114 migrants died along Eu border during the last month,
108 of them off Senegal and Canary island, 1 in Malta and
3 off Turkey, then 2 people asphyxiated on a truck where
they were hidden on a ferry sailing to Italy. From 1988
at least 5,856 people have died trying to emigrate illegally
to European Countries
ROME - The last month of 2006 gives only tears to
the relatives of at least 114 young people left to
Europe
and drowned with
their illegal hope. So many people – according to Fortress
Europe – died along the Eu borders at December.
Sailing from Senegal to the Canary islands 108 migrants
lost their
life, one victim in Malta and 3 off Turkey, then 2
people asphyxiated on a truck in which they were hidden
on a
ferry sailing to Italy. Four others people died in
3 different
migrants detention centers in Italy, France and Russia.
According to our press review at least at least 5,856
migrants have
died along Eu frontiers from 1988, among them 1,949
are missing in the sea.
17th Decembers. Yoff beach, near Dakar, Senegal. 25
ghosts come out from the night of the sea on a pirogue.
They
are the only survivors among
127 adventuriers who left Casamance, at the border
with Guinea Bissau, two weeks before sailing to Canary
islands. A longer
but safer route, because of the sea patrollings off
Dakar and Saint Louis. A storm capsized two times the wood
and
the waves swallowed who were not able to swim. Then
other people died after two weeks to the drift without
any provisions
aboard. The grigri which the villages marabù gave
them to assure themselves spirits protection, failed
against the sea might. A week before Dakar counted
others 4 victims
after another pirogue shipwreck,
while the 7th December two
young people died for hypothermia, after their arrival
in Canary islands. 108 deaths in thirty days is not
little. From
1988 at least 1,726 migrants drowned trying to reach
Spain and
Canary, 868 only
during 2006. Spanish government speaks of about 6,000
victims. Alarming figures which shout the responsibilities
of
the European and Africans Governments, deaf to thousands
of illegal
migrants reasons, always accused of an invasion that
simply doesn’t exist.
Madrid insists on the 31,000 arrivals
to Canary during 2006, a record comparing with the
only 5,000 of 2005. But behind the alarmism a different
truth is hidden.
In 2005 Spain regularized 690,000 illegal
immigrates: 20% were Ecuadoregni, 17% Rumanians and
12% Moroccans, followed by Colombians, Bolivians and Bulgarians.
Sub-Saharian
Africa - from which everyone would fear the invasion
- did not exceed 4% of the demands. The same happened in
Italy.
In the 2002 regularization 134,000
of the 646,000 demands were from Rumanians people,
them 101,000 from Ucrainans, 48,000 from Moroccans
and Albanians
and 34,000
from Ecuador.
Italian Internal Affairs Ministry figures help
to solve the problem. In 2006 the 63% of immigrate
without any residence permit entered in Italy with a tourist
visa
then expired, and then another 24% arrived from other
Schengen Countries profiting of open inner Eu frontiers.
The 20,000 arrived
by boat in Sicily in 2006 (they were 19,000 in 2005)
so represent no more than 13% of all the illegal entries.
Actually the
mechanisms of legal entry for job reasons doesn’t work.
But differently from the others Countries, in Africa the
possibilities to obtain a tourist visa are almost null for
the candidates to immigration. This is the reality, but Europe
prefers keep on speaking about “pressure without previous” and
spending millions euro for the repression of an invasion
that there isn’t.
One billion and 820 million euro are not little. This
is the budjet for the next seven years in order to
control the external frontiers of the European Union.
It is nearly
one
half of all migration resources of the budget just
approved by the European Parliament. In the game Frontex,
the European agency for the control of the frontiers,
won a double income for 2007, 340 millions euro (170 millions
in 2006), with the declared goal to create a permanent
system of coast patrolling in the south of Europe. This
is the goal
of the 6 month extension of
Hera mission in Senegal, operating from the 7 september
2006, as of the pressures on Tripoli for a joint operation
along
Libyan coasts the next summer.
Spain, which spent 45 millions euro
in 2006 in order to repatriate by flight about 4,400
Senegaleses, has just reached an agreement with Morocco
for children repatriation.
On the same time Italy has renewed the cooperation
with Tunisia for Sicily Channel patrolling. Similar
agreements
by now
are part of all the diplomatic relations of Europe
with the belt of Countries from Turkey to Gambia, passing
for all
the Maghreb, Mauritania and Senegal. Aids in exchange
for patrolling the European external frontiers. A engagement
that is often translated in arbitrary detention and
collective
deportations, many times in degrading conditions.
