It was only when I saw the glow from Tony Blair’s tan that I knew I couldn’t chicken out.
Without telling anyone, I had hatched a vague plan the previous day to place the former prime minister under a citizen’s arrest during his scheduled visit to the European Parliament on Monday but was not certain that I would have the guts to proceed with it.
When I realised Blair was just a few metres away from me, I walked swiftly towards him and placed a hand on his right arm. “Mr Blair, this is a citizen’s arrest,” I said. For a millisecond, he looked at me with his penetrating eyes, treating me to an expression that seemed to blend puzzlement and contempt. I had intended to invite him to accompany me to the nearest police station but I was abruptly shoved out of the way by at least one of his bodyguards. “You are guilty of war crimes,” I shouted at his back, as he made his way towards a meeting room.
My attempt was inspired by the Arrest Blair campaign that George Monbiot, the environmental activist and Guardian columnist, has set up. I was aware that the protester Grace McCann had made an earlier effort to arrest Blair after he appeared at the Chilcot inquiry in January. As mine was the second attempt since Monbiot launched his initiative, many well-wishers have expressed a hope that it will be a case of third time lucky. I wouldn’t bet on the chances of a successful arrest but would encourage others to have a go, provided they use peaceful means.
I am no expert on the legal issues surrounding citizens arrests but I did know that a precedent had been set by Peter Tatchell, when he tried to apprehend Robert Mugabe, also in Brussels, in 2001.
Britain and Belgium have both ratified the Rome statute, which entered into force in 2002. This accord, which covers the activities of the International Criminal Court, refers to the crime of aggression. In my view, the war that Blair and George Bush declared against Iraq just over seven years ago constitutes such a crime as it was demonstrably not an act of self-defence. So far the ICC has only issued indictments against Africans; why should international justice not apply to white men like Blair and Bush?
Although my attempt was motivated primarily by my outrage at the Iraq war, I also wished to highlight the obscenity of Blair’s current role as a “peace envoy” in the Middle East. Last year I visited the house of Maher Hanoun and his family in East Jerusalem – which was stolen from them by Israeli settlers a few months later. Blair has an office in the nearby American Colony hotel but has uttered no more than a few feeble words of concern at the ethnic cleansing on its doorstep. How can a man so willing to accommodate the destruction of Arab culture be trusted to bring peace?
Originally published by The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk)
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestine. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Flouting its own laws, EU accommodates "Made in Israel"
Historians looking back on November 2008 might record it as a time when normally astute commentators succumbed to a fantasy. In the same week that Barack Obama became America's first black president, some governments on the other side of the Atlantic tried to chime with the message of hope his public relations machine had honed to near-perfection. The highest echelons of Britain's ruling Labor party even tried to rekindle a modicum of the magic that many sensed when it came to power 11 long years earlier. Although Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had until then been cheerleaders for Israeli aggression, their ministers suddenly transformed themselves into champions of Palestinian rights.
This sleight of hand was performed with the aid of a terse document dispatched from London to Brussels. In it, Britain expressed concern about how goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank may be benefiting illegally from European Union trade preferences that theoretically only apply to businesses within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The one-page note stated that the British customs authorities were conducting spot checks on imports claiming to be "Made in Israel" and would forward the findings to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU).
Leaked ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the note garnered the kind of fawning media coverage that the spin doctors who became synonymous with Blair and Brown often worked hard to manufacture. "Britain is taking the lead in pressing the EU to curb imports from Israeli producers in the occupied West Bank as a practical step towards halting the steady increase in the construction of Jewish settlements," Donald Macintyre, Jerusalem correspondent with the London-based Independent, reported.
More than a year later, where is this combination of leadership and practicality now? Despite the clear promise to present evidence to the Commission, officials working with that institution say that nothing has been formally transmitted to them from Britain or any other EU government since then that would enable them to take action against Israel over its abuse of trade preferences.
This is partly explained by the inability of inspectors to detect abuses. A spokesman for the British customs authorities told me that during 2009, just one "labeling irregularity" had been identified when fruit and vegetables purporting to be from Israel were examined. In that case, the documents accompanying a consignment of food said that it had originated in Israel but a perusal of its packaging revealed it was actually from the Jordan Valley, according to the spokesman.
