AYS Daily Digest 16/03/2021: “Inhumane” camp in UK shut down by Home Office
Leaked photos from Covid unit in Malta // Statement from ABR on police cooperation // Restrictions on asylum access in Hungary // Alarm over Canary camp expulsions // Legal squats in France // Report: ‘Hotspot approach’ has failed
FEATURE: Penally, controversial camp in SW Wales, will shut its doors
A controverisal camp in the UK for people-on-the-move will shut its doors at the end of this month in a big win for human rights advocates who have long demand the closure of the “inhumane” facility, media reported.
The Home Office said that as “pressures put on the asylum estate during Covid” have eased off, it was decided not to extend the use of Penally beyond the originally-agreed six months. However, Napier, another controversial camp in Kent, “will remain in operation in accordance with current needs.”
Only last week, inspectors who visited Penally and Napier deemed the camps “filthy” and “impoverished,” adding that there were “fundamental failures” over housing people in military sites.
Naomi Phillips, director of policy and advocacy at the British Red Cross, celebrated the Penally decision:
“We have consistently raised serious concerns with the Home Office that Penally, and other barracks sites, are completely inappropriate and inhumane as housing for people fleeing war, persecution and violence,” she told media.
“We want to see the urgent closure of these sites, and a long-term solution that allows people to live in safe, suitable and secure accommodation.”
On March 21, Penally, near the town of Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales, will be returned to the Ministry of Defence. The some 50 or 60 men still housed there will be sent to alternative accommodation sites before that date.
The British Home Office opened the facility last September, deciding to house 250 men at the former military barracks. Almost immediately, the decision was met with sharp outcries about the conditions in the facility.
In October, the Welsh government formally called on the UK to stop housing people at Penally, saying the camp represented the “direct opposite” to basic equality and human rights needs. One Welsh minister, Jane Hutt, said Penally “does not meet the basic human needs of people seeking a new life in the UK.”
As with many facilities set up by the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, the overcrowding at Penally put people-on-the-move at heightened risk of contracting the coronavirus. Video footage and photographs of the camp seen by BBC Wales showed bathroom floors covered with water, every toilet in one bathroom blocked, and beds in communal rooms positioned less than 2 meters apart.
The Home Office, however, deemed the barracks “Covid-compliant,” and the facility remained open.
In addition to the terrible conditions people-on-the-move suffered at Penally, the camp was a huge financial burden for the government. In total, policing the facility cost more than £1m (1.16m EUR) and took up more than 8,000 policing hours in the first six weeks after it was opened alone.
Simon Hart, a Conservative MP and Secretary of State for Wales, said he was “very pleased” to learn of the decision. He acknowledged that the use of Penally caused “much frustration and anger” and had “contributed to heightened tensions,” but stressed that the Home Office “had little option at the time” for accommodating people elsewhere.
However, Welsh MP Liz Saville Roberts warned of making excuses. “The institutional failures of the Home Office over Penally camp are a scandal that must not be brushed under the carpet. We now need binding guarantees that a situation like this can never happen again,” she said.
Now, civil society is calling on the Home Office to shut Napier as well.
Kolbassia Haoussou, director of survivor empowerment at Freedom from Torture, said the Home Office “must also now close Napier Barracks, which remain open despite repeated warnings of the life-threatening conditions inside.”
He added: “If this government is serious about improving the asylum system, it will close the barracks, make quick and fair asylum decisions, and house people humanely within our communities so they can start to rebuild their lives.”
SEA
Every day, three people die in the Central Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. There is not much more we can say about this stark and horrifying statistic, published by InfoMigrants.
MALTA
Leaked photos of Maltese detention facility show horror
A person working in a Covid-19 unit of a Maltese reception center has leaked terrible photographs of the conditions there to local media in an effort to “show people what it’s like to be stuck in the detention services system in Malta.”
