AYS News Digest: Forcible Returns from Turkey to Syria
Plans to Receive Ukrainian Nationals in Neighbouring Countries / EU Funding in Ethiopian Migration Policy / #EvacuateRefugeesFromLibya / news and reports along with some recommended reads from our Info Team members
FEATURE
Syrians for Truth and Justice (STJ) has reported that between 2019 and 2021, Turkish authorities deported more than 155,000 Syrian refugees. This equates to refoulement under the idea of “voluntary return”.
In some instances, Turkish Authorities would take advantage of the fact Syrian refugees may not be able to speak/understand Turkish and would ask the interpreters to “trick the refugees into putting their thumbprint on the “voluntary return” document”.
Many deportee witnesses interviewed by STJ said they had lost their jobs, their bank accounts had been frozen after their kimliks had been cancelled, and they had been given five-year-entry bans to Turkey. Even worse, many families had been separated, as predominantly husbands and fathers were sent back to Syria, whilst wives and children stayed in Turkey. Many deportees had been subjected to detention and torture upon arrival in Syria. Read more.
Some deportees also referred to “family-level deportations”.
SEARCH AND RESCUE AT SEA
120people have reportedly been picked up the Moroccan navy, mostly men coming from Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2021, the Moroccan police claimed they had arrested more than 12,000 people attempting to leave the country through irregular forms of migration. They also claimed to have broken down over 150 smuggling networks.
In addition, the EU has provided roughly 1 billion euros since 2014 to Morocco and its National Strategy on Immigration and Asylum (NSIA). Nonetheless, since May 2021, only 1,400 migrants had obtained protection, pre-departure and reintegration assistance, as stated by InfoMigrants. The Geneva-based non-profit organisation, GDP, further stated that Morocco has been receiving “generous funding from Europe” to prevent flows of migrants entering European territories. There has been a developing relationship between Spain and Morocco which has led to more Moroccan navy patrols and greater interception of migrant boats. Full article available here.
To read more about the Global Detention Project report on Immigration Detention in Morocco, you can access it here.
LIBYA
“We want you to spread our stories”
A snippet of an interview is included below between Yambio David, a spokesperson for the refugee protests organised in front of the UNHCR in Tripoli these last few months, and Henrike Koch who was involved in the #EvacuateRefugeesFromLibya:
-“We want you to spread our stories”
-“And what are your other demands, especially with regard to the EU?
We demand that the European states stop cooperating with the Libyan Coast Guard and the Libyan militias and that all camps — we call them concentration camps — in Libya are closed completely. And we call for the protection and evacuation of all those who do not feel safe in Libya. Furthermore, the perpetrators, the violators of basic human rights, must be held accountable before the law.
-Yambio, you have been in Libya since 2018. What did you experience there?
Yambio: I have seen extortion, arbitrary detention and serious human rights violations in Libya. For months I was detained without judicial review and forced to work. I have been tortured several times in different detention centers just for being who I am: an immigrant, a refugee, meaning a nobody in their world. They make us feel like subhumans here.
-Did you try to escape?
What we experience here forces us to get on boats. I tried a couple of times to get to Europe via the Mediterranean, but was always intercepted and taken to internment camps by Libyan militias. Because of the things I went through, I became an activist.”
You can read the whole interview here. In addition, UNHCR Libya tweeted that 64 vulnerable people were released on February 15 from the notorious Ain Zara detention centre. They will reportedly all receive emergency cash, medical support, and help with shelter arrangement, but it was the UNHCR’s bizarre wording of this that drew attention, not the news itself to the same extent:
GREECE
Efstratia Mavrapidou died
If reading this title you wonder who this is, then you must have missed the beautiful story of humanity, simple yet great people and solidarity.
She was one of the three grandmothers of solidarity.
Efstratia Mavrapidou, Maritsa Mavrapidou and Emilia Kamvisi spent their whole life in the fishing village, Skala Sykamnia.