The low number of "irregularities" found does not mean that Israeli exporters are generally playing by the rules set out in the association agreement between the EU and Israel, which came into force in 2000. Under it, goods from within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries can generally enter the EU without being subject to customs duties but this privilege does not extend to goods from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Phyllis Starkey, a conscientious Labor Party Member of Parliament, noted recently that the total amount that Britain raised on customs duties levied on goods from Israeli settlements in 2009 amounted to less than £22,000. By contrast, the annual sum gathered on goods from the settlements in the 2005-08 period was £110,0000. Starkey estimates that as much as 80 percent of all exports to Britain from the settlements are shipped under false pretenses. Britain is Israel's third-largest trading partner.
EU officials should not be allowed shirk their responsibilities to investigate these matters further. In 2005, following complaints that goods from the settlements were routinely labeled as "Made in Israel," the EU introduced guidelines ("technical arrangements," in diplomatic parlance) designed to help customs officials distinguish between a bona fide Israeli good and one from the OPT or the occupied Golan Heights. But these rules -- which essentially involve checking postcodes -- have proven notoriously easy to circumvent. The Israeli business magazine Globes has advised how to do so: "You invent an address within the Green Line [the internationally-recognized boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank] and operate using this address. In this way you do not have to pay the customs fees that apply to products exported from across the Green Line. The method works, but not for those whose company carries a name that gives away the true location -- such as Golan Height Wineries."
Some Israeli firms brag openly about how they can sell goods from the settlements abroad without paying duties. Cosmetics-maker Ahava uses Dead Sea mud extracted from the occupied Jordan Valley in its products. When quizzed about this by the BBC, the company's representatives admitted that they give the address of their headquarters and not the site of production when exporting. Thus, they can avail -- fraudulently -- EU preferences.
The relaxed attitude of civil servants to how European and international law is being flouted by Israel -- Britain's 2008 initiative notwithstanding -- is in stark contrast to the courage displayed by numerous ordinary people. Supermarkets in several EU countries have been flooded with complaints from customers outraged at how they are stocking herbs or oranges from illegal settlements.
In response to this burgeoning grassroots awareness, Britain's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published recommendations to retailers on how to differentiate between food originating from Israeli settlements, that from within Israel, and that grown by Palestinian farmers (several anti-poverty organizations sell Palestinian olive oil and other produce using a "Fair Trade" label). The interpretation of these recommendations has meant that shoppers can encounter confusing and clumsily-phrased notices while searching for groceries. The Morrisons supermarket chain has displayed the following instructions beside its stocks of "Best Medjool" dates: "Please note product labeled 'Produce of Jordon [sic] Valley' is produced in the West Bank (Israeli settlement) and produce of Israel is not from the occupied territories."
Betty Hunter from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign described the guidance to retailers as "absolutely inadequate" as she believes that no goods from Israeli settlements should be sold in Europe, regardless of whether they have been subject to customs duties. Activists from her group plan to attend the annual shareholder meetings of Britain's main supermarkets later this year and to advocate a complete ban on such goods. (The campaign is also committed to a wider boycott of Israeli goods.)
John Hilary, director of the organization "War on Want," concurs. "It is quite clear that the settlements are illegal under international law," he said. "For us, there is no justification for goods from the settlements to be allowed in any European country at all."
Yet EU officials have not only failed to defend international law, they have accommodated Israel's abuse of it. Last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that goods from illegal settlements are not eligible for preferential treatment from the EU. The verdict related to the activities of Brita, a German manufacturer of water filters, which buys accessories and syrups from Soda-Club, a company based in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone located near Maale Adumim, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Charles Shamas from the Mattin Group, a Ramallah-based organization that monitors the EU's relations with Israel, followed the court proceedings vigilantly. During the final stages of the proceedings in the autumn of last year, he revealed how the EC's lawyers told the court that the whole issue could be resolved if the Palestinian Authority issued certificates for the goods, rather than Israel. "This was a fallacious argument," Shamas said. "The Commission did not want to tell the court that these operators [in Israeli settlements] should be frozen out of any preferential treatment with the European Union."
