EU plans joint ‘charter flights’ to deport immigrants

 

source: EURACTIV

5 November 2009

EU plans ‘charter flights’ to deport illegal immigrants

Published: Wednesday 4 November 2009

EU leaders have for the first time asked for the creation of joint charter flights to deport illegal immigrants. These flights would be financed by Frontex, the European agency in charge of the EU’s external borders.

Frontex, Turkey and a 47% increase in refugee arrests…

source: Kathimerini

Frontex seeks Turkish cooperation A senior official of the European Union’s border-monitoring agency Frontex yesterday said the organization’s efforts to curb a wave of illegal immigrants seeking to enter the bloc through Greece would be much more effective if Turkey were to cooperate. Addressing reporters in Athens during an official visit, Frontex Deputy Executive Director Gil Arias Fernandez was careful not to condemn Turkey, noting that the role of his organization is to help EU member states monitor their borders, not to apply pressure on transit countries, but he stressed that Turkey’s cooperation “would be very welcome.” Meanwhile, fresh Frontex statistics revealed a 47 percent increase in detentions of illegal immigrants in the Aegean in the first six months of this year, with 14,000 migrants detained on the islands of Lesvos, Samos, Chios and Patmos as compared to 9,500 in the same period of 2008. Statistics for illegal arrivals to Italy and Spain however show a decrease of around 60 percent. Fernandez attributed this dramatic drop partly to the enforcement of repatriation pacts drawn up between Italy and Libya and between Spain and Senegal and to intensified Frontex patrols around the borders of these EU states. Similar patrols along Greece’s land borders have been effective, Fernandez said, stressing that the islands of the Aegean remained a problem area. The Frontex official said this was partly because of the porous nature of the sea border but also partly because of Turkey’s refusal to honor a bilateral repatriation pact. Questioned about reports regarding Frontex aircraft in the eastern Aegean receiving warning signals from Turkish radar while conducting patrols, Fernandez stressed that the interception had been unjustified as the organization’s aircraft had not entered Turkish air space. He added that Frontex has invited Turkey to participate in patrols of the Aegean but has never received a positive answer. Of 11,309 appeals lodged by Greece this year for the return of migrants to Turkey, only 108 were approved, Frontex statistics show [...].

New FRONTEX ship in the harbour of Mitilini

source: noborder09lesvos.blogspot.com

a Rumanian ship of FRONTEX is since yeasterday in the harbour of Mitilini ready to  replace the Italian FRONTEX ship that was here last month. you can enjoy both on this picture and also  apreciate how the rumanians pretend to be greenpeace….. For the short period both ships will kollaborate in the greek border , the italian ship will depart on the 5 of august. the rumanian one will stay for one month in the harbour of mitlini.

(informations from the Mitlini newspaper EMBROS 01.08.2009)

Frontex, the Movie feat. noborder camp in Lesvos 2009

source: http://lesvos09.antira.info/2009/07/frontex-the-movie-feat-noborder-camp-in-lesvos-2009/

Greek and Italian prime ministers cooperate closely

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Italy and Greece urge EU to play greater immigration role

Rome – The European Union should seek direct commitments from individual African nations for the repatriation of illegal immigrants, Italian and Greek leaders said Wednesday. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his Greek counterpart Kostas Karamanlis made the remarks at a joint news conference following their talks in Rome.

The 27-member EU as a whole should take responsibility for dealing with the issue of illegal immigration, rather than “individual member states having to reach agreements with those on the African side of the Mediterranean coast,” Berlusconi said.

On Tuesday the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) had criticised both countries for their treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees.

Earlier this month Italy sent back to Libya migrants from Eritrea even though they were in need of asylum, the Geneva-based agency said.

The UNHCR also voiced concern over Greek authorities’ decision to close a makeshift camp hosting hundreds of would-be immigrants in the city of Patros, without however, providing alternative accommodation.

On Wednesday Berlusconi and Karamanlis did not directly address the criticism.

Instead, Karamanlis said Italy and Greece would continue to “cooperate closely,” on illegal immigration and also seek ways to boost the EU’s external border security agency, Frontex, so that it may step up patrols in the Mediterranean.

In May, following the coming into effect of an agreement with Libya, Italy introduced a strict “push-back” policy, to prevent migrants from entering its territory illegally.

Through the agreement, Libya has agreed to prevent the use of its shores for such sea journeys and to accept would-be immigrants intercepted by Italian authorities in international waters.

Rights activists, United Nations officials and the Vatican have all condemned what they say are deportations by Italy done without determining whether the migrants qualify for political asylum.

source

Greek-Italian push for EU migrant pacts: PMs promote repatriation agreements

CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (r) ushers his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis into the Palazzo Chigi in Rome for talks that focused on illegal immigration. The leaders also discussed cooperation in the energy sector, in the proposed ITGI and South Stream gas pipelines, prompting Karamanlis to highlight their ‘strong common interests.’

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi yesterday agreed to promote the creation of a common European policy for curbing a growing tide of illegal immigrants, proposing repatriation pacts between Brussels and the migrants’ states of origin and transit countries.

