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social issues & initiatives | Crossborder | by Corinna Milborn | 2006-10
Borderline Cases from the EastCapsizing boatloads of refugees or weakened Africans clambering out of rudimentary vessels onto the beaches of Tenerife or Lampedusa have become part of everyday presentations on our media this summer. Hereby the fact that most of the illegal immigrants to the EU enter across the eastern border is often overlooked. A report on a permanent state of emergency.Khushal, a 21-year old Afghan, has been released from detention once again. He has an elevenyear history as a refugee; ahead of him perhaps lies deportation to a country in a state of war or a non-existence as an illegal person in Europe. I meet him in a cafŽ. “Khushal means luck,” he tells me as he introduces himself, pushing his cap back on his head. His broad smile reveals rows of perfect teeth. Khushal has been fleeing for more than half of his life: he had to flee Afghanistan with his family when he was only ten years old. His father was an officer under the communist president Njibullah. In 1996 terrorists who were connected to the Taliban stormed his house and killed Khushal’s grandparents, his uncle and his eldest brother. The family fled and settled in the no-mans-land between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2002 the father and Khushal’s older brother attempted to return to Afghanistan. They vanished without a trace – everyone assumes that they were murdered. Khushal was now the eldest son. “I had to provide for my mother, three sisters and four brothers,” he explains and one can imagine the burden he carries on his shoulders. His mother sold the family home in Afghanistan through a middleman. When Khushal turned 18, he gave the entire proceeds of the sale to a people smuggler who was supposed to bring him to England: “13 000 dollars – for Afghans this is a fortune. For that money I could have opened a business in Afghanistan – but I can’t go there, and in Pakistan things are very difficult for us.” Khushal took a plane in Islamabad, landed in Moscow, where the smuggler made him wait. Finally they went by car to the Ukraine. After a few days a small group had been built up. At night they were taken by another car to Slovakia. That was the end of the journey for the time being – not a sign of the promised destination England. Khushal managed to make it on foot in the rain over the border to Austria and there looked for a police station. On 14 January 2004 he submitted an application for asylum. Khushal’s story is in many ways typical of refugees who enter the EU across its eastern border. A look at his former refugee guesthouse in Kirchberg am Wechsel suffices to see people gathered together from all the war areas of Eastern Europe. There are Chechens, who have fled from a war that continues unabated in southern Russia, ignored by the world public, and that has made practically every Chechen a persecuted person. There is a young woman from Uiguria, a region of China that almost no-one has heard of but where the central Chinese government persecutes dissidents with draconian severity – the most common forms of punishment being enforced labour or execution. Also Armenians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Iranians: people from regions that we know about from the news – whenever the talk is of bombs, war, violations of human rights or famine.Without the people smugglers nothing happens For these people there is only one way to obtain political asylum in the EU: crossing the border illegally. One cannot apply for asylum in an embassy or at the border – one has to stand with both feet on European territory. And legal possibilities of entering Europe permanently do not exist for them at present. Even tourist visas are difficult to obtain. The closing of the borders led to the flourishing of an unpopular profession: without people smugglers one cannot get into the EU, all refugees are compelled to entrust themselves to this Mafia. In particularly in order to arrive via Hungary or Slovakia, the smugglers must be experts and are accordingly expensive. And getting through Hungary and Slovakia can save lives. Due to the lack of a uniform asylum system in the EU refugees cannot be sure that they are safe by crossing the border into the EU. Chechens, for example, are not, on principle, granted asylum in Slovakia. In Austria, in contrast, over 99 per cent of them are recognised as refugees. Many people smugglers work together with corrupt border officials; others know routes across the Green Border. But all of them have to conceal their clients in order to bring them to Europe, and that can endanger lives. The number of those that die on the eastern borders of the EU is not known. In the news we only learn about the small, daily tragedies: such as some time ago when a number of Chinese were found hidden in loudspeakers of normal sizes, sent as human packages and almost asphyxiated before the police found them. Or last weekend when – an almost everyday occurrence on the border – a dormobile was stopped in which 16 Moldavians were found gasping for air underneath a hidden floor. The deaths caused by the regime of border control may be more spectacular in the Mediterranean when bodies are washed onto the beaches, but in the East the refugee routes are long and the dangers are accordingly great. Those who travel by land from Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh or Pakistan often make their way across the war zone between Iran, Iraq and Turkey where for decades professional people smugglers have been bringing refugees from war areas through the mountains – a difficult and dangerous route, on foot through mined territory, past the positions of the Kurd PKK guerrillas who demand a “toll” from the refugees. From there, they continue through Turkey to the Mediterranean coast where the refugees are brought in small boats to Cyprus or to one of the Greek islands, or continue to travel northwards to arrive in the EU via Ukraine. Many also fly to Moscow and attempt to reach Europe from there across the Green Border. Final stop Ukraine Ukraine has thus developed into the gateway to Europe. Previously only a land of passage, now, as the EU is sealing the borders more and more, increasing numbers of refugees find themselves staying there. “Here the number of refugees has risen by about 20 per cent,” explains Eduard Trampusch, who works for Caritas Austria in Ukrainian refugee camps. Most of them come from