Chief of Mission for IOM Greece.

“COVID-19 has imposed restrictions on all of us but for certain categories of migrants it also has delayed their possibility to return home. This movement was a cooperation between the Iraqi authorities, the European Commission and the Greek Government to alleviate that situation.”

“Amid the lockdown, migrants staying in Greece continued to register for return assistance and take advantage of the special programme initiated by the Hellenic Authorities to assist with voluntary returns from the Greek islands,” he added.

The Iraqi nationals had been residing on the islands of Lesvos, Samos, Kos, Chios and Leros, as well as mainland Greece, for several months.

Prior to their departure, and in coordination with the Hellenic authorities, the migrants were accommodated in an IOM temporary facility in Attika and the Open Centre for migrants (OCAVRR) in Athens. Individual counselling sessions were conducted in their native languages to confirm their wishes to voluntary return. Following the protocols set by the Ministry of Health, all migrants also underwent health assessments and medical examinations, including COVID-19 tests, to confirm their fitness for travel.

“I am glad I am returning to my home country because I missed my wife and mother,” said Salih Ahmed from Baghdad.

On the day of departure, IOM Greece assisted the returnees with all airport procedures and one-time cash assistance was given to each of them as a contribution to their initial expenses upon arrival.

During the flight, all passengers were required to wear masks and gloves, and disinfectant gel was provided for use on surfaces and to keep hands clean. Upon arrival in both Baghdad and Erbil, temperature checks were conducted, while new sets of masks and gloves were provided.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, 432 migrants have voluntarily returned to 20 countries of origin via commercial flights, with IOM’s assistance. All necessary travel documents have been provided in collaboration with the relevant consular authorities.

Working in close cooperation with the Hellenic authorities, ΙΟΜ Greece has been implementing AVRR projects since 2010, assisting more than 50,000 migrants to voluntarily return to their countries of origin. The project “The implementation of assisted voluntary returns including reintegration measures and operation of Open Center in the Prefecture of Attica for applicants of voluntary return (AVRR/OCAVRR)” is co-funded 75% by European Funds (Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund) and 25% by Greek National Funds.

►https://www.iom.int/news/iom-government-greece-assist-134-iraqi-migrants-voluntary-return

Nouveau mot, en effet, ajouté à la discussion sur le #vocabulaire pour décrire #migrants et #réfugiés, là :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/414225

De plus en plus cyniquement inventifs : la discussion sur le #vocabulaire pour décrire #migrants et #réfugiés est là :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/414225

La discussion sur le vocabulaire pour décrire #migrants et #réfugiés est là :
►http://seenthis.net/messages/414225

Libye : que se passe-t-il dans le « #centre_d’investigations » de #Tripoli ?

La semaine dernière, environ 300 migrants interceptés en mer par les garde-côtes libyens ont été transférés dans le centre de #Sharah_Zawiya, au sud de la capitale libyenne. Ouvert depuis au moins un an – avec une fermeture de quelques mois fin 2019 – le lieu est depuis peu contrôlé par le #DCIM et accessible à l’Organisation internationale des migrations (#OIM).

#Centre_de_détention « caché », #centre_de_transit ou centre « d’investigations » ? Le centre de Sharah Zawiya, dans le sud de Tripoli, est l’objet d’interrogations pour nombre d’observateurs des questions migratoires en Libye.

Selon l’Organisation internationale des migrations (OIM), contactée par InfoMigrants, le lieu est supposé être un centre de transit : les migrants interceptés en mer sont envoyés dans cette structure afin d’y subir un interrogatoire avant leur transfert vers un centre de détention officiel.

« Théoriquement, ils [les migrants] ne restent pas plus de 48 heures à Sharah Zawiya », précise l’OIM.

« Je suis resté au moins trois mois dans ce centre »

Or plusieurs migrants, avec qui InfoMigrants est en contact et qui sont passés par ce centre, affirment avoir été enfermés plus que deux jours et disent n’avoir jamais été interrogés. « Je suis resté au moins trois mois là-bas l’été dernier, avant de réussir à m’en échapper », indique Ali, un Guinéen de 18 ans qui vit toujours en Libye. « Durant toute cette période, on ne m’a posé aucune question ».

Ce dernier explique qu’à leur arrivée, les gardiens dépouillent les migrants. « Ils prennent tout ce qu’on a, le plus souvent nos téléphones et de l’argent ». Ibrahim, un Guinéen de 17 ans qui a – lui aussi - réussi à s’échapper du centre ce week-end après avoir été intercepté en mer, raconte la même histoire. « Ils m’ont forcé à leur donner mon téléphone et les 100 euros que j’avais sur moi », soupire-t-il.

Ali assure également que les Libyens demandent une #rançon pour sortir du centre, avoisinant les 3 000 dinars libyens (environ 1 950 euros). « Un monsieur, un Africain, nous amenait des téléphones pour qu’on contacte nos familles et qu’on leur demande de l’argent. Un autre, un Arabe, récupérait la somme due ». Il détaille également les #coups portés sur les migrants « sans aucune raison » et le #rationnement_de_la_nourriture – « un morceau de pain pour trois personnes le matin, et un plat de pâtes pour six le soir ».

D’après des informations recueillies et vérifiées par InfoMigrants, le centre est ouvert depuis au moins un an et a fermé quelques mois fin 2019 avant de rouvrir la semaine dernière avec l’arrivée d’environ 300 migrants. Un changement de chefferie à la tête du centre serait à l’origine de cette fermeture temporaire.

Changement d’organisation ?

Ce changement de responsable a-t-il été accompagné d’un changement de fonctionnement ? Ali explique qu’il s’est enfui vers le mois d’octobre, après trois mois de détention, avec l’aide de l’ancienne équipe. « Les Libyens qui contrôlaient le centre nous ont dit de partir car un nouveau chef devait arriver. L’ancien et le nouveau responsable n’étaient d’ailleurs pas d’accord entre eux, à tel point que leurs équipes ont tirés les uns sur les autres pendant que nous prenions la fuite ».
L’OIM signale de son côté n’avoir reçu l’autorisation d’entrer dans le centre que depuis la semaine dernière. « Avant, le lieu était géré par le ministère de l’Intérieur, mais depuis quelques jours c’est le DCIM [le département de lutte contre la migration illégale, NDLR] qui a repris le contrôle », explique l’agence onusienne à InfoMigrants.

Ibrahim assure, lui, qu’aucune somme d’argent n’a été demandée par les gardiens pour quitter le centre. Les personnes interceptées en mer, mardi 18 février, ont en revanche été transférées samedi vers le centre de détention de #Zaouia, où une rançon de 2 000 dinars (environ 1 300 euros) leur a été réclamée pour pouvoir en sortir.
Ce genre de centre n’est pas une exception en Libye, prévient une source qui souhaite garder l’anonymat. « Il existe d’autres centres de ce type en Libye où on ne sait pas vraiment ce qu’il s’y passe. Et de toute façon, #centre_d’investigation, de transit ou de détention c’est pareil. Les migrants y sont toujours détenus de manière arbitraire pour une période indéfinie ».

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/22991/libye-que-se-passe-t-il-dans-le-centre-d-investigations-de-tripoli
#Zawiya #IOM #détention

#business #xenophobie_business

#cartographie_animée #cartographie #sémiologie #design_cartographique

ping @deka

Résumé en français par Jasmine Caye (@forumasile) :

Pour freiner la migration en provenance d’Afrique les dépenses européennes explosent

Maite Vermeulen est une journaliste hollandaise, cofondatrice du site d’information The Correspondent et spécialisée dans les questions migratoires. Avec deux autres journalistes, l’italien Giacomo Zandonini (Italie) et le nigérian Ajibola Amzat, elle a tenté de comprendre les raisons derrières la flambée des dépenses européennes sensées freiner la migration en provenance du continent africain.

Depuis le Nigéria, Maite Vermeulen s’est intéressée aux causes de la migration nigériane vers l’Europe et sur les milliards d’euros déversés dans les programmes humanitaires et sécuritaires dans ce pays. Selon elle, la politique sécuritaire européenne n’empêchera pas les personnes motivées de tenter leur chance pour rejoindre l’Europe. Elle constate que les fonds destinés à freiner la migration sont toujours attribués aux mêmes grandes organisations gouvernementales ou non-gouvernementales. Les financements européens échappent aussi aux évaluations d’impact permettant de mesurer les effets des aides sur le terrain.

Le travail de recherche des journalistes a duré six mois et se poursuit. Il est financé par Money Trail un projet qui soutient des journalistes africains, asiatiques et européens pour enquêter en réseau sur les flux financiers illicites et la corruption en Afrique, en Asie et en Europe.

Les Nigérians ne viennent pas en Europe pour obtenir l’asile

L’équipe a d’abord tenté d’élucider cette énigme : pourquoi tant de nigérians choisissent de migrer vers l’Europe alors qu’ils n’obtiennent quasiment jamais l’asile. Le Nigéria est un pays de plus de 190 millions d’habitants et l’économie la plus riche d’Afrique. Sa population représente le plus grand groupe de migrants africains qui arrivent en Europe de manière irrégulière. Sur les 180 000 migrants qui ont atteint les côtes italiennes en 2016, 21% étaient nigérians. Le Nigéria figure aussi régulièrement parmi les cinq premiers pays d’origine des demandeurs d’asile de l’Union européenne. Près de 60% des requérants nigérians proviennent de l’Etat d’Edo dont la capitale est Bénin City. Pourtant leurs chance d’obtenir un statut de protection sont minimes. En effet, seuls 9% des demandeurs d’asile nigérians reçoivent l’asile dans l’UE. Les 91% restants sont renvoyés chez eux ou disparaissent dans la nature.

Dans l’article Want to make sense of migration ? Ask the people who stayed behind, Maite Vermeulen explique que Bénin City a été construite grâce aux nigérians travaillant illégalement en Italie. Et les femmes sont peut-être bien à l’origine d’un immense trafic de prostituées. Elle nous explique ceci :

“Pour comprendre le présent, il faut revenir aux années 80. À cette époque, des entreprises italiennes étaient établies dans l’État d’Edo. Certains hommes d’affaires italiens ont épousé des femmes de Benin City, qui sont retournées en Italie avec leur conjoint. Ils ont commencé à exercer des activités commerciales, à commercialiser des textiles, de la dentelle et du cuir, de l’or et des bijoux. Ces femmes ont été les premières à faire venir d’autres femmes de leur famille en Italie – souvent légalement, car l’agriculture italienne avait cruellement besoin de travailleurs pour cueillir des tomates et des raisins. Mais lorsque, à la fin des années 80, la chute des prix du pétrole a plongé l’économie nigériane à l’arrêt, beaucoup de ces femmes d’affaires ont fait faillite. Les femmes travaillant dans l’agriculture ont également connu une période difficile : leur emploi est allé à des ouvriers d’Europe de l’Est. Ainsi, de nombreuses femmes Edo en Italie n’avaient qu’une seule alternative : la prostitution. Ce dernier recours s’est avéré être lucratif. En peu de temps, les femmes ont gagné plus que jamais auparavant. Elles sont donc retournées à Benin City dans les années 1990 avec beaucoup de devises européennes – avec plus d’argent, en fait, que beaucoup de gens de leur ville n’en avaient jamais vu. Elles ont construit des appartements pour gagner des revenus locatifs. Ces femmes étaient appelées « talos », ou mammas italiennes. Tout le monde les admirait. Les jeunes femmes les considéraient comme des modèles et voulaient également aller en Europe. Certains chercheurs appellent ce phénomène la « théorie de la causalité cumulative » : chaque migrant qui réussit entraîne plus de personnes de sa communauté à vouloir migrer. A cette époque, presque personne à Benin City ne savait d’où venait exactement l’argent. Les talos ont commencé à prêter de l’argent aux filles de leur famille afin qu’elles puissent également se rendre en Italie. Ce n’est que lorsque ces femmes sont arrivées qu’on leur a dit comment elles devaient rembourser le prêt. Certaines ont accepté, d’autres ont été forcées. Toutes gagnaient de l’argent. Dans les premières années, le secret des mammas italiennes était gardé au sein de la famille. Mais de plus en plus de femmes ont payé leurs dettes – à cette époque, cela prenait environ un an ou deux – et elles ont ensuite décidé d’aller chercher de l’argent elles-mêmes. En tant que « Mamas », elles ont commencé à recruter d’autres femmes dans leur ville natale. Puis, lentement, l’argent a commencé à manquer à Benin City : un grand nombre de leurs femmes travaillaient dans l’industrie du sexe en Italie.”

Aujourd’hui, l’Union européenne considère le Nigéria comme son plus important “partenaire migratoire”et depuis quelques années les euros s’y déversent à flots afin de financer des programmes des sécurisation des frontières, de création d’emploi, de lutte contre la traite d’être humains et des programmes de sensibilisation sur les dangers de la migration vers l’Europe.
Le “cartel migratoire” ou comment peu d’organisation monopolisent les projets sur le terrain

Dans un autre article intitulé A breakdown of Europe’s € 1.5 billion migration spending in Nigeria, les journalistes se demandent comment les fonds européens sont alloués au Nigéria. Encore une fois on parle ici des projets destinés à freiner la migration. En tout ce sont 770 millions d’euros investis dans ces “projets migration”. En plus, le Nigéria bénéficie d’autres fonds supplémentaires à travers les “projets régionaux” qui s’élèvent à 775 millions d’euros destinés principalement à coordonner et organiser les retours vers les pays d’origines. Mais contrairement aux engagements de l’Union européenne les fonds alloués aux projets en faveur de la migration légale sont très inférieurs aux promesses et représentent 0.09% des aides allouées au Nigéria.

A qui profitent ces fonds ? Au “cartel migratoire” constitué du Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (HCR), de l’Organisation internationale des migrations (OIM), de l’UNICEF, de l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIL), de l’Organisation internationale des Nations Unies contre la drogue et le crime (UNODC). Ces organisations récoltent près de 60% des fonds alloués par l’Union européenne aux “projets migration” au Nigéria et dans la région. Les ONG et les consultants privés récupèrent 13% du total des fonds alloués, soit 89 millions d’euros, le double de ce qu’elles reçoivent en Europe.
Les montants explosent, la transparence diminue

Où va vraiment l’argent et comment mesurer les effets réels sur les populations ciblées. Quels sont les impacts de ces projets ? Depuis 2015, l’Europe a augmenté ses dépenses allouées à la migration qui s’élèvent désormais à plusieurs milliards.

La plus grande partie de ces fonds est attribuée à l’Afrique. Dans l’article Europe spends billions stopping migration. Good luck figuring out where the money actually goes, Maite Vermeulen, Ajibola Amzat et Giacomo Zandonini expliquent que l’UE prévoit de doubler ces dépenses dans le budget 2021-2027 et quadrupler les dépenses sur le contrôle des frontières.

Des mois de recherche n’ont pas permis de comprendre comment étaient alloués les fonds pour la migration. Les sites internet sont flous et de nombreux bureaucrates européens se disent incapables concilier les dépenses car la transparence fait défaut. Difficile de comprendre l’allocation précise des fonds de l’Union européenne et celle des fonds des Etats européens. Le tout ressemble, selon les chercheurs, à un immense plat de spaghettis. Ils se posent une question importante : si eux n’y arrivent pas après des mois de recherche comment les députés européens pourraient s’y retrouver ? D’autres chercheurs et fonctionnaires européens qualifient les dépenses de migration de l’UE d’opaques. La consultation de nombreux sites internet, documents officiels, rapports annuels et budgets, et les nombreuses demandes d’accès à l’information auprès de plusieurs pays européens actifs au Nigéria ainsi que les demandes d’explications adressées à la Commission européenne n’ont pas permis d’arriver à une vision globale et précise des budgets attribués à la politique migratoire européenne. Selon Tineke Strik, député vert au parlement européen, ce manque de clarté a des conséquences importantes sur le processus démocratique, car sans vision globale précise, il n’y a pas vraiment de surveillance possible sur les dépenses réelles ni sur l’impact réel des programmes sur le terrain.

▻https://thecorrespondent.com/154/europe-spends-billions-stopping-migration-good-luck-figuring-out-where-the-money-actually-goes/102663569008-2e2c2159

Sur la Carte, il faut considérer Calais comme un mur et la France devrait donc être en vert.

La costruzione di muri: un business

Trent’anni dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino, l’Europa fa parlare di sé ancora una volta per i suoi muri di frontiera. Questa volta non è tanto l’ideologia che la divide, quanto la paura di rifugiati e migranti, alcune tra le persone più vulnerabili al mondo.

Riassunto del rapporto «The Business of Building Walls» [1]:

Chi ha ucciso il sogno di un’Europa più aperta? Cosa ha dato inizio a questa nuova era dei muri?
Ci sono evidentemente molte ragioni: il crescente spostamento di persone a causa di conflitti, repressione e impoverimento, l’ascesa di politiche securitarie sulla scia dell’11 settembre, l’insicurezza economica e sociale percepita in Europa dopo la crisi finanziaria del 2008, solo per nominarne alcune. Tuttavia, c’è un gruppo che ha di gran lunga da guadagnare da questo innalzamento di nuovi muri: le imprese che li costruiscono. La loro influenza nel dare forma ad un mondo di muri necessita di un esame più profondo.

Questo rapporto esplora il business della costruzione di muri, che è stato alimentato e ha beneficiato di un aumento considerevole della spesa pubblica dedicata alla sicurezza delle frontiere dall’Unione Europea (EU) e dai suoi Stati membri. Alcune imprese beneficiarie sono delle multinazionali che approfittano di un mercato globale per la sicurezza delle frontiere che si stima valere approssimativamente 17,5 miliardi di euro nel 2018, con una crescita annuale prevista almeno dell’8% nei prossimi anni.

È importante guardare sia oltre che dietro i muri e le barriere d’Europa, perché i reali ostacoli alla migrazione contemporanea non sono tanto le recinzioni, quanto la vasta gamma di tecnologie che vi è alla base, dai sistemi radar ai droni, dalle telecamere di sorveglianza ai sistemi biometrici di rilevamento delle impronte digitali. Allo stesso modo, alcuni tra i più pericolosi muri d’Europa non sono nemmeno fisici o sulla terraferma. Le navi, gli aerei e i droni usati per pattugliare il Mediterraneo hanno creato un muro marittimo e un cimitero per i migliaia di migranti e di rifugiati che non hanno un passaggio legale verso la salvezza o per esercitare il loro diritto di asilo.

Tutto ciò rende insignificanti le dichiarazioni della Commissione Europea secondo le quali essa non finanzierebbe i muri e le recinzioni. Il portavoce della Commissione, Alexander Winterstein, per esempio, nel rifiutare la richiesta dell’Ungheria di rimborsare la metà dei costi delle recinzioni costruite sul suo confine con la Croazia e la Serbia, ha affermato: “Noi sosteniamo le misure di gestione delle frontiere presso i confini esterni. Queste possono consistere in misure di sorveglianza o in equipaggiamento di controllo delle frontiere... . Ma le recinzioni, quelle non le finanziamo”. In altre parole, la Commissione è disposta a pagare per qualunque cosa che fortifichi un confine fintanto che ciò non sia visto come propriamente costruire dei muri.