Maysa Zorob, Brussels representative with the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, said that exports from Israeli settlements are a "very inconvenient issue" for Europe. "I doubt that the EU's member states will be excited about implementing the ruling of the European Court of Justice," she added. "The EU has a big economic interest in supporting these products and granting them tax-free status would mean there would be a lot more trade. A lot of big companies manufacture in the settlements and give the postcodes of Israel proper when exporting. The problem is that Israel has quite a big margin for fraud."
Another signal of how the EU is eager to develop closer ties with Israeli firms, including those known to operate in the settlements, came in late 2009, when both sides agreed to liberalize agricultural trade between them even more fully. As a result, 80 percent of Israel's fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods can be exported to the EU free of customs duties.
Theoretically, food and drink companies in Israeli settlements will not benefit from this latest deal. But in practice they will. Agrexco, one of the leading Israeli exporters of agricultural goods, is known to mix goods from within Israel with those from the settlements in its depots and label the whole lot as Israeli. This firm alone is estimated to control more than 60 percent of all exports of settlement produce.
The EU's weak response on this issue can be traced to those heady days of November 2008. Within a fortnight of the UK's declaration on mislabeling of Israeli exports, Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, was sharing a platform with Israeli President Shimon Peres and voicing hopes that the value of British trade with "our firm friend" Israel would jump from its 2007 level of £2.3 billion to more than £3 billion by 2012.
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them," George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four. That is the kind of duplicity Britain tries to get away with by embracing the very same Israeli firms whose theft of Palestinian land it professes to disdain.
Originally published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
This sleight of hand was performed with the aid of a terse document dispatched from London to Brussels. In it, Britain expressed concern about how goods originating from Israeli settlements in the West Bank may be benefiting illegally from European Union trade preferences that theoretically only apply to businesses within Israel's internationally-recognized borders. The one-page note stated that the British customs authorities were conducting spot checks on imports claiming to be "Made in Israel" and would forward the findings to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU).
Leaked ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers, the note garnered the kind of fawning media coverage that the spin doctors who became synonymous with Blair and Brown often worked hard to manufacture. "Britain is taking the lead in pressing the EU to curb imports from Israeli producers in the occupied West Bank as a practical step towards halting the steady increase in the construction of Jewish settlements," Donald Macintyre, Jerusalem correspondent with the London-based Independent, reported.
More than a year later, where is this combination of leadership and practicality now? Despite the clear promise to present evidence to the Commission, officials working with that institution say that nothing has been formally transmitted to them from Britain or any other EU government since then that would enable them to take action against Israel over its abuse of trade preferences.
This is partly explained by the inability of inspectors to detect abuses. A spokesman for the British customs authorities told me that during 2009, just one "labeling irregularity" had been identified when fruit and vegetables purporting to be from Israel were examined. In that case, the documents accompanying a consignment of food said that it had originated in Israel but a perusal of its packaging revealed it was actually from the Jordan Valley, according to the spokesman.
The low number of "irregularities" found does not mean that Israeli exporters are generally playing by the rules set out in the association agreement between the EU and Israel, which came into force in 2000. Under it, goods from within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries can generally enter the EU without being subject to customs duties but this privilege does not extend to goods from Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
Phyllis Starkey, a conscientious Labor Party Member of Parliament, noted recently that the total amount that Britain raised on customs duties levied on goods from Israeli settlements in 2009 amounted to less than £22,000. By contrast, the annual sum gathered on goods from the settlements in the 2005-08 period was £110,0000. Starkey estimates that as much as 80 percent of all exports to Britain from the settlements are shipped under false pretenses. Britain is Israel's third-largest trading partner.
EU officials should not be allowed shirk their responsibilities to investigate these matters further. In 2005, following complaints that goods from the settlements were routinely labeled as "Made in Israel," the EU introduced guidelines ("technical arrangements," in diplomatic parlance) designed to help customs officials distinguish between a bona fide Israeli good and one from the OPT or the occupied Golan Heights. But these rules -- which essentially involve checking postcodes -- have proven notoriously easy to circumvent. The Israeli business magazine Globes has advised how to do so: "You invent an address within the Green Line [the internationally-recognized boundary between Israel and the occupied West Bank] and operate using this address. In this way you do not have to pay the customs fees that apply to products exported from across the Green Line. The method works, but not for those whose company carries a name that gives away the true location -- such as Golan Height Wineries."
