EUROPE-RIGHTS: Spanish NGOs Oppose EU Plan against Refugees

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, Sep 26 1997 (IPS) - Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Spain are opposed to a project being negotiated by the 15 European Union (EU) member states to reduce the influx of refugees into the bloc to a minimum.

Some 10 million legal immigrants live in the EU, accounting for slightly more than four percent of the bloc’s total population. More than 200,000 requests for asylum are received annually.

The European Commission, the EU executive organ, has proposed measures to prevent a massive inflow of foreigners, pointing to the region’s average unemployment rate of 10.8 percent.

Interior and Justice ministry officials from the 15 member countries will study the proposed measures Oct. 9-10 in Luxembourg. One of the provisions would be to organise EU-level collective deportations of foreign nationals in charter flights.

The European commissioner of Legal Affairs, Swedish socialist politician Anita Gradin, suggested that EU states refuse to process asylum requests for up to five years in case of a massive influx of refugees.

Representatives from Germany and Austria suggested that “the burden be distributed” if any member country is subjected to a large flow of refugees. In other words, the refugees would be distributed throughout the EU.

But the project’s chief aim is to impede such an inflow.

Encarna Cerezo, a physician with the Spanish non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Medicos del Mundo’ (Doctors of the World), one of the most active organisations within and outside of Spain, termed the project an “aberration.”

Most countries near the EU suffer from internal conflicts, with clear human rights violations and poor living conditions, said Cerezo. The EU, comprised of rich nations, should contribute to fighting the causes of massive emigration of people from the developing world, while maintaining an open door policy, she argued.

NGOs like Medicos del Mundo, the Spanish Commission of Aid to Refugees (CEAR), the Pro Human Rights Association (APDH) and SOS Racism cite the case of 2,000 immigrants living in appalling and overcrowded conditions on the outskirts of Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish enclaves on the northern coast of Africa.

The immigrants live in precarious conditions, most of them in emergency shelters or tents, and lack identity documents or permits to work or enter Spain.

Lawyer Juan Maria Bandres, president of CEAR and former parliamentary deputy, says the immigrants are frequently unable even to fill out a request for asylum due to the lack of the basic bureaucratic instruments in Ceuta or Melilla.

Around 50 of the immigrants, of Algerian nationality, were handcuffed in August and handed over to the Algerian police in the Spanish port of Alicante – a measure the APDH described as an attack against the basic rights of the deportees, given the current violent and chaotic situation in their home country.

The immigrants in Ceuta and Melilla have very little food and lack basic sanitation services. The APDH’s Melilla office pointed out that 110 Algerians held in a home received army rations for 50 people and had only two showers and toilets. “But it is as if they had nothing, because there is no water,” said an APDH official.

The president of Medicos del Mundo, Pilar Estebanez, blamed the situation on the Spanish government, presided over by the centre- right Jose Maria Aznar.

“It is a paradox that the NGOs can build latrines and showers in Zaire for refugee camps of up to 200,000 people with public money, while the settlements in Ceuta and Melilla lack even these basic necessities.”