Anywhere but Here
The Wall of Deterrence has been carefully constructed by the EU. The repercussions from this wall play out hourly on major media platforms across the EU with images of desperate refugees plucked from the waters of the Mediterranean, sitting hopeless in camps, families scaling barbed wire confronted by men with clubs, all are becoming the norm. WHY the movement now??
The cornerstone of the wall is Dublin III – established as the Dublin System in June 1990, so called as it was signed by the initial EU signatories in Dublin Ireland. It went into force in 1999. Norway and Iceland joined the agreement even though they were not EU members. The Regulation (Reg no. 604/2013 Dublin III http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2013:180:0031:0059:EN:PDF%20> )
determines the EU member state that deals with an Asylum Seeker’s application for protection under the Geneva Convention and the EU Qualification Directive. It DEPENDS on EURODAC http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/asylum/identification-of-applicants/index_en.htm. which is the European fingerprinting database for Asylum Seekers, functioning since 2003.
The premise behind the Dublin regulations was to create a “space of freedom, security and justice” putting a stop to the “orbiting” of asylum seekers who were passed from country to country. The Dublin Regulations established the “Safe Third Country “protocol which provides for the RETURN of a refugee to the country that first takes his/her fingerprints, assuming this is the refugee’s point of entry. 16 years later the Dublin Regulations represent a major brick in the European Wall of Deterrence, one that places a financial strain on those countries designated “safe” where the unfortunate lose their liberty to the EURODOC fingerprint system of containment through identification, detention and confinement.
The 2012 Report “Lives on Hold” http://www.dublin-project.eu/dublin/Dublin-news/New-report-Dublin-II-regulation-lives-on-hold by the Dublin Transnational Network, partially funded by the EU through the European Refugee Fund is a damning indictment of the Dublin Regulations. It points out that the regulations were implemented on the false premise that each EU member would offer equal protections and offer equal opportunities. It was assumed the Dublin Regulations would be applied humanely and not bureaucratically. However, Dublin II proved to be the cornerstone of the European Union Wall of Deterrence and has been applied in a manner that imposes a system of incarceration (detention), marginalization and uncertainty. The differing economies and differing approaches to the rights of education and work meant it was in the best interest of the asylum seeker to get FIRST to a country more hospitable to his/her long term needs than was usually available in what has come to be termed a transit country such as Turkey or Greece or the countries of the Balkans. They are transit because there is no incentive for a refugee to stop, there are huge disincentives. Camps are overcrowded, education for children lacking, the right to work is denied forcing families into a life of welfare, dependent on the strained resources of NGOs and UNHCR while they wait years or even decades for the slim hope of “resettlement” in an EU that severely limits the number of resettlement spots to thousands, cumulatively, when millions are in need. Dublin III has done little to change this and today we see a very real fear of giving that fingerprint before achieving “feet on the ground” in a country where an asylum seeker can hope to make a life and not a place of limbo for years as the EU attempts to keep asylum seekers as far from the prosperous EU as it possibly can. Transit countries generally do not have economies that are robust nor do they have the financial means to support large numbers of people in need. As the number of people seeking help increases, the EU has invested billions in Border “Security”…Walls. Rumors of Walls, realities of Walls, all serve to send refugees into desperate flights for the safer haven of prosperous Europe, remember-they are humans seeking safety for their children first, themselves second.
So what do you do with a country that is NOT a part of the European Union and wants to be a part of the EU and is very strategically located? You give Visa considerations in exchange for an acceptance of “safe third country” http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2012:0239:FIN:EN:PDF rules similar to Dublin III Regulations
Turkey is not a member of the European Union, yet, as part of its Re-Admission Agreement Turkey agreed to become a Safe Third Country in 2013, financed by the European Union as part of Turkey’s quest to become an EU member state. The EU, in fact, describes Turkey as the “external frontier of the bloc”. The EU financed http://avrupa.info.tr/eu-projects-at-a-glance/justice-home-affairs-fundamental-rights-including-civil-society/establishing-an-integrated-border-management-system-1st-phase.html border security and Detention Centers to the tune of €9,834,750 through 2012 and an additional €21.88 million in 2013. To explain, a “Safe third country” is one of those euphemisms designed to make you feel good about something not really palatable. It refers to the core principle of the Dublin Regulations. The first country to get your fingerprints is presumed to be your country of entry. It is where your request for asylum will be heard. It matters not if you have family in another EU country, have a support system in another EU country, have a skill needed in another EU country. The country that got your fingerprint is your “safe third country” and if fingerprinted again anywhere else, it is to that country you will be returned. This means that as a Refugee, you might have a family already established somewhere in the EU, but if Turkey gets your fingerprint, it is in Turkey you will stay, no family, no language skills and now no hope. The message is clear to an asylum seeker, DO NOT STAY in Turkey or Greece or any of the border countries and the northward journey begins.
While Detention is intrinsic to the Dublin Regulations, it goes contrary to the Refugee Convention. http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html In fact, Article 31 of the Refugee Convention states that Contracting States shall not impose penalties on account of their [refugee] illegal entry or presence… and that Contracting States shall not apply to the movements of such refugees restrictions… It should be noted that Turkey is a signatory to this document in 1951, long before it traded VISA considerations for border controls. Yet Turkey has infamous Detention Centers, as shown above, paid for by the EU, with new ones under construction.
Turkey’s new Law on Foreigners, http://www.goc.gov.tr/files/files/eng_minikanun_5_son.pdf in effect since April 2014, has its own version of Dublin III in Articles 73 and 74 and Turkey’s participation in EURODOC. Sadly, Turkey codifies its version while the cracks in the Dublin Regulations are starting to appear as on August 21, 2015 Germany formally lifted the use of the Dublin Regulations in dealing with Syrian Refugees. http://www.internationales-zentrum-friedberg.de/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/69_AUSSETZUNG_DUBLINVERFAHREN_SYRIEN.PDF The large numbers of refugees have also meant many of the transit countries have been lax with implementing the fingerprinting required for EURODOC as the burden of refugee care has been disproportionate to date with Greece and Lebanon unwilling to be responsible for any more refugees and happy to let them transit north adding to an uneven and often ignored implementing of the Dublin Regulations.
Kumkapi Removal Center sums up everything wrong with the system currently in place and how the Dublin Regulations and the Turkish iteration of them required and financed by the EU abrogate Refugee Rights. Asylum Seekers are detained without access to translators, lawyers or UNHCR personnel in a timely manner. Detention duration is capricious. Iranians are often held 6 months or longer; Afghans have been repatriated without ever seeing a UNHCR representative. Families are separated, the husband/father released while his wife and child remain behind. Mothers with infants, preteen boys and girls, all are found on the floors of Kumkapi Removal Center.
The madness of a historic, elegant edifice used as an illegal, immoral, inhumane Detention center, next to the cacophony of the fine dining of the Kumkapi Fish Restaurants, while well-dressed tourists stroll by laden with shopping bags from the Grand Bazaar as they step around Syrian refugees asleep on the seems too surreal to be true…welcome to Istanbul.