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Migration News and Policy Review

9.3.20 - 22.3.20

Weeks In Summary

The most significant developments concerning migration in Europe have stemmed from the COVID-19-imposed restrictions. The EU agreed to limitations on non-essential travel into the Schengen area, while several countries' emergency responses have interrupted the processing of applications for international protection. Meanwhile, perceived members of ethnic groups whose countries report high numbers of infections (most notably, Chinese, but also Italians, Iranians or Spaniards) have been targeted through hate crime and discriminatory public discourse. 

In addition, the predicament of refugees at the Greek-Turkish border continued to expose refugees to human rights violations and pushbacks. In light of new cases of COVID-19, Greece has imposed restrictions on refugee facilities and transferred those who arrived after 1 March from the islands onto the mainland. Turkey, on the other hand, declared to have shut its land borders with the EU. 

This review mostly offers a summary of some of the most important events surrounding these two issues. For the latest events in the Czech Republic, check out this week's special edition of the Consortium's newsletter.


 TOP STORIES


  • COVID-19 mobility restrictions affect right to asylum and migrant returns in the EU
  • Reports collect accounts of human rights violations of refugees in Greece
  • Malta facilitates a pushback to Libya from its SAR zone

 COVID-19 EFFECTS ON MIGRANTS' RIGHTS


Recommendations and policy in the EU

 
On Monday 16 March, the European Commission presented a series of Guidelines to Member States on health-related border management measures in the context of the COVID-19 emergency, aimed at reaching a communitarian approach. The next day, the European Council acted upon these guidelines by agreeing, among other things, to ban non-essential travel from foreigners into the Schengen area for 30 days. The enforcement of the measure, however, will fall under the jurisdiction of individual member states.

 

In light of the lockdown in Spain, ECRE reports that eight 'unreturnable' migrants had to be released from the country's much-criticised Centres for the Internment of Foreigners (CIEs), on March 16. According to El País (in Spanish), by 19 March, 120 countries had forbidden the entry to people coming from Spain. These included Morocco or Argelia, whose nationals accounted for about 75% of the deportations from Spain in 2017. At the same time, the centres can only retain migrants for a maximum of 60 days, which means that, after that period, 'unreturnable' foreigners will have to be released. The application of this practice has been confirmed by the Ministry of Interior, at a press conference (in Spanish) on 18 March.

 

On Tuesday 17 March, UNHCR and IOM announced that they were temporarily suspending resettlement departures for refugees, a measure to take effect over the "coming days". On the same day, a jointly-developed (IFRC, IOM, UNHCR, WHO) guidance on how to prepare and respond to a COVID-19 outbreak in (refugee) camps was made public.

 

On Friday 20 March, the United Nations Network on Migration uploaded a note calling governments to cater to the needs of migrants across the globe when implementing restrictions related to COVID-19. This followed a previous document by UNHCR that, similarly, called for the respect of the rights of refugees. Despite the warnings, several policy responses to COVID-19 have severely impacted the rights of migrants and refugees across the globe. In the EU, the right to asylum has been affected by some countries' decisions. For example:
 

  • Since early March, the Hungarian government has been linking migration with the spread of the disease. On March 3, a suspension on admission of 'illegal migrants' through the Hungarian transit zones was declared. According to Politico, as of 14 March, the country was not accepting any asylum applications through such zones.
 
  • The Brussels Times reported that since 17 March, Belgium was beginning to close its asylum facilities as well as putting an end to the processing of any new asylum applications.
 
  • According to Euractiv, on Wednesday 18 March, the Turkish Ministry of Interior announced that the country had effectively shut its land borders with Greece and Bulgaria due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, at the time of writing, it is uncertain how this is affecting the refugee crossings into Greece that had been taking place since late February.
 
  • According to Infomigrants, by 18 March, the Italian territorial commissions making decisions on international protection were partially suspended, with hearings likely to be postponed. In Germany, appointments of asylum seekers with the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees are conducted only after producing a medical certificate discarding a COVID-19 contagion. Otherwise, restrictions of services in refugee facilities and a shift to remote communications have been imposed in the three countries.
 

