AYS Weekend Digest 21–22/11/2020 Protests and injustice in Italian CPRs
British Home Office plan mass deportation to Jamaica / Calls to stop the construction of the new ‘camp’ on Lesvos, Greece / First snow over Lipa camp, BiH / Videos and reports from Tuesday’s eviction in Paris.
FEATURED: Protests and injustice in Italian CPRs
We reported last week on the situation in the CPR at Gradisca D’Isonzo, in north-eastern Italy. On Friday, LasciateCIEentrare, an association supporting the rights of people on the move in detention, received a video from inside the CPR, showing a detainee in respiratory crisis with no intervention from guards or doctors. He had been asking for his inhaler, since the previous day, receiving no answer.
On Thursday and Friday, protests and revolts took place in the CPR Corelli in Milan, media and Mai piu lager — No CPR report. On Thursday one detainee was arrested after a protest. The following day a further 40 detainees protested about the conditions and the lack of adequate anti-COVID provisions. 3 of them were arrested. For many, the CPR is the last stop before deportation. Even the police union admitted that the structure is inadequate and dangerous for both detainees and operators. Only two of the five wings are currently open: the quarantine area had to be closed, and inmates who test positive sleep in one room in one of the open wings, without proper isolation. No systematic testing has been done, despite authorities having promised periodic checks.
Border Criminologies released a report on Migrant detention and COVID-19 in Italy. Find it HERE.
LIBYA
On evacuations to Rwanda
UNHCR reports that 79 people were evacuated on Thursday to Rwanda from Libya, within the framework of the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) established between Government of Rwanda, UNHCR and the African Union (AU), which had been halted for nearly a year due to COVID-19. While evacuations from Libya are always positive news, many issues must be addressed regarding the future of the evacuees. Despite having been selected by UNHCR on a vulnerability basis (the modalities of the selection process are not entirely clear), they will still have to ask for asylum in Rwanda, as Carola Gluck states. One year ago, when the ETM was established, Jeff Crisps posed 25 questions on its working practices. Most still await an answer. Find them HERE.
SEA
Updates
Over the weekend, Open Arms’ ASTRAL sailboat has left the Med for a few days for necessary repairs. Alarm Phone reiterates the call for Search and Rescue operations for a boat with around 50 people who left Garabulli, Libya, on Thursday, which was reported by a fisherman. Relatives are still looking for the missing. “We fear another shipwreck.” On Sunday, the Red Crescent reportedly found five more bodies washed up on the beach in Misrata, Libya. It is unclear for how long they had been in the water.
GREECE
Calls to stop the building of the new “super camp” on Lesvos
Local media report that the Initiative for a Sustainable Solution of refugees in Lesvos has met with the Deputy Director-General of the EU Directorate-General for Migration and Head of the EU Task Force on Migration Management, Mrs Beate Gminder, and the General Secretary of the Ministry of Migration and Asylum, Mr Logothetis to call for alternative solutions for Lesvos.
The Initiative calls for a decongestion of the island and an end to geographical restrictions, believing that 1000 places, already adequately provided by the original Kara Tepe camp, should be enough if people only have to stay long enough to register their claim for asylum before moving to the mainland. They decry the conditions of Moria 2.0 and asked that it is closed immediately, a sentiment shared by many.
They believe a new camp would increase problems on the island for both people on the move and local residents. We agree.
Moria 2.0, the home of modern conveniences…
Volunteers asked not to travel to Lesvos until COVID-19 is under control
Stand by me Lesvos is asking that short-term volunteers from abroad do not travel to the island at the present time as cases of COVID-19 are still rising and hospital places are limited. They thank everyone who wants to come, but suggest that this is not the right time.
Updates on Fady’s case
The Global Legal Action Network are continuing to work on Fady’s case, as we reported last week, while looking at the wider context which this case represents, that of pushbacks and enforced disappearances being normalised within border security policy.
According to Itamar Mann, Legal Advisor with GLAN: “Historically, the prohibition of enforced disappearances emerged from contexts of authoritarian rule. Today, border violence at the Southeastern border of the EU has acquired a fundamentally authoritarian aspect. These enforced disappearances do not replicate previous historical precedents. But when expulsions are no longer directed only at the undocumentd but also towards the legally present, there are striking similarities. Enforced disappearances provide the closest concept within our legal vocabulary,”
More background is available in this THREAD.
BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
First snow in Bihac
IOM-BiH representative Van de Auweraert warns the international community that the first snow has arrived for the 1,500 people living in Lipa camp in Bihac. A camp that Bosnian authorities put up in the spring to move people on the move away from major inhabited areas in the canton. A camp that is not equipped for winter.
While we appreciate that he is raising awareness regarding much needed winterization, there is a problem: IOM has been involved in the management of the camp since its inception; it was clear from the beginning that Lipa camp was everything but a temporary response, that it was the unsafe, out of the way, and repressive response of a government which considers people on the move as a public order problem only. AYS has been warning people about the situation there for months. Did IOM really not notice that winter was coming? Is it incompetence or is it complicity?
