Doctors Without Borders denounces “inhumane” migration policy: “Children trapped in shipping containers and bombarded with tear gas” | Abroad

European member states are once again talking about a migration crisis. The emphasis is placed on more incarceration, border walls and deportations. There seems to be no question of providing protection anymore, says MSF. This very harmful policy, which we have been witnessing for years, is being institutionalized at the European level.

The dirty work is left to third – often less safe – countries. For example, the Italian government finances the Libyan coastguard. In 2022, it intercepted about 23,600 people and forcibly returned them to Libya, where they become victims of “crimes against humanity”. In the sea area between the two countries, 1,053 people died in the first four months of 2023, the deadliest period since 2017.

“After we entered Libya, they took us to a prison,” a young man from Cameroon told MSF teams. “I spent eight months there. They beat us really hard until we paid them. If we had no money, they would call our families and demand money from them to release us.”

“They let them listen in on the phone as they beat us. Sometimes they even made videos of our abuse and sent them to our families. I had no money and no family. I was locked up for eight months and went blind in one eye after they beat me with a metal stick. The guards didn’t even take me to the hospital when this happened.”

MSF also points out that an extension of the so-called ‘hotspot’ model is now on the table. Such refugee reception centers are “focused on deportation and detention rather than assistance”.

The measure was proposed as temporary in 2015 in order to cope with the excessive influx to Europe. In the meantime, however, many of those hotspots in Italy and Greece have become quasi-prisons. “On the island of Samos, the shelter is surrounded by barbed wire, people are monitored 24 hours a day, they have to go through an X-ray machine and they are identified by biometric data such as fingerprints.” In addition, the age limit for detention will be lowered to 12 years.

“People who survive the deadly crossing of the Mediterranean or the mountains and forests of Europe are treated inhumanely when they enter EU territory,” said MSF team leader Julien Buha Collette. “Across Europe, we see that violence at the borders has become normalized. In addition to the deaths at sea and violent pushbacks, we have heard of children in Hungary being locked in shipping containers and tear gassed before being sent back to Serbia. It’s inhumane.”

The situation is in stark contrast to Europe’s rapid response to the reception of Ukrainian refugees, MSF said. “This underlines that migration is not a matter of capacity, but of political will.”