Speaking after talks in Rome, Karamanlis said that Greek and Italian authorities saw eye-to-eye on many issues relating to illegal immigration. “We agreed to push forward with common initiatives in all directions including the promotion of repatriation agreements between the EU and the countries of origin and transit of the migrants,” Karamanlis said, adding that the role of the EU’s border monitoring agency Frontex should also be boosted.

Berlusconi struck a similar note, calling on all member states to contribute to efforts to make the 27-member EU the “common point of reference” so that repatriation pacts relate to the EU as a whole “rather than individual member states having to reach agreements with those on the African side of the Mediterranean coast.”

Earlier in the week the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) had criticized both Greece and Italy for their treatment of asylum seekers.

The UNHCR expressed concern over the decision by Greek authorities to raze a makeshift settlement in the western port of Patra that, until recently, had hosted hundreds of would-be migrants seeking an opportunity to sneak onto a ferry to Italy.

The United Nations refugee agency has also appealed to Greece to avoid so-called “push-backs” of migrants originating from war zones.

In a related development yesterday, Alternate Interior Minister Christos Markoyiannakis announced that an aircraft had left Athens with 90 would-be migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hundreds more migrants are believed to have been deported over the past few months.

“Excuse me, Mr. Minister – she said – what difference is there between dying at sea and dying in Libya?”

source: fortresseurope.blogspot

The massacre continues: 459 deaths in the first 6 months of 2009

ROME, 2 July 2009 – The number of deaths at the border fell for the first time over the last three years. In the first semester of 2009, the victims reported by the international press along the routes of emigration in the Mediterranean have been 434, to which the 25 people who disappeared along land borders must be added, including the three boys who ended up under lorries in the Italian Adriatic harbours. Last year, over the same period, there had been 985 documented deaths. The figures –based on news from the international press- were divulged by the Fortress Europe observatory. The main reason for the decrease in shipwrecks is the objective decrease in the number of arrivals, particularly in Italy and Spain. Since the start of returns to Libya on 7 May, arrivals by boat in Sicily can be counted on one hand. And in the Canary islands in Spain, there has not been any arrival by boat in the months of April and May, and very few boats arrived in the archipelago in June. This is an effect of the returns in the high seas and joint patrol operations enacted by Frontex in Senegal and Mauritania. However, it is still too early to compare data. In fact, very little news arrives from the press in countries to the south of the Mediterranean on this issue. For this reason, it cannot stated with any certainty whether the deaths have decreased or whether the shipwrecks occur further away from the gaze of our cameras, off the Libyan coast or in the high seas.

In detail, according to the data collected from the international press by Fortress Europe, there were 339 victims along the route towards Malta and Lampedusa in the first semester of 2008 (compared with 650 in the same period of 2008), 87 off the Spanish coast (compared with 136 in 2008) and 8 in the Aegean Sea (compared with 199 in 2008), between Turkey and Greece. There is only news of one victim on the way between Algeria and Sardinia. A corpse that was fished out of the water near to the Cavoli island in the Cagliari region, whose origin may lie in a shipwreck about which there are no available details. Other three emigrants, most probably Afghan refugees, lost their lives under lorries that disembarked in the Italian Adriatic harbours after the crossing from Greece. In Egypt, three refugees were killed after being shot by the Egyptian police at the border with Israel. Two people died in Ceuta, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, as they tried to climb over the six-metre barrier that seals that border. There were also two victims in Calais, in France, where the harbour and Channel Tunnel represent an obligatory passage to enter England illegally. Finally, there were supposedly at least 14 victims of the crossing of the Sahara during the first half of the year, according to the very few pieces of information arriving from Saharan countries.

June has also been a month in which deaths were counted: 29 in the Gibraltar Strait, off the Spanish coasts; 3 in Egypt, shot by the police at the Israeli border; and one in Italy, who was called Amir Rohol, was 19 years old and an Afghan asylum seeker. He died after falling off an articulated lorry that had disembarked in Ancona, along the junction between Clearway 76 and the A14 motorway.

Many are likely to use this data to justify the returns to Libya. Joseph St. John, an official from the Maltese interior ministry also stated this during a seminar in which I took part on 17 June in Malta. Refuse entry to save human lives. From the audience, an Ethiopian woman refugee raised her hand to intervene. “Excuse me, Mr. Minister – she said – what difference is there between dying at sea and dying in Libya?”. I don’t feel that there is much more to add about this.

Spain and Greece pledge to continue anti-immigrant terror in the Mediterranean

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Spain and Greece to cooperate against illegal immigration

Europe News

Jul 13, 2009, 14:46 GMT

Madrid – Spain and Greece on Monday pledged to jointly renew efforts to fight illegal immigration into the European Union.

Spain will intensify such measures when it takes over the EU presidency in the first half of 2010, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said at a joint press conference with his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis in Madrid.

Spain will focus on strengthening the European frontier control agency Frontex and on seeking repatriation agreements with undocumented immigrants’ countries of origin, Zapatero said.

The agreements should also include cooperation programmes to promote the social and economic development of the countries in question, in order to discourage their citizens from seeking better lives abroad, Zapatero said.