Some Israeli firms brag openly about how they can sell goods from the settlements abroad without paying duties. Cosmetics-maker Ahava uses Dead Sea mud extracted from the occupied Jordan Valley in its products. When quizzed about this by the BBC, the company's representatives admitted that they give the address of their headquarters and not the site of production when exporting. Thus, they can avail -- fraudulently -- EU preferences.
The relaxed attitude of civil servants to how European and international law is being flouted by Israel -- Britain's 2008 initiative notwithstanding -- is in stark contrast to the courage displayed by numerous ordinary people. Supermarkets in several EU countries have been flooded with complaints from customers outraged at how they are stocking herbs or oranges from illegal settlements.
In response to this burgeoning grassroots awareness, Britain's Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published recommendations to retailers on how to differentiate between food originating from Israeli settlements, that from within Israel, and that grown by Palestinian farmers (several anti-poverty organizations sell Palestinian olive oil and other produce using a "Fair Trade" label). The interpretation of these recommendations has meant that shoppers can encounter confusing and clumsily-phrased notices while searching for groceries. The Morrisons supermarket chain has displayed the following instructions beside its stocks of "Best Medjool" dates: "Please note product labeled 'Produce of Jordon [sic] Valley' is produced in the West Bank (Israeli settlement) and produce of Israel is not from the occupied territories."
Betty Hunter from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign described the guidance to retailers as "absolutely inadequate" as she believes that no goods from Israeli settlements should be sold in Europe, regardless of whether they have been subject to customs duties. Activists from her group plan to attend the annual shareholder meetings of Britain's main supermarkets later this year and to advocate a complete ban on such goods. (The campaign is also committed to a wider boycott of Israeli goods.)
John Hilary, director of the organization "War on Want," concurs. "It is quite clear that the settlements are illegal under international law," he said. "For us, there is no justification for goods from the settlements to be allowed in any European country at all."
Yet EU officials have not only failed to defend international law, they have accommodated Israel's abuse of it. Last month, the European Court of Justice ruled that goods from illegal settlements are not eligible for preferential treatment from the EU. The verdict related to the activities of Brita, a German manufacturer of water filters, which buys accessories and syrups from Soda-Club, a company based in the Mishor Adumim industrial zone located near Maale Adumim, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Charles Shamas from the Mattin Group, a Ramallah-based organization that monitors the EU's relations with Israel, followed the court proceedings vigilantly. During the final stages of the proceedings in the autumn of last year, he revealed how the EC's lawyers told the court that the whole issue could be resolved if the Palestinian Authority issued certificates for the goods, rather than Israel. "This was a fallacious argument," Shamas said. "The Commission did not want to tell the court that these operators [in Israeli settlements] should be frozen out of any preferential treatment with the European Union."
Maysa Zorob, Brussels representative with the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, said that exports from Israeli settlements are a "very inconvenient issue" for Europe. "I doubt that the EU's member states will be excited about implementing the ruling of the European Court of Justice," she added. "The EU has a big economic interest in supporting these products and granting them tax-free status would mean there would be a lot more trade. A lot of big companies manufacture in the settlements and give the postcodes of Israel proper when exporting. The problem is that Israel has quite a big margin for fraud."
Another signal of how the EU is eager to develop closer ties with Israeli firms, including those known to operate in the settlements, came in late 2009, when both sides agreed to liberalize agricultural trade between them even more fully. As a result, 80 percent of Israel's fresh produce and 95 percent of its processed foods can be exported to the EU free of customs duties.
Theoretically, food and drink companies in Israeli settlements will not benefit from this latest deal. But in practice they will. Agrexco, one of the leading Israeli exporters of agricultural goods, is known to mix goods from within Israel with those from the settlements in its depots and label the whole lot as Israeli. This firm alone is estimated to control more than 60 percent of all exports of settlement produce.
