AYS Weekend Digest 20–21/3/2021: Greece: ‘Illegal pushbacks, Lives at risk, NGOs prosecuted’, statement
Ocean Viking still waiting for Safe Port — 2-year-old girl dies in the Canaries — Administrative pressure against volunteers in France — Vulnerable resettlement schemes closed in the UK
Featured — Coalition of NGOs calls for an end to pushbacks and to criminalisation of solidarity
The Campaign for Access to Asylum has published a statement on Illegal pushbacks, Lives at risk, NGOs under prosecution, co-signed by a coalition of Greek and Greek-based organisations.
The statement raises concerns about the climate of intimidation and distrust over the work of NGOs that operate at the country’s borders, especially those who receive reports and testimonies on pushbacks. The consequences for freedom of speech and democratic values are of course extremely problematic.
The Asylum Campaign reiterates the call to end 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 organisations supporting people on the move, particularly at the external borders of the European Union.
- To protect them from any unjust and unsubstantiated accusations addressed against them.
- 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 appropriate mechanisms contributing to the search and rescue of all people that find themselves in 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.
LIBYA
People on the move vulnerable to robbery and violence in Tripoli
SEA
Ocean Viking rescue ship still waiting for a safe port
After rescuing 10 people on Thursday and 106 on Saturday, SOS Mediterranee’s Ocean Viking is still being denied a safe port.
GREECE
Arrivals and pushbacks
As reported by Aegean Boat Report, a boat with 7 people on board was in distress off the northern coast of Lesvos on Sunday evening. The authorities in Mytilene were informed.
Some hours later, ABR was contacted again by the same boat, that had now been pushed back into Turkish water. The Turkish coast guard was informed of their location.
Racist and anti-migrant rhetorics from before the crisis
For the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Greek Helsinki Monitor is reminding their readers that racist and anti-migrant rhetoric is not exclusive to the current government, but is instead an ongoing trait of the right-wing party Neo Democratia.
In August 2012, the Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection Nikos Dendias said that because of illegal immigration, “the country is lost … Since the invasion of the Dorians, 4000 years ago, the country has never suffered an invasion of this magnitude; this is a bomb at the foundations of society and the state.”
This statement was used by the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn to justify their position against migrants — which often turned into beatings and violence.
In 2014, Sofia Voultepsi, Nea Democratia MP and current deputy minister for asylum and migration, stated during a live TV show, that people on the move were “unarmed invaders, weapons in the hands of the Turks.”
This rhetoric has fed into widespread narratives which describe people on the move as a threat to the nation, weapons used by Turkey. More recently, the coalition against the expansion of Fylakio hotspot, in the Evros region, launched a petition. Their objection is motivated “by our opposition to turning already neglected remote areas into refugee dumps” — which equates people on the move with rubbish. The petition uses images which resound with those highlighted by The Helsinki Monitor:
Given the Turkish aggression and the use of immigration as a weapon, the creation of concentrated groups easily exploited by the Erdogan regime is a dynamite in the foundations of our national security and must be avoided.
But this, they stress, has nothing to do with racism…
Updates from Lesvos
Newroz in the mud
Accommodation crisis and Evictions
In the last two weeks we have published two specials covering the accommodation crisis for people on the move in Greece and the evictions which followed the closing of the Filoxenia program.
- AYS Special: Recognised refugees sleeping on the street as EU scheme scrapped
- AYS Special: The ongoing failure of accommodation programs
On the same topic, Katy Fallon just published an article for Solomon:
SPAIN
2-year-old Nabody dies after a week in hospital
Nabody had been rescued on Tuesday from a dinghy, together with 7 more children. She had to be resuscitated at the Arguineguin port as soon as the rescue boat landed on Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. After less than a week in the ICU ward at the local hospital, she passed away on Sunday.
Nabody is the 19th confirmed victim of the Canary route to Europe.
According to Spanish media, a second child from the same rescue has recovered and the ICU ward is still hosting 19 people from two boats that landed this week, 11 minors and eight adults plus one man who arrived the week before.
