In December 2018, rescue ship Proactiva Open Arms rescued 300 refugees at sea near Malta and Italy.
Open Arms tried to bring the refugees to the nearest port but both Malta and Italy refused to accept the refugees.
Pregnant women, babies and people in need of medical help were stuck at sea for a week looking for a safe port.
A week later, December 29th 2018, Open Arms was finally allowed to dock in Spain
And now, January 14th, 2019, Open Arms is detained, accused of violating “the obligation to leave those rescued at sea at the nearest port" by bringing the refugees to Spain.
REALLY.
Europe will use any excuse, no matter how obviously fake, to prevent the rescuing of lives at sea. Because it prefers a dead refugee to a safe refugee and Europe is willing to kill to achieve that. It’s that simple.
Once, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Europe decided that every human being had a right to seek asylum on foreign soil and given the opportunity to prove with help of a lawyer that they were in need of shelter, and to receive it.
European countries didn’t really want to do this, but couldn’t openly admit that they didn’t actually like carrying out one of the most important measures that had been put in place to prevent the next Holocaust. So instead, the right to seek asylum became something you could do once on European soil.
And so rose a system of militarized borders, where one side of the fence means you have no rights and the other side of the fence means you have the right to seek asylum. It doesn’t matter in how much danger you are, if you are not on European soil, you’re fucked.
But with climate change and neocolonialism creating great suffering in Africa, those borders get more and more militarized. In places where no one is watching, like Melilla in this video, the borders keep getting higher and more militarized. In places where Europeans are watching, like on the Meditteranean, the border is pushed back into Northern Africa, where violent regimes and crime gangs can be paid to do Europe’s dirty work.
European policymakers know that the worst of climate change is still coming and that Africa will in all likelyhood be hardest hit by its effects. They are preparing to keep their borders closed through mass dying on a scale we can hardly imagine.
This is why they are constantly finding new lows in their battle against refugees. Funding slave traders, shooting at refugees, criminalizing those who rescue refugees at sea, imprisoning children. This period in European history will probably one day be remembered as a time as dark as its history of colonialism and slavery. And we haven’t even seen the worst of it yet.
All because Europe is not willing to make good on the time it said ‘never again’ and ‘we will give shelter’. This is what we mean when we say borders kill.
‘Brewtopia’ is a zine by Generic Greeting, produced for a Manchester Beer Week event in June. My poem, 'Drinking as an act of masculinist appropriation/Drunk to over and up throw’, runs through the zine, alongside work by members of the Generic Greeting family: Raquel Lowsley, Lulu Heal, Esme May Rees, Rachel Dargavel-Leafe, Rose Miller, Will Berry, Calum Brodie, Jack McConell, KIDMILK, & Harry Mckenzie. Edited and produced by Raquel Lowsley.
Previews and purchase can be attained here, [£5].
'Brexit: Borders Kill’ was “put together in response to the recent referendum in the U.K. which came out in favour of 'Brexit’. It has been made quickly as a front against the fascist implications of 'Leave’.” So say the editors. I have a collage poem collaboration with Will Berry featured, alongside too many fantastic poets to name. This can be accessed online for free, printed, photocopied, distributed in any way you see fit.
Senior UN figure says deporting people without considering their asylum applications would break international law
The European Union’s plan to send refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war back to Turkey en masse could be illegal, a top UN official has said, as concerns mounted that Greece lacks the infrastructure needed for the deal to take effect on Monday.
Peter Sutherland, the UN secretary general’s special representative for international migration and development, said that deporting migrants and refugees without considering their asylum applications first would break international law.
In light of claims by an NGO that Turkey had already been pushing Syrians back over the border to their home country, he said none could be deported from Europe without guarantees that their rights would be protected.
Sutherland spoke as Greece prepares to begin deporting migrants and refugees on Monday. Greek immigration officials have already said they need more staff to implement the plan.
Asked during an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Europe’s scheme could be illegal, Sutherland replied: “Absolutely, and there are two fundamental reasons for this.
“First of all, collective deportations without having regard to the individual rights of those who claim to be refugees are illegal. Now, we don’t know what is going to happen next week, but if there is any question of collective deportations without individuals being given the right to claim asylum that is illegal.
“Secondly, their rights have to be absolutely protected where they are deported to, in other words Turkey. There has to be adequate assurances they can’t be sent back from Turkey to Syria, for example if they are Syrian refugees, or Afghanistan or wherever.”
European and Turkish leaders are set to implement a deal on Monday that will result in almost all asylum seekers being deported back to Turkey. In exchange for each person sent back, the EU has agreed to accept a refugee who has not tried to enter Europe illegally.
The success of the deal rests on both Greece’s ability to process thousands of people in a short space of time, and Turkey’s ability to prove itself a safe country for refugees.
In theory, only those refugees who fail to claim asylum in Greece – usually because they are seeking to settle elsewhere in the EU – or whose claims are rejected will be deported. The most senior Greek asylum official, Maria Stavropoulou, said on Friday that she would need a 20-fold increase in personnel to handle expected claims.
Unrest has already erupted among refugees and migrants in Greece in anticipation of the deal being implemented. On the Greek island of Chios, hundreds of people tore down a razor wire fence that had kept them imprisoned in a camp and fled.
One told the BBC: “Deportation is a big mistake because we have risked a lot to come here especially during our crossing from Turkey to Greece. We were smuggled here from Turkey. We cannot go back.
“We will repeat our trip again and again if needs be, because we are running away in order to save our lives.”
Amnesty International alleged that unaccompanied children were among hundreds of Syrians to have been illegally expelled from Turkey since January. John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Europe and central Asia director, said: “In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day.”
The Turkish interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment, but the country’s embassy in the Netherlands later denied Amnesty’s allegations, stating that “no Syrian was ever forced to return to Syria nor were they ever advised or forced to voluntarily return to Syria”.
[..]
“What has been happening has been a gradual pushing back and back and back, by building fences right up through the Balkans, stopping them leaving from Greece and now pushing them back from Greece into Turkey. And, some argue, although this is denied by Turkey, pushing them from Turkey into Syria in some instances,” he said.
“This is an unsustainable position. We have a global responsibility here, a global responsibility to people in desperate circumstances, who are prepared to risk their lives trying to get across the Mediterranean.”