Rising Xenophobia and Racism

 

In 2015, the World Health Organisation published guidelines on how to name human infectious diseases, which highlighted the importance of not stigmatising particular communities (e.g. by avoiding to associate a disease with an ethnicity or country). This was, again, emphasised in their 24 February 2020 Guide to preventing and addressing social stigma in the context of the new coronavirus outbreak. Despite several reminders in subsequent WHO press conferences in recent days, there has been an increase in discrimination towards certain perceived ethnic groups, particularly East Asians. 


Several political leaders made discriminatory claims in relation to the virus. Most notably, various members of the Trump administration have referred to the COVID-19 as a "Chinese virus", in a way that, according to The New York Times, has been replicated by other Republican leaders. A video-collage by Vice news compiles over a month of Trump's public blaming of the virus on China. On Thursday 19 March, the photographer Jabin Botsford captured, for The Washington Post, the US President's notes for a COVID-19 briefing press conference. On the papers, the word "corona" had been crossed out and replaced by "Chinese" instead. The US government has justified the use of the 'Chinese' label amid cross-accusations between the countries' administrations in regard to the spread of the virus.

© 2020 Jabin Botsford for The Washington Post.

In Spain, the Chinese Embassy had to call out on a (now-deleted) Tweet from COVID-19-infected far-right politician Javier Ortega Smith in which the prominent leader framed his fight as one of 'Spanish antibodies' against the 'damned Chinese viruses'.

 

Most major newspapers report a rise in anti-Asian street-level hate crime across several countries. In an article for the New Yorker, the director of London services for Stop Hate UK, confirms this is the case in the United Kingdom. In a recent story, Chinese students in the UK reported continuous racist attacks on grounds of 'Maskaphobia', as their use of face masks was attracting unwanted attention and aggression. The Guardian released a short video report reflecting on the rising Sinophobia in Italy. 

 

Instances of anti-Asian racism and the combating of these narratives are being shared on Twitter under the hashtags #IAmNotAVirus (with translations to several languages, including Spanish or French), #CoughingWhileAsian or #AntiAsianRacism. In addition, Amnesty International launched a brief video with guidelines on how to call out coronavirus-related racism and UNICEF's Voices of Youth opened a platform for young people to deal with issues of stigma and discrimination. There is a Wikipedia entry on Xenophobia and racism related to the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic.


While East Asians have been targeted most often, the panic around the pandemic has created suspicions across multiple communities. Thailand's Health Minister lashed out at the "dirty" Western tourists as potential carriers of the virus. The Hungarian government has used aggressive rhetoric against Iranians present in the country. American TV presenter Bill Mitchell suggested on his Twitter account (with over half a million followers), that there might be a genetic predisposition for people of Italian descent to spread the disease. The Amstetten branch of the Austrian far-right FPÖ has been trying to link Muslim "illegal immigration" with the virus on its social media platforms. The leader of the far-right People's Party Our Slovakia, Marian Kotleba, blamed the spread of viruses like the COVID-19 or HIV on a regime of open borders brought after communism.


 EU MIGRATION NEWS


 

Pushback in Maltese SAR area

 

An article from Infomigrants, reports an alarm raised by the IOM after, last weekend (14-15 March), more than 400 migrants were apprehended at sea by the Libyan coastguard and disembarked in Libya. One of the interceptions, according to a brief report by Alarm Phone, took place in the Maltese Search and Rescue zone and was coordinated by the Maltese Rescue Coordination Centre. IOM has acknowledged the veracity of this interception and expressed their concerns in a press release.
 

EU relies on "privatised pushbacks" to curb down arrivals through the Mediterranean sea


An article from the New York Times describes how service provider ships in the Mediterranean are being forced to comply with the Libyan coast guards in order to return migrants rescued at sea back to Libya. Commercial vessels are being given a preference in rescue missions, as NGO ships are known to disobey orders to cooperate with Libyan authorities. According to an analysis from Forensic Oceanography, cited in the article, from 2011 to 2018, only one commercial ship returned migrants to Libya. However, since 2018, there have been 30 such cases.  
 