Questo rapporto è il seguito di “Building Walls - Fear and securitizazion in the Euopean Union”, co-pubblicato nel 2018 con Centre Delàs e Stop Wapenhandel, che per primi hanno misurato e identificato i muri che attraversano l’Europa.

Questo nuovo rapporto si focalizza sulle imprese che hanno tratto profitto dai tre differenti tipi di muro in Europa:
– Le imprese di costruzione ingaggiate per costruire i muri fisici costruiti dagli Stati membri UE e dall’Area Schengen in collaborazione con le imprese esperte in sicurezza e tecnologia che provvedono le tecnologie, l’equipaggiamento e i servizi associati;
– le imprese di trasporto marittimo e di armamenti che forniscono le navi, gli aerei, gli elicotteri e i droni che costituiscono i muri marittimi dell’Europa per tentare di controllare i flussi migratori nel Mediterraneo, in particolare le operazioni di Frontex, l’operazione Sophia e l’operazione italiana Mare Nostrum;
– e le imprese specializzate in informatica e in sicurezza incaricate di sviluppare, eseguire, estendere e mantenere i sistemi dell’UE che controllano i movimento delle persone, quali SIS II (Schengen Information System) e EES (Entry/Exii Scheme), che costituiscono i muri virtuali dell’Europa.
Dei budget fiorenti

Il flusso di denaro dai contribuenti ai costruttori di muri è stato estremamente lucrativo e non cessa di aumentare. Il report rivela che dalla fine della guerra fredda, le imprese hanno raccolto i profitti di almeno 900 milioni di euro di spese dei paesi dell’UE per i muri fisici e per le recinzioni. Con i dati parziali (sia nella portata e che negli anni), i costi reali raggiungerebbero almeno 1 miliardo di euro. Inoltre, le imprese che forniscono la tecnologia e i servizi che accompagnano i muri hanno ugualmente beneficiato di un flusso costante di finanziamenti da parte dell’UE, in particolare i Fondi per le frontiere esterne (1,7 miliardi di euro, 2007-2013) e i Fondi per la sicurezza interna - Fondi per le Frontiere (2,76 miliardi di euro, 2014-2020).

Le spese dell’UE per i muri marittimi hanno raggiunto almeno 676,4 milioni di euro tra il 2006 e il 2017 (di cui 534 milioni sono stati spesi da Frontex, 28 milioni dall’UE nell’operazione Sophia e 114 milioni dall’Italia nell’operazione Mare Nostrum) e sarebbero molto superiori se si includessero tutte le operazioni delle guardie costiera nazionali nel Mediterraneo.

Questa esplosione dei budget per le frontiere ha le condizioni per proseguire. Nel quadro del suo budget per il prossimo ciclo di bilancio dell’Unione Europea (2021-2027), la Commissione europea ha attribuito 8,02 miliardi di euro al suo fondo di gestione integrata delle frontiere (2021-2027), 11,27 miliardi a Frontex (dei quali 2,2 miliardi saranno utilizzati per l’acquisizione, il mantenimento e l’utilizzo di mezzi aerei, marittimi e terrestri) e almeno 1,9 miliardi di euro di spese totali (2000-2027) alle sue banche dati di identificazione e a Eurosur (il sistemo europeo di sorveglianza delle frontiere).
I principali attori del settore degli armamenti

Tre giganti europei del settore della difesa e della sicurezza giocano un ruolo cruciale nei differenti tipi di frontiere d’Europa: Thales, Leonardo e Airbus.

– Thales è un’impresa francese specializzata negli armamenti e nella sicurezza, con una presenza significativa nei Paesi Bassi, che produce sistemi radar e sensori utilizzati da numerose navi della sicurezza frontaliera. I sistemi Thales, per esempio, sono stati utilizzati dalle navi olandesi e portoghesi impiegate nelle operazioni di Frontex.
Thales produce ugualmente sistemi di sorveglianza marittima per droni e lavora attualmente per sviluppare una infrastruttura di sorveglianza delle frontiere per Eurosus, che permetta di seguire e controllare i rifugiati prima che raggiungano l’Europa con l’aiuto di applicazioni per Smartphone, e studia ugualmente l’utilizzo di “High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites - HAPS” per la sicurezza delle frontiere, per l’Agenzia spaziale europea e Frontex. Thales fornisce attualmente il sistema di sicurezza del porto altamente militarizzato di Calais.
Con l’acquisto nel 2019 di Gemalto, multinazionale specializzata nella sicurezza e identità (biometrica), Thales diventa un attore importante nello sviluppo e nel mantenimento dei muri virtuali dell’UE. L’impresa ha partecipato a 27 progetti di ricerca dell’UE sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

– La società di armamenti italiana Leonardo (originariamente Finmeccanica o Leonardo-Finmeccanica) è uno dei principali fornitori di elicotteri per la sicurezza delle frontiere, utilizzati dalle operazioni Mare Nostrum, Hera e Sophia in Italia. Ha ugualmente fatto parte dei principali fornitori di UAV (o droni), ottenendo un contratto di 67,1 milioni di euro nel 2017 con l’EMSA (Agenzia europea per la sicurezza marittima) per fornire le agenzie di guardia costiera dell’UE.
Leonardo faceva ugualmente parte di un consorzio che si è visto attribuire un contratto di 142,1 milioni di euro nel 2019 per attuare e assicurare il mantenimento dei muri virtuali dell’UE, ossia il Sistema di entrata/uscita (EES). La società detiene, con Thales, Telespazio, che partecipa ai progetti di osservazione dai satelliti dell’UE (React e Copernicus) utilizzati per controllare le frontiere. Leonardo ha partecipato a 24 progetti di ricerca dell’UE sulla sicurezza e il controllo delle frontiere, tra cui lo sviluppo di Eurosur.

– Il gigante degli armamenti pan-europei Airbus è un importante fornitore di elicotteri utilizzati nella sorveglianza delle frontiere marittime e di alcune frontiere terrestri, impiegati da Belgio, Francia, Germania, Grecia, Italia, Lituania e Spagna, in particolare nelle operazioni marittime Sophia, Poseidon e Triton. Airbus e le sue filiali hanno partecipato almeno a 13 progetti di ricerca sulla sicurezza delle frontiere finanziati dall’UE, tra cui OCEAN2020, PERSEUS e LOBOS.

Il ruolo chiave di queste società di armamenti in realtà non è sorprendente. Come è stato dimostrato da “Border Wars” (2016), queste imprese, in quanto appartenenti a lobby come EOS (Organizzazione europea per la sicurezza) e ASD (Associazione delle industrie aerospaziali e della difesa in Europa), hanno ampiamente contribuito a influenzare l’orientamento della politica delle frontiere dell’UE. Paradossalmente, questi stessi marchi fanno ugualmente parte dei quattro più grandi venditori europei di armi al Medio Oriente e all’Africa del Nord, contribuendo così ad alimentare i conflitti all’origine di queste migrazioni forzate.

Allo stesso modo Indra gioca un ruolo non indifferente nel controllo delle frontiere in Spagna e nel Mediterraneo. L’impresa ha ottenuto una serie di contratti per fortificare Ceuta e Melilla (enclavi spagnole nel Nord del Marocco). Indra ha ugualmente sviluppato il sistema di controllo delle frontiere SIVE (con sistemi radar, di sensori e visivi) che è installato nella maggior parte delle frontiere della Spagna, così come in Portogallo e in Romania. Nel luglio 2018, Indra ha ottenuto un contratto di 10 milioni di euro per assicurare la gestione di SIVE su più siti per due anni. L’impresa è molto attiva nel fare lobby presso l’UE. È ugualmente una dei grandi beneficiari dei finanziamenti per la ricerca dell’UE, che assicurano il coordinamento del progetto PERSEUS per lo sviluppo di Eurosur e il Seahorse Network, la rete di scambio di informazioni tra le forze di polizia dei paesi mediterranei (in Europa e in Africa) per fermare le migrazioni.

Le società di armamenti israeliane hanno anch’esse ottenuto numerosi contratti nel quadro della sicurezza delle frontiere in UE. Nel 2018, Frontex ha selezionato il drone Heron delle Israel Aerospace Industries per i voli di sorveglianza degli esperimenti pilota nel Mediterraneo. Nel 2015, la società israeliana Elbit Systems ha venduto sei dei suoi droni Hermes al Corpo di guardie di frontiera svizzero, nel quadro di un contratto controverso di 230 milioni di euro. Ha anche firmato in seguito un contratto per droni con l’EMSA (Agenzia europea per la sicurezza marittima), in quanto subappaltatore della società portoghese CEIIA (2018), così come dei contratti per equipaggiare tre navi di pattugliamento per la Hellenic Coast Guard (2019).
Gli appaltatori dei muri fisici

La maggioranza di muri e recinzioni che sono stati rapidamente eretti attraverso l’Europa, sono stati costruiti da società di BTP nazionali/società nazionali di costruzioni, ma un’impresa europea ha dominato nel mercato: la European Security Fencing, un produttore spagnolo di filo spinato, in particolare di un filo a spirale chiamato “concertina”. È famosa per aver fornito i fili spinati delle recinzioni che circondano Ceuta e Melilla. L’impresa ha ugualmente dotato di fili spinati le frontiere tra l’Ungheria e la Serbia, e i suoi fili spinati “concertina” sono stati installati alle frontiere tra Bulgaria e Turchia e tra l’Austria e la Slovenia, così come a Calais e, per qualche giorno, alla frontiera tra Ungheria e Slovenia, prima di essere ritirati. Dato che essi detengono il monopolio sul mercato da un po’ di tempo a questa parte, è probabile che i fili spinati “concertina” siano stati utilizzati presso altre frontiere in Europa.

Tra le altre imprese che hanno fornito i muri e le tecnologie ad essi associate, si trova DAT-CON (Croazia, Cipro, Macedonia, Moldavia, Slovenia e Ucraina), Geo Alpinbau (Austria/Slovenia), Indra, Dragados, Ferrovial, Proyectos Y Tecnología Sallén e Eulen (Spagna/Marocco), Patstroy Bourgas, Infra Expert, Patengineeringstroy, Geostroy Engineering, Metallic-Ivan Mihaylov et Indra (Bulgaria/Turchia), Nordecon e Defendec (Estonia/Russia), DAK Acélszerkezeti Kft e SIA Ceļu būvniecības sabiedrība IGATE (Lettonia/Russia), Gintrėja (Lituania/Russi), Minis e Legi-SGS (Slovenia/Croazia), Groupe CW, Jackson’s Fencing, Sorhea, Vinci/Eurovia e Zaun Ltd (Francia/Regno Unito).

I costi reali dei muri e delle tecnologie associate superano spesso le stime originali. Numerose accuse e denunce per corruzione sono state allo stesso modo formulate, in certi casi perché i progetti erano stati attribuiti a delle imprese che appartenevano ad amici di alti funzionari. In Slovenia, per esempio, accuse di corruzione riguardanti un contratto per la costruzione di muri alle frontiere hanno portato a tre anni di battaglie legali per avere accesso ai documenti; la questione è passata poi alla Corte suprema.

Malgrado tutto ciò, il Fondo europeo per le frontiere esterne ha sostenuto finanziariamente le infrastrutture e i servizi tecnologici di numerose operazioni alle frontiere degli Stati membri. In Macedonia, per esempio, l’UE ha versato 9 milioni di euro per finanziare dei veicoli di pattugliamento, delle telecamere a visione notturna, dei rivelatori di battito cardiaco e sostegno tecnico alle guardie di frontiera nell’aiuto della gestione della sua frontiera meridionale.
Gli speculatori dei muri marittimi

I dati che permettono di determinare quali imbarcazioni, elicotteri e aerei sono utilizzati nelle operazioni marittime in Europa mancano di trasparenza. È dunque difficile recuperare tutte le informazioni. Le nostre ricerche mostrano comunque che tra le principali società implicate figurano i giganti europei degli armamenti Airbus e Leonardo, così come grandi imprese di costruzione navale come l’olandese Damen e l’italiana Fincantieri.

Le imbarcazioni di pattugliamento di Damen sono servite per delle operazioni frontaliere portate avanti da Albania, Belgio, Bulgaria, Portogallo, Paesi Bassi, Romania, Svezia e Regno Unito, così come per le vaste operazioni di Frontex (Poseidon, Triton e Themis), per l’operazione Sophia e hanno ugualmente sostento la NATO nell’operazione Poseidon.

Al di fuori dell’Europa, la Libia, il Marocco, la Tunisia e la Turchia utilizzano delle imbarcazioni Damen per la sicurezza delle frontiere, spesso in collaborazione con l’UE o i suoi Stati membri. Per esempio, le sei navi Damen che la Turchia ha comprato per la sua guardia costiera nel 2006, per un totale di 20 milioni di euro, sono state finanziate attraverso lo strumento europeo che contribuirebbe alla stabilità e alla pace (IcSP), destinato a mantenere la pace e a prevenire i conflitti.

La vendita di imbarcazioni Damen alla Libia mette in evidenza l’inquietante costo umano di questo commercio. Nel 2012, Damen ha fornito quattro imbarcazioni di pattugliamento alla guardia costiera libica, che sono state vendute come equipaggiamento civile col fine di evitare la licenza di esportazione di armi nei Paesi Bassi. I ricercatori hanno poi scoperto che non solo le imbarcazioni erano state vendute con dei punti di fissaggio per le armi, ma che erano state in seguito armate ed utilizzate per fermare le imbarcazioni di rifugiati. Numerosi incidenti che hanno implicato queste imbarcazioni sono stati segnalati, tra i quali l’annegamento di 20 o 30 rifugiati. Damen si è rifiutata di commentare, dichiarando di aver convenuto col governo libico di non divulgare alcuna informazione riguardante le imbarcazioni.

Numerosi costruttori navali nazionali, oltre a Damen, giocano un ruolo determinante nelle operizioni marittime poiché sono sistematicamente scelti con priorità dai paesi partecipanti a ogni operazione di Frontex o ad altre operazioni nel Mediterraneo. Tutte le imbarcazioni fornite dall’Italia all’operazione Sophia sono state costruite da Fincantieri e tutte quelle spagnole sono fornite da Navantia e dai suoi predecessori. Allo stesso modo, la Francia si rifornisce da DCN/DCNS, ormai Naval Group, e tutte le imbarcazioni tedesche sono state costruite da diversi cantieri navali tedeschi (Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, HDW, Lürssen Gruppe). Altre imprese hanno partecipato alle operazioni di Frontex, tra cui la società greca Motomarine Shipyards, che ha prodotto i pattugliatori rapidi Panther 57 utilizzati dalla guardia costiera greca, così come la Hellenic Shipyards e la Israel Shipyards.

La società austriaca Schiebel, che fornisce i droni S-100, gioca un ruolo importante nella sorveglianza aerea delle attività marittime. Nel novembre 2018, è stata selezionata dall’EMSA per un contratto di sorveglianza marittima di 24 milioni di euro riguardante differenti operazioni che includevano la sicurezza delle frontiere. Dal 2017, Schiebel ha ugualmente ottenuto dei contratti con la Croazia, la Danimarca, l’Islanda, l’Italia, il Portogallo e la Spagna. L’impresa ha un passato controverso: ha venduto dei droni a numerosi paesi in conflitto armato o governati da regimi repressivi come la Libia, il Myanmar, gli Emirati Arabi Uniti e lo Yemen.

La Finlandia e i Paesi Bassi hanno impiegato degli aerei Dornier rispettivamente nel quadro delle operazioni Hermès, Poseidon e Triton. Dornier appartiene ormai alla filiale americana della società di armamenti israeliana Elbit Systems.
CAE Aviation (Lussemburgo), DEA Aviation (Regno Unito) e EASP Air (Paesi Bassi) hanno tutte ottenuto dei contratti di sorveglianza aerea per Frontex.
Airbus, Dassault Aviation, Leonardo e l’americana Lockheed Martin hanno fornito il più grande numero di aerei utilizzati per l’operazione Sophia.

L’UE e i suoi Stati membri difendono le loro operazioni marittime pubblicizzando il loro ruolo nel salvataggio dei rifugiati in mare. Ma non è questo il loro obiettivo principale, come sottolinea il direttore di Frontex Fabrice Leggeri nell’aprile 2015, dichiarando che “le azioni volontarie di ricerca e salvataggio” non fanno parte del mandato affidato a Frontex, e che salvare delle vite non dovrebbe essere una priorità. La criminalizzazione delle operazioni di salvataggio da parte delle ONG, gli ostacoli che esse incontrano, così come la violenza e i respingimenti illegali dei rifugiati, spesso denunciati, illustrano bene il fatto che queste operazioni marittime sono volte soprattutto a costituire muri piuttosto che missioni umanitarie.
I muri virtuali

I principali contratti dell’UE legati ai muri virtuali sono stati affidati a due imprese, a volte in quanto leader di un consorzio.
Sopra Steria è il partner principale per lo sviluppo e il mantenimento del Sistema d’informazione dei visti (SIV), del Sistema di informazione Schengen (SIS II) e di Eurodac (European Dactyloscopy) e GMV ha firmato una serie di contratti per Eurosur. I sistemi che essi concepiscono permettono di controllare e di sorvegliare i movimenti delle persone attraverso l’Europa e, sempre più spesso, al di là delle sue frontiere.

Sopra Steria è un’impresa francese di servizi per consultazioni in tecnologia che ha, ad oggi, ottenuto dei contratti con l’UE per un valore totale di più di 150 milioni di euro. Nel quadro di alcuni di questi grossi contratti, Sopra Steria ha formato dei consorzi con HP Belgio, Bull e 3M Belgio.

Malgrado l’ampiezza di questi mercati, Sopra Steria ha ricevuto importanti critiche per la sua mancanza di rigore nel rispetto delle tempistiche e dei budget. Il lancio di SIS II è stato costantemente ritardato, costringendo la Commissione a prolungare i contratti e ad aumentare i budget. Sopra Steria aveva ugualmente fatto parte di un altro consorzio, Trusted Borders, impegnato nello sviluppo del programma e-Borders nel Regno Unito. Quest’ultimo è terminato nel 2010 dopo un accumulo di ritardi e di mancate consegne. Tuttavia, la società ha continuato a ottenere contratti, a causa del suo quasi monopolio di conoscenze e di relazioni con i rappresentanti dell’UE. Il ruolo centrale di Sopra Steria nello sviluppo dei sistemi biometrici dell’UE ha ugualmente portato alla firma di altri contratti nazionali con, tra gli altri, il Belgio, la Bulgaria, la Repubblica ceca, la Finlandia, la Francia, la Germania, la Romania e la Slovenia.