The EU's weak response on this issue can be traced to those heady days of November 2008. Within a fortnight of the UK's declaration on mislabeling of Israeli exports, Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, was sharing a platform with Israeli President Shimon Peres and voicing hopes that the value of British trade with "our firm friend" Israel would jump from its 2007 level of £2.3 billion to more than £3 billion by 2012.
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them," George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four. That is the kind of duplicity Britain tries to get away with by embracing the very same Israeli firms whose theft of Palestinian land it professes to disdain.
Originally published by The Electronic Intifada (www.electronicintifada.net)
Friday, February 26, 2010
Military Technology to Track Down Migrants?
Arms manufacturers have been asked to advise an official European Union (EU) body on how their products can be used to stop asylum-seekers entering the bloc’s territory.
Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, will host an event in Spain this coming June, at which several makers of pilotless drones – or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) – will give presentations.
Although these camera-carrying planes have been designed for war and have been used extensively in attacks on civilians in Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the agency is studying how they can be adapted to border surveillance.
A Frontex source said that none of these drones have been used in its work to date but that is examining what “added value” they can bring to tasks performed by the coast guards of EU member countries. “Special attention” is being paid to drones as they could be capable of monitoring vessels at sea for longer periods of time than equipment now in use by coast guards, according to the source.
Frontex is one of many bodies in Europe that are eager to use drones for security purposes. Earlier this month, the Merseyside police in England sought credit for the first known use of a drone to arrest a suspected criminal. Yet the affair turned into a controversy, when it emerged that the police did not have a licence to use these planes.
Amnesty International said this week it would be concerned if surveillance technology helped Frontex to erode the right to have asylum applications processed in Europe. “Is this being used to fulfil human rights obligations?” Nicolas Beger, director of Amnesty’s Brussels office, said. “If it isn’t, that’s a problem.”
The EU’s executive, the European Commission, published a plan to strengthen Frontex Feb. 24. Under it, the Union’s governments would be required to ensure that boats and planes are at the agency’s disposal. Frontex, which has mainly performed a coordinating role between national border management authorities of EU states since its inception in 2005, would gradually be able to buy or lease its own equipment.
Cecilia Malmström, the EU’s recently-appointed home affairs commissioner, said that migrants are “not criminals” but “people coming in search of a better life”. Asked why technology invented for military purposes is being tested for migration control work, she insisted that “there has been absolutely no decision” on using drones for those purposes.
She also stated that “fundamental rights must not be infringed” by Frontex and announced that an independent monitor will be present when the agency is assisting with the expulsion of rejected asylum-seekers. “I don’t exclude at all that there have been errors committed (by Frontex in the past),” she added.
In June last year, Frontex coordinated Operation Nautilus, in which a boat carrying an estimated 75 migrants was intercepted off the Italian coast. Using a German Puma helicopter, the operation was the first of its kind in which Frontex succeeded in forcing migrants from the central Mediterranean Sea back to Libya. Human rights organisations criticised Frontex over this operation, contending that it was unable to give guarantees that the Libyan authorities had allowed people on that vessel the possibility to apply for asylum. Under international law, all individuals are entitled to seek protection from persecution in a country other than their own.
Bjarte Vandvik from the European Council on Refugees and Exile, a network of organisations working with asylum-seekers, said that the research on drones highlighted how Europe’s debate on migration issues is being determined by a “security approach”.
“We can’t accept that people are being sent back to possible torture or death without even being given an opportunity to have their claims dealt with,” he said. “People are being turned away from the borders of Europe today without being screened one way or another to see if they are here looking for protection or here looking for employment and a better life, which is not a crime either.”
Despite impressions conveyed by some politicians that the EU is “swamped” with more asylum-seekers than it can afford to accommodate, asylum applications have fallen sharply in the past two decades. When the Union had just 12 member states in 1992, it registered 550,000 asylum claims. Yet in 2008, the number for the EU – which now comprises 27 countries – was 238,000, while provisional data indicates that the number fell to about 223,000 last year.
Amnesty’s Beger said there has been “a lot of myths and scaremongering” about migration in Europe. There is a “very stark absence”, he argued, of any recognition that asylum-seekers and other migrants are human beings. Because the EU’s policy “disproportionately aims at returning people”, rather than upholding the right to asylum, migrants are undertaking ever more hazardous journeys in their attempts to enter Europe.