The photographs, taken in late January this year, depict the conditions inside a Covid-19 isolation unit for men who test positive for the virus. The walls of the facility are covered in mould and the toilets are filthy and blocked up.
Ħal Far, the detention facility, was opened in April 2020 to house people who tested positive for Covid-19, a collaboration between the Home Affairs Ministry and the Maltese Red Cross.
A ministry spokesperson said everything in the facility was “completely new” when it opened and that the building was “disinfected daily.”
“I feel guilty about working there as I feel like I’m part of the problem,” the source said. “Even though I try to help, it’s not easy to see people living in these conditions. For some people it became normal and just part of their regular day. I just can’t do it.”
GREECE
Statement from Aegean Boat Report on cooperation with Greek Police
“In the light of more than a year of illegal pushbacks by official Greek rescue and border patrol agencies at the behest of the Greek government, behaviour which we can only describe as reprehensible and inhuman, Aegean Boat Report is sorry to announce that except in cases of extreme risk of suffering and potential loss of life, we will no longer share with the Greek port police the location of men, women and children seeking asylum in Greece,” ABR wrote on its website.
ABR cited the expulsion (so-called ‘pushback’) of 10,656 men, women and children since March 2020 as the reason for ceasing cooperation with the police.
“We do not feel it is possible for us to continue to assist the Greek port police and the Greek government by providing them with this information, for as long as they continue to behave in this unacceptable, unjustifiable, and illegal way,” ABR said.
Below is a video of just such an illegal pushback, from Alarmphone.
Statment from Campaign for Access to Asylum on pushbacks and criminalization of NGOs
The Campaign for Access to Asylum has released a statement with ten signatories calling for protections of freedom of speech and democratic values in light of the current climate of intimidation surrounding the work of NGOs and independent actors who collect testitmonies of and report on pushbacks.
The Campaign for Access to Asylum raises the alarm on the consequences with respect to freedom of speech and democratic valuesthat can result from the ongoing efforts to create a climate of intimidation and distrust over the work of particularly those NGOs that operate at the country’s borders and receive reports and testimonies on pushbacks which, as they ought to, they publicise. In full accordance with the repeated calls issued by the foremost competent national and international bodies and organizations, the Asylum Campaign reiterates the call for putting an end to the practice of illegal pushbacks and the use of force against refugees and migrants, as well as for the effective investigation and prosecution of relevant incidents. At the same time, the Campaign calls on the Greek and European authorities:
-To safeguard the independence of non-Governmental Organisations that engage in the support of refugees and migrants, particularly at the external borders of the European Union.
-To protect them from any unjust and unsubstantiated accusation addressed against them, which also puts at risk the principle of solidarity that binds their work.
-To safeguard the search and rescue operation of both the competent authorities, as well as all actors that can provide assistance at Europe’s land and sea borders, where human lives are constantly put at risk.
-To establish the appropriate mechanisms that will be able to contribute to the search and rescue of all people that find themselvesin danger at Europe’s borders and in any area under their jurisdiction or over which they exert effective control.
-To put an end to the onerous EU-Turkey Statement that has transformed the eastern Aegean region into a place of extensive human rights violations and to move forward with establishing legal pathways that will allow those seeking international protection in Greece and Europe to do so in a safe and orderly manner
Read the full statement here.
Mitarakis and the European left’s war
It seems Notis Mitarakis, Greece’s minister of Migration and Asylum, has not in fact read the most recent findings of the Frontex Scrutiny Working Group, which found five incidents of contradictions or inconsistencies in the Hellenic Coast Guard’s behavior, and said it was impossible to conclude whether or not there were violations of the Frontex regulation and fundamental rights.
Mitarakis seems to think this means Greece is off the hook, as he remarked: “We are pleased to see that the recent finding of the Frontex Working Group, which investigated a number of complaints, concluded that there was no breach of the rules, responding to those who make baseless allegations” in a meeting of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
In fact, the minister said the Frontex investigation is “a positive development” that “will allow this debate to end, the truth to shine and the misinformation to stop.”