GMV, un’impresa tecnologica spagnola, ha concluso una serie di grossi contratti per Eurosur, dopo la sua fase sperimentale nel 2010, per almeno 25 milioni di euro. Essa rifornisce ugualmente di tecnologie la Guardia Civil spagnola, tecnologie quali, ad esempio, i centri di controllo del suo Sistema integrato di sorveglianza esterna (SIVE), sistema di sicurezza delle frontiere, così come rifornisce di servizi di sviluppo logistico Frontex. L’impresa ha partecipato ad almeno dieci progetti di ricerca finanziati dall’UE sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

La maggior parte dei grossi contratti riguardanti i muri virtuali che non sono stati conclusi con consorzi di cui facesse parte Sopra Steria, sono stati attribuiti da eu-LISA (l’Agenzia europea per la gestione operazionale dei sistemi di informazione su vasta scale in seno allo spazio di libertà, di sicurezza e di giustizia) a dei consorzi di imprese specializzate nell’informazione e nelle nuove tecnologie, tra questi: Accenture, Atos Belgium e Morpho (rinominato Idemia).
Lobby

Come testimonia il nostro report “Border Wars”, il settore della difesa e della sicurezza, grazie ad una lobbying efficace, ha un’influenza considerabile nell’elaborazione delle politiche di difesa e di sicurezza dell’UE. Le imprese di questo settore industriale sono riuscite a posizionarsi come esperti della sicurezza delle frontiere, portando avanti il loro discorso secondo il quale la migrazione è prima di tutto una minaccia per la sicurezza che deve essere combattuta tramite mezzi militari e securitari. Questo crea così una domanda continua del catalogo sempre più fornito di equipaggiamenti e servizi che esse forniscono per la sicurezza e il controllo delle frontiere.

Un numero alto di imprese che abbiamo nominato, in particolare le grandi società di armamenti, fanno parte dell’EOS (Organizzazione europea per la sicurezza), il più importante gruppo di pressione sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

Molte imprese informatiche che hanno concepito i muri virtuali dell’UE sono membri dell’EAB (Associazione Europea per la Biometria). L’EOS ha un “Gruppo di lavoro sulla sicurezza integrata delle frontiere” per “permettere lo sviluppo e l’adozione delle migliori soluzioni tecnologiche per la sicurezza delle frontiere sia ai checkpoint che lungo le frontiere marittime e terrestri”.
Il gruppo di lavoro è presieduto da Giorgio Gulienetti, della società di armi italiana Leonardo, Isto Mattila (diplomato all’università di scienze applicate) e Peter Smallridge di Gemalto, multinazionale specializzata nella sicurezza numerica, recentemente acquisita da Thales.

I lobbisti di imprese e i rappresentanti di questi gruppi di pressione incontrano regolarmente le istituzioni dell’UE, tra cui la Commissione europea, nel quadro di comitati di consiglio ufficiali, pubblicano proposte influenti, organizzano incontri tra il settore industriale, i policy-makers e i dirigenti e si ritrovano allo stesso modo in tutti i saloni, le conferenze e i seminari sulla difesa e la sicurezza.

Airbus, Leonardo e Thales e l’EOS hanno anche assistito a 226 riunioni ufficiali di lobby con la Commissione europea tra il 2014 e il 2019. In queste riunioni, i rappresentanti del settore si presentano come esperti della sicurezza delle frontiere, e propongono i loro prodotti e servizi come soluzione alle “minacce alla sicurezza” costituite dall’immigrazione. Nel 2017, queste stesse imprese e l’EOS hanno speso fino a 2,56 milioni di euro in lobbying.

Si constata una relazione simile per quanto riguarda i muri virtuali: il Centro comune della ricerca della Commissione europea domanda apertamente che le politiche pubbliche favoriscano “l’emergenza di una industria biometrica europea dinamica”.
Un business mortale, una scelta

La conclusione di questa inchiesta sul business dell’innalzamento di muri è chiara: la presenza di un’Europa piena di muri si rivela molto fruttuosa per una larga fetta di imprese del settore degli armamenti, della difesa, dell’informatica, del trasporto marittimo e delle imprese di costruzioni. I budget che l’UE ha pianificato per la sicurezza delle frontiere nei prossimi dieci anni mostrano che si tratta di un commercio che continua a prosperare.

Si tratta altresì di un commercio mortale. A causa della vasta militarizzazione delle frontiere dell’Europa sulla terraferma e in mare, i rifugiati e i migranti intraprendono dei percorsi molto più pericolosi e alcuni si trovano anche intrappolati in terribili condizioni in paesi limitrofi come la Libia. Non vengono registrate tutte le morti, ma quelle che sono registrate nel Mediterraneo mostrano che il numero di migranti che annegano provando a raggiungere l’Europa continua ad aumentare ogni anno.

Questo stato di cose non è inevitabile. È il risultato sia di decisioni politiche prese dall’UE e dai suoi Stati membri, sia dalle decisioni delle imprese di trarre profitto da queste politiche. Sono rare le imprese che prendono posizione, come il produttore tedesco di filo spinato Mutinox che ha dichiarato nel 2015 che non avrebbe venduto i suoi prodotti al governo ungherese per il seguente motivo: “I fili spinati sono concepiti per impedire atti criminali, come il furto. Dei rifugiati, bambini e adulti, non sono dei criminali”.

È tempo che altri politici e capi d’impresa riconoscano questa stessa verità: erigere muri contro le popolazioni più vulnerabili viola i diritti umani e costituisce un atto immorale che sarà evidentemente condannato dalla storia.

Trent’anni dopo la caduta del muro di Berlino, è tempo che l’Europa abbatta i suoi nuovi muri.

▻https://www.meltingpot.org/La-costruzione-di-muri-un-business.html

How the arms industry drives Fortress Europe’s expansion

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In recent years, rising calls for deterrence have intensified the physical violence migrants face at the EU border. The externalization of the border through deals with sending and transit countries signals the expansion of this securitization process. Financial gains by international arms firms in this militarization trend form an obstacle for policy change.

In March, April, and May of this year, multiple European countries deployed military forces to their national borders. This was done to assist with controls and patrols in the wake of border closures and other movement restrictions due to the Covid-19 crisis. Poland deployed 1,460 soldiers to the border to support the Border Guard and police as part of a larger military operation in reaction to Covid-19. And the Portuguese police used military drones as a complement to their land border checks. According to overviews from NATO, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands (military police), Slovakia, and Slovenia all stationed armed forces at their national borders.

While some of these deployments have been or will be rolled back as the Corona crisis dies down, they are not exceptional developments. Rather, using armed forces for border security and control has been a common occurrence at EU external borders since the so-called refugee crisis of 2015. They are part of the continuing militarisation of European border and migration policies, which is known to put refugees at risk but is increasingly being expanded to third party countries. Successful lobbying from the military and security industry has been an important driver for these policies, from which large European arms companies have benefited.

The militarization of borders happens when EU member states send armies to border regions, as they did in Operation Sophia off the Libyan coast. This was the first outright EU military mission to stop migration. But border militarization also includes the use of military equipment for migration control, such as helicopters and patrol vessels, as well as the the EU-wide surveillance system Eurosur, which connects surveillance data from all individual member states. Furthermore, EU countries now have over 1,000 kilometers of walls and fences on their borders. These are rigged with surveillance, monitoring, and detection technologies, and accompanied by an increasing use of drones and other autonomous systems. The EU also funds a constant stream of Research & Technology (R&T) projects to develop new technologies and services to monitor and manage migration.

This process has been going on for decades. The Schengen Agreement of 1985, and the subsequent creation of the Schengen Area, which coupled the opening of the internal EU borders with robust control at the external borders, can be seen as a starting point for these developments. After 2011, when the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ led to fears of mass migration to Europe, and especially since the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the EU accelerated the boosting and militarising of border security, enormously. Since then, stopping migration has been at the top of the EU agenda.

An increasingly important part of the process of border militarization isn’t happening at the European borders, but far beyond them. The EU and its member states are incentivizing third party countries to help stop migrants long before they reach Europe. This externalising of borders has taken many forms, from expanding the goals of EUCAP missions in Mali and Niger to include the prevention of irregular migration, to funding and training the Libyan Coast Guard to return refugees back to torture and starvation in the infamous detention centers in Libya. It also includes the donation of border security equipment, for example from Germany to Tunisia, and funding for purchases, such as Turkey’s acquisition of coast guard vessels to strengthen its operational capacities.

Next to the direct consequences of European border externalisation efforts, these policies cause and worsen problems in the third party countries concerned: diverting development funds and priorities, ruining migration-based economies, and strengthening authoritarian regimes such as those in Chad, Belarus, Eritrea, and Sudan by providing funding, training and equipment to their military and security forces. Precisely these state organs are most responsible for repression and abuses of human rights. All this feeds drivers of migration, including violence, repression, and unemployment. As such, it is almost a guarantee for more refugees in the future.

EU border security agency Frontex has also extended its operations into non-EU-countries. Ongoing negotiations and conclusions of agreements with Balkan countries resulted in the first operation in Albania having started in May 2019. And this is only a small part of Frontex’ expanding role in recent years. In response to the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the European Commission launched a series of proposals that saw large increases in the powers of the agency, including giving member states binding advice to boost their border security, and giving Frontex the right to intervene in member states’ affairs (even without their consent) by decision of the Commission or Council.

These proposals also included the creation of a 10,000 person strong standing corps of border guards and a budget to buy or lease its own equipment. Concretely, Frontex started with a budget of €6 million in 2005, which grew to €143 million in 2015. This was then quickly increased again from €239 million in 2016 to €460 million in 2020. The enormous expansion of EU border security and control has been accompanied by rapidly increasing budgets in general. In recent years, billions of euros have been spent on fortifying borders, setting up biometric databases, increasing surveillance capacities, and paying non-EU-countries to play their parts in this expansion process.

Negotiations about the next seven-year-budget for the EU, the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027, are still ongoing. In the European Commission’s latest proposal, which is clearly positioned as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the fund for strengthening member states’ border security, the Integrated Border Management Fund, has been allotted €12.5 billion. Its predecessors, the External Borders Fund (2007-2013) and the Internal Security Fund – Borders (2014-2020), had much smaller budgets: €1.76 billion and €2.70 billion, respectively. For Frontex, €7.5 billion is reserved, with €2.2 billion earmarked for purchasing or leasing equipment such as helicopters, drones, and patrol vessels. These huge budget increases are exemplary of the priority the EU attaches to stopping migration.

The narrative underlying these policies and budget growths is the perception of migration as a threat; a security problem. As researcher, Ainhoa Ruiz (Centre Delàs) writes, “the securitisation process also includes militarisation,” because “the prevailing paradigm for providing security is based on military principles: the use of force and coercion, more weapons equating to more security, and the achievement of security by eliminating threats.”

This narrative hasn’t come out of the blue. It is pushed by right wing politicians and often followed by centrist and leftist parties afraid of losing voters. Importantly, it is also promoted by an extensive and successful industrial lobby. According to Martin Lemberg-Pedersen (Assistant Professor in Global Refugee Studies, Aalborg University), arms companies “establish themselves as experts on border security, and use this position to frame immigration to Europe as leading to evermore security threats in need of evermore advanced [security] products.” The narrative of migration as a security problem thus sets the stage for militaries, and the security companies behind the commercial arms lobby, to offer their goods and services as the solution. The range of militarization policies mentioned so far reflects the broad adoption of this narrative.

The lobby organizations of large European military and security companies regularly interact with the European Commission and EU border agencies. They have meetings, organise roundtables, and see each other at military and security fairs and conferences. Industry representatives also take part in official advisory groups, are invited to present new arms and technologies, and write policy proposals. These proposals can sometimes be so influential that they are adopted as policy, almost unamended.

This happened, for instance, when the the Commission decided to open up the Instrument contributing to Security and Peace, a fund meant for peace-building and conflict prevention. The fund’s terms were expanded to cover provision of third party countries with non-lethal security equipment, for example, for border security purposes. The new policy document for this turned out to be a step-by-step reproduction of an earlier proposal from lobby organisation, Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). Yet, perhaps the most far-reaching success of this kind is the expansion of Frontex, itself, into a European Border Guard. Years before it actually happened, the industry had already been pushing for this outcome.

The same companies that are at the forefront of the border security and control lobby are, not surprisingly, also the big winners of EU and member states’ contracts in these areas. These include three of the largest European (and global) arms companies, namely, Airbus (Paneuropean), Leonardo (Italy) and Thales (France). These companies are active in many aspects of the border security and control market. Airbus’ and Leonardo’s main product in this field are helicopters, with EU funds paying for many purchases by EU and third countries. Thales provides radar, for example, for border patrol vessels, and is heavily involved in biometric and digital identification, especially after having acquired market leader, Gemalto, last year.

These three companies are the main beneficiaries of the European anti-migration obsession. At the same time, these very three companies also contribute to new migration streams to Europe’s shores through their trade in arms. They are responsible for significant parts of Europe’s arms exports to countries at war, and they provide the arms used by parties in internal armed conflicts, by human rights violators, and by repressive regimes. These are the forces fueling the reasons for which people are forced to flee in the first place.

Many other military and security companies also earn up to hundreds of millions of euros from large border security and control projects oriented around logistics and transport. Dutch shipbuilder Damen provided not only many southern European countries with border patrol vessels, but also controversially sold those to Libya and Turkey, among others. Its ships have also been used in Frontex operations, in Operation Sophia, and on the Channel between Calais and Dover.

The Spanish company, European Security Fencing, provided razor wire for the fences around the Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, in Morocco, as well as the fence at Calais and the fences on the borders of Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Frontex, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), and Greece leased border surveillance drones from Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). These are Israeli military companies that routinely promote their products as ‘combat-proven’ or ‘battlefield tested’ against Palestinians.

Civipol, a French public-private company owned by the state, and several large arms producers (including Thales, Airbus, and Safran), run a string of EU-/member state-funded border security projects in third party countries. This includes setting up fingerprint databases of the whole populations of Mali and Senegal, which facilitates identification and deportation of their nationals from Europe. These are just a few examples of the companies that benefit from the billions of euros that the EU and its member states spend on a broad range of purchases and projects in their bid to stop migration.

The numbers of forcibly displaced people in the world grew to a staggering 79.5 million by the end of last year. Instead of helping to eliminate the root causes of migration, EU border and migration policies, as well as its arms exports to the rest of the world, are bound to lead to more refugees in the future. The consequences of these policies have already been devastating. As experts in the field of migration have repeatedly warned, the militarisation of borders primarily pushes migrants to take alternative migration routes that are often more dangerous and involve the risks of relying on criminal smuggling networks. The Mediterranean Sea has become a sad witness of this, turning into a graveyard for a growing percentage of refugees trying to cross it.

The EU approach to border security doesn’t stand on its own. Many other countries, in particular Western ones and those with authoritarian leaders, follow the same narrative and policies. Governments all over the world, but particularly those in the US, Australia, and Europe, continue to spend billions of euros on border security and control equipment and services. And they plan to increase budgets even more in the coming years. For military and security companies, this is good news; the global border security market is expected to grow by over 7% annually for the next five years to a total of $65 billion in 2025. It looks like they will belong to the very few winners of increasingly restrictive policies targeting vulnerable people on the run.

▻https://crisismag.net/2020/06/27/how-the-arms-industry-drives-fortress-europes-expansion
#industrie_militaire #covid-19 #coronavirus #frontières_extérieures #Operation_Sophia #Eurosur #surveillance #drones #technologie #EUCAP #externalisation #Albanie #budget #Integrated_Border_Management_Fund #menace #lobby_industriel #Instrument_contributing_to_Security_and_Peace #conflits #paix #prévention_de_conflits #Aerospace_and_Defence_Industries_Association_of_Europe (#ASD) #Airbus #Leonardo #Thales #hélicoptères #radar #biométrie #identification_digitale #Gemalto #commerce_d'armes #armement #Damen #European_Security_Fencing #barbelé #European_Maritime_Safety_Agency (#EMSA) #Elbit #Israel_Aerospace_Industries (#IAI) #Civipol #Safran #base_de_données

–—

Pour @etraces :

Civipol, a French public-private company owned by the state, and several large arms producers (including Thales, Airbus, and Safran), run a string of EU-/member state-funded border security projects in third party countries. This includes setting up fingerprint databases of the whole populations of Mali and Senegal, which facilitates identification and deportation of their nationals from Europe

GUARDING THE FORTRESS. The role of Frontex in the militarisation and securitisation of migration flows in the European Union

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The report focuses on 19 Frontex operations run by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (hereafter Frontex) to explore how the agency is militarising borders and criminalising migrants, undermining fundamental rights to freedom of movement and the right to asylum.

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This report is set in a wider context in which more than 70.8 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced, according to the 2018 figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (UNHCR, 2019). Some of these have reached the borders of the European Union (EU), seeking protection and asylum, but instead have encountered policy responses that mostly aim to halt and intercept migration flows, against the background of securitisation policies in which the governments of EU Member States see migration as a threat. One of the responses to address migration flows is the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (hereafter Frontex), established in 2004 as the EU body in charge of guarding what many have called ‘Fortress Europe’, and whose practices have helped to consolidate the criminalisation of migrants and the securitisation of their movements.

The report focuses on analysing the tools deployed by Fortress Europe, in this case through Frontex, to prevent the freedom of movement and the right to asylum, from its creation in 2004 to the present day.

The sources used to write this report were from the EU and Frontex, based on its budgets and annual reports. The analysis focused on the Frontex regulations, the language used and its meaning, as well as the budgetary trends, identifying the most significant items – namely, the joint operations and migrant-return operations.

A table was compiled of all the joint operations mentioned in the annual reports since the Agency was established in 2005 up to 2018 (see annexes). The joint operations were found on government websites but were not mentioned in the Frontex annual reports. Of these operations, we analysed those of the longest duration, or that have showed recent signs of becoming long-term operations. The joint operations are analysed in terms of their objectives, area of action, the mandates of the personnel deployed, and their most noteworthy characteristics.

Basically, the research sought to answer the following questions: What policies are being implemented in border areas and in what context? How does Frontex act in response to migration movements? A second objective was to analyse how Frontex securitises the movement of refugees and other migrants, with the aim of contributing to the analysis of the process of border militarisation and the security policies applied to non-EU migrants by the EU and its Member States.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/guarding-the-fortress

Pour télécharger le rapport_
▻https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/informe40_eng_ok.pdf

#rapport #TNI #Transnational_institute

voir aussi :
Asylum Outsourced : McKinsey’s Secret Role in Europe’s Refugee Crisis
►https://seenthis.net/messages/862826

#Frontex aircraft : Below the radar against international law

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For three years, Frontex has been chartering small aircraft for the surveillance of the EU’s external borders. First Italy was thus supported, then Croatia followed. Frontex keeps the planes details secret, and the companies also switch off the transponders for position display during operations.