Karamanlis proposed a European coast guard to improve maritime surveillance.

Spain and Greece were among the European countries most concerned by the influx of immigrants across the Mediterranean, Zapatero said.

Fortress Europe’s “dissuasion effects” – FRONTEX predicts decrease in immigrants numbers

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FRONTEX: ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION DOWN, -25% EXPECTED IN 2009

(ANSAmed) – ROME – In 2009 illegal immigration into Europe could fall by as much as 20 – 25% compared to 2008, says Gil Arias-Fernandez, deputy executive director of EU border agency, Frontex. Today he presented figures on illegal immigration in Europe regarding the first three months of 2009. Compared to the first quarter of 2008, there has been a 16% drop in the number of illegal immigrants arriving in Europe, and a 20% drop in Italy.

Overall in this period 20,200 illegal immigrants are thought to have arrived in Europe, 2,586 (13%) of whom arrived in Italy. The amount of people entering Europe by land or air has fallen particularly, considering that 8% of illegal immigrants arrived by boat.

The total number of illegal immigrants in the EU in January, February and March 2009 was 90,800 (11,080 in Italy), 16% fewer (12% for Italy) than in the first quarter of 2008. Last year 145 thousand illegal immigrants came to Europe. Italy had the greatest number of immigrants arriving by boat, 37 thousand, or 41% of the total.

In 2009, Frontex is expecting to see trends change. ”The trends of the last few months, along with forecasts,” the deputy director said, ‘’show that illegal immigration could fall by as much as 20-25%. If sea routes change, it could remain stable at 16% or drop to 10%.”

Arias-Fernandez believes that numbers have fallen due to the economic crisis and the fact that some countries have been repatriating illegal immigrants, as well as the agreements made between Italy and Libya.

Meanwhile, the arrival of illegal immigrants in Sicily and Sardinia has fallen by 54% and 56% respectively. The decrease in the number of arrivals, according to Arias-Fernandez, was also influenced by the agreements made between Italy and Libya.

”From January 1 2009 to July 5,” he affirmed, ”there were 333 illegal arrivals according to our people in the field. For the same period last year there were 776.

As for Sicily, including Lampedusa, the figure passed from last year’s 14,806 to 6,760 this year. From May 15 on, that is from when the agreements became effective, our agents noticed even more of a decrease.

The decrease in this last month and a half may have even reached -70%.” A positive vote therefore for the agreements between Italy and Libya. ”Based on our statistics,” Arias-Fernandez concluded, we are able to say that the agreements have had a positive impact.

On the humanitarian level, fewer human lives have been put at risk, due to fewer departures. But our agency does not have the ability to confirm if the right to request asylum as well as other human rights are being respected 3in Libya.” The arrivals from sea on Italy’s shores from the Mediterranean represent around 5% of the total of illegal migrants, while the other 95% come from the East, often carrying tourist visas (ANSAmed).

The FRONTEX job: the first ever deportation coordinated by Frontex on the high seas

source

Frontex handover of migrants to Italy results in forced repatriation

Karl Stagno-Navarra

The European Union border agency Frontex operating from Malta has for the first time ever coordinated a mission that led to the forced repatriation operation of migrants at sea.
74 illegal migrants sighted last Thursday afternoon by a Maltese private aircraft at approximately 126 miles south-east of Malta, was transmitted to a German Puma helicopter participating in Operation Nautilus IV that is being coordinated from Malta.
Senior military sources revealed with MaltaToday that the German helicopter was instructed to work closely with the Italian coast-guard in the area, that picked up the migrants Friday morning, and handed them over to a Libyan patrol boat.
The Italian army is participating in another joint patrol along with France, to monitor the Sardignia-Lampedusa route.
The mission has been defined as the first ever forced repatriation operation coordinated by Frontex on the high seas. Even though the migrants were intercepted by an Italian coast guard boat, the same migrants, that included women and children were identified by a Frontex asset that followed the operation through.
Meanwhile Italian police have reportedly been in contact with the Maltese authorities, after 10 migrants who escaped from Safi and Marsa detention and open centres, were apprehended in Sicily.
The migrants were caught on the Ragusa coast shortly after being ferried by a Maltese speedboat.
The news re-opens past issues with the Italian authorities following a series of tragic trips by speedboats driven by Maltese criminals that exploit the migrants and secretly take them to Sicily.

French navy war ship intercepted 200 immigrants in the Aegean in June

source

French Navy Completes 5th Frontex Mission

A French Navy ship, the PSP Arago, has completed what is reported as the Navy’s fifth Frontex mission.  The PSP Arago was based in the Aegean Sea 3-29 June 2009 and operated out of several Greek ports.  It reportedly intercepted over 200 migrants in 7 interdictions; the migrants were turned over to Greek authorities.

French naval ships have participated in Frontex missions since 2008. French naval surveillance airplanes have participated in such missions since 2006.

Click here for article (Le portail des sous-marins).

Click here for the Préfecture maritime de la Méditerranée web site: Intervenir – Participation aux missions Frontex.

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