Migration trends in Europe report (2020-2050)


Despite the current uncertainty about the future, the Italian Institute for International Political Studies has published a report, supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on The Future of Migration to Europe. The publication covers trends in different categories of migration into the EU as well as their interaction with EU policies for the foreseeable two decades.


 REFUGEES IN GREECE

Violence and infringement of international refugee law continue as Government plans COVID-19 contention and transfers to the mainland

 

On Monday 10 March, an investigative article published by The New York Times, revealed what seemed to be a secret facility in Northeastern Greece where incoming migrants and refugees are being informally detained before deportation. The article includes a testimony from a former inmate describing the precarious situation within the unofficial detention centre. A wealth of material evidence describing the centre (including video reconstruction, interviews or contracts) can be found in this Twitter thread by Forensic Architecture based on their previous investigation.

 

On Thursday 12 March, following the identification of a COVID-19 case on the island of Lesbos, Doctors Without Borders released a note in which they called the Greek government to urgently design a plan to protect the 42,000 refugees in Greek islands' hotspots. The note describes the precarious condition of the Moria camp and claims that "it would be impossible to contain an outbreak in such camp settings in Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos".

 

On Friday 13 March, Vice News published a video showing the tensions between the local residents of Samos and refugees (and their advocates). On Saturday 14 March, a Greek navy ship transported close to 450 migrants from the harbour of Mytilene (Lesbos) to a closed camp in Malakassa (near Athens), as reported by Human Rights Watch. The vessel had been docked for days at the island's port, serving as a detention centre for migrants that had arrived by sea since 1 March. Following Human Rights Watch contact with people in the vessel by 10 March, those inside the ship were being denied the opportunity to lodge an asylum claim. Videos from inside the ship were disclosed by the Legal Centre Lesvos. An article for Balkan Insight, reports of another camp on the island run by UNHCR, where 42 newly arrived migrants were, allegedly, being denied access to asylum.

 

On Monday 16 March, a refugee child perished in a fire inside the long-time overcrowded Lesbos' Moria camp. On the same day, 23 European NGOs sent a Joint Letter to the Greek Prime Minister requesting information about the situation of refugee children in the country, as well as calling for an end to the detention of unaccompanied minors in Greece. On Tuesday, a report on the situation in Moria covering January-February 2020 was made public by Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees. The document denounces the poor sanitary and security conditions of the camp at a time of increased arrivals, cases of indiscriminate detention or pushbacks.

 

On Tuesday 17 March, Human Rights Watch published a detailed report supported by interviews with 21 asylum seekers and migrants in Turkish soil. The participants denounced several forms of serious crimes and aggressions perpetrated by Greek security forces, as well as, what seemed to be, informal militias, after having crossed the Evros river into Greece. According to the report, these violations include, among others, forms of sexual and other physical violence, pushbacks, theft, and the firing of rubber bullets and live rounds. The report concludes with a series of recommendations for both the Greek and EU institutions.

"An asylum seeker in northern Turkey at the Greek border on March 6 shows injuries he says Greek security forces inflicted after he had crossed the Evros River into Greece"
© 2020 Belal Khaled from HRW report.

Between 13-17 March, the Council of Europe's Anti-torture Committee visited several detention facilities for migrants and refugees in Greece. Preliminary results were expected to be received by the Greek authorities in the coming days.

 

On Tuesday 17 March, the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum announced a series of measures aimed at avoiding  a coronavirus outbreak in the country's refugee camps . The measures include: restrictions to visitors entering the camps, as well as to the movement of refugees both within and outside the camp; the suspension of special activities and facilities, such as schools or libraries; etc. According to Reuters, the Ministry has further decided to transfer migrants who arrived after 1 March from the islands to the mainland. As described above, a ship already transferred people from Lesbos onto the mainland on 14 March. On Friday 20 March, according to Ekathimerini, a further 604 migrants who had reached Greek islands since 1 March were transferred by ship to facilities on the mainland.

 

Also on Tuesday 17 March, Euractiv refers to a phone call between Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel. The call discussed renewed conditions for the EU-Turkey Statement of 2016, the need for the EU to provide humanitarian support to the Syrian province of Idlib, as well as actions to prevent the coronavirus spreading among refugee populations. Following the source, some of these issues will be discussed at the next EU summit on 26 March.

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