At the height of the refugee crisis in the summer of 2015, the camera “caught” them treating an infant on the shore, the child of a Syrian refugee woman who had just landed on the shore. They continued to do the same, offering -despite their years- everything they could to the refugees, all this time that their village became the center of the refugee-humanitarian crisis. Every day they went down to the shore and sat with other citizens in solidarity with the refugees, Stonisi reminds. Read the story here.
SERBIA
Falling behind countries that repatriated citizens from Syrian camps
BalkanInsight has reported that more than two dozen Serbian women remain trapped in refugee camps in Syria, as they await to be repatriated by the Serbian government. Around 26 Serbian women are currently being held in refugee camps in Syria, along with their children. Most of these women had followed their partners seeking a better life under an Islamic State caliphate and are now facing the repercussions. Serbia has fallen behind other countries in the Balkans, who have already repatriated their citizens from such camps.
“In one of the voicemails this reporter heard, Aiba said that camp guards threatened to take her children away if she ever spoke out about her experience in the camp jail. But still she speaks.”
ITALY
Report: Technologies for Border Surveillance and Control in Italy. Identification, Facial Recognition, and European Union Funding
This research points out that identification and categorisation systems for migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, rely on vast quantities of biometric data including fingerprints and facial images.
Key findings:
- The criminalisation of migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers is ingrained within the Italian technological infrastructure: biometric data collected during disembarking operations or at the time of arrival on Italian territory are stored in a database (AFIS) that also contains data on potential suspects. The same database is used to find facial and identity matches using SARI, the Italian National Police facial recognition system. This criminalisation process happens without any transparency regarding the number of people within each category of the legal system whose facial image has been collected, therefore using an unclear and unverifiable method.
- Migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers are obliged to resort to a form of bartering of their personal and biometric data in exchange for reception and information to continue their journey, often towards northern Europe. Even if they had the chance to provide informed consent and they could fully comprehend the motivations behind the treatment of their personal and biometric data, their condition of vulnerability and marginalisation would not allow them to protest, deny consent or ask for any modification to said treatment, an option that is open to all European and Italian citizens.
- Migration management and border control policies in Europe are no longer exclusively performed through public policy or traditional border control: identification procedures during disembarking operations or at the time of arrival on the Italian territory are increasingly invasive and tech-intensive. Databases collecting personal and biometric data of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are populated on a daily basis by every European member state; they allow wide access to this wealth of information to an array of European agencies and law enforcement entities for investigations. Bigger worries stem from EU funds allocated to countries like Greece, Spain and Italy to manage border control: very little information is publicly available about funding once it fills a country’s coffers. In this research, we have tried to track these funds and shed light on how they are used, along with verifying the impact that the aforementioned technologies (including biometric ones) have or could potentially have on migrants.
- Migration management and border control policies in Europe are no longer exclusively performed through public policy or traditional border control: identification procedures during disembarking operations or at the time of arrival on the Italian territory are increasingly invasive and tech-intensive. Databases collecting personal and biometric data of migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are populated on a daily basis by every European member state; they allow wide access to this wealth of information to an array of European agencies and law enforcement entities for investigations. Bigger worries stem from EU funds allocated to countries like Greece, Spain and Italy to manage border control: very little information is publicly available about funding once it fills a country’s coffers. In this research, we have tried to track these funds and shed light on how they are used, along with verifying the impact that the aforementioned technologies (including biometric ones) have or could potentially have on migrants.
- Facial recognition systems used in Italy during criminal investigations could have far more serious consequences on migrants and asylum-seekers, stemming from a lack of publicly-available, independent evaluation on the accuracy of the facial recognition system’s core algorithms used by police. Without appropriate supervision of said algorithms, and taking into account the technology-induced criminalisation of migrants, cases of false positive matches could occur, leading to violations of human rights towards vulnerable minorities or groups in need of special legal safeguards.
Full report:
FRANCE
Refugee Info Bus tweeted about the campaigns held by activists, locals and members of aid organisations. They have been demanding;
- An end to evictions of tents
- The respect of ‘treve hivernale’ for the duration of the above
- Dignity for displaced people in Calais
- The opening of a true dialogue between organisations and French authorities
POLAND — BELARUS
A testimony written by Ola Sabah Hamad, an Iraqi woman who fled her country and traveled across the Polish-Belarusian border to reach Poland, has been published by Salam Lab to the Polish community. The objective is to raise awareness of the difficult and perilous journey for so many people on the move to reach Poland.
Please read the full statement here.
Support and solidarity with the detained activists
UKRAINE
As a response to the growing tensions and possible invasion of Ukraine in the next few days/weeks, neighbouring countries have started implementing plans to receive potential new arrivals from Ukraine.
As stated in an article by MMh;
“Anti-migrant rhetoric would need reinvention, as displaced people from Ukraine could not be ‘otherized’ in Eastern Europe as displaced people from MENA in Western Europe, or displaced people from Latin America in the U.S.”
Many articles have directed their attention to how long Europe’s hospitality will last, rather than whether countries would welcome Ukrainian refugees at all. The large-scale mobilisation of Ukrainian refugees who have an impact on EU migration governance.
UK
Today, the London Assembly voted to condemn the National and Borders Bill as ‘racist’ legislation. Among many issues with the Nationality and Borders Bill, introduced by Priti Patel, one impact would be the increase of prison sentences for refugees who enter the UK through an irregular route.
This Assembly believes that the law undermines equal citizenship for all and places Britons of ethnic minorities as second-class citizens [and] that the law is also an attack on the rights of refugees who potentially face a four-year prison term for not entering the UK directly from a country of persecution.
Therefore, this Assembly calls on both the Chair of the Assembly and the Mayor of London to each write separately to the Home Secretary to express our condemnation of this Bill on behalf of Londoners.
A pledge was made by the West Midlands, highlighting the list of organisations that have signed opposing the implementation of the Nationality and Borders Bill, also referred as ‘anti-refugee bill’.
A public meeting is being held on February 23 by Patients not Passports Hackney, in collaboration with the Hackney Migrant Centre. They will discuss how the Hostile Environment currently affects the access to NHS healthcare and the impacts of the Nationality and Borders Bill on the anti-migrant narrative in the UK. You can find more information here.
The Welsh Parliament has also rejected the Nationality and Borders Bill.
GENERAL
EU Funding for Migration Initiatives in Ethiopia
The Danish Institute for International Studies states that since 2016, the EU has invested 330 million euros towards initiatives in Ethiopia that address “root causes of displacement and irregular migration”. This is part of the wider Emergency Trust Fund for the Horn of Africa that aims to manage mobility in this region. The interview included in this article, with Kiya Gezahegne, a researcher of EU Migration Management in Africa and the Middle East, explores this topic. Kiya argues that;
“Most migration which originates from Ethiopia itself is actually directed towards the Middle East and other African countries (particularly South Africa), not to Europe. However, I believe the EU is interested in curbing transit migration through Ethiopia. This might mean, for example, ensuring Eritrean refugees can settle here safely, rather than moving on (possibly towards European states). These EU-driven priorities have very much been reflected in the direction of Ethiopia’s migration policy so far.”
Kya Gezahegne adds that in theory, the EU and other international organisations and authorities encourage ‘safe legal migration’, however, in practice, EU policy and Ethiopian policy attempt to prevent the mobility of people.
WORTH READING
- You try to help someone and you feel like a criminal. I think checkpoints were introduced largely to make people who help feel that they are doing something illegal. Helping is legal! Read the interview with Ula Kozak:
- A really interesting podcast By Gerald Knaus and Yascha Mounk on the EU asylum system:
- Refugees on the Move: Crisis and Response in Turkey and Europe. Edited by Erol Balkan and Zumray Kutlu Tonak:
Find daily updates and special reports on our Medium page.
If you wish to contribute, either by writing a report or a story, or by joining the info gathering team, please let us know.
We strive to echo correct news from the ground through collaboration and fairness. Every effort has been made to credit organisations and individuals with regard to the supply of information, video, and photo material (in cases where the source wanted to be accredited). Please notify us regarding corrections.
If there’s anything you want to share or comment, contact us through Facebook, Twitter or write to: areyousyrious@gmail.com
