After the entrance of 10 new countries in EU, Schengen borders moved towards eastern countries. EU borders changed and control areas as well: former USSR countries are today strategic to control migrations especially from Asia.
We asked Helmut Dietrich to comment upon this situation.
Question - How does the change in Schengen border affect migration flows?
Answer - We are facing a process that moves borders’ control towards eastern countries. This process has started some years ago and I believe that it will last quite long up the day Schengen borders will reach Byelorussia, Ukraine, etc. Alarm and tension is brought to east. This happens from a technical point of view but we can see its effects in the fact that asylum seekers are detained in concentration camps, they are segregated. This process happens everywhere in EU. Some years ago we entered inside some detention centres and we interviewed many asylum seekers. When we published this, everybody called a “scandal” because asylum seekers could not be detained. Today it happens everywhere, detention is normal. The trend today is also opening centres far away in European eastern countries, where in the past centres were spread out through EU. A new external frontier is being built also thanks to detention centres, which are contemporary concentration camps.
Question - Are rules inside European detention centres different from the ones of outside borders camps? How do you comment that fact that Europe appears not to be caring of what happens everyday in such places?
Answer - Many years ago we saw in Eastern Germany how borders have always been a sort of an emergency zone where rights did not exist because of the “emergency”. An open zone, without any juridical, political control, etc.
Borders’ areas are an open zone where we cannot know what really happens, some years ago we started an inquiry on detention centres, today we should also go and see what happens in these areas. These places become strategic in order to stop refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, sans papiers. Citizens that are not welcome are there blocked.
Question - What do you think it is happening today in the Mediterranean sea, what do you think about the agreements signed between Spain and Morocco, Italy and Libya?
Answer - In the last years Europe seemed to launch alarms against Eastern Europe. We’ve always been told that poor citizens were organised by criminals. In the last years though we’ve noticed that some specific nationalities are detained: Afghans and Chechnyans. Citizens coming from these countries are systematically detained. This happens in Eastern Europe. Today things are changing. The old enemy (criminal organisations) has changed, the alarm today is “terrorism”. This is the new European nightmare.
To understand how this change is taking place we just need to give a look at what happens in Lampedusa, in Spain and in the Canary Islands. Here the biggest EU detention centres are built. In the past, when someone reached these places he/she could anyway manage to reach Milan, Madrid, Paris. Today those huge militarised concentration camps – that cannot be entered by ngos, humanitarian groups, UN – have become the structures that prevent all “boat people” from entering EU. Within this logic detention centres need to be built also outside Europe, in Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Egypt. And Europe is managing to have centres built in Northern Africa. This is very dangerous to the respect of human rights.
When migrants are stopped in Northern Africa or are there repatriated, we cannot possibly know what happens to them. There are real objective dangers: Sahara, for instance, where many die. This is the negation of fundamental citizenship rights.
Question - You mentioned the need of new enemies… How are detention centres related to war, to global war and to the war on terrorism?
Answer - Detention centres are by definition administrative structures, this is to say police’s arrogance. Police holds strong powers inside centres, and this happens because of the quoted war. We read and saw what happens in Guantanamo. Citizens are detained on basis of administrative laws without judges, courts, trials: this is what happens with detention centres as well.
I believe we should study the relation between detention centres and war and other issues, i.e. economics. Berlusconi, Blair, Schroeder went to Libya when the first deportations started, they signed very important contracts: gas, petrol, oil pipeline. When we talk about petrol, we should talk about accessing petrol, this implies militarization, surveillance, security. Security implies detention centres. This is, according to me, the link between war and cpt.
Another issue is the new EU doctrine about security: the Solana’s proposal, which states that countries at EU’s borders are extremely important to Europe’s security and that Europe should have more powers in these areas.
Much can be said on this matter. We can also underline how the logic of war is in line with detention centres’ aim of stopping the “unwanted”.
We could believe that cooperation agreements, quotas that establish how many migrants can enter EU are a way of opening borders. But it is not true, the truth is that these are ways of controlling citizens by finger prints, SIS, etc.