The European Commission does not want to make public which private surveillance planes Frontex uses in the Mediterranean. In the non-public answer to a parliamentary question, the EU border agency writes that the information on the aircraft is „commercially confidential“ as it contains „personal data and sensitive operational information“.

Frontex offers EU member states the option of monitoring their external borders using aircraft. For this „Frontex Aerial Surveillance Service“ (FASS), Frontex charters twin-engined airplanes from European companies. Italy first made use of the service in 2017, followed a year later by Croatia. In 2018, Frontex carried out at least 1,800 flight hours under the FASS, no figures are yet available for 2019.

Air service to be supplemented with #drones

The FASS flights are carried out under the umbrella of „Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance“, which includes satellite surveillance as well as drones. Before the end of this year, the border agency plans to station large drones in the Mediterranean for up to four years. The situation pictures of the European Union’s „pre-frontier area“ are fed into the surveillance system EUROSUR, whose headquarter is located at Frontex in Warsaw. The national EUROSUR contact points, for example in Spain, Portugal and Italy, also receive this information.

In addition to private charter planes, Frontex also uses aircraft and helicopters provided by EU Member States, in the central Mediterranean via the „Themis“ mission. The EU Commission also keeps the call signs of the state aircraft operating there secret. They would be considered „sensitive operational information“ and could not be disclosed to MEPs.

Previously, the FOIA platform „Frag den Staat“ („Ask the State“) had also tried to find out details about the sea and air capacities of the member states in „Themis“. Frontex refused to provide any information on this matter. „Frag den Staat“ lost a case against Frontex before the European Court of Justice and is now to pay 23,700 Euros to the agency for legal fees.

Real-time tracking with FlightAware

The confidentiality of Frontex comes as a surprise, because companies that monitor the Mediterranean for the agency are known through a tender. Frontex has signed framework contracts with the Spanish arms group Indra as well as the charter companies CAE Aviation (Canada), Diamond-Executive Aviation (Great Britain) and EASP Air (Netherlands). Frontex is spending up to 14.5 million euros each on the contracts.

Finally, online service providers such as FlightAware can also be used to draw conclusions about which private and state airplanes are flying for Frontex in the Mediterranean. For real-time positioning, the providers use data from ADS-B transponders, which all larger aircraft must have installed. A worldwide community of non-commercial trackers receives this geodata and feeds it into the Internet. In this way, for example, Italian journalist Sergio Scandura documents practically all movements of Frontex aerial assets in the central Mediterranean.

Among the aircraft tracked this way are the twin-engined „DA-42“, „DA-62“ and „Beech 350“ of Diamond-Executive Aviation, which patrol the Mediterranean Sea on behalf of Frontex as „Osprey1“, „Osprey3“ and „Tasty“, in former times also „Osprey2“ and „Eagle1“. They are all operated by Diamond-Executive Aviation and take off and land at airports in Malta and Sicily.

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„Push-backs“ become „pull-backs“

In accordance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees, the EU Border Agency may not return people to states where they are at risk of torture or other serious human rights violations. Libya is not a safe haven; this assessment has been reiterated on several occasions by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, among others.

Because these „push-backs“ are prohibited, Frontex has since 2017 been helping with so-called „pull-backs“ by bringing refugees back to Libya by the Libyan coast guard rather than by EU units. With the „Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance“, Frontex is de facto conducting air reconnaissance for Libya. By November 2019, the EU border agency had notified Libyan authorities about refugee boats on the high seas in at least 42 cases.

Many international law experts consider this practice illegal. Since Libya would not be able to track down the refugees without the help of Frontex, the agency must take responsibility for the refoulements. The lawyers Omer Shatz and Juan Branco therefore want to sue responsibles of the European Union before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Frontex watches refugees drown

This is probably the reason why Frontex disguises the exact location of its air surveillance. Private maritime rescue organisations have repeatedly pointed out that Frontex aircrafts occasionally switch off their transponders so that they cannot be tracked via ADS-B. In the answer now available, this is confirmed by the EU Commission. According to this, the visibility of the aircraft would disclose „sensitive operational information“ and, in combination with other kinds of information, „undermine“ the operational objectives.

The German Ministry of the Interior had already made similar comments on the Federal Police’s assets in Frontex missions, according to which „general tracking“ of their routes in real time would „endanger the success of the mission“.

However, Frontex claims it did not issue instructions to online service providers to block the real-time position display of its planes, as journalist Scandura described. Nonetheless, the existing concealment of the operations only allows the conclusion that Frontex does not want to be controlled when the deployed aircraft watch refugees drown and Italy and Malta, as neighbouring EU member states, do not provide any assistance.

▻https://digit.site36.net/2020/06/11/frontex-aircraft-blind-flight-against-international-law
#avions #Italie #Croatie #confidentialité #transparence #Frontex_Aerial_Surveillance_Service (#FASS) #Multipurpose_Aerial_Surveillance #satellites #Méditerranée #Thermis #information_sensible #Indra #CAE_Aviation #Diamond-Executive_Aviation #EASP_Air #FlightAware #ADS-B #DA-42 #DA-62 #Beech_350 #Osprey1 #Osprey3 #Tasty #Osprey2 #Eagle1 #Malte #Sicile #pull-back #push-back #refoulement #Sergio_Scandura

Walls Must Fall: Ending the deadly politics of border militarisation - webinar recording
This webinar explored the trajectory and globalization of border militarization and anti-migrant racism across the world, the history, ideologies and actors that have shaped it, the pillars and policies that underpin the border industrial complex, the resistance of migrants, refugees and activists, and the shifting dynamics within this pandemic.

- #Harsha_Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013)
- #Jille_Belisario, Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe (TMP-E)
- #Todd_Miller, author of Empire of Borders (2020), Storming the Wall (2019) and TNI’s report More than A Wall (2019)
- #Kavita_Krishnan, All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA).
▻https://www.tni.org/en/article/walls-must-fall
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8B-cJ2bTi8&feature=emb_logo

#conférence #webinar

Le business meurtrier des frontières

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Le 21ème siècle sera-t-il celui des barrières ? Probable, au rythme où les frontières nationales se renforcent. Dans un livre riche et documenté, publié aux éditions Syllepse, le géographe Stéphane Rosière dresse un indispensable état des lieux.

Une nuit du mois de juin, dans un centre de rétention de l’île de Rhodes, la police grecque vient chercher une vingtaine de migrant·e·s, dont deux bébés. Après un trajet en bus, elle abandonne le groupe dans un canot de sauvetage sans moteur, au milieu des eaux territoriales turques. En août, le New York Times publie une enquête révélant que cette pratique, avec la combinaison de l’arrivée aux affaires du premier ministre conservateur Kyriakos Mitsotakis et de la diffusion de la pandémie de Covid-19, est devenue courante depuis mars.

Illégales au regard du droit international, ces expulsions illustrent surtout le durcissement constant de la politique migratoire de l’Europe depuis 20 ans. Elles témoignent aussi d’un processus mondial de « pixellisation » des frontières : celles-ci ne se réduisent pas à des lignes mais à un ensemble de points plus ou moins en amont ou en aval (ports, aéroports, eaux territoriales…), où opèrent les polices frontalières.
La fin de la fin des frontières

Plus largement, le récent ouvrage de Stéphane Rosière, Frontières de fer, le cloisonnement du monde, permet de prendre la mesure d’un processus en cours de « rebordering » à travers le monde. À la fois synthèse des recherches récentes sur les frontières et résultats des travaux de l’auteur sur la résurgence de barrières frontalières, le livre est une lecture incontournable sur l’évolution contemporaine des frontières nationales.

D’autant qu’il n’y a pas si longtemps, la mondialisation semblait promettre l’affaissement des frontières, dans la foulée de la disparition de l’Union soviétique et, corollairement, de la généralisation de l’économie de marché. La Guerre froide terminée annonçait la « fin de l’histoire » et, avec elle, la disparition des limites territoriales héritées de l’époque moderne. Au point de ringardiser, rappelle Stéphane Rosière, les études sur les frontières au sein de la géographie des années 1990, parallèlement au succès d’une valorisation tous azimuts de la mobilité dans le discours politique dominant comme dans les sciences sociales.

Trente ans après, le monde se réveille avec 25 000 kilomètres de barrières frontalières – record pour l’Inde, avec plus de 3 000 kilomètres de clôtures pour prévenir l’immigration depuis le Bangladesh. Barbelés, murs de briques, caméras, détecteurs de mouvements, grilles électrifiées, les dispositifs de contrôle frontalier fleurissent en continu sur les cinq continents.
L’âge des « murs anti-pauvres »

La contradiction n’est qu’apparente. Les barrières du 21e siècle ne ferment pas les frontières mais les cloisonnent – d’où le titre du livre. C’est-à-dire que l’objectif n’est pas de supprimer les flux mondialisés – de personnes et encore moins de marchandises ni de capitaux – mais de les contrôler. Les « teichopolitiques », terme qui recouvre, pour Stéphane Rosière, les politiques de cloisonnement de l’espace, matérialisent un « ordre mondial asymétrique et coercitif », dans lequel on valorise la mobilité des plus riches tout en assignant les populations pauvres à résidence.

De fait, on observe que les barrières frontalières redoublent des discontinuités économiques majeures. Derrière l’argument de la sécurité, elles visent à contenir les mouvements migratoires des régions les plus pauvres vers des pays mieux lotis économiquement : du Mexique vers les États-Unis, bien sûr, ou de l’Afrique vers l’Europe, mais aussi de l’Irak vers l’Arabie Saoudite ou du Pakistan vers l’Iran.

Les dispositifs de contrôle frontalier sont des outils parmi d’autres d’une « implacable hiérarchisation » des individus en fonction de leur nationalité. Comme l’a montré le géographe Matthew Sparke à propos de la politique migratoire nord-américaine, la population mondiale se trouve divisée entre une classe hypermobile de citoyen·ne·s « business-class » et une masse entravée de citoyen·ne·s « low-cost ». C’est le sens du « passport index » publié chaque année par le cabinet Henley : alors qu’un passeport japonais ou allemand donne accès à plus de 150 pays, ce chiffre descend en-dessous de 30 avec un passeport afghan ou syrien.
Le business des barrières

Si les frontières revêtent une dimension économique, c’est aussi parce qu’elles sont un marché juteux. À l’heure où les pays européens ferment des lits d’hôpital faute de moyens, on retiendra ce chiffre ahurissant : entre 2005 et 2016, le budget de Frontex, l’agence en charge du contrôle des frontières de l’Union européenne, est passé de 6,3 à 238,7 millions d’euros. À quoi s’ajoutent les budgets colossaux débloqués pour construire et entretenir les barrières – budgets entourés d’opacité et sur lesquels, témoigne l’auteur, il est particulièrement difficile d’enquêter, faute d’obtenir… des fonds publics.

L’argent public alimente ainsi une « teichoéconomie » dont les principaux bénéficiaires sont des entreprises du BTP et de la sécurité européennes, nord-américaines, israéliennes et, de plus en plus, indiennes ou saoudiennes. Ce complexe sécuritaro-industriel, identifié par Julien Saada, commercialise des dispositifs de surveillance toujours plus sophistiqués et prospère au rythme de l’inflation de barrières entre pays, mais aussi entre quartiers urbains.

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Un business d’autant plus florissant qu’il s’auto-entretient, dès lors que les mêmes entreprises vendent des armes. On sait que les ventes d’armes, alimentant les guerres, stimulent les migrations : un « cercle vertueux » s’enclenche pour les entreprises du secteur, appelées à la rescousse pour contenir des mouvements de population qu’elles participent à encourager.
« Mourir aux frontières »

Bénéfices juteux, profits politiques, les barrières font des heureux. Elles tuent aussi et l’ouvrage de Stéphane Rosière se termine sur un décompte macabre. C’est, dit-il, une « guerre migratoire » qui est en cours. Guerre asymétrique, elle oppose la police armée des puissances économiques à des groupes le plus souvent désarmés, venant de périphéries dominées économiquement et dont on entend contrôler la mobilité. Au nom de la souveraineté des États, cette guerre fait plusieurs milliers de victimes par an et la moindre des choses est de « prendre la pleine mesure de la létalité contemporaine aux frontières ».

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Sur le blog :

– Une synthèse sur les murs frontaliers : ►http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2019/01/28/lamour-des-murs

– Le compte rendu d’un autre livre incontournable sur les frontières : ▻http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2019/08/03/frontieres-en-mouvement

– Une synthèse sur les barricades à l’échelle intraurbaine : ►http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2020/10/21/gated-communities-le-paradis-entre-quatre-murs

▻http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2020/11/05/le-business-meurtrier-des-frontieres

The big wall

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An ActionAid investigation into how Italy tried to stop migration from Africa, using EU funds, and how much money it spent

►https://thebigwall.org/en
►https://seenthis.net/messages/905345

#Italie

How Private Security Firms Profit Off the Refugee Crisis

The UK has pumped money to corporations turning #Calais into a bleak fortress.

Tall white fences lined with barbed wire – welcome to Calais. The city in northern France is an obligatory stop for anyone trying to reach the UK across the channel. But some travellers are more welcome than others, and in recent decades, a slew of private security companies have profited millions of pounds off a very expensive – an unattractive – operation to keep migrants from crossing.

Every year, thousands of passengers and lorries take the ferry at the Port of Calais-Fréthun, a trading route heavily relied upon by the UK for imports. But the entrance to the port looks more like a maximum-security prison than your typical EU border. Even before Brexit, the UK was never part of the Schengen area, which allows EU residents to move freely across 26 countries. For decades, Britain has strictly controlled its southern border in an attempt to stop migrants and asylum seekers from entering.

As early as 2000, the Port of Calais was surrounded by a 2.8 metre-high fence to prevent people from jumping into lorries waiting at the ferry departure point. In 1999, the Red Cross set up a refugee camp in the nearby town of Sangatte which quickly became overcrowded. The UK pushed for it to be closed in 2002 and then negotiated a treaty with France to regulate migration between the two countries.

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The 2003 Le Toquet Treaty allowed the UK to check travellers on French soil before their arrival, and France to do the same on UK soil. Although the deal looks fair on paper, in practice it unduly burdens French authorities, as there are more unauthorised migrants trying to reach the UK from France than vice versa.

The treaty effectively moved the UK border onto French territory, but people still need to cross the channel to request asylum. That’s why thousands of refugees from conflict zones like Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia have found themselves stranded in Calais, waiting for a chance to cross illegally – often in search of family members who’ve already made it to the UK. Many end up paying people smugglers to hide them in lorries or help them cross by boat.

These underlying issues came to a head during the Syrian crisis, when refugees began camping out near Calais in 2014. The so-called Calais Jungle became infamous for its squalid conditions, and at its peak, hosted more than 7,000 people. They were all relocated to other centres in France before the camp was bulldozed in 2016. That same year, the UK also decided to build a €2.7 million border wall in Calais to block access to the port from the camp, but the project wasn’t completed until after the camp was cleared, attracting a fair deal of criticism. Between 2015 and 2018, the UK spent over €110 million on border security in France, only to top it up with over €56 million more in 2018.

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But much of this public money actually flows into the accounts of private corporations, hired to build and maintain the high-tech fences and conduct security checks. According to a 2020 report by the NGO Care4Calais, there are more than 40 private security companies working in the city. One of the biggest, Eamus Cork Solutions (ECS), was founded by a former Calais police officer in 2004 and is reported to have benefited at least €30 million from various contracts as of 2016.

Stéphane Rosière, a geography professor at the University of Reims, wrote his book Iron Borders (only available in French) about the many border walls erected around the world. Rosière calls this the “security-industrial” complex – private firms that have largely replaced the traditional military-industrial sector in Europe since WW2.

“These companies are getting rich by making security systems adaptable to all types of customers – individuals, companies or states,” he said. According to Rosière, three-quarters of the world’s border security barriers were built in the 21st century.

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Brigitte, a pensioner living close to the former site of the Calais Jungle, has seen her town change drastically over the past two decades. “Everything is cordoned off with wire mesh," she said. "I have the before and after photos, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s just wire, wire, wire.” For the past 15 years, Brigitte has been opening her garage door for asylum seekers to stop by for a cup of tea and charge their phones and laptops, earning her the nickname "Mama Charge”.

“For a while, the purpose of these fences and barriers was to stop people from crossing,” said François Guennoc, president of L’Auberge des Migrants, an NGO helping displaced migrants in Calais.

Migrants have still been desperate enough to try their luck. “They risked a lot to get into the port area, and many of them came back bruised and battered,” Guennoc said. Today, walls and fences are mainly being built to deter people from settling in new camps near Calais after being evicted.

In the city centre, all public squares have been fenced off. The city’s bridges have been fitted with blue lights and even with randomly-placed bike racks, so people won’t sleep under them.

“They’ve also been cutting down trees for some time now,” said Brigitte, pointing to a patch near her home that was once woods. Guennoc said the authorities are now placing large rocks in areas where NGOs distribute meals and warm clothes, to prevent displaced people from receiving the donations. “The objective of the measures now is also to make the NGOs’ work more difficult,” he said.

According to the NGO Refugee Rights Europe, about 1,500 men, women and minors were living in makeshift camps in and around Calais as of April 2020. In July 2020, French police raided a camp of over 500 people, destroying residents’ tents and belongings, in the largest operation since the Calais Jungle was cleared. An investigation by Slate found that smaller camps are cleared almost every day by the French police, even in the middle of winter. NGOs keep providing new tents and basic necessities to displaced residents, but they are frustrated by the waste of resources. The organisations are also concerned about COVID-19 outbreaks in the camps.

As VICE World News has previously reported, the crackdown is only pushing people to take more desperate measures to get into the UK. Boat crossings reached record-highs in 2020, and four people have died since August 2020 while trying to cross, by land and sea. “When you create an obstacle, people find a way to get around it,” Guennoc said. “If they build a wall all the way along the coast to prevent boat departures, people will go to Normandy – and that has already started.” Crossing the open sea puts migrants at even greater risk.

Rosière agrees security measures are only further endangering migrants.“All locks eventually open, no matter how complex they may be. It’s just a matter of time.”

He believes the only parties who stand to profit from the status quo are criminal organisations and private security firms: “At the end of the day, this a messed-up use of public money.”

▻https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx8yax/how-private-security-firms-profit-off-the-refugee-crisis

En français:
À Calais, la ville s’emmure
▻https://www.vice.com/fr/article/wx8yax/a-calais-la-ville-semmure

Financing Border Wars. The border industry, its financiers and human rights

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This report seeks to explore and highlight the extent of today’s global border security industry, by focusing on the most important geographical markets—Australia, Europe, USA—listing the human rights violations and risks involved in each sector of the industry, profiling important corporate players and putting a spotlight on the key investors in each company.