The Migreurop net
reported that in the dawn of 23 December about 300
migrants were arrested in a police raid in different quarters
of Rabat,
in Morocco. The same happened the 25 December in Nador,
at the doors of Melilla Spanish enclave. Migrants were
then
deported to the frontier with Algeria, at Oujda. Among
them there were also asylum seekers and refugees under
the protection
of United Nation High Commissariat for Reefugees in
Morocco, which did nothing to stop these collective deportations,
going on since Ceuta and Melilla repression the last
year.
Also in Algeria deportations to Mali border are going
on and hundreds of migrants are abandoned in Tinzanwatin
village,
in the middle of the Sahara desert. In Libya,
already accused of arbitrary detention and tortures
from Human
Rights Watch and
Afvic (Amis
Et familles Des victimes de l’immigration clandestin),
collective deportations are continuing. According to
an official notice of
Habeshia Agency, 400 Eritreans citizens detained in
Al-Kufrah prison, a structure at the border with Sudan
financed by
Italy ,
would risk to being expelled and then emprisoned at
their arrival in Eritrea. Some of them would risk also
the death “for
the political role which they had”. In 2003
Tripoli deported to Asmara 181 persons, upon request
of the Eritrean
president Iseya Afewerki, “there is no news of these
persons until now”, according to Habeshia and
Amnesty International.
Turkey situation is different. Ankara threats not to
be of the game if Athens will continue to expel in
Turkey irregular
migrants found in Greece and if Eu does not participate
to expenses, told Mehmet Terzioglu from
the Turkish Ministry of the Interior, maybe referring
to Karaburun case,
when to the dawn of the 26 september 8 people drowned 400
meters from the seaside of the Turkish city, after Greek
Armed Forces – which arrested them in Hiyos Greek island – threw
them in the sea. It is not the first time. According to Ankara
the Greek Coastgard would have abandoned in Turkish territorial
waters at least 5,800 illegal
migrants from 2003 to 2006. On the routes between Turkey
and Greece, in the Aegean sea, at least 452 persons
have lost the life, last 2 Decembers, 3 people were
missing
off Edremit after a shipwreck.
Two days later in Marseilles, in France, a turkish
guy, Kaz¦m Kustul,
22 years old, committed suicide in a migrants detention
centre. He used to live in France from 2003 and was arrested
to be
deported. Its is not an isolated case. The 9th December,
a forty-years old Bulgarian detained in Italy, in the
Lamezia Terme (Catanzaro) center hung himself.
And the 2nd December in Russia Manana Dzhabelia ,
51 years, Georgian, arrested as illegal migrant, died
of infarct. She suffered from diabetes, and probably
would have
been saved if helped in time, denounced the associations
that remember a similar case in the month of October.
Collaterals effects of administrative detention. The
28th December 1999 six
people died after Trapani detention centre, in Italy,
took fire. The Prefect Leonardo Cerenzia was acquitted.
In the
seventh anniversary of the tragedy, Sicily antiracist
forum demonstrated in
front of the detention center in order to remember,
because memory doesn’t vanishe.
They are still there instead the ghosts of the 283
victims of 1996 Christmas shipwreck. In the tenth anniversary
of the greatest tragedy of the Mediterranean of the
post-war
period their rests remain buried under 106 meters of
sea
20 miles off Porto Palo (Sicily), blocked in the F-174
hold, sank with its passengers after a crash with traffickers
boat
Yohan that made it sink. Traffickers than escaped in
Greece with few survivors. Melting Pot dedicates a
special to
a crime that thanks to the witness of the survivors,
the evidence of a fisherman and the investigation of
a journalist
came out from the oblivion in 2001 when Giovanni Maria
Bellu showed the images of the boat at the bottom of
the Sicily
Channel. The trial is still open. The shipowner and
the captain are accused of voluntary manifold homicide.
There will be justice? Difficult to say it in a Country,
Italy, where boat helping Sicily Channel shipwrecked
risk to be arrested rather than traffickers, as sadly
teachs
Cap Anamur case,
a humanitarian german boat which in July 2004 rescued
37 people from the sea and today is accused in a trial
of
agravated abetting of illegal migration
More info at
Fortress Europe
http://fortresseurope.blogspot.com
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