“The European Left is waging war against Frontex in the European Parliament, trying to limit its ability to protect Europe ‘s borders. Frontex must follow European regulations, but its role is to prevent illegal entry into Europe,” Mitarakis said in a television program on Saturday.
BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA
Letter to the EU, from Lipa camp
No Name Kitchen has co-signed a letter written by a Pakistani man living in Lipa camp in northwest Bosnia and Herzegovina addressed to members of European Parliament. “We are refugees. We have no work. We have no rights. We have no dignity here. We need hope,” he writes.
Read more from Soufyan Ali’s letter and about the conditions in Lipa here.
HUNGARY
UNHCR concerned about asylum access in Hungary
UNHCR has expressed its concern over a recent decision by the government of Hungary that the agency feels “restricts access to asylum.”
“UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, deplores the recent decision of the Hungarian government to extend a decree that authorizes the police to automatically and summarily remove anyone intercepted for irregular entry and stay,” UNHCR wrote in the statement.
In May 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Hungary introduced legislation that required people to first ask for asylum at Hungarian embassies in neighbouring non-EU countries before they enter Hungary.
“We urge the Government of Hungary to withdraw these legislative provisions and ensure that people who wish to seek international protection, many of whom are fleeing war, violence and persecution, have effective access to its territory and to the asylum procedure. UNHCR stands ready to support the Government of Hungary to review its asylum system to bring it in line with international refugee and human rights law,” said UNHCR’s Europe Bureau Director, Pascale Moreau.
SPAIN
Alarm raised over people expelled from Canaries camp
The Solidarity Platform with People on the Move, Somos Red, have denounced the situation of the people expelled from Camp Canarias 50, in the La Isleta neighborhood (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), media reported.
The situation of the 60 men from North Africa was reported in mainstream media. Fifteen days after the men left the overcrowded Red Cross center, they received housing assistance as a result of collaboration among the citizens of Gran Canaria.
The group continued in their statement:
Given this situation [the lack of humanitarian response in the face of increased arrivals of people], it is proven that the Canary Islands Plan and the macrocamps are generating, among other difficulties, new vulnerability profiles in the Canary Islands without any institution providing a response.
On the other hand, we want to congratulate Canarian society because it is exercising responsibility, in the absence of basic institutional resources, and serving with precarious means that allow offering a dignified reception and defending the rights of migrants.
More people, it seems, are opting to leave reception centers and sleep rough on the Canaries, out of fear of deportation. People are sleeping in parks, in ravines, even under trucks, media reported.
At first, it was reportedly primarily Moroccans who slept on the streets. But increasingly, more West Africans are also doing so.
It is important to stress that sleeping on the streets in this context cannot be viewed as an active choice.
“They [asylum seekers] leave the reception facilities because they are afraid of being transferred to Las Raíces and sent back to their country of origin,” Mamé Cheikh, president of the Federation of African Associations of the Canary Islands, told InfoMigrants.
The deportations, however, are just rumors. According to Mamé Cheikh, “since the beginning of the year no one has been deported to black Africa from Tenerife.”
And while hiding from authorities may make people-on-the-move feel safer, they have a better chance of getting transferred to the mainland if they live in the reception centers. “No one will help them in the street,” Mamé Cheikh said.
FRANCE
Legal squatting in Brittany
Apparently, there is an unrecognized agreement in France that allows a form of legal squatting.
In Rennes, the capital of Brittany, the organization Un Toit C’est Un Droit has been using this assocation/town hall agreement for several years, which allows asylum seekers, rejected or undocumented migrants to be accommodated in empty and derelict buildings slated for demolition. More than 150 people are currently accommodated in these legal squats in the Rennes area.
InfoMigrants interviewed the president of Un Toit C’est Un Droit, which you can read here.
Call for donations of old phones!