Executive summary

Migration will be one of the defining human rights issues of the 21st century. The growing pressures to migrate combined with the increasingly militarised state security response will only exacerbate an already desperate situation for refugees and migrants. Refugees already live in a world where human rights are systematically denied. So as the climate crisis deepens and intersects with other economic and political crises, forcing more people from their homes, and as states retreat to ever more authoritarian security-based responses, the situation for upholding and supporting migrants’ rights looks ever bleaker.

States, most of all those in the richest countries, bear the ultimate responsibility to uphold the human rights of refugees and migrants recognised under International Human Rights Law. Yet corporations are also deeply implicated. It is their finance, their products, their services, their infrastructure that underpins the structures of state migration and border control. In some cases, they are directly involved in human rights violations themselves; in other cases they are indirectly involved as they facilitate the system that systematically denies refugees and migrants their rights. Most of all, through their lobbying, involvement in government ‘expert’ groups, revolving doors with state agencies, it becomes clear that corporations are not just accidental beneficiaries of the militarisation of borders. Rather they actively shape the policies from which they profit and therefore share responsibility for the human rights violations that result.

This state-corporate fusion is best described as a Border Industrial Complex, drawing on former US President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers of a Military-Industrial Complex. Indeed it is noticeable that many of the leading border industries today are also military companies, seeking to diversify their security products to a rapidly expanding new market.

This report seeks to explore and highlight the extent of today’s global border security industry, by focusing on the most important geographical markets—Australia, Europe, USA—listing the human rights violations and risks involved in each sector of the industry, profiling important corporate players and putting a spotlight on the key investors in each company.
A booming industry

The border industry is experiencing spectacular growth, seemingly immune to austerity or economic downturns. Market research agencies predict annual growth of the border security market of between 7.2% and 8.6%, reaching a total of $65–68 billion by 2025. The largest expansion is in the global Biometrics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets. Markets and Markets forecasts the biometric systems market to double from $33 billion in 2019 to $65.3 billion by 2024—of which biometrics for migration purposes will be a significant sector. It says that the AI market will equal US$190.61 billion by 2025.

The report investigates five key sectors of the expanding industry: border security (including monitoring, surveillance, walls and fences), biometrics and smart borders, migrant detention, deportation, and audit and consultancy services. From these sectors, it profiles 23 corporations as significant actors: Accenture, Airbus, Booz Allen Hamilton, Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Deloitte, Elbit, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, IBM, IDEMIA, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Mitie, Palantir, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Serco, Sopra Steria, Thales, Thomson Reuters, Unisys.

– The border security and control field, the technological infrastructure of security and surveillance at the border, is led by US, Australian, European and Israeli firms including Airbus, Elbit, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Leonardo and Thales— all of which are among the world’s major arms sellers. They benefit not only from border contracts within the EU, US, and Australia but also increasingly from border externalisation programmes funded by these same countries. Jean Pierre Talamoni, head of sales and marketing at Airbus Defence and Space (ADS), said in 2016 that he estimates that two thirds of new military market opportunities over the next 10 years will be in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Companies are also trying to muscle in on providing the personnel to staff these walls, including border guards.

- The Smart Borders sector encompasses the use of a broad range of (newer) technologies, including biometrics (such as fingerprints and iris-scans), AI and phone and social media tracking. The goal is to speed up processes for national citizens and other acceptable travellers and stop or deport unwanted migrants through the use of more sophisticated IT and biometric systems. Key corporations include large IT companies, such as IBM and Unisys, and multinational services company Accenture for whom migration is part of their extensive portfolio, as well as small firms, such as IDEMIA and Palantir Technologies, for whom migration-related work is central. The French public–private company Civipol, co-owned by the state and several large French arms companies, is another key player, selected to set up fingerprint databases of the whole population of Mali and Senegal.

– Deportation. With the exception of the UK and the US, it is uncommon to privatise deportation. The UK has hired British company Mitie for its whole deportation process, while Classic Air Charter dominates in the US. Almost all major commercial airlines, however, are also involved in deportations. Newsweek reported, for example, that in the US, 93% of the 1,386 ICE deportation flights to Latin American countries on commercial airlines in 2019 were facilitated by United Airlines (677), American Airlines (345) and Delta Airlines (266).

- Detention. The Global Detention Project lists over 1,350 migrant detention centres worldwide, of which over 400 are located in Europe, almost 200 in the US and nine in Australia. In many EU countries, the state manages detention centres, while in other countries (e.g. Australia, UK, USA) there are completely privatised prisons. Many other countries have a mix of public and private involvement, such as state facilities with private guards. Australia outsourced refugee detention to camps outside its territories. Australian service companies Broadspectrum and Canstruct International managed the detention centres, while the private security companies G4S, Paladin Solutions and Wilson Security were contracted for security services, including providing guards. Migrant detention in third countries is also an increasingly important part of EU migration policy, with the EU funding construction of migrant detention centres in ten non-EU countries.

- Advisory and audit services are a more hidden part of public policies and practices, but can be influential in shaping new policies. A striking example is Civipol, which in 2003 wrote a study on maritime borders for the European Commission, which adopted its key policy recommendations in October 2003 and in later policy documents despite its derogatory language against refugees. Civipol’s study also laid foundations for later measures on border externalisation, including elements of the migration deal with Turkey and the EU’s Operation Sophia. Since 2003 Civipol has received funding for a large number of migration-related projects, especially in African countries. Between 2015 and 2017, it was the fourth most-funded organisation under the EU Trust Fund. Other prominent corporations in this sector include Eurasylum, as well as major international consultancy firms, particularly Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, for which migration-related work is part of their expansive portfolio.

Financing the industry

The markets for military and border control procurement are characterized by massively capital intensive investments and contracts, which would not be possible without the involvement of financial actors. Using data from marketscreener.com, the report shows that the world’s largest investment companies are also among the major shareholders in the border industry.

– The Vanguard Group owns shares in 15 of the 17 companies, including over 15% of the shares of CoreCivic and GEO Group that manage private prisons and detention facilities.

- Other important investors are Blackrock, which is a major shareholder in 11 companies, Capital Research and Management (part of the Capital Group), with shares in arms giants Airbus and Lockheed Martin, and State Street Global Advisors (SsgA), which owns over 15% of Lockheed Martin shares and is also a major shareholder in six other companies.

- Although these giant asset management firms dominate, two of the profiled companies, Cobham and IDEMIA, are currently owned by the private equity firm Advent International. Advent specialises in buyouts and restructuring, and it seems likely that it will attempt to split up Cobham in the hope of making a profit by selling on the component companies to other owners.

- In addition, three large European arms companies, Airbus, Thales and Leonardo, active in the border security market, are partly owned by the governments of the countries where they are headquartered.

In all cases, therefore, the financing depends on our money. In the case of state ownership, through our taxes, and in terms of asset management funds, through the way individual savings, pension funds, insurance companies and university endowments are directly invested in these companies via the giant Asset Management Funds. This financing means that the border industry survives on at least the tacit approved use of the public’s funds which makes it vulnerable to social pressure as the human rights costs of the industry become ever more clear.
Human rights and the border industry

Universal human rights apply to every single human being, including refugees and migrants. While the International Bill of Human Rights provides the foundation, including defining universal rights that are important in the context of migration, such as the right to life, liberty and security of person, the right to freedom from torture or cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, and freedom from discrimination, there are other instruments such as the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention or Geneva Convention) of 1951 that are also relevant. There are also regional agreements, including the Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that play a role relevant to the countries that have ratified them.

Yet despite these important and legally binding human rights agreements, the human rights situation for refugees and migrants has become ever more desperate. States frequently deny their rights under international law, such as the right to seek asylum or non-refoulement principles, or more general rights such as the freedom from torture, cruel or inhumane treatment. There is a gap with regard to effective legal means or grievance mechanisms to counter this or to legally enforce or hold to account states that fail to implement instruments such as the UDHR and the Refugee Convention of 1951. A Permanent Peoples Tribunal in 2019 even concluded that ‘taken together, the immigration and asylum policies and practices of the EU and its Member States constitute a total denial of the fundamental rights of people and migrants, and are veritable crimes against humanity’. A similar conclusion can be made of the US and Australian border and immigration regime.

The increased militarisation of border security worldwide and state-sanctioned hostility toward migrants has had a deeply detrimental impact on the human rights of refugees and migrants.

– Increased border security has led to direct violence against refugees, pushbacks with the risk of returning people to unsafe countries and inhumane circumstances (contravening the principle of non-refoulement), and a disturbing rise in avoidable deaths, as countries close off certain migration routes, forcing migrants to look for other, often more dangerous, alternatives and pushing them into the arms of criminal smuggling networks.

– The increased use of autonomous systems of border security such as drones threaten new dangers related to human rights. There is already evidence that they push migrants to take more dangerous routes, but there is also concern that there is a gradual trend towards weaponized systems that will further threaten migrants’ lives.

– The rise in deportations has threatened fundamental human rights including the right to family unity, the right to seek asylum, the right to humane treatment in detention, the right to due process, and the rights of children’. There have been many instances of violence in the course of deportations, sometimes resulting in death or permanent harm, against desperate people who try to do everything to prevent being deported. Moreover, deportations often return refugees to unsafe countries, where they face violence, persecution, discrimination and poverty.

- The widespread detention of migrants also fundamentally undermines their human rights . There have been many reports of violence and neglect by guards and prison authorities, limited access to adequate legal and medical support, a lack of decent food, overcrowding and poor and unhealthy conditions. Privatisation of detention exacerbates these problems, because companies benefit from locking up a growing number of migrants and minimising costs.

– The building of major migration databases such as EU’s Eurodac and SIS II, VIS gives rise to a range of human rights concerns, including issues of privacy, civil liberties, bias leading to discrimination—worsened by AI processes -, and misuse of collected information. Migrants are already subject to unprecedented levels of surveillance, and are often now treated as guinea pigs where even more intrusive technologies such as facial recognition and social media tracking are tried out without migrants consent.

The trend towards externalisation of migration policies raises new concerns as it seeks to put the human costs of border militarisation beyond the border and out of public sight. This has led to the EU, US and Australia all cooperating with authoritarian regimes to try and prevent migrants from even getting close to their borders. Moreover as countries donate money, equipment or training to security forces in authoritarian regimes, they end up expanding and strengthening their capacities which leads to a rise in human rights violations more broadly. Nowhere are the human rights consequences of border externalisation policies clearer than in the case of Libya, where the EU and individual member states (in particular Italy and Malta) funding, training and cooperation with security forces and militias have led to violence at the borders, murder, disappearances, rape, enslavement and abuse of migrants in the country and torture in detention centres.

The 23 corporations profiled in this report have all been involved in or connected to policies and practices that have come under fire because of violations of the human rights of refugees and migrants. As mentioned earlier, sometimes the companies are directly responsible for human rights violations or concerns. In other cases, they are indirectly responsible through their contribution to a border infrastructure that denies human rights and through lobbying to influence policy-making to prioritize militarized responses to migration. 11 of the companies profiled publicly proclaim their commitment to human rights as signatories to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), but as these are weak voluntary codes this has not led to noticeable changes in their business operations related to migration.

The most prominent examples of direct human rights abuses come from the corporations involved in detention and deportation. Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, Mitie and Serco all have faced allegations of violence and abuse by their staff towards migrants. G4S has been one of the companies most often in the spotlight. In 2017, not only were assaults by its staff on migrants at the Brook House immigration removal centre in the UK broadcast by the BBC, but it was also hit with a class suit in Australia by almost 2,000 people who are or were detained at the externalised detention centre on Manus Island, because of physical and psychological injuries as a result of harsh treatment and dangerous conditions. The company eventually settled the case for A$70 million (about $53 million) in the largest-ever human rights class-action settlement. G4S has also faced allegations related to its involvement in deportations.

The other companies listed all play a pivotal role in the border infrastructure that denies refugees’ human rights. Airbus P-3 Orion surveillance planes of the Australian Air Force, for example, play a part in the highly controversial maritime wall that prevents migrants arriving by boat and leads to their detention in terrible conditions offshore. Lockheed Martin is a leading supplier of border security on the US-Mexico border. Leonardo is one of the main suppliers of drones for Europe’s borders. Thales produces the radar and sensor systems, critical to patrolling the Mediterrean. Elbit Systems provides surveillance technologies to both the EU and US, marketed on their success as technologies used in the separation wall in the Palestinian occupied territories. Accenture, IDEMIA and Sopra Steria manage many border biometric projects. Deloitte has been one of the key consulting companies to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since 2003, while PriceWaterhouseCoopers provides similar consultancy services to Frontex and the Australian border forces. IBM, Palantir and UNISYS provide the IT infrastructure that underpins the border and immigration apparatus.
Time to divest

The report concludes by calling for campaigns to divest from the border industry. There is a long history of campaigns and movements that call for divestment from industries that support human rights violations—from the campaigns to divest from Apartheid South Africa to more recent campaigns to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The border industry has become an equally morally toxic asset for any financial institution, given the litany of human rights abuses tied to it and the likelihood they will intensify in years to come.

There are already examples of existing campaigns targeting particular border industries that have borne fruit. A spotlight on US migrant detention, as part of former President Trump’s anti- immigration policies, contributed to six large US banks (Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo) publicly announcing that they would not provide new financing to the private prison industry. The two largest public US pension funds, CalSTRS and CalPERS, also decided to divest from the same two companies. Geo Group acknowledged that these acts of ‘public resistance’ hit the company financially, criticising the banks as ‘clearly bow[ing] down to a small group of activists protesting and conducting targeted social media campaigns’.

Every company involved or accused of human rights violations either denies them or says that they are atypical exceptions to corporate behavior. This report shows however that a militarised border regime built on exclusion will always be a violent apparatus that perpetuates human rights violations. It is a regime that every day locks up refugees in intolerable conditions, separates families causing untold trauma and heartbreak, and causes a devastating death toll as refugees are forced to take unimaginable dangerous journeys because the alternatives are worse. However well-intentioned, any industry that provides services and products for this border regime will bear responsibility for its human consequences and its human rights violations, and over time will suffer their own serious reputational costs for their involvement in this immoral industry. On the other hand, a widespread exodus of the leading corporations on which the border regime depends could force states to change course, and to embrace a politics that protects and upholds the rights of refugees and migrants. Worldwide, social movements and the public are starting to wake up to the human costs of border militarisation and demanding a fundamental change. It is time now for the border industry and their financiers to make a choice.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/financingborderwars

#TNI #rapport
#industrie_frontalière #militarisation_des_frontières #biométrie #Intelligence_artificielle #AI #IA

#Accenture #Airbus #Booz_Allen_Hamilton #Classic_Air_Charter #Cobham #CoreCivic #Deloitte #Elbit #Eurasylum #G4S #GEO_Group #IBM #IDEMIA #Leonardo #Lockheed_Martin #Mitie #Palantir #PricewaterhouseCoopers #Serco #Sopra_Steria #Thales #Thomson_Reuters #Unisys
#contrôles_frontaliers #surveillance #technologie #Jean-Pierre_Talamoni #Airbus_Defence_and_Space (#ADS) #smart_borders #frontières_intelligentes #iris #empreintes_digitales #réseaux_sociaux #IT #Civipol #Mali #Sénégal #renvois #expulsions #déportations #Mitie #Classic_Air_Charter #compagnies_aériennes #United_Airlines #ICE #American_Airlines #Delta_Airlines #rétention #détention_administrative #privatisation #Broadspectrum #Canstruct_International #Paladin_Solutions #Wilson_Security #Operation_Sophia #EU_Trust_Fund #Trust_Fund #externalisation #Eurasylum #Deloitte #PricewaterhouseCoopers #Vanguard_Group #CoreCivic #Blackrock #investisseurs #investissement #Capital_Research_and_Management #Capital_Group #Lockheed_Martin #State_Street_Global_Advisors (#SsgA) #Cobham #IDEMIA #Advent_International #droits_humains #VIS #SIS_II #P-3_Orion #Accenture #Sopra_Steria #Frontex #Australie

Outsourcing oppression. How Europe externalises migrant detention beyond its shores

https://www.tni.org/files/styles/cover_image/public/cover-images/outsourcingoppression-report-tnicover.png?itok=mwQBC1JP#.jpg

This report seeks to address the gap and join the dots between Europe’s outsourcing of migrant detention to third countries and the notorious conditions within the migrant detention centres. In a nutshell, Europe calls the shots on migrant detention beyond its shores but is rarely held to account for the deeply oppressive consequences, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced disappearance, violence, sexual violence, and death.

Key findings

– The European Union (EU), and its member states, externalise detention to third countries as part of a strategy to keep migrants out at all costs. This leads to migrants being detained and subjected to gross human rights violations in transit countries in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, West Asia and Africa.

– Candidate countries wishing to join the EU are obligated to detain migrants and stop them from crossing into the EU as a prerequisite for accession to the Union. Funding is made available through pre-accession agreements specifically for the purpose of detaining migrants.

– Beyond EU candidate countries, this report identifies 22 countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and West Asia where the EU and its member states fund the construction of detention centres, detention related activities such as trainings, or advocate for detention in other ways such as through aggressively pushing for detention legislation or agreeing to relax visa requirements for nationals of these countries in exchange for increased migrant detention.

- The main goal of detention externalisation is to pre-empt migrants from reaching the external borders of the EU by turning third countries into border outposts. In many cases this involves the EU and its member states propping up and maintaining authoritarian regimes.

– Europe is in effect following the ‘Australian model’ that has been highly criticised by UN experts and human rights organisations for the torturous conditions inside detention centres. Nevertheless, Europe continues to advance a system that mirrors Australia’s outsourced model, focusing not on guaranteeing the rights of migrants, but instead on deterring and pushing back would-be asylum seekers at all costs.

- Human rights are systematically violated in detention centres directly and indirectly funded by the EU and its member states, including cases of torture, arbitrary and prolonged detention, sexual violence, no access to legal recourse, humanitarian assistance, or asylum procedures, the detention of victims of trafficking, and many other serious violations in which Europe is implicated.

- Particularly horrendous is the case of Libya, which continues to receive financial and political support from Europe despite mounting evidence of brutality, enslavement, torture, forced disappearance and death. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), implement EU policies in Libya and, according to aid officials, actively whitewash the consequences of European policies to safeguard substantial EU funding.

- Not only does the EU deport and push back migrants to unsafe third countries, it actively finances and coercively pushes for their detention in these countries. Often they have no choice but to sign ‘voluntary’ agreements to be returned to their countries of origin as the only means of getting out of torturous detention facilities.

- The EU implements a carrot and stick approach, in particular in its dealings with Africa, prolonging colonialist dynamics and uneven power structures – in Niger, for example, the EU pushed for legislation on detention, in exchange for development aid funding.

– The EU envisages a greater role for migrant detention in third countries going forward, as was evidenced in the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum.

