The EU's answer to the migrant problem

Obscurity and confinement for migrants in Europe

By Caroline Brothers Published: December 30, 2007






They are in railroad depots. They are in old grain stores and recycled factories. Some are brand new, others are in adjuncts of prisons. One is on a ship anchored in the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

From Ireland to Bulgaria, from Finland to Spain, detention camps for foreigners have mushroomed across the European Union. They have emerged mostly over the past decade, as the region has grown less and less welcoming to migrants.

There are now 224 detention camps scattered across the European Union; altogether they can house more than 30,000 people - asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation - who are often held in administrative detention for as long as 18 months. In a number of EU countries, there is no upper limit on detention length.

"Detention is a very serious measure in a democratic society - governments deprive people of their liberty when they are convicted of a serious crime," said Katrine Camilleri, a refugee lawyer in Malta with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which on Dec. 18 published a report on conditions in detention centers in the 10 newest EU states.

"These people have committed no crime, and though human rights law allows for detention in very specific cases, even then you can't detain people forever. Even 18 months is a very long time; it destroys them," said Camilleri, who has just been honored by the UN refugee agency for her work in the face of arson attacks on her car and home.


The smallest centers hold a few dozen people; the biggest, more than 1,000. A network of them has quietly taken form with little scrutiny and few established norms, sometimes reusing old sites, like Rivesaltes in the south of France, which was one of the biggest French internment camps for Jews during World War II.
And they have spread outside of Europe to places like Libya, where Italy builds and pays for detention centers to house migrants it deports.

Governments contend that they are trying to manage a bureaucratic nightmare and contain a security risk: the rise of migration by stealth, in which people deliberately hide their identities when it suits their cause and clog up strained asylum systems with dubious claims.

The result is a patchwork of standards. Even the best centers are strung with cameras and coils of barbed wire; the worst are infested with vermin, lack medical care and, according to a 300-page study commissioned by the European Parliament, are subject to riots, arson attacks and suicides.

Dimitris Vouros, the lone court of appeal lawyer employed to assist refugees on the Greek island of Samos, was among those relieved to see its old detention center finally closed. Inside it, a year ago, protesting Iranian inmates sewed up their lips with wire.

"The new building is like a small hotel inside, but on the outside, half the community of Samos call it 'Guantánamo,' " Vouros said, of the new €2.5 million, or $3.7 million, establishment.

The psychological impact of incarceration can be severe, particularly for the young. In Denmark from 2001 to 2006 the rate of suicide attempts among inmates was six times that of the Danish population, according to the Danish Asylum Seekers Advice Bureau.

Governments are reluctant to admit to their existence, let alone permit entry to the camps; a reporter was denied access to centers in Greece and the Canary Islands of Spain; under the government of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy barred even the United Nations refugee agency from its center on the Italian island of Lampedusa. The current prime minister, Romano Prodi, allowed the agency in.

The camps are concentrated along Europe's eastern and southern borders, while a large swathe of them runs east-west through Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany, according to Migreurop, a network of researchers and lawyers that has mapped the phenomenon.

Some of the largest ones are close to Europe's migration pressure points. The biggest is in the southern Italian town of Crotone, with 1,100 places, according to Migreurop; next, says Camilleri, are two in Malta with room for 800 each.

The total known capacity for all the "closed" EU camps is 30,871, according to the European Parliament study. When "open" camps, to which asylum-seekers are obliged to return at night, are included, the total rises to 40,979.

The establishment of these centers has failed to stanch the flow of migrants, and Europe is now looking for help beyond its borders. Bilateral agreements, raising concerns about dubious alliances and human rights violations, have given rise to camps in peripheral states like Morocco, Tunisia, Ukraine, Libya and Turkey.



Source

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/30/europe/greece.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert