AYS Daily Digest 5/11/20: Report on Criminalisation of Solidarity in the Western Balkans
By: Are You Syrious
Tags: Migration, Digest, Solidarity, Europe, Refugees

Across the Balkans, the No Name Kitchen continues their project Health on the Move, and you can follow the project’s outcomes and needs here.

ITALY

Revealing the flaws hidden behind the pandemic

The report “The system at a crossroads” by ActionAid and openPolis reveals the destruction of the widespread reception system in the CAS from North to South and the failure of the management of the coronavirus pandemic in the protection of health. The cases of Sicily and Friuli-Venezia Giulia can be examined here.

Italian justice dismisses the submission to trial against the captain and the Open Arms mission chief

The court of Ragusa has rejected the request to send the Spaniards Ana Isabel Montes Mier and Marc Reig Creus, former head of mission and captain of the rescue ship of Proactiva Open Arms dedicated to carrying out the tasks rescue in the Mediterranean Sea. It refers to the situation from 2018 when Proactiva team intervened in the rescue of 218 people in distress at sea who, after the urgent evacuation of a woman and a newborn, disembarked in the port of Pozzallo (Sicily). See more here.

Racists against humanity

A well-known racist and xenophobic group organised a protest at the Trieste’s piazza della Libertà. For over a year it ahs been the place where the volunteers of the Linea d’ombra association, together with the SiCura street doctors, have been helping people and treating the wounds of those who arrive in the city via the Balkan route. And they do it in the forecourt of the station which has now been renamed “Piazza del mondo”. The entire story is available here.

FRANCE

810 evictions in Calais have been documented this year so far, that’s five evictions every 48 hours, it is reported.

To Paris: “We who sleep under your bridges”

People on the move installed in a camp north of Paris warn about the unspeakable conditions in which they live. In the currently uunstable social atmosphere of the country, they are once again asking for the basic, demanding papers, housing and the right to work legally:

We are more than 1,500 living under the bridges in Saint-Denis in unspeakable conditions. On October 17, many of us joined the national march of undocumented migrants to ask for papers and housing for all. Today we are writing to alert people to our situation. We are addressing this text to the French authorities, so that they stop violating our rights, so that they finally treat us as human beings. We are also addressing it to the French population and more particularly the Ile-de-France region: we need your support, to fight together, to make ourselves heard.

Macron called for a “deep overhaul” of the Schengen zone

Following the recent developments in France, the French president has announced that he wants to intensify very strongly their border controls to “fight the illegal immigration.” Macron announced France would be doubling the number of guards at its national borders from 2,400 to 4,800 “due to the escalating terror threat.”

SPAIN

4 young lives lost

Four young people died by drowning in a sewage canal when they tried to enter Melilla, according to the MAP agency. The deceased had entered the canal from the port of Beni Ensar, which borders the south of Melilla, the Spanish media have reported. It seems that the Civil Protection of the port of Nador located one of them still alive and transferred him to the Hassani Hospital in Nador, where he died shortly after, while the three bodies appeared in the canal, and were taken to the Nador morgue. According to these reports, the “attempts at irregular entry into Melilla are much rarer this year, as the migratory routes have shifted to the Atlantic Ocean, and specifically the coasts closest to the Canary Islands , from where most of the boats and cayucos now leave.”

Reactivation of deportations to Mauritania from the Canary Islands

After eight months on hold, the next flight is expected to leave next week, Spanish media reported. According to their sources, the first deportation flight will take place next week, predictably on the 10th. There are currently 23 people in the Barranco Seco (Gran Canaria) detention center, most of them Senegalese, while that of Hoya Fría, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, remains empty.

PORTUGAL

Children of all immigrants residing in Portugal for over a year to receive nationality at birth

Portuguese president enacted a new nationality law that allows the children of all immigrants who have lived in Portugal for at least one year to have Portuguese nationality at birth, even if their parents are staying in the country illegally, or if one of the parents is legally residing in Portuguese territory, in which case it is applicable regardless of the time they have been there. Also, they have amended the rule that any foreigner married or living in de facto union with a Portuguese national can apply for Portuguese nationality — without reference to the existence of children.

GERMANY

Deportations continue

In spite of the announced measures that included a plan that deportation will be stopped during the COVID pandemic, it is reported that a group of 10 men were deported on a flight from Germany to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Tuesday, October 27. Deportation flights are also expected to resume to Afghanistan from mid-November.

WORTH READING

On the shortcomings, challenges and innovations (and their consequences for refugees/asylum seekers) in refugee status determination processes worldwide:

“The man who watched a bottle of water” :