EU WAR ON "ILLEGAL" MIGRANTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN CAUSES HUMAN TRAGEDIES
Ever more refugees and migrants, men, women and children, are dying in attempts to reach the EU Member States Italy and Greece. Forced migrants are the prime victims of steadily mounting EU sponsored police, customs and military efforts to seal off overland and sea smuggling routes.
December 1999: Greek authorities refuse a cargo ship packed with 380 migrants permission to dock in Greece. After that, the vessel sails around Greek islands for days, crossing in and out of international waters under close surveillance by Greek coast guard vessels. The ship is believed to come from Turkey and is sailing under the false name Vodelai I. It has a Bulgarian crew but does not bear a flag. The crew claim migrants on board have commandeered the ship and say water and food is running out. The smugglers apparently reckon Greek authorities will, as has happened many times before, end up by authorising the migrants to disembark, in order to bring the plight of the passengers to an end. This time, however, the scheme does not work. Highlighting its new determination to seal off overland and sea smuggling routes into Greece, Greek authorities decide to ferry food and drinking supplies to the migrants by helicopter, rather than granting the cargo ship permission to land. On 13 December, the ship is finally allowed to dock in the Italian port of Otranto after nine days at sea.
October: five Kurdish migrants from Iraq are killed and 16 injured when they enter a mine field after illegally crossing into Greece from Turkey. Greece has set up mine fields along its northeastern border as a defence measure against feared military attacks by Turkey.
31 October: the radars of the Italian coast guard detect a small, fast running Albanian smuggler boat carrying migrants. Two warships are immediately sent out to chase it. In an attempt to shake off the Italian navy vessels, the smugglers throw a Kurdish man into the water. Usually, the Italians stop to pick up people at risk of drowning, thereby allowing smugglers to escape. But this time, the Italians continue their chase. The man drowns. This story is told by one of 151(!) migrants arrested on the single day of 1 November in the Otranto area.
1 November: a small Albanian boat with 26 migrants on board sinks near the port of Brindisi. Four persons die, 10 are rescued, the others are reported missing. According to media reports, the Albanian smugglers deliberately ran their boat into a rock in order to avoid arrest by strong Italian police forces already awaiting them ashore. As for the fate of the 12 missing persons, they must have reached the shore by swimming... Commenting on these reports, Giuliano Acunzoli from Ya basta, Milano, wonders: "How could twelve people, wet to the bones and shocked after the violent bump, calmly swim to the shore in front of the police and simply vanish in the landscape?" As for the 10 survivors, according to Acunzoli, they were brought to a detention centre pending their being sent back to Albania...
Early November: an Israeli warship discovers a drifting smuggler ship carrying 70 exhausted migrants from Bangladesh, Iraq, Egypt and India. The passengers say they paid 4,000 dollars each for a journey to Italy. But one night, the ship's crew disappeared with their passports and their travel fees. The ship was then approaching the Greek coast. When discovered by the Israeli vessel, the smuggler ship has been drifting for 20 days. The Israeli warship brings the migrants to the Lebanese port of Naqoura, where they are taken care of by UN personnel.
As for the Otranto channel, the Italian cost guard, police or navy were involved in some way or another in a long list of accidents, whose circumstances remain mysterious, according to the Italian authorities:
- 31 December 1992: a boat with 11 Albanians crashes against a rock. Four dead, six "missing", one rescued.
- 12 October 1994: Mysterious sinking of two boats with 51 Albanian migrants. Two dead, 11 "missing", 38 rescued.
- 10 September 1995: a boat with 28 Albanians on board sinks for unknown reasons. 3 dead, 9 "missing", 16 rescued.
- November 30 1995: A boat with 28 Albanians sinks near Santa Cesarea. Two dead, 17 "missing", five rescued.
Early 1997, with the prospect of mass arrivals of Albanian migrants, the Italian government decided on a Navy blockade of the Otranto channel. The blockade was fully supported by the EU.
- 28 March 1997: the Italian corvette Sibilla collides with the old Albanian ship Kater I Rades, with 89 migrants on board. 56 migrants die, 33 are rescued. The Kater I Rades is recovered in October. An Italian investigation into the incident clears the navy and puts the entire blame on the crew of the Albanian ship.
- 21 November 1997: 20 miles from Brindisi, five people drown, 11 are reported "missing" and 11 rescued in another mysterious accident.
Otranto channel: "mass murder without witnesses"?
Many other accidents, not confirmed by the Italian authorities, should be added to the above list. They include a large but unknown number of "minor" incidents with only one or two dead, but also tragedies like the following, reported by the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica (25.8.99):
"The government of Montenegro confirms: about 100 Roma gypsies drowned in the Otranto channel in the night between August 15 and 16, 1999. The news was given by the Montenegro newspaper Vijesti. According to the Montenegro police, the ship, crammed with refugees, sank 28 miles from the port of Bar. The reasons for the tragedy are unknown. Heretofore, 41 corpses were recovered on the shores of Montenegro. However, the news was not confirmed by the Italian government. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows nothing about it, and the Italian consulate in Bar seems to have learned the news from the press. "We can't confirm anything, we have no reliable data, and the Montenegro police did not inform us", said the chancellor of the Consulate, Mr Giuseppe Ferrara."
Despite ever more sophisticated control of the Otranto channel by the Italian coast guard and navy, supported by the NATO, the number of migrant drownings appears to be on the rise. The official number of casualties is now more than 200 (including "missing" persons). However, this figure comprises only the officially confirmed incidents. Giuliano Acunzoli rightly point out that the only sinkings that can become public knowledge are those where there are survivors. He further highlights that as most sinkings occur fairly far from the shore, the fate of those listed as "missing" (typically two or three times the number of those confirmed drowned) is quite doubtful. Beyond this, Albanian authorities report that about half of the migrants they encounter are children.