Local media report that 293 people arrived on the Canary islands this week, breaking the downward trend in arrivals recorded in the first half of March. Among last weeks arrivals, a higher than usual number of women and children was also reported.
Salvamento Humanitario’s union spokesperson lament that the promised reinforcement for the rescue agency deployed off the Canaries has been halted because of the low number of arrivals in early March, while funding was diverted towards unmanned aircrafts.
In the case of the patera on which [Nabody] arrived in a cardiorespiratory arrest, for example, it was a complicated operation because the Salvamar de Arguineguín had only two crew members on deck to help 52 people in the water. (Ismael Furió, CGT, Sea and Ports section of the CGT workers union, C7)
GERMANY
Kreuztal joins the Cities of Safe Harbour alliance
The council of the city of Kreuztal, in North Rhine-Westphalia, has pledged the city as Safe Harbour for refugees and joins the alliance “Cities of Safe Harbours”. The city appeals to the federal and state governments to support safe passage and a humane European refugee policy and to oppose the criminalisation of sea rescuers.
FRANCE
Administrative pressure against volunteers
Since the beginning of the pandemic, volunteers of Utopia 56 Paris have been given 74 fines for “non-compliance with the curfew” during their distributions, reaching almost €10,000, despite always carrying a professional certificate and travel documentation.
Volunteer teams go to maraud every night to vulnerable populations. Every night they provide emergency material and food aid. Every night, they accompany young minors to child welfare schemes. Every night they reach people in distress. Every night they are available at all times through a hotline.
Yet every night they get bullied by police. Every night they are fined with the pretext that: “You are not allowed.”
Utopia 56 is challenging each and every ticket, but this administrative pressure is part of a wider policy of criminalisation against grassroots solidarity with people on the move all over France and in many parts of Europe, which becomes more brutal and relentless at the Union’s border.
Paris: Call for volunteers Tuesday 23rd and Thursday 25th
Solidarité migrants Wilson is looking for people to help cooking and distributing food this coming week. Read further HERE.
DENMARK
A party for Moria’s children without children
Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke — MS, the Danish Association for International Co-operation has set up a welcome party for children from the camp in Lesvos, Greece… without children, to protest against the country’s authorities, which are still refusing to welcome any children from Greece.
UK
Home Office attempting to deport COVID Specialist
The hostile environment, as we know, is not governed by logic or care for fellow humans. As a result, a biochemist who has already given four years to the NHS and was forced to leave his job due to this asylum decision, faces deportation due to an undisclosed problem with his paperwork. During his time in the UK he has faced a racist attack which amounted to torture and yet still he wishes to stay and considers the country his home. Biochemists are the second most sought after professionals for skilled work visas, but this does not apparently matter.
The British NHS relies on 170,000 foreign-born staff from more than 200 countries. We wish them luck.
Vulnerable resettlement schemes closed
The Vulnerable Children’s Resettlement Scheme (VCRS) was launched in 2016, with the aim of resettling up to 3,000 at-risk children from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including their families. They managed 1838. The Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) was launched in January 2014 in order to relocate 20,000 people fleeing the war in Syria and this was achieved. To put this in context, approximately 6.6 million people fled the country and 5.5 million of them are housed in neighbouring countries primarily in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.
The replacement mechanism, the UK Resettlement Scheme (UKRS), Community Sponsorship and Mandate Resettlement Scheme will now take over from both. We do not have high hopes.
WORTH READING
- “He drowned in a shipwreck,” the inscription reads. “It wasn’t the sea, it wasn’t the wind, it is the policies and fear”. Samos Chronicles writes about the charges against the father who lost his child trying to reach the Greek island.
- A suggestion from Jeff Crisp:
From Gerrit Jan van Heuven Goedhart’s speech:
One of the factors which at once helps to constitute the problem and complicate it is precisely that the refugee problem brought about by the First World War was by no means solved before the Second World War was upon us … the problem facing us is not a static but a dynamic one, in other words that the refugee problem has taken on a permanent character, that it is a perennial and not a transitory problem
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