FRANCE
More reports on Tuesday’s eviction
Solidarité migrants Wilson published a video on the eviction that took place on Tuesday morning. This was the first eviction ‘organised’ autonomously by the national police and gendarmerie. As the group report, it was a surreal and brutal experience:
Where police officers gas people waiting to get in the buses.
Where women and children stay parked for hours before they can board the buses.
Where in the middle of a pandemic thousands of people are forced to spend hours next to each other, without the possibility of distancing.
Where journalists are kept away, prohibited from entering the perimeter set for the eviction.
Where people are left for hours without access to water and toilets.
Where volunteer citizens who wanted to leave the perimeter are prevented by law enforcement, and to say things clearly, held prisoners against their will.
Where 1000 people are hunted like cattle by police after 12 hours of waiting, from Saint-Denis to Paris.
With the new security law being discussed in the country at the moment, a video like the one above would be illegal. Thousands took the street to protest on Saturday. Read more HERE.
A testimony was collected on Thursday, two days after the eviction:
… Nearly 1000 people are scattered in Paris, we do not know where they are. We can’t do any more fixed distribution like we used to do when there was the camp at Porte de Paris, however we still try to do it at Rosa Parks, a place known for food distributions … So we meet those people who shelter from rain and cold as they can … it’s a primary, basic need simply being able to sit down, lay down one night in a place safe from wind and rain. I had no questions about the asylum procedure that night but only questions we couldn’t answer: “Where can we go”. They know it’s hard to get tents so they ask the minimum “Do you just have a blanket or a sleeping bag? Clothes for the rain?”. Walking through the neighborhood, we meet small groups, 2,3 people walking fast, looking behind them. They know they are hunted down by those who follow ‘orders’. Fear and tired sweat in their speeches, they expect response from us … They all ask us ′“Why do they do that?”
Solidarité Migrants Wilson carries on with its activities, if you are in Paris, check HERE to find out how you can help.
Woman in detention separated from her 20 day old baby in Toulouse
La Cimade reports on the detention of a woman in the CRA (administrative detention) in Toulouse for 4 days, after being separated from her 20 day old baby, in total violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
On Sunday, groups of activists took to the street of Marseilles to stand in solidarity with those detained in the CRAs:
According to the State, “the administrative detention center is not a prison because the deprivation of liberty is not a judicial decision but an administrative decision. Deprivation of liberty is not coercive in nature. We must therefore speak of detention and not of detention or imprisonment. “
According to hundreds of testimonies from within, press releases, association reports and media inquiries: these are prisons for undocumented migrants. We know it. These are places of deprivation of liberty, police violence, places where threats and humiliation are daily, execrable food, poor hygiene, places where anti-covid-19 health measures are not applied, care refused, places that are poorly or not heated in winter, places of isolation.
This hypocrisy is unbearable. These confinements are unbearable.
Young man dies on motorway in Calais
BELGIUM
Justice for Mawda
Choose Love report that the trial regarding Mawda’s death at the hands of the Belgium police starts today (23.11.20) in Mons, Belgium.
Mawda, a 2 years old Iraqi Kurd girl, was killed by the Belgian police in May 2018 when she and her family tried to reach the UK.
We are demanding justice for her and her family, and an end to the criminalisation and dehumanisation of refugees. #Justice4Mawda #Mawda
AYS will continue to publish updates as the trial progresses.
UK
Home Office plan pre Christmas mass deportation to Jamaica during lockdown
A mass deportation flight to Jamaica is planned, most likely on the 2nd of December. People have been given no chance to even say goodbye to their families and are in an at risk group for COVID-19. You can support them in the following ways:
If you are on twitter, tweet @ukhomeoffice and call on them to stop the flight. Please use the hashtags #Jamaica50 and #enddeportations
Write to your MP and ask them to raise concerns urgently with the Home Secretary
For an overview of successful campaigns against the Home Office this year, check out this article by gal-dem.
Power […] increasingly lies in the collaborative efforts of grassroots organisers, campaigners and public interest lawyers uniting to protect human rights against a department that has lost its way.
Together, we are strong.
WORTH READING
- They want to silence us — a look at the criminalisation of Human Rights groups and the role of the EU by Jasoor.
- The Institute of Race Relations kick-start the debate on abolitionism and immigration enforcement. Since 2018, abolitionist solutions have been put forward by grassroots migrants and refugee groups from across Europe. The article draws “on the lived experience and powerful testimony of migrants and refugees, to consider how to further build abolitionist perspectives within our movements.”
- “If authorities had responded adequately to our distress calls, today, relatives, friends, loved ones, and we ourselves would not be grieving. Death at sea is not inevitable. It is intentional. European maritime rescue coordination centres are not simply dysfunctional: they are part of a violent regime that seeks to keep unwanted migrants out, no matter the cost.” Call it what it is, a massacre at Europe’s doorstep, by Deanna Dadusc and Maurice Stierl.
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