It is hard to assess the real extent of the ongoing tragedy in the Adriatic sea. Are official reports reliable as regards the actual causes of "accidents"? Are some "accidents" due to navy and coast guard engaging smuggler boats? What is more important to the Italian government and the EU - catching smugglers or saving the lives of innocent men, women and children? Such questions are haunting many observers of the "low intensity" war in the Otranto channel. For Ya Basta activist Acunzoli there is little doubt: "It's mass murder without witnesses".
The arsenal of refugee deterrence
Meanwhile, efforts by Italy and Greece to further tighten their maritime borders are being pursued with the support of the EU and NATO.
Two weeks before the EU Summit of Tampere, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema called for a conference on the Adriatic and Ionian Sea. The conference is to be organised by Italy and Greece. "The struggle against crime, trafficking and smuggling through that border is an essential aspect of the stability of the Balkans," D'Alema said. The Italian-Greek initiative was welcomed by the Tampere Summit.
In cooperation with OSCE and the UNHCR, and with financial assistance from the EU, Albanian authorities plan to build a "refugee centre" in the Albanian port town of Vlore, known for being one of the main bases of migrant trafficking on the Adriatic. Recently, the EU High Level Working Group on Asylum and Immigration recommended in its country report on Albania that the EU assist Albania in setting up such centres for the detention and repatriation of would-be immigrants and asylum seekers. Italian prime Minister Massimo D'Alema says stopping illegal immigration is a regional responsibility and has promised to assist Albania's police with their role in the task.
In July, the Greek Minister of Public Order, Christos Chrysohoidis said satellite technology was being used to map even the most obscure crossing-points of the Greek border. He also announced an increase in the number of border police to as many as 2,500 men, including specially trained units to be stationed at the country's northern borders with Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia (FYROM) and Albania.
Italy is already using satellite surveillance for the control of its maritime borders and has set up a police base on an Albanian island near the port of Vlore in an "extraterritorial" effort to clamp down on migrant smuggling via the Otranto channel. In addition to this, the government is to spend 23 million Euros to acquire optical and infrared cameras to monitor the shores of the Otranto channel.
Turkey cooperates with EU on stopping migrants
For about a year, Turkey too has been stepping up action against refugees and migrants in transit to western European destinations - an apparent effort to prove "EU maturity". Police raids leading to mass arrests of migrants attempting to leave Turkey for Greece and other EU countries have become frequent. In one recent operation, in late October, Turkish police detained 282 migrants as they attempted to cross into Greece. The migrants included nationals from Iraq, Iran, Gambia, Egypt, India, Jordan, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ukraine, the Turkish news agency Anatolia reported.
Turkish participation in EU and Schengen efforts to curb "illegal" immigration to EU countries can be traced back to early 1998. On 8 January of that year the chief of the Turkish police participated in a police conference in Rome organised by the six main Schengen target countries of immigration (see FECL No.53: "Kurdish Exodus triggers EU-war on 'illegal immigrants'" and "'ECONOMIC MIGRANTS?' - THE CAUSES OF THE KURDISH EXODUS"). According to press reports on the very secretive meeting, the Turkish Police chief stated his government's preparedness to support efforts by the Schengen States to prevent arrivals of refugees and migrants via Turkey. In the meantime, Turkey, which is seen by the EU as a prime country of origin and transit of migrants, has been put on the list of the first group of non-EU countries with which Europol seeks to exchange intelligence.
In recent years, the islands of Malta and Cyprus have been increasingly affected by the phenomenon of migrant trafficking too. In early October, Maltese armed forces intercepted a ship carrying nearly 100 would-be immigrants from India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. The ship was probably heading towards Sicily when it strayed into Maltese waters.
In Cyprus, the immigration chief and three senior police officers were arrested in October on suspicion of fraud and corruption. Allegations ranged from police officers taking protection money to turn a blind eye to forgery in residence and work permits (mostly for prostitutes), to immigration officers issuing visas for bribes. Ironically, the chief of immigration had earlier made himself a reputation for sending many illegal immigrants to prison over the years.
It is not only local authorities that are detaining migrants in Cyprus. Agence France Press reported in early November on a group of 43 men, women and children who were detained for more than a year in a British military compound in the Cypriotic town of Episkopi. They had been rescued by British troops in September 1998, after the boat in which they were travelling from Lebanon to Italy foundered off the island's southern coast. The UNHCR is studying their cases and 37 of the original group are said to have been recognised as refugees. However, a British military spokesman in Cyprus said none of the group will be allowed to go to Britain, and he did not rule out the possibility that they would be returned either to Lebanon or to their countries of origin.
Grim memories from the past
Today's boat-people tragedy in the Mediterranean Sea arouses grim memories from World War II and its aftermath.
In the days following the end of World War II, numerous Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps sought the possibility of emigration to what was then British-controlled Palestine. At that time, Britain mounted a naval blockade in an attempt to stem the flow of "illegal" Jewish immigrants. Many migrant ships were intercepted, and some were rammed by the blockading vessels. At one point, 16,000 of these would-be immigrants were detained... in British camps in Cyprus.
Sources: 2 reports by Giuliano Acunzoli, Ya Basta, Milano 29.10.99 (Contact: acunzoli@tin.it); Bloomberg news agency, 6.10.99; Reuters, 16.10.99; Reuters, 11.10.99, 13.12.99; AP, 11.10.99, 8.12.99, 10.12.99; Agence France Presse, 1.11.99, 10.11.99; UPI, 3.11.99; Athens News, 13.7.99; "Volunteers who brought back Jews to Palestine look back", Chap. 15 of "The Struggle for Independence and the Birth of the State of Israel", Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 30.5.97; Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 1990, Macmillan Publishing Company.