- The EU acts on the premise of containment and deterrence, namely, that if migrants seeking to reach Europe are intercepted and detained along that journey, they will be deterred from making the journey in the first place. This approach completely misses the point that people migrate to survive, often fleeing war and other forms of violence. The EU continues to overlook the structural reasons behind why people flee and the EU’s own role in provoking such migration.

– The border industrial complex profits from the increased securitisation of borders. Far from being passive spectators, the military and security industry is actively involved in shaping EU border policies by positioning themselves as experts on the issue. We can already see a trend of privatising migrant detention, paralleling what is happening in prison systems worldwide.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/outsourcingoppression

pour télécharger le rapport :
▻https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/outsourcingoppression-report-tni.pdf

#externalisation #rétention #détention #détention_arbitraire #violence #disparitions #disparitions_forcées #violence #violence_sexuelle #morts #mort #décès #Afrique #Europe_de_l'Est #Balkans #Asie #modèle_australien #EU #UE #Union_européenne #torture #Libye #droits_humains #droits_fondamentaux #HCR #UNHCR #OIM #IOM #dissuasion #privatisation

#Border_Profiteers. Corporations profiting from borders, detentions and deportations - Berlin edition

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Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

We map out the rising number of #high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders.

From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

The Guardian has mapped out the result of the EU’s investment: a digital wall on the harsh sea, forest and mountain frontiers, and a technological playground for military and tech companies repurposing products for new markets.

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The EU is central to the push towards using technology on its borders, whether it has been bought by the EU’s border force, Frontex, or financed for member states through EU sources, such as its internal security fund or Horizon 2020, a project to drive innovation.

In 2018, the EU predicted that the European security market would grow to €128bn (£108bn) by 2020. Beneficiaries are arms and tech companies who heavily courted the EU, raising the concerns of campaigners and MEPs.

“In effect, none of this stops people from crossing; having drones or helicopters doesn’t stop people from crossing, you just see people taking more risky ways,” says Jack Sapoch, formerly with Border Violence Monitoring Network. “This is a history that’s so long, as security increases on one section of the border, movement continues in another section.”

Petra Molnar, who runs the migration and technology monitor at Refugee Law Lab, says the EU’s reliance on these companies to develop “hare-brained ideas” into tech for use on its borders is inappropriate.

“They rely on the private sector to create these toys for them. But there’s very little regulation,” she says. “Some sort of tech bro is having a field day with this.”

“For me, what’s really sad is that it’s almost a done deal that all this money is being spent on camps, enclosures, surveillance, drones.”

Air Surveillance

Refugees and migrants trying to enter the EU by land or sea are watched from the air. Border officers use drones and helicopters in the Balkans, while Greece has airships on its border with Turkey. The most expensive tool is the long-endurance Heron drone operating over the Mediterranean.

Frontex awarded a €100m (£91m) contract last year for the Heron and Hermes drones made by two Israeli arms companies, both of which had been used by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip. Capable of flying for more than 30 hours and at heights of 10,000 metres (30,000 feet), the drones beam almost real-time feeds back to Frontex’s HQ in Warsaw.

Missions mostly start from Malta, focusing on the Libyan search and rescue zone – where the Libyan coastguard will perform “pull backs” when informed by EU forces of boats trying to cross the Mediterranean.

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German MEP Özlem Demirel is campaigning against the EU’s use of drones and links to arms companies, which she says has turned migration into a security issue.

“The arms industries are saying: ‘This is a security problem, so buy my weapons, buy my drones, buy my surveillance system,’” says Demirel.

“The EU is always talking about values like human rights, [speaking out] against violations but … week-by-week we see more people dying and we have to question if the EU is breaking its values,” she says.

Sensors and cameras

EU air assets are accompanied on the ground by sensors and specialised cameras that border authorities throughout Europe use to spot movement and find people in hiding. They include mobile radars and thermal cameras mounted on vehicles, as well as heartbeat detectors and CO2 monitors used to detect signs of people concealed inside vehicles.

Greece deploys thermal cameras and sensors along its land border with Turkey, monitoring the feeds from operations centres, such as in Nea Vyssa, near the meeting of the Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian borders. Along the same stretch, in June, Greece deployed a vehicle-mounted sound cannon that blasts “deafening” bursts of up to 162 decibels to force people to turn back.

Poland is hoping to emulate Greece in response to the crisis on its border with Belarus. In October, its parliament approved a €350m wall that will stretch along half the border and reach up to 5.5 metres (18 feet), equipped with motion detectors and thermal cameras.

Surveillance centres

In September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as prison-like. The €38m (£32m) facility for 3,000 asylum seekers has military-grade fencing and #CCTV to track people’s movements. Access is controlled by fingerprint, turnstiles and X-rays. A private security company and 50 uniformed officers monitor the camp. It is the first of five that Greece has planned; two more opened in November.

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

▻https://twitter.com/_PMolnar/status/1465224733771939841

At the same time, Greece opened a new surveillance centre on Samos, capable of viewing video feeds from the country’s 35 refugee camps from a wall of monitors. Greece says the “smart” software helps to alert camps of emergencies.

Artificial intelligence

The EU spent €4.5m (£3.8m) on a three-year trial of artificial intelligence-powered lie detectors in Greece, Hungary and Latvia. A machine scans refugees and migrants’ facial expressions as they answer questions it poses, deciding whether they have lied and passing the information on to a border officer.

The last trial finished in late 2019 and was hailed as a success by the EU but academics have called it pseudoscience, arguing that the “micro-expressions” the software analyses cannot be reliably used to judge whether someone is lying. The software is the subject of a court case taken by MEP Patrick Breyer to the European court of justice in Luxembourg, arguing that there should be more public scrutiny of such technology. A decision is expected on 15 December.

►https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/06/fortress-europe-the-millions-spent-on-military-grade-tech-to-deter-refu

Migrants en Libye : « Je sais qu’il y a une chance sur deux de mourir »

A Tripoli, les exilés africains qui espèrent rejoindre l’Europe sont pris en tenaille entre les institutions – voies légales mais lentes -, les réseaux de passeurs - option coûteuse et dangereuse - et les centres de détention des autorités locales.

Ils sont plusieurs centaines de milliers d’exilés à être pris au piège en Libye. Leur geôle a quatre murs, contre lesquels ils se fracassent tour à tour. D’abord la Méditerranée, cette mer qui les sépare de l’Europe, surveillée par les gardes-côtes. Puis le Département de lutte contre la migration illégale et ses centres de détention aux mains des milices. Il y a aussi le réseau des passeurs et des trafiquants qui représentent à la fois leur pire cauchemar et l’espoir, jamais éteint, d’un ticket de sortie de l’enfer. Le dernier mur, enfin, est celui du Haut Commissariat aux réfugiés des Nations unies (HCR). Une issue de secours légale, mais bouchée (lire page 9). Les quotas de réinstallation dans des pays d’accueil, ridiculement bas par rapport aux besoins, ne permettant pas d’évacuer les réfugiés à un rythme suffisant.

Michel Vumbi Mogambi a presque 70 ans. Quand il est arrivé en Libye, voilà vingt ans, il n’avait aucune intention de poursuivre sa route jusqu’en Europe. Le Congolais fuyait les combats dans son pays : la riche Libye de Kadhafi offrait à l’époque du travail et un bon salaire. Aujourd’hui, ruiné et rattrapé par la guerre, il prie pour sortir d’ici, silhouette voûtée parmi les fidèles de l’église San Francesco de Tripoli. A la sortie de la messe, le vieil homme est agité, sa chemise tachée de sang. La nuit dernière, des hommes en treillis ont défoncé sa porte, l’ont déshabillé, battu pour qu’il leur donne son argent. Son ami Peter, le mécanicien, s’est fait voler 1 800 dinars (environ 400 euros au marché noir). Leur voisin de chambrée, le Soudanais Habib Ali, 500 dinars. Et le vendeur égyptien du bout de la cour 5 000 dinars. Michel n’avait pas d’argent. Il a tenté de se cacher dans les toilettes, nu.
« Vers qui voulez-vous vous tourner ? »

La vingtaine d’hommes célibataires venus de toute l’Afrique qui partagent cette petite allée du quartier de Gargaresh ont tous été arrêtés, frappés, embarqués, puis relâchés au petit matin. Chacun a des blessures à montrer. Récentes, après la bastonnade de la veille ; anciennes, qui racontent une vie d’exil ; parfois cruelles, marques évidentes de tortures. Les serrures de leurs habitations ont été défoncées à coups de crosse. Les petites chambres taguées ont été retournées, à la recherche d’un billet, un bijou ou d’un téléphone dissimulé. « Les policiers étaient encagoulés, mais j’ai pu lire "Département de lutte contre la migration illégale" sur leurs uniformes noirs, dit Habib Ali. Quand ce sont les autorités elles-mêmes qui vous rançonnent et vous kidnappent, vers qui voulez-vous vous tourner ? »

Michel est officiellement demandeur d’asile, enregistré au HCR. Mais sa petite carte plastifiée de l’ONU, qu’il sort sans arrêt de sa pochette, ne le protège pas : la Libye n’a jamais ratifié les conventions de Genève. Sur son territoire, les réfugiés n’ont aucune existence officielle.

Ayoub Qassem est le porte-parole de la marine nationale libyenne. Il n’y a pas d’électricité, ce jour-là, dans la base navale d’Abou Sitta, sur la rive de Tripoli : son bureau est plongé dans la pénombre. Les lourds rideaux laissent tout juste filtrer une lumière bleutée qui donne au militaire formé en URSS un aspect de créature des profondeurs. « La migration clandestine est la dernière facette du colonialisme, assène-t-il. Partout, il y a des pions qui travaillent pour les intérêts de l’Occident. C’est l’Europe qui a créé un rêve dans la tête des Africains, afin d’éviter qu’ils ne développent leurs pays. Ils sont comme des papillons attirés par la flamme ! Mais qui va nous protéger, nous, les Libyens, contre cette invasion ? » Le vieil officier triture sa moustache, fulmine, soudain inarrêtable dans sa logorrhée complotiste et anti-impérialiste : « L’ONU est complice, elle a besoin de ces crises pour faire sa propagande et se lamenter sur le sort des migrants. »

Depuis 2012, affirme-t-il, 80 000 personnes ont été « secourues », c’est-à-dire interceptées, par ses gardes-côtes. Une activité qui occupe 90 % de leur temps et de leurs ressources. Les équipages ont été en partie formés par Sophia, la mission de l’Union européenne, mais aussi par des experts espagnols. « Notre partenaire le plus sérieux est l’Italie, affirme Ayoub Qassem. Quand le pays ferme ses portes, cela nous aide. »
Torture et viols systématiques

La majorité des départs, en cette période de l’année, a lieu depuis les plages à l’est de Tripoli, à proximité de la ville de Khoms. Près de 6 000 migrants ont été arrêtés en 2019 dans les eaux libyennes. Plus de 600 sont morts noyés. « Quand on critique les ONG, on donne l’impression qu’on est contre les migrants en tant que personnes, soupire Massoud Abdelsamad, à la tête du Centre de sécurité maritime. Mais je vous parle simplement en technicien : plus il y a de bateaux de sauvetage en mer, plus il y a des tentatives de traversée. On sait que des passeurs surveillent la position des navires humanitaires sur les sites de trafic maritime et qu’ils envoient leurs embarcations de migrants dans leur direction. »

Ella (1) a pris la mer à deux reprises. A chaque fois, la jeune Erythréenne a été refoulée vers cette Libye qu’elle « ne veut plus voir ». Chétive, le regard brûlant, elle dit : « Je suis venue jusqu’ici ici pour aller en Europe. C’est mon rêve, personne n’a le droit de me l’arracher. Peu importe ce qui m’arrive, je ne renoncerai pas. » Ella est aujourd’hui enfermée dans le centre de détention de Tariq al-Sikka, à Tripoli, géré par le Département de lutte contre la migration illégale.

Autour d’elle, dans un coin de la pièce, trois femmes se sont serrées sur les blocs de mousse qui servent de matelas, et jettent des regards obliques en direction de l’encadrement de la porte : le gardien y fume sa cigarette. Cette prison « modèle » est la seule que le gouvernement libyen laisse les journalistes visiter. On y sert deux repas par jour et les demandeuses d’asile ont le droit de posséder un téléphone portable.

« Le centre est dur, on devient folles à force de patienter, mais on est tellement en danger dans les villes libyennes que c’est préférable d’être dedans plutôt que dehors. On a la sécurité. Même si on risque autre chose ici… » Quoi exactement ? Coup de menton vers la silhouette masculine de la porte, ses amies lui ordonnent de se taire. « Vous allez partir d’ici dans une heure, mais nous, on va rester là pendant des mois, on doit se protéger », se fâche Beydaan (1), une jeune Somalienne enfermée depuis cinq mois ici, mais coincée depuis trois ans en Libye. Sa voisine Sanah (1) est soudanaise, c’est l’une des plus anciennes du centre : elle est arrivée en mai 2018 et a passé plusieurs entretiens avec des fonctionnaires du HCR. Depuis, elle attend une hypothétique place dans un pays d’accueil. « Au mois de mars, quatre femmes, mères de famille, ont été envoyées au Niger, répète-t-elle. Il paraît qu’après elles sont arrivées en Europe. »

Mariam (1) l’Ethiopienne regarde avec des yeux fixes mais ne parle pas. Les autres racontent pour elle. Son mari a été exécuté par un passeur à Bani Walid, plaque tournante du trafic d’êtres humains en Libye. La torture, les viols y sont systématiques. Elle a passé plus d’un an dans un centre de détention « officiel » - la plupart sont en réalité gérés par des milices - à Khoms, avant d’être transférée à Tariq al-Sikka.

« Le HCR s’oppose à la privation de liberté, les migrants ne devraient pas être enfermés, c’est notre position de principe, rappelle Paula Barrachina, porte-parole du HCR à Tripoli. Mais on se rend quand même dans les centres pour détecter les personnes les plus vulnérables et prodiguer des soins. C’est un dilemme permanent : faire de l’humanitaire sans participer à la pérennisation de ces lieux. »
Places allouées au compte-gouttes

Le HCR coadministre - avec le ministère libyen de l’Intérieur - à Tripoli son propre « centre de rassemblement et de départ », un site de transit où patientent les migrants « validés » pour obtenir l’asile en Occident. Mais les places dans les pays d’accueil étant allouées au compte-gouttes, le lieu est débordé. Quelque 1 500 personnes y vivent, dans un lieu aménagé pour 700. Surtout, les départs sont bien trop lents. Conséquence : les personnes vulnérables qui pourraient obtenir le statut de réfugiés croupissent dans des centres de détention insalubres, eux-mêmes saturés. Mais ils sont des dizaines de milliers d’autres à errer en Libye à la recherche d’une porte de sortie.

« J’ai perdu patience. On ne peut pas continuer comme ça, tonne Ghassan Salamé, l’envoyé spécial des Nations unies en Libye. Il faut fermer ces centres de détention. Il y a des sévices, des directeurs qui sont suspectés de faire du trafic, des entreprises qui bénéficient de contrats de fournitures [de nourriture et entretien]… » Trois prisons du Département de lutte contre la migration illégale ont officiellement cessé leur activité cet été, mais plusieurs ONG affirment que les migrants interceptés en mer continuent d’y être envoyés. « La communauté internationale et l’opinion publique européenne sont malheureusement obsédées par ces centres, alors qu’en réalité nous avons un problème bien plus sérieux, qui ne concerne pas que 5 000 migrants, mais 700 000 à 800 000 personnes illégalement entrées en Libye, explique le diplomate. C’est sur elles que nous voulons nous concentrer, sur le grand nombre d’expatriés illégaux, essayer de les aider de manière humanitaire, les soigner, les aider à accéder au marché du travail, les protéger. » Pour mettre son plan à exécution, Salamé a demandé un programme de 210 millions de dollars (188 millions d’euros) au Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies : « Je suis fâché car nous n’en avons obtenu qu’un peu moins de 40 millions. Si nous devons faire ce pas supplémentaire, il faut vraiment que les pays qui le peuvent mettent la main à la poche. »
« Un mois et demi pour traverser le désert »

L’errance a fini par déposer Souleymane, 44 ans, sous le toit en tôle d’un hangar d’une administration à l’abandon, dans un quartier excentré de Tripoli. A sa suite, onze familles éparses, venues comme lui des monts Nouba, région en guerre du sud du Soudan. Allongé sur une natte en plastique, ses longues jambes repliées, le chef de la colonie décrit : « Nous sommes arrivés en Libye il y a un an. Nous habitions une maison dans la banlieue Sud de Tripoli dans une zone proche de la ligne de front. On entendait les tirs qui se rapprochaient, on est partis à pied. Après cinq jours à dormir sur la route, devant le HCR, un Libyen nous a trouvé cet abri. »

Les autres hommes du campement se sont rassemblés en silence pour écouter la voix grave de l’ancien chauffeur de camion. « Je voyage avec ma femme et mes sept enfants, entre 1 an et demi et 16 ans. Je suis passé par le Tchad. Nous avons mis un mois et trois jours à traverser le désert, à cause des pannes. Le petit qui est là, à 5 ans, il marchait dix heures par jour. Nous étions vingt dans un camion de transport de bétail. A Sebha, j’ai été battu et torturé. Je suis arrivé au HCR à Tripoli le 28 février. Dix jours plus tard, j’étais enregistré. »

A l’évocation de la chute du régime d’Omar el-Béchir, dans son pays, Souleymane sourit. « Au Soudan, le changement va prendre beaucoup de temps. Dans mon village, il n’y aura pas d’eau et d’école avant au moins quinze ans : mes enfants ne peuvent pas attendre. » Souleymane joue avec la cheville du garçon qui s’est installé contre lui. « Si j’avais assez d’argent, je pai erais la traversée à mon fils. Pour ma famille, cela coûte 3 500 euros de prendre la mer, environ 500 euros par personne, les bébés ne paient pas. Je sais qu’il y a une chance sur deux de mourir. »

Il se redresse, calmement, insiste. « Je vois que vous ne comprenez pas. Pour des gens qui ont quitté une vie vraiment horrible, qui ont traversé le désert, le reste est dérisoire, ça n’a pas d’importance. » Faute d’argent, comme 45 000 autres demandeurs d’asile enregistrés par le HCR, il attend le miracle onusien d’une place d’accueil pour sa famille en Occident. « On dit qu’une famille de Soudanais est déjà partie pour la Norvège, après un an et demi d’attente. C’est bien, la Norvège ? »

(1) Les prénoms ont été modifiés.

▻https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/10/31/migrants-en-libye-je-sais-qu-il-y-a-une-chance-sur-deux-de-mourir_1760873

v. aussi ce fil de discussion sur comment les migrants sont utilisés comme «#chair_à_canon» dans le cadre des conflits qui sévissent la Libye:

Carne da cannone. In Libia i profughi dei campi sono arruolati a forza e mandati a combattere
►https://seenthis.net/messages/773233

Refugees being ’starved out’ of UN facility in Tripoli

Aid worker claims refugees are being denied food to motivate them to leave.