If you have old phones lying around, and especially if you have the charger that comes with it, do not hesitate to send us a PM! They will be able to render proud services to #refugees in need.”
GERMANY
GENERAL
Border Abolition 2021 Call for Contributions
Border Abolition 2021 will be a two-day online conference aimed at connecting organising, campaigning, activist research and academic work around border violence, incarceration, abolitionism, racism and other interlocking forms of racialisation. We hope to bring together people struggling against borders in all their forms, from immigration detention, prison and militarised border sites, to the solidarity practices that resist expanding systems of everyday bordering. We see this work as also envisioning the creation of systems of care, safety and support that many of our communities lack.
Read more about the conference, the call for contributions, and how to submit, here. Submissions close April 15.
EU/FRONTEX
German think-tank: EU’s ‘hotspot approach’ has failed
Europe’s ‘hotspot approach’ to dealing with arrivals of people to its shores, established under the EU-Turkey deal five years ago, has failed — so deemed the Expert Council on Integration and Migration, a Berlin-based think tank, in a paper published on Tuesday.
Researcher Karolina Popp wrote in the paper, “No More Morias?”, that the system fails because it does not provide a mechanism to relieve pressure on hotspot locations, the Aegean islands being perhaps the most famous examples.
In Greece, Popp says, neither the promised fast-tracked asylum procedures and speedy returns have come to fruition. The Greek asylum system is still woefully inadequate and unable to cope with the pressure.
Now, the EU’s proposal to set up processing camps at its external borders could lead to some of the same problems seen in these hotspot locations. Think: the Canary Islands, whose handling of the situation of increased arrivals last year has been pretty dismal.
The paper comes out a few days before the five-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal. While we welcome the paper, we also ask the question, why has it taken five years for this report to come out, when NGOs and people working on the ground in these so-called ‘hotspot’ locations have long known that the system there is broken? Did we really need to wait five years to learn that our governments and our policy-makers have led us all down the wrong path?
EU to pressure African countries to take back their citizens
The European Union is discussing ways it can apply more pressure to African countries to cooperate on the so-called readmission and return of their citizens, people-on-the-move who fled their home countries looking for a safe haven and a life in Europe.
On Monday, EU members states’ foreign and interior ministers discussed ways to increase leverage on these ‘third countries’ in Africa at a so-called “jumbo summit” virtual meeting on EU migration policy, media reported.
“We have to work for safe and fair and regular migration. We have to put together incentives in order to make third countries accept the people who have to go back, and to create a flow of regular migration,” the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at the first such meeting for six years.
A solution outlined in the EU’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum last September was to make it more difficult or more expensive for citizens of those countries that failed to readmit migrants to secure European visas under an amended “Visa Code” regulation.
Under the Code, member states can notify the Commission when confronted with “substantial and persistent practical problems’’ with any country.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said on Monday that it is “important that we use this new tool, together with member states, and I am ready to table proposals based on this already this summer.” “It’s time not only to talk but also to act,” she said.
WORTH READING
Lawfare on solidarity at sea: The Mediterranean rescuers facing trial
A look at the Iuventa crew and the criminalization of SAR from Maurice Stierl, a researcher and fellow at the University of Warwick.
Also, today at 16:00 GMT Stierl will give an online talk hosted by Sussex University entitled, “Europe’s unsafe environment: anti-migrant violence in COVID times.”
You can register for the event here.
Women on the move tell: the moving fates and dreams of refugees from Libya
An interview with a communications officer on SOS Méditerranée, in Vogue.
I was made homeless as an asylum seeker in the UK — now I’m anxiously waiting for a decision
A first-person account from an Iraqi man navigating the UK’s asylum process.
NGOs under attack: “They don’t want uncomfortable witnesses. But we will resist”
An interview with Sascha Girke, a 42-year-old German paramedic and one of the Iuventa crew facing prison time for SAR work in the Central Mediterranean.
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