Development & Aid, Europe, Headlines, Human Rights, Population

RIGHTS: Where Leaders Outnumbered Refugees

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Sep 21 2005 (IPS) - A group of members of the European Parliament has accused Italy of masking miserable conditions at a refugee camp..

The camp on the island of Lampedusa, a 20 sq km island located midway between Sicily and Tunisia, has a capacity of 200 but has often held close to a thousand.

When a group of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) reached the island last week, only 11 asylum seekers were present.

French socialist MEP Martine Roure who chaired the delegation told media representatives Tuesday that people on the island told them that those detained at the centre had been flown out three days earlier..

Four representatives of the group of 12 who visited the centre told media representatives that the move was a “dramatic masquerade”, and expressed their displeasure that they had not seen the centre as it usually is.

“It was the first time during an inspection visit of a retention centre that MEPs outnumbered the refugees,” said Italian socialist MEP Giovanni Claudio Fava.

But from what they were able to see, the MEPs said there were only 12 toilets, none of which had a door, and18 washbasins and showers using seawater.

The MEPs said conditions at the centre “violate human rights.” They say the site is run-down, lacks fresh water and basic hygiene facilities, and that refugee access to legal assistance and medical care is not safeguarded.

“I saw enough in Lampedusa to confirm my fears. The negative expectations I had were fulfilled. I’ve seen a lot of pretty awful stuff in refugee camps and I saw more of the same here. The European Parliament will be keeping an eye on it,” said German socialist MEP Wolfgang Kreissl-Dörfler.

“Journalists are not allowed to enter the site, photography is completely banned, and it is extremely military in the way it is set up. When we visited we had police and three people chaperoning us. It’s the sort of things I’ve seen in civil war areas such as Angola,” he said.

“Legally speaking we think there is a significant violation of human rights on the island of Lampedusa, but it’s no good saying that; we need to get more evidence to prove it and that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Roure.

The European Parliament sent MEPs from each parliamentary group to inspect the centre.

Every year thousands of illegal immigrants make the trip to Lampedusa. Many of the inmates come from Tunisia’s neighbour Libya.

The MEPs expressed the fear that many asylum-seekers brought to the camp are deported to Libya without their legal status being tested. Camp authorities told the delegation members that the expelled asylum-seekers were “economic migrants” who had not applied for asylum.

“In that case, Lampedusa is the only place in Europe where people arrive without applying for asylum,” Roure said. The Italian government has entered into a controversial agreement with the Libyan government to extradite rejected immigrants. But the MEPs said they have never seen a copy of the document, and that Italy has not declared the content of the extradition agreement with Libya.

“The Italian government couldn’t tell us if there was a safe third country. Libya has been considered as all things bad for a long time but it is considered safe for refugees to be deported there,” said Kreissel-Dörfler.

Amnesty International and the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) have also criticised the removal of asylum-seekers to Libya, and the Lampedusa camp.

In March this year the UNHCR condemned the expulsion of 180 people from Lampedusa, saying it was far from certain that Italy had ensured that it did not send genuine refugees back to Libya.

Libya has not signed the Geneva convention on refugees – the key legal document in defining who is a refugee, their rights and the legal obligations of states – and so cannot, according to the UNHCR, be trusted as a place of safe asylum.

The group of MEPs say they will now gather proof of violations of UN human rights and refugee conventions at Lampedusa to bring the case up for judicial examination.

But the MPs were not permitted to take photographs or to film the camp. They were also not allowed to see registers of asylum-seekers, or expulsion orders.