The UN has been accused of trying to starve out refugees and asylum seekers who are sheltering for safety inside a centre run by the UN refugee agency in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

One group of about 400 people, who came to the Tripoli gathering and departure facility in October from Abu Salim detention centre in the south of the country, have apparently been without food for weeks.

Among them are 100 minors, according to a recent assessment by the International Organization for Migration. They are “currently starving” apart from some food that other refugees manage to sneak out of another part of the centre, the IOM assessment said. They last received food assistance a “couple of weeks ago”.

Internal documents seen by the Guardian show that the UNHCR is also planning to withdraw food from 600 other refugees and migrants in the centre – who include survivors of bombings, torture, forced labour and other human rights abuses. The majority have already tried to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean, but were returned to Libya by the EU-backed Libyan coastguard.

In a document circulated among UN staff on Tuesday, and seen by the Guardian, the agency said it would “phase out” food catering from 31 December. The document said the information should not be made public before mid-December, when 230 more refugees have been evacuated to other countries, in order to prevent disruption. After that, the facility will no longer be used as a transit centre, the document said, until the remaining refugees and migrants “vacate voluntarily”.

In the document, the UNHCR said that it would continue to finance cleaning in the centre after the withdrawal of food, partly to “prevent the reputational risk of having deficient/broken toilets and showers”. It also said a healthcare clinic on the site would continue to operate.

An aid worker with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “They are starving the population inside the [facility]. They’re just trying to starve them to motivate them to leave. It’s deliberately withholding aid to put people under pressure.”

The group who will be affected by the next food withdrawal include 400 survivors of the 3 July Tajoura detention centre bombing, in which at least 53 refugees and migrants were killed after an airstrike hit the hall in which they were being held. Hundreds of survivors remained on the site of the strike for a week afterwards, staging a hunger strike in protest at the lack of help.

They eventually walked dozens of miles to the gathering and departure facility, where they were let in but told their cases for evacuation wouldn’t be evaluated until they agreed to leave the centre.

One Tajoura survivor told the Guardian this week that if they are forced to leave and fend for themselves in Tripoli “it will be a very dangerous scenario”. Refugees are frightened of forced recruitment by militias, being caught up in the ongoing civil war, or being kidnapped anew by traffickers. Others who have taken a UNHCR offer of money, in return for living alone in Tripoli, say the payments are not enough and they remain in danger. One Eritrean man recently released from Triq al Sikka detention centre was shot last week by men in police uniforms who, he said, were trying to rob him.

“Still now they didn’t give food. I think it is [on] purpose?” an Eritrean refugee in the facility messaged the Guardian this week through WhatsApp. “Everyone is suffering and stressed and we have all decided to stay here until they use force, because being returned to a detention centre means again facing trafficking, torture and abuse.”

The man said he spent more than a year in Abu Salim detention centre, which was repeatedly caught on the frontlines of Tripoli’s ongoing conflict. “[We have] no option until UNHCR gives us a positive response. Even if they leave we will stay here. We have no option, we will not go anywhere. There are no safe places in Libya at this time.”

An 11 November email sent by the Guardian to UNHCR spokespeople, which asked whether denying food to former Abu Salim detainees in the facility was a “deliberate policy on UNHCR’s part”, went unanswered, as did further requests for comment.

The internal UN document suggest that, after the agency stops using the facility as a transit centre, the property could continue to operate as an “open centre” for refugees and migrants previously held in detention centres, though there are other “possible scenarios”. These include that Libya’s department for combating illegal migration (DCIM) “moves in and forcibly removes all the migrants/asylum-seekers … [to] detention centres”, or that it turns the facility into a detention centre run by its own guards.

The DCIM, which is under the interior ministry of the UN-backed Tripoli Government of National Accord, ostensibly runs a network of migrant detention centres in Libya, though in reality most are run by militias. A litany of human rights abuses, including rape and sexual abuse, labour exploitation and a denial of medical care have been reported.

The UN-run facility opened in December last year to much fanfare. “The opening of this centre, in very difficult circumstances, has the potential to save lives,” said the UN high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi. “It offers immediate protection and safety for vulnerable refugees in need of urgent evacuation, and is an alternative to detention for hundreds of refugees currently trapped in Libya.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/28/refugees-being-starved-out-of-un-facility-in-tripoli?CMP=share_btn_tw

Au centre du HCR à Tripoli, les migrants d’Abu Salim accusent l’ONU de ne pas les nourrir

Les migrants actuellement réfugiés dans une partie du centre du HCR à Tripoli, le GDF, accusent l’agence onusienne de les « affamer ». Ces migrants n’ont pas accès aux distributions de nourriture et n’ont plus le droit d’en apporter de l’extérieur. Le HCR, de son côté, se défausse de toute responsabilité et assure que ce sont les autorités libyennes qui sont en charge de l’intendance du lieu.

« L’ONU nous affame pour qu’on quitte le centre ». Massaoud* ne décolère pas. Ce migrant fait partie des 400 personnes qui se sont réfugiées dans un hangar juste à côté du centre de rassemblement et de départ (GDF), géré par les autorités libyennes en coordination avec le Haut-commissariat des Nations unies aux réfugiés (HCR). Il avait rejoint le centre après avoir été libéré de la prison d’Abu Salim le 29 octobre.

Selon lui, depuis leur arrivée, le GDF ne distribue pas de nourriture à ces migrants et depuis quelques jours, leur interdit même d’en faire entrer dans l’enceinte du hangar. En tout, 400 personnes seraient concernées par ces restrictions de vivres - sur les 1 200 hébergées au sein du centre du HCR à Tripoli.

Ahmed*, un autre migrant du GDF, affirme à InfoMigrants que les autorités font en effet la différence entre deux catégories : les 400 migrants de la prison Abu Salim – arrivés en octobre - et les autres.
Quelques migrants autorisés à apporter de la nourriture

« Avant on pouvait faire entrer de la nourriture. Mais depuis ce week-end, la police refuse sans justification », soupire Massaoud qui raconte avoir été battu par les gardes libyens et envoyé dans la prison de Tarek al-Sika plusieurs jours parce qu’il avait justement apporté de la nourriture dans le hangar. Il a ensuite été renvoyé au GDF.

Contacté par la rédaction, le HCR se dégage de toute responsabilité. Selon l’agence onusienne, ce sont les autorités libyennes qui sont en charge de l’intendance du lieu. Et toujours selon le HCR, les Libyens n’autoriseraient, en effet, les entrées de vivres dans le hangar qu’au compte-goutte.

« La DCIM, l’organe du ministère de l’Intérieur chargé de surveiller le périmètre de l’installation [du hangar], n’autorise actuellement que peu de représentants des demandeurs d’asile à acheter de la nourriture et des boissons pour le reste du groupe », explique Tarik Argaz, porte-parole du HCR en Libye, dans un mail envoyé à InfoMigrants.
Les migrants priés de quitter le centre

Les migrants d’Abu Salim accusent également le HCR de les pousser dehors en les affamant. Mais les exilés affirment n’avoir nulle part où aller et redoutent les combats qui font rage dans la capitale libyenne. De son côté, le GDF se justifie en précisant que le centre est surpeuplé et qu’il est destiné à un « public vulnérable ».

« Ils nous ont dit que la seule solution pour nous était de sortir du centre et de nous intégrer dans la société libyenne », explique encore Massaoud qui déplore que l’ONU ne traite pas son dossier de réinstallation. « Mais je vais faire quoi dehors ? C’est trop dangereux », s’inquiète le jeune homme.

L’ONU propose un accompagnement à ceux qui accepteraient de quitter le GDF volontairement. « Le HCR leur offre une assistance pour les aider à s’établir dans les zones urbaines, y compris une assistance financière d’urgence pour une période de deux mois, des articles de première nécessité notamment des matelas, des couvertures, des vêtements, des kits d’hygiène, ainsi que l’accès à des soins médicaux », déclare encore Tarik Argaz.

Depuis les premières arrivées spontanées début juillet, seulement 40 migrants ont accepté de quitter le GDF et de bénéficier de l’aide du HCR.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/21185/au-centre-du-hcr-a-tripoli-les-migrants-d-abu-salim-accusent-l-onu-de-
#faim

UN Libya migrant center plagued with crowding, TB, food cuts

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The United Nations center in Libya was opened as an “alternative to detention,” a last, safe stop for migrants before they were resettled in other countries. Now, just a year later, it looks increasingly like the notorious Libyan lockups it was supposed to replace.

The facility is jam-packed with nearly 1,200 migrants — about twice the number it was built for — including hundreds who fled from abuse at other detention centers in hopes of sanctuary. Dozens of patients with tuberculosis languish in a room crammed with mattresses. Sewage is overflowing, and armed guards from a local militia have effectively turned the center into a prison.

Unable to cope, the U.N. last week offered migrants the equivalent of $112 each to leave, and warned that food, already down to emergency rations, would be cut off on Jan. 1 for unapproved arrivals.

“This is very dangerous because among us there are people who are malnourished,” said a 27-year-old Sudanese man who arrived at the center in July. “If they cut food, they won’t be able to stand it.”

_

This story is part of an occasional series, “Outsourcing Migrants,” produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

_

He, like the rest of the nearly dozen migrants who spoke with The Associated Press from the compound, asked to withhold his name because of fears of retaliation. Libyan security officials and U.N. and other aid workers confirmed that the U.N. had lost control of the facility.

The conditions at the center underscore the predicament the U.N. finds itself in over migration. The UN has criticized the detention of migrants in Libya - a position it reiterated last month when Italy suggested the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees run more centers as a solution to rampant abuse in Libyan prisons.

“UNHCR does not and will not run places of detention in Libya,” its spokesman, Charlie Yaxley, told the AP.

Yet that is effectively what the Tripoli facility has become.

“It’s not the best possible scenario,” acknowledged Jean-Paul Cavalieri, the head of the UNHCR in Libya.

Cavalieri lamented the chaos that has accelerated as migrants, acting on their own, escape other detention centers with torture, rape, slave labor and trafficking to what they hope will be UN protection. He said the UNHCR is glad they are free of detention but cannot handle them at its center, known as the Gathering and Departure Facility, where people supposed to be there for days now spend months, stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.

“What we are trying to do now is to turn the loss of the GDF as a transit center into an opportunity,” Cavalieri said, but he struggled to articulate how. Cavalieri also said there are fears of possible abuse at the U.N. center, including of young girls. UN staff now spend just four hours a day in the compound, migrants and Libyan officials say.

In a statement after the AP story ran, Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean, said no one was being forced to leave the center, but “the situation is very tense.” UNHCR said 20 people agreed to leave Friday.

“We need the GDF (this transit centre) to function again as it was designed for the most vulnerable and most at risk refugees in detention, pending their evacuation out of Libya,” Cochetel added.

The dilemma has grown out of Europe’s outsourcing of migration to Libya. Europe has poured nearly 425 million euros into Libya since 2016 to keep migrants from reaching its shores — money that goes mostly to the U.N. and other aid agencies to improve conditions for migrants and Libyans displaced by the country’s civil war. The U.N. runs a vast operation within Libya, registering 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers, with about 6,000 inside the detention system and the rest ensconced in communities in Tripoli and beyond.

But dependence upon European funding and its increasingly restrictive migration policies have left the U.N. in the uncomfortable position of being the arbiter of horror stories. It is the U.N.’s job to decide who has suffered enough to get a coveted resettlement slot in another country.

Many end up waiting months, sometimes years — often in other detention centers — to find out their fate. The U.N. is now threatening to suspend asylum cases altogether for unauthorized migrants who refuse to leave its GDF facility.

The facility, like the UNHCR mission in Libya itself, was funded largely by European countries. The idea was that it would be operated by UNHCR, with cooperation from the Libyan government.

The situation was less than ideal from the outset, Cavalieri acknowledged. Delayed by months of negotiations, UNHCR ultimately agreed to a series of conditions from the Libyan government: armed guards within the compound and Interior Ministry militia at the gates, no freedom of movement for the refugees and asylum seekers, and a single Libyan “partner” for the various lucrative contracts inside.

Those conditions were never publicly spelled out. When the first group of refugees was resettled from the facility in December 2018, the UNHCR described it as “the first centre of its kind in Libya,” and said it was “intended to bring vulnerable refugees to a safe environment” while solutions were found. More than 2,300 people have passed through in the past year.

The influx of unauthorized migrants began in July, when an airstrike hit a detention center in Tripoli, killing 54. Survivors walked through the city to the U.N. center and, once the guards admitted them, they refused to leave.

The latest group to arrive, in late October, included more than three dozen tuberculosis patients among several hundred who walked out of Abu Salim detention center, where they had been imprisoned for the last year without regular meals. Those whose families could spare money paid guards to buy them food; others went hungry.

U.N. officials at the center told the new group, mostly men from sub-Saharan Africa, that there would be no resettlement unless they left — either for another detention center or for the streets of Tripoli. They were given bread and water, and U.N. officials said they had no control over what happened next, according to two Eritrean asylum-seekers. That would be up to the commander of the armed guards at the gates.

The Eritreans, whose government is considered among the world’s most repressive, refused to leave. They also refused to discuss returning home when an Eritrean diplomat unexpectedly showed up at the invitation of a U.N. migration official, according to the asylum-seekers. His arrival forced them to face a representative of the very government from which they are seeking asylum.

The tuberculosis patients, meanwhile, are being treated on-site in a crowded room of their own. They receive medicine from the U.N. But the pills are supposed to be taken on a full stomach, and instead the patients are making do with the same biscuits, bread and water they all have subsisted on since their arrival.

Most of the migrants at the U.N. center fled from worse and are torn between relief and fury — relief to have escaped Libya’s prisons alive, and fury at the impotence of the UN, which they say lacks either the will or the power to make any meaningful decisions about their future, inside the center or out.

“I hate these organizations. They don’t have any humanity,” said a 15-year-old Eritrean who survived the airstrike, fled to the U.N. facility, and is waiting to learn what will happen to him. His group is not allowed outside because they speak no Arabic and are targets for kidnapping. There are no resettlement slots available other than Libya.

“What shall we do?” he asked. “We have no options but to stay. Is there any news?”

The last thing most of those the AP interviewed want is to be turned out into Libyan cities, which are dangerous for everyone — Libyans and foreigners alike — but especially for migrants. They are considered ripe for kidnappings for ransom and for arrest by Libyan authorities who return them to the same detention centers they fled. So migrants inside see few alternatives to their new prison — it’s better than the old one or the streets.

“You are not allowed out because it’s like you are at the very last stage. You are almost outside Libya. It’s for your own safety,” said Khaled al-Marghani of LibAid, the Libyan group that operates the facility. “If you leave, I won’t be able to let you back in.”

Hardly anyone seemed eager to accept the latest offer, which the U.N. said came with guarantees from the Libyan government that they would not be re-arrested on the streets. But it is militias that run the streets, and not the central government.

One Sudanese migrant did agree to leave, seeing little alternative. He said he’ll now try to cross to Europe by sea before he is swept up in a Libyan raid to detain migrants.

“Instead of living in Tripoli and getting tortured, the sea is less torturous,” he said.

At a hearing late last month before members of the European Parliament, Annabelle Roig Granjon, a senior officer with UNHCR, fielded questions about how European funds were helping migrants inside Libya, especially in the center that opened a year ago to so much hope.

“The nature of the center, which was meant to be a transit center, is changing and this is a challenge right now,” she said. “What was meant to be an alternative to detention is turning into something else.”

►https://apnews.com/7e72689f44e45dd17aa0a3ee53ed3c03

UN tells migrants to leave Libya transit centre as $6m project flounders

‘You will not be considered for evacuation or resettlement if you stay.’

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The UN says it is unable to help most residents of an overcrowded refugee centre in the Libyan capital it once touted as a safe haven. To encourage people to go, it is offering money and aid, even telling them they won’t be able to register as refugees to leave the war-torn country if they remain.

Originally intended as a temporary residence for a small fraction of refugees – just those who had already been vetted by the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) and were scheduled for evacuation or permanent residency in other countries — the Gathering and Departure Facility (GDF) now has some 1,150 residents, well over its stated capacity.

Most arrived over the last eight months of clashes in Tripoli, including 900 who UNHCR says entered “informally”; some even bribed their way in. As the fighting has intensified, numbers in the centre have risen and many of the people inside are hoping for, or demanding, a way out of the country – even though the UN says it can’t offer that to everyone.

A flyer UNHCR began distributing late November at the GDF – seen by The New Humanitarian – offers food, cash, primary healthcare, and medical referrals to those willing to leave.

“You will not be considered for evacuation or resettlement if you stay,” stresses the flyer – the latest in a series of attempts to encourage those who entered informally to leave. Aid, including cash, was also offered earlier. About 100 people have taken up the offer since late November, but others have also likely entered the facility.

A source within UNHCR Libya, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, criticised the effort to push people out, calling it tantamount to “blackmail” to promise them help if they go and threaten their ability to secure refugee status if they do not.

“Asylum seekers are asylum seekers and can’t be denied the right to seek asylum on the basis of their stay at the GDF,” they said, adding that the aid on offer had not included “any future consideration for their protection needs or safety” once they leave.

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The agency has defended its actions.

UNHCR’s Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean Situation Vincent Cochetel pointed out that there are only two locations in Libya, both in the Tripoli area, where people can officially register their claim as a refugee with UNHCR, and the GDF is not one of them.

Cochetel said the agency can no longer provide for or protect the people inside, given that it has become overcrowded and dangerous.

“We believe the urban environment is safer for them, as long as they have a roof over their heads,” he said, adding that his agency provides various services in Tripoli, where the vast majority of migrants already live and rent accomodations.

UNHCR “is not in charge of the GDF”, and never was, according to a spokesperson, who said that the centre was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior, which allows UNHCR and a local NGO, LibAid, to provide services there – like healthcare and food.

But it was the refugee agency that proposed the project, and a statement released after the GDF’s opening late last year said the facility is “managed by the Libyan Ministry of Interior, UNHCR, and UNHCR’s partner LibAid.”

According to internal UN documents and several sources, the $6 million facility – paid for by international donors – has now become unsanitary and is in disarray.

Many of those inside are unsure whether to stay or go.

“UNHCR is putting a lot of pressure on us to leave the GDF,” one young Yemeni man who said he was in the centre told TNH by WhatsApp. “Should I leave the GDF no matter how dangerous the situation is for us?”
How it got this bad

There are more than 600,000 migrants in Libya, including 46,000 registered refugees and asylum seekers. Some came to work, but others aim to make their way to Europe, through a country that has become notorious for the rape, kidnap, and extortion of migrants, and for squalid detention centres run by militias and gangs.