Alfredo Abad from the Spanish Commission for Refugees accused the EU of a “big hypocrisy” in setting out to build a common system of asylum in recent years, while simultaneously preventing refugees from arriving here.
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
Frontex, the EU’s border management agency, will host an event in Spain this coming June, at which several makers of pilotless drones – or unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) – will give presentations.
Although these camera-carrying planes have been designed for war and have been used extensively in attacks on civilians in Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the agency is studying how they can be adapted to border surveillance.
A Frontex source said that none of these drones have been used in its work to date but that is examining what “added value” they can bring to tasks performed by the coast guards of EU member countries. “Special attention” is being paid to drones as they could be capable of monitoring vessels at sea for longer periods of time than equipment now in use by coast guards, according to the source.
Frontex is one of many bodies in Europe that are eager to use drones for security purposes. Earlier this month, the Merseyside police in England sought credit for the first known use of a drone to arrest a suspected criminal. Yet the affair turned into a controversy, when it emerged that the police did not have a licence to use these planes.
Amnesty International said this week it would be concerned if surveillance technology helped Frontex to erode the right to have asylum applications processed in Europe. “Is this being used to fulfil human rights obligations?” Nicolas Beger, director of Amnesty’s Brussels office, said. “If it isn’t, that’s a problem.”
The EU’s executive, the European Commission, published a plan to strengthen Frontex Feb. 24. Under it, the Union’s governments would be required to ensure that boats and planes are at the agency’s disposal. Frontex, which has mainly performed a coordinating role between national border management authorities of EU states since its inception in 2005, would gradually be able to buy or lease its own equipment.
Cecilia Malmström, the EU’s recently-appointed home affairs commissioner, said that migrants are “not criminals” but “people coming in search of a better life”. Asked why technology invented for military purposes is being tested for migration control work, she insisted that “there has been absolutely no decision” on using drones for those purposes.
She also stated that “fundamental rights must not be infringed” by Frontex and announced that an independent monitor will be present when the agency is assisting with the expulsion of rejected asylum-seekers. “I don’t exclude at all that there have been errors committed (by Frontex in the past),” she added.
In June last year, Frontex coordinated Operation Nautilus, in which a boat carrying an estimated 75 migrants was intercepted off the Italian coast. Using a German Puma helicopter, the operation was the first of its kind in which Frontex succeeded in forcing migrants from the central Mediterranean Sea back to Libya. Human rights organisations criticised Frontex over this operation, contending that it was unable to give guarantees that the Libyan authorities had allowed people on that vessel the possibility to apply for asylum. Under international law, all individuals are entitled to seek protection from persecution in a country other than their own.
Bjarte Vandvik from the European Council on Refugees and Exile, a network of organisations working with asylum-seekers, said that the research on drones highlighted how Europe’s debate on migration issues is being determined by a “security approach”.
“We can’t accept that people are being sent back to possible torture or death without even being given an opportunity to have their claims dealt with,” he said. “People are being turned away from the borders of Europe today without being screened one way or another to see if they are here looking for protection or here looking for employment and a better life, which is not a crime either.”
Despite impressions conveyed by some politicians that the EU is “swamped” with more asylum-seekers than it can afford to accommodate, asylum applications have fallen sharply in the past two decades. When the Union had just 12 member states in 1992, it registered 550,000 asylum claims. Yet in 2008, the number for the EU – which now comprises 27 countries – was 238,000, while provisional data indicates that the number fell to about 223,000 last year.
Amnesty’s Beger said there has been “a lot of myths and scaremongering” about migration in Europe. There is a “very stark absence”, he argued, of any recognition that asylum-seekers and other migrants are human beings. Because the EU’s policy “disproportionately aims at returning people”, rather than upholding the right to asylum, migrants are undertaking ever more hazardous journeys in their attempts to enter Europe.
Alfredo Abad from the Spanish Commission for Refugees accused the EU of a “big hypocrisy” in setting out to build a common system of asylum in recent years, while simultaneously preventing refugees from arriving here.
First published by Inter Press Service (www.ipsnews.net)
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