€U day of Struggle against internment camps. = HOME TRUTHS

by - Sat Apr 02, 2005 15:01

then chances are they won't help Africa or Asia
govern themselves wisely.
If we tell you there is a problem, they say there is none. We have a map which shows you where the problem is brushed under the carpet. Because we know you don't have little dishies. But consider this, there is not enough carpet to hide the extent of human misery much longer. Your society has a moral responsibilty as great as that of Europeans in the 1930s who ignored other types of camps, to ask what can be done beyond the moat, beyond the fortress walls to give the poor of this planet their dignity, their food, their water, their jobs, their hope, their fish, their lives back.

Next time you drive that car, use that mobile, curse that foreigner, eat that fish stick, spend that "euro" you earned, think about it.

.:. for our ancestors were pirates & so too are we .:.

your camps.

by © Migreurop 2004 - Migeurop Sat Apr 02, 2005 22:23 carte at migreurop dot org

Though internment camps have very diverse features (see map), they also have certain common characteristics.

The first one is their occupants: citizens of none-European countries who have committed no offence other than crossing or trying to cross a border without papers.

A second characteristic is that "illegal migrants" are considered and managed as a group, instead of being treated as individuals with a personal history.

Thirdly, it seems impossible to ensure the respect of fundamental rights in these places.

There is no freedom of movement.

Basic rights to asylum, to family life and private life, as well as minors' rights are not guaranteed, while inhumane and degrading treatment is often perpetrated. The internment of foreigners in Europe is not aimed (primarily) at punishing them.

Instead its goal is to demonstrate to the receiving state's population that migrants, who must be controlled, are efficiently managed.

It is a kind of tacit contract between State and society, through which the State guarantees the security of its citizens. This is the legitimization of camps. Internment is part of a series of measures that are referred to as "common migration and asylum policies" and aim at subcontracting the control of entry into the European Union to the states at the outer borders of Europe.

Nowadays, border controls and the fight against illegal immigration are central to European immigration and asylum policies. Before September 11th 2001, the question of immigration was treated on the same level as criminality and drug trafficking.

Today it is clearly associated with the terrorist threat. More and more, the migrant is depicted as the enemy, and "war" vocabulary is often used to describe the situation and to act against it: military equipment for controls at sea, high technology, walls and barriers, camps and collective expulsions.

In this climate which is constantly maintained, internment of foreigners is a logical response that is also applied to asylum seekers. With such a policy, the European Union chooses to protect itself from asylum seekers instead of protecting them. Therefore, the new European standards based upon the "bogus asylum seekers" notion, make access to asylum procedures even more difficult and contribute to lower the level of protection.

Detention of asylum seekers appears as an appropiate answer to the "threat" of the increasing number of asylum seekers.

European proposals increasingly mention the possibility of detaining asylum seekers in camps located outside the European Union. This "externalisation" or "subcontracting" applies not only to asylum but also to the protection of borders. The aim is to make them more and more impenetrable, pushing them beyond their physical materialisation. "Externalisation" is not only based upon visa policy, a key instrument of "remote control" policing. "Externalisation" is also central to the relations between the European Union and third countries, forcing the latter to cooperate in the fight against illegal immigration.

Morocco is a good example of this policy. The European Union finances the control of Moroccan borders in order to fight illegal immigration to Europe. It is a way of transforming this country into a "European border watchdog".

Whatever the functions of the camps - containing the influx of migrants coming to Europe, organising the deportation of illegall migrants or detaining asylum seekers: camps are a part of the mechanism to exclude those designated by the European Union as a "risk" or as an "enemy". They are the materialization of a security approach to migration, to the detriment of the fundamental right of free movement.

Migreurop's mailbox contact@migreurop.org
Migreurop's web site www.migreurop.org
Migreurop's Definition of Camps

The first image which the term of "camp" evokes is that of a closed place, geographically identified, and reserved for confinement of undesirable people. Today in Europe, the camps range from prisons, as in Germany and Ireland, to detention centres in the Greek islands which were not planned and are built in make-shift buildings. There are also high risks of shipwrecks and capsizing of boats transporting migrants across the Adriatic, from Italian "Centri di permanenza temporanea e assistenza" to French "zones d'attente/ waiting zones" and "centres de retention", from closed centres for asylum seekers in Belgium, to buffer camps which mark the real frontier of the European Union: Morocco, Spain (Ceuta, Melilla, Canary islands), Algeria, Ukraine, Malta, or Lampedusa... But to stick to this definition of the camps would mask an important part of the reality.

The diversity of administrative procedures and various technical and humanitarian constraints aimed at regrouping the migrants go beyond the reference to confinement and lead us to consider the camps as places used to keep the foreigners at a distance. The forms that this can take are variable and sometimes very different from camps with barbed wire.