Originally intended as a waystation for those on their way out of Libya, a UNHCR press release issued last December said the then-new GDF was a place to “bring vulnerable refugees to a safe environment while solutions including refugee resettlement, family reunification, evacuation to emergency facilities in other countries, return to a country of previous asylum, and voluntary repatriation are sought for them”.

The GDF is no longer the gleaming facility shown off in promotional videos and photos when it opened a year ago, when families posed with their packed bags, and kids smiled in a playground.

An internal UNHCR report from early November, obtained by TNH, paints a starkly different picture, as do the numerous accounts of those living inside the centre.

“Sewage water flooded days ago,” it says, adding, “the toilets in all the housing are extremely dirty… [and people] are complaining of the smell”. According to the report, some people had tuberculosis, scabies had begun to spread, and “food is stored in bad conditions”.

Some of this may be due to overcrowding, although the GDF’s capacity is not entirely clear: last December UNHCR said the facility could hold 1,000 people, but that number was adjusted in subsequent statements – in September, it was 700, and in October 600.

Numbers at the centre began to increase not long after it opened, although roughly in line with capacity until fighting broke out in Tripoli — with the internationally recognised government in Tripoli and the militias that back it on one side, and eastern forces led by general Khalifa Haftar on the other.

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Thousands of people found themselves trapped in detention centres on front lines, and UNHCR began evacuations to the GDF, including some of the “most vulnerable people” who had survived a July double airstrike on a centre called Tajoura that killed 52 people.

Other people were evacuated to the GDF from other centres or flocked there themselves, from Tajoura or elsewhere – drawn by the decent living conditions (it reportedly came to be known as “hotel GDF”) or because they saw it as a first step out of the country.

UNHCR tried to reserve GDF places for people it had previously registered as having a claim to refugee status – but distinguishing between refugees and other migrants has been at the heart of why the centre ran into trouble.

In late October, hundreds of residents from a separate Tripoli detention centre called Abu Salim managed to leave, and they too headed for the GDF, even though UNHCR described the facility as “severely overcrowded” at the time.

The guards who surround the GDF eventually let them in. Several sources, including UNHCR’s Cochetel told TNH that the guards — provided by the Tripoli government’s Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM) — took bribes to do so.
Unrealistic hopes?

Libya is not a party to the international refugee conventions and does not accept refugees itself.

That leaves those who have not made it out of Libya and to Europe with limited options.

The UN’s migration agency, IOM, coordinates “voluntary humanitarian return” for migrants who want to go back to their home countries: nearly 9,000 people have opted for this option in 2019.

UNHCR, meanwhile, registers asylum seekers and refugees in Libya for possible moves to other countries, including permanent resettlement (774 people this year), or evacuation to countries who have agreed to take them, but not as citizens, like Rwanda (1,410 in 2019).

Until recently, UNHCR said the Libyan authorities had only allowed it to register people from nine countries for refugee status, but Cochetel said this had now changed and the agency could take the details of people of any nationality.

In addition to cash and healthcare, UNHCR says people who leave the GDF are eligible for “documentation,” and a spokesperson said “there is a commitment from the authorities not to detain asylum seekers holding UNHCR documents.”

But, even after registration, these papers do not confer the right to work, nor do they guarantee safety: Libya is a divided country with multiple authorities, none of which are party to refugee conventions and officially recognise UNHCR documents.

Kasper Engborg, deputy head of office for OCHA Libya, the UN body that coordinates emergency response, explained how those flocking to the GDF often have expectations that go beyond just shelter.

“They all went there in the hopes that this could be the first gateway to Europe, and they have obviously left [their home countries] for a reason. We are not in a place where we can judge what reasons people left for.

“They believe as soon as they are in the GDF they are halfway on their way to Europe,” Engborg said, pointing out that not many countries have so far stepped up to offer spots to people who claim asylum in Libya, many of whom come from sub-Saharan Africa.

A UNHCR report says 6,169 resettlement places have been found since September 2017, and over 4,000 of those have already been allocated.

“At the end of the day it is the countries who decide who they want to take and how many people,” Engborg said.

UNHCR’s Cochetel put it differently: “[Many] people believe UNHCR is a travel agency and we should resettle them all.” With limited spots available, he asked, “how do we do that?”

While much of the blame for the current chaos in the GDF appears to have been placed on the new influx of people and a lack of resettlement spaces, others say the current situation points to problems that were there from the start.

The GDF is across the street from the headquarters of the DCIM and a detention centre it runs, allowing people to slip between the facilities.

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That means, according to multiple sources who work in Libya’s aid operation, all of whom requested anonymity, that physical and administrative control has largely been dictated by local authorities, and occasionally the militias that back them and provide armed security.

UNHCR’s Cochetel said the agency had limited choice in who it would work with in the GDF, and which firms to contract for services.

It’s “costing us enormous amounts of money; we cannot choose the partners”, he said. “We pay for food four times the level we should be paying.”

Two sources, both of whom requested anonymity, said part of the problem at the GDF stems from the fact that UNHCR never had a clear-cut agreement with the Libyan authorities – who are themselves split – on how the agency and its local partner, Libaid, would be able to operate inside the facility.
What’s next?

As controversy for the centre continues to swirl, it’s not clear what’s next for the GDF, and more importantly, for the people inside.

A UNHCR spokesperson said a catering contract that provides hot meals to the people who entered the centre without vetting will end at the start of next year, but the UN denies it will let GDF residents go hungry. It says, too, that it will not shut off the electricity or stop providing aid altogether.

“People are not going to be left in a starving situation,” said Engborg. “[If people do not leave] then other solutions will be found.”

But those solutions – one floated by a UNHCR spokesperson includes the possibility that the facility could “be run as an open centre, administered by the Libyan government, where different UN agencies and partners could provide various services” – would have to be approved by the authorities in Tripoli.

If conditions don’t improve, the UN could pull out altogether.

The spokesperson said that “for the UN to remain engaged, the centre would need to be a purely civilian facility where agencies and residents would have unhindered access and freedom of movement”.

One DCIM source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media, said Tripoli authorities were unlikely to allow an unguarded centre on their doorstep.

So far, there is little sign of others stepping in. Several international groups involved in providing aid to migrants and refugees declined to speak on the record about the GDF or say if they would pitch in to help those currently there.

In the meantime, emotions are running high inside the centre, as desperate texts sent out to various media outlets lay bare.

“It is a very confusing situation, and it is also a very difficult situation, because you are dealing with people’s hopes and emotions,” Engborg said. “Therefore, whatever rational decision that we often need to take, we are up against people’s legitimate hopes and emotions.”

Leaving the GDF may mean a registration appointment, cash, and other help. But for some, staying may keep some semblance of safety and the dream of a new life elsewhere alive.

Only around 100 residents have taken the UN up on its offer since it began distributing flyers, according to an aid worker in the centre. But the UN’s attempts to coax people out of the GDF and dissuade others from entering have largely proven unsuccessful. And, with no agreed resolution, it might get worse still.

While “some people are leaving… new people are coming in”, said Cochetel. “They bribe, pay their way in… I have the feeling that more people will go there, thinking they will get better assistance at the GDF. [But] it’s not true.”

▻https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2019/12/10/UN-migrants-Libya-transit-centre-project

Non, en Libye les migrants en centres de détention n’ont pas plus de chance d’être réinstallés en Europe

En Libye, des trafiquants font payer à des migrants leur entrée en centre de détention en leur faisant croire qu’ils seront plus rapidement évacués et réinstallés en Europe. C’est totalement faux mais plusieurs centaines de personnes, désespérées, ont déjà été victimes de cette arnaque.

Depuis l’été dernier, il arrive que des migrants paient pour être enfermés dans des centres de détention en Libye. Selon le Haut-Commissariat des Nations unies pour les Réfugiés (UNHCR), informé de cette situation par des victimes de cette arnaque, les trafiquants demandent entre 200 et 500 dollars à certains migrants pour une place en centre de détention. Pour les convaincre de payer, ils leur promettent un accès facilité aux équipes du HCR et une réinstallation plus rapide en Europe.

« Les trafiquants leur font la promesse qu’une fois qu’ils auront payé, le HCR sera pour eux comme une agence de voyage vers l’Europe. Parfois, ils leur disent même que le HCR a déjà planifié un rendez-vous avec eux », s’indigne Vincent Cochetel, représentant du HCR pour la Méditerranée centrale, contacté par InfoMigrants.

Entre 200 et 500 dollars pour une place dans des centres dont les conditions de vie inhumaines (manque de nourriture et d’eau, absence d’hygiène et de soins, traitement dégradants…) sont régulièrement dénoncées par les ONG ? Pour Vincent Cochetel, le succès de cette nouvelle pratique des trafiquants est le signe d’une détérioration des conditions de vie des migrants en Libye. Si les personnes croient aux promesses des trafiquants et finissent par payer pour aller dans ces centres, c’est qu’elles se sentent trop en danger en dehors.

« Les gens sont désespérés »

« Beaucoup de quartiers de Tripoli sont touchés par des frappes aériennes et des coupures d’électricité et d’eau. Les gens se trouvent dans un cul de sac, ils n’ont pas assez d’argent pour traverser ou ne veulent pas prendre de risques car, avec l’hiver, l’eau est froide et la mer plus agitée. Ils sont désespérés et pensent qu’ils seront plus visibles dans ces centres », explique Vincent Cochetel.

Certaines nationalités craignent également l’enlèvement. En Libye, selon le représentant du HCR, moins on parle l’arabe, plus on a une couleur de peau foncée et plus les risques d’être enlevé sont élevés.

Pour alimenter cette nouvelle branche de leur économie, les trafiquants cibleraient en particulier les personnes membres des communautés érythréenne et soudanaise. Une rumeur persistante –bien que fausse – affirme que ces personnes ont plus de moyens financiers grâce à leurs diasporas.

Le sentiment d’insécurité des migrants risque d’être renforcé par la fermeture, fin 2019, du centre de rassemblement et de départ (Gathering and Departure Facility, GDF) du HCR, à Tripoli. Pour compenser la fermeture de ce centre surpeuplé, L’agence onusienne assure qu’elle va renforcer ses programmes d’assistance dans des zones urbaines. Mais depuis avril 2019, le sud de la capital libyenne est en proie à un conflit armé.

En juillet 2019, le centre de détention de Tajourah, près de Tripoli, a été la cible d’une frappe aérienne qui a fait plus de 44 morts et 130 blessés.
« Les gens n’ont pas besoin d’être en détention pour être enregistrés »

Pour les migrants qui ont accepté de payer pour se retrouver en centres de détention, les voies de recours sont inexistantes. Surtout dans un pays où « le système de détention officiel fait partie du ’business model’ des trafiquants », estime Vincent Cochetel,

Le HCR lui-même reconnaît qu’il ne peut pas faire « grand-chose de plus que de prévenir les gens qu’ils n’ont pas besoin d’être en détention pour être enregistré ». « On essaye de faire passer le message dans différentes communautés. Mais parfois, ce qu’on dit a moins d’impact que le discours des trafiquants », déplore le représentant du HCR.

Face à ce nouveau danger pour les migrants, la solution est de renforcer l’information dans les langues que les gens parlent. « Nous devons aussi bien équilibrer nos efforts de réinstallation pour qu’il n’y ait pas la perception qu’on réinstalle plus les gens en détention que ceux en milieu urbain », ajoute Vincent Cochetel.

Depuis novembre 2017, le HCR a mis en place un système d’évacuation des réfugiés susceptibles d’obtenir une protection internationale dans un pays européen. Pour cela, les personnes doivent avoir été enregistrées en tant que réfugiés par l’agence onusienne. Ces enregistrements se font depuis les centres de détention officiels gérés par le département de lutte contre la migration illégale (DCIM, selon l’acronyme anglais) ou depuis le centre du HCR, à Tripoli.

Les migrants évacués sont alors envoyés vers le Niger ou le Rwanda, dans l’attente de leur réinstallation dans un pays d’accueil. Mais les États européens et le Canada n’acceptent les réfugiés qu’au compte-goutte. Sur les quelques 50 000 réfugiés enregistrés par le HCR en Libye, seuls quelque 4 600 ont été réinstallés depuis novembre 2017.

Les migrants qui parviennent à quitter les centres de détention et tentent de rejoindre l’Europe par la mer sont quasi-systématiquement interceptés par les garde-côtes libyens et renvoyés en détention.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/21425/non-en-libye-les-migrants-en-centres-de-detention-n-ont-pas-plus-de-ch

Fin janvier 2020:
UN evacuates endangered refugee centre in Libya’s Tripoli
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/823675

« A Tripoli, la vulnérabilité des demandeurs d’asile est immense »

Selon la porte-parole du Haut-Commissariat pour les réfugiés, le nombre de candidats à la traversée vers l’Europe interceptés par les gardes-côtes libyens a « augmenté de plus de 120 % » en janvier.

Caroline Gluck est porte-parole du Haut-Commissariat pour les réfugiés (HCR) en Libye. Elle alerte sur la détérioration de la situation des migrants en Libye et déplore le manque de solution d’évacuation pour les plus vulnérables. Depuis l’assaut déclenché en avril 2019 par le maréchal dissident Khalifa Haftar contre le gouvernement d’accord national (GAN) de Tripoli, la sécurité s’est considérablement dégradée dans la capitale. Le HCR a décidé de fermer son centre de rassemblement et de départ de Tripoli.
Quelle est aujourd’hui la situation des migrants en Libye ?

Environ 640 000 migrants se trouvent actuellement en Libye et le pays continue d’être une terre d’accueil pour des travailleurs étrangers. Il faut ajouter à ces personnes 47 000 réfugiés et demandeurs d’asile, sachant que le HCR enregistre chaque mois un millier de demandeurs d’asile supplémentaires, qui ont pour beaucoup été libérés de centres de détention ou été victimes de trafiquants. Ils ont urgemment besoin d’aide. Ils sont Syriens, Soudanais, Erythréens, Palestiniens… Leur vulnérabilité est immense, en particulier pour ceux originaires d’Afrique.

La Libye n’est pas un pays sûr, ni une terre d’asile. Les réfugiés y sont considérés comme étant dans l’illégalité et peuvent à tout moment être arrêtés et détenus. Il leur est souvent difficile de trouver un logement, a fortiori depuis le regain de la guerre civile à partir d’avril 2019, qui a provoqué le déplacement de 150 000 Libyens à l’intérieur du pays. Migrants et nationaux se retrouvent en concurrence pour trouver des logements abordables.

De façon générale, le contexte sécuritaire a des conséquences considérables pour l’ensemble des agences internationales et des ONG. Plus du quart des effectifs libyens du HCR ont été déplacés à cause du conflit. Toutes nos activités sont ralenties. Notre présence est limitée aux villes de Tripoli, Benghazi et Misrata et nous ne pouvons pas apporter notre aide à tous ceux qui en ont besoin. En outre, les dysfonctionnements du système bancaire font que nous avons du mal à déployer notre programme de soutien pour les personnes vivant en milieu urbain. Quelque 5 000 foyers reçoivent jusqu’à présent cette assistance qui représente, pour une personne seule, 250 dollars [230 euros]. Ce n’est pas assez.
Un an à peine après son ouverture, le HCR a annoncé la fermeture de son centre de transit pour réfugiés à Tripoli. Pourquoi ?

Il y a encore 119 personnes au sein du centre de rassemblement et de départ (GDF) et nous aimerions le fermer la semaine prochaine. La suite qui sera donnée n’est pas encore claire. Ce centre devait être un lieu de transit pour des réfugiés particulièrement vulnérables avant leur évacuation de Libye et, éventuellement, leur réinstallation en Europe ou en Amérique du Nord.

Mais nous avons été dépassés par la réalité du terrain. En juillet, après le bombardement aérien du centre de détention de Tajoura [est de Tripoli], nous y avons accueilli de façon exceptionnelle 400 personnes. Les réfugiés ont cru qu’en entrant dans notre centre, ils pourraient quitter les pays. Fin octobre début novembre, 400 personnes du centre de détention d’Abu Salim [quartier de Tripoli], qui n’étaient pas prioritaires, sont venues au GDF. Les gardes de la DCIM [département libyen de lutte contre la migration illégale, qui relève du ministère de l’intérieur], qui surveillent le complexe dans lequel se trouve le GDF, les ont laissés faire. On a su que certains payaient pour pouvoir entrer. Les lieux sont devenus surpeuplés.

D’autres événements ont précipité notre décision de fermeture. En janvier, trois obus de mortier sont tombés près du GDF et des débris ont atterri près d’un entrepôt à l’intérieur du complexe. Au même moment, nous avons appris que la DCIM construisait un site militaire à proximité immédiate du GDF. Fin janvier, deux journées d’entraînement de forces armées y ont eu lieu. Le site a perdu sa vocation civile et les réfugiés devenaient une cible militaire. Nous ne pouvons plus y travailler.

Nous sommes conscients de nos échecs et de nos vulnérabilités. Nous recherchons un nouveau site pour que des réfugiés particulièrement vulnérables y transitent avant des vols d’évacuation. Mais nous avons aussi besoin que la communauté internationale offre plus de places de réinstallation. Seuls 2 400 réfugiés ont pu être évacués de Libye en 2019. Ce qui est vrai pour la Libye est vrai à l’échelle mondiale. Nous estimons qu’1,4 million de réfugiés en danger dans des pays de premier accueil ont urgemment besoin d’être évacués. En 2019, le HCR n’a pu en réinstaller que 63 000, soit 4,5 % des besoins mondiaux.
Le sujet est moins présent dans l’actualité, mais les traversées de la Méditerranée se poursuivent…

En janvier, les gardes-côtes libyens ont intercepté 1 040 personnes qui tentaient de traverser la Méditerranée pour rejoindre l’Europe. Il y a un an, ils en avaient intercepté 469. Cette augmentation de plus de 120 % est le fait de la guerre en Libye. Les gens sont désespérés. Des Libyens tentent aussi la traversée.

On observe par ailleurs un changement depuis peu : les gens interceptés en mer ne sont plus systématiquement ramenés dans des centres de détention. Nous comprenons qu’il y a actuellement onze centres de détentions officiels, placés sous la responsabilité du ministère de l’intérieur, contre seize il y a encore quelques semaines. Il y a d’autres centres de détention non officiels, mais le HCR n’y a pas accès.

Nous ne pouvons que spéculer sur les raisons des fermetures de certains centres officiels. Peut-être que les ressources du gouvernement sont employées sur d’autres fronts, peut-être que notre plaidoyer a eu un effet même si je pense qu’il est limité. La situation continue d’évoluer au jour le jour. Ce qui est certain, c’est que la Libye a besoin de paix. Nous espérons que les pourparlers progresseront mais, à ce stade, nous ne pouvons que constater le soutien militaire apporté par des pays étrangers malgré le cessez-le-feu et l’embargo sur les armes.

▻https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2020/02/14/a-tripoli-la-vulnerabilite-des-demandeurs-d-asile-est-immense_6029581_3212.h
#vulnérabilité