the former Soviet republics: there are Chechens, Georgians, Moldovans and Transnistrians. After ten days in a reception camp they are deported, as Ukraine regards them as citizens of Russia or Moldova – and has agreements with these countries that such refugees will be returned. Refugees from China, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, the central Asian crisis countries whose names end in “stan” and also a surprising number of Palestinians, who were caught here on their way to the EU, are brought to one of two reception camps where they can be kept for up to six months. All of those that are caught in Slovakia or Hungary also land up there: these two states have a deportation agreement with Ukraine concerning refugees that have entered their countries via Ukraine, that is to say all of them. Ukraine is obliged to take them back and also keeps them in camps. The first of these camps lies directly on the border to Slovakia and Hungary and is called Chop. Caritas Austria has renovated the building that accommodates women and children. The organisation also provides legal advice and social aid and attempts to make life in the camps more bearable. A difficult task: “In summer this year an average of 200 persons were kept in Chop. The camp is equipped for a maximum of 70 persons,” explains the project leader Eduard Trampusch. In the second camp, isolated in a small wood in Pavshino, things do not look any better: at present 400 men are interned there, the maximum capacity of the camp is 200. “The camps are hopelessly overfilled,” says Trampusch. When enough refugees from one country come together they are brought to Kiev and from there by charter flight back to their own country. If this cannot be done within six months, then, according to Ukraine law, they must be set free – and attempt again to enter the EU. Outsourced Experts assess that only less than 10 per cent of those travelling through Ukraine are caught. The number of those caught is around 2,000 persons per year which means that, according to these estimates, in Ukraine alone around 20,000 make it across the border and apply for asylum in Western Europe or vanish into the illegal work market – as children’s nannies, carers, building workers, farm labourers. Although these people are obviously needed, the EU wants to close its borders further: in 2005 the Warsaw-based border security agency “Frontex” began its work. The EU program ARGO finances border security measures on the EU’s external borders, 60 to 80 per cent of the funding comes from Brussels. The Schengen information system SIS collects all the data about illegal border crossings and arrested persons, which are then distributed throughout Europe. Austria’s EU presidency devoted some thought to those who do not make it to Europe through the increasingly tight net: in two conferences of ministers of the interior in January and in May 2006, a program was worked out that shifts the responsibility for refugees who fail to make it across the border to non-EU countries. In the case of the EU’s eastern border, Ukraine is once again the key contury. There, according to the intentions of the EU, the first “regional protected zone” is to be established. People who can neither move ahead nor go back should be kept there in extraterritorial camps, paid for from the EU budget. Here the Austrians have reanimated an idea for which Tony Blair and Otto Schily – at the time German Foreign Minister – were sharply criticised a number of years ago. But now the time seems ripe: similar camps are planned in North Africa. In Libya three camps that are paid for by the Italian government have been in operation since 2003, in Mauritania the EU contributes to the maintenance of reception camps for refugees who were caught as they were trying to flee to the Canary Islands, camps are also to be built in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. However the pilot project is to be located on the eastern border. The basic idea is that people who want to get to Europe should, whatever the case, remain outside – and as the states have little interest in burdening themselves with the EU refugee problem, the money should come from the EU. But the concrete handling of the situation is left up to Ukraine and here human rights experts have serious misgivings: according to Transparency International, this is the most corrupt country in Europe and far removed from a fully developed constitutional state. Where the responsibility for refugees is simply “outsourced” to a country that is not in a position to properly accommodate these persons, this does not satisfy the basic principle of the refugee convention, which requires that those persecuted should be afforded protection. There is adequate proof of this hypothesis: more than a few of those stranded apply to Ukraine for asylum, but in the past year the country has not recognised a single refugee. But not all who manage to cross the border have made it: Khushal, for example, the young Afghan we spoke about earlier. His application for asylum in Austria was rejected, as was his appeal. Khushal attempted once again to get to England and another time to Belgium, but his fingerprints reveal that Austria is responsible for him. He has been sent back twice, landing again in Traiskirchen. In October 2005 he was arrested as an illegal resident and was placed in detention for four weeks prior to deportation – but he cannot be deported to Afghanistan, as the country is regarded as too unsafe. So he was set free again, but he is not accepted again in the basic services facility for asylum seekers. Now he lives as an illegal person with his former German teacher in Kirchberg am Wechsel, in a legal vacuum. “I am not allowed to stay here, when I go somewhere else they send me back here and I certainly cannot go back to Afghanistan. Seen from a purely legal standpoint, all I can do is vanish into thin air.” Donations: Caritas 7 700 004 PSK BLZ 60.000 code word Flüchtlingslager Ukraine Corinna Milborn, who was born in 1972, is a political scientist and journalist in Vienna. As editor-in-chief of the human rights journal “liga” and as politics editor of the news magazine “For-mat”, she has been investigating migration, in-tegration, globalisation and human rights for a number of years. Corinna Milborn “Gestürmte Festung Europa – Einwanderung zwi-schen Stacheldraht und Ghetto. Das Schwarz-buch”, Styria Verlag, Vienna 2006 External links: www.festungeuropa.com
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