It then becomes clear that certain "open" centres of reception, transit or lodging provide assistance and a roof for migrants, but it hides the fact that the occupants of these open centres, migrants and asylum seekers have no other choice, but to be there. This is the case in Germany and Belgium where payment of a survival allowance and examination of asylum applications are conditioned by an obligation to reside in a fixed place. Is not the forced dispersion of exiles, organised in some countries to avoid the creation of new "focal points" for grievances, the symbol of the multiform character of the exclusion of foreigners?

Can we not compare to an informal "compulsory residence order" the obligation, for foreigners, not to be where they are considered to be trouble? Because police harassment and this obligation to stay invisible obviously act as prison bars and trace the boundaries of a place to which foreigners are confined. Thus, the camps become a process, a symbol of forced wandering and endless movement of exiles that European societies refuse to welcome. The expression "Europe of camps", taken in its wider sense, appears to best suit the relegation systems Europe uses in place of migration policies.

Methodological Note

Migreurop network has an extended definition of "camps" that covers a large variety of places. On this map, however, we have chosen to show only detention centers or « closed camps », ­ the locations where migrants are detained and deprived of their freedom of movement. The camps are classified as follows:

* Blue for people awaiting permission to enter the territory, primarily those wishing to apply for asylum (asylum seekers) or immigrants refused entry and waiting for an examination of their situation. After this examination, the person held may be admitted to the territory or rejected and returned to the port/border.

* Orange ­ for people who have been arrested in an illegale situation in the territory of a state and are awaiting deportation.

* Red ­ most of these places are used to detain both types of people, and may also serve as identification/screening centres. We have also included certain exceptions: e.g the open camps in Ceuta and Melilla where freedom of movement is primarily subject to administrative constraints. These open camps symbolise the externalisation of borders. In some cases, we have also included certain national particularities: e.g in Germany and Ireland, prisons are often used for detaining migrants. In other cases, some of the camps shown on the map are places where migrants gather informally without being directly placed under the control of the authorities: ­ To the South of the Mediterranean: migrants waiting for and organising their passage to Europe. ­ In European countries such as France or Italy: an old train station in Rome (where migrants are awaiting admission), Calais in France (where foreigners wait to cross the Channel to reach the United Kingdom).


From European Migration and Asylum Policies to Camps for Foreigners


Sources: Germany: Initiativen gegen abschiebehaft-Berlin / Austria: Asylkoordination Osterreich / Belgium: Mrax / Denmark: http://www.coe.int/T/F/Com/Presse/∞ Actualite/ / Spain: Rapport du Comite europeen pour la prevention de la torture et des peines ou traitements inhumains ou dégradants (CPT) (6/8/2003); Luz Saavedra /
Estonia: Legal information centre for human rights
France: ministre de l'Interieur français
Greece: Articles de presse (http://www.enet.gr/online/∞ online) / Hungary: Hungarian Helsinki Committee, helsinki@mail.datanet.hu
Ireland: Irish refugee council
Italy: Storie in gabbia, supplement Il Manifesto du 31/5/03, http://www.migranti.net/pages/inserto_CPT.pdf∞


Sources :-

Latvia: The latvian centre for human rights and ethnic studies
Lithuania: rapport de M. A. Gil-Robles, commissaire aux droits de l'Homme sur sa visite en Lituanie (2004) http://www.coe.int/T/f/commissaire_d.h/∞
Luxemburg: http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/∞ lux/2004-12-inf-fra.pdf /
Malta: jrsmalta@waldonet.net.mt
Netherlands: www.autonoomcentrum.nl
Poland: JRS /
Czech R.: http://www.mvcr.cz/suz/uvod.html∞, S a n d r i n e Carton (2003) «L'institutionnalisation de l'asile en Europe centrale: l'exemple tcheque. 1990-2003", Paris
U.K. http://www.barbedwirebritain.org.uk/∞ / Slovakia: JRS
Slovenia: JRS
Sweden: Migration Board, www.migrationsverket.se/english/maps Switzerland: Organisation suisse d'aide aux refugies, http://www.sfh-osar.ch∞, Office federal des refugies, Office federal de la statistique, Conference des directrices et directeurs des d'apartements cantonaux de justice et police / Gross Andrea (2000) Arrival of asylum seekers in Europeans airports, Council of Europe. Bulgaria: Bulgarian Red Cross, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee / Croatia: Croatian Red Cross, Croatian Law Centre / Rumania: Benedicte Michalon - Migrinter-CNRS / Serbia&Montenegro: Groupe 484, Gracanicka 10, Belgrade / Ukraine: Ukrainian State Committee

€.:.+*%@

Migreurop has no data for Egypt, Israel, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Byelorussia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Moldavia and Montenegro. For Finland, Norway, Portugal and Russia, only information from the European report of Andrea Gross are on the map. If you have more information, send us a message at carte@migreurop.org

© Migreurop 2004

by Caravan - indy.de Tue Apr 05, 2005 01:04

There is a special on Indy.de with a summary about the actions
on April 2nd all over Europe and in San Diego (USA) and Baxter (Australia)
http://de.indymedia.org/2005/04/110751.shtml
Best wishes to Ireland.
What a great action to welcome Kunle this way!