Europe embraces our border policy

Labor has vowed to soften asylum measures that are a proven success.

Members of the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms rescue Cameroonian migrant Josepha, 40, during an operation off the coast of Libya. Picture: AFP

Throughout Europe’s tumultuous four-year migration explosion, Australia has been a political ­beacon. At the most recent flashpoint — the English Channel — Australia’s firmness in controlling borders, turning back boats, processing offshore and ensuring no one who arrives illegally by sea is granted residency, was lauded. Theresa May’s Conservative Party is revisiting Australia’s success and working out how elements can be transferred to its own Brexit angst-riddled nation.

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid is reading the same Down Under script: stop the boats to prevent deaths; introduce the military, boost the border force and aerial surveillance; work with neighbouring countries to disrupt the people-smugglers.

Politically, Australia’s offshore detention centres might be a step too far for British sensibilities ­although Denmark has just found an island 3km offshore to house its unwanted migrants.

Australian policies often have been cited as European parliaments lurch to the Right and toughen their stance towards the influx of migrants, especially so during the past 18 months. From Austria to Germany to Denmark to France, public attitudes to the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, mainly from North Africa, have distinctly hardened.

The policy shift reflected the suspicion among Europeans that economic migrants were exploiting an asylum system designed for genuine refugees from Syria and Iraq, and then benefiting from ­European indecision and bureaucracy to avoid being ­returned to their home countries.

The sterner stance has brought the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean down to 2216 as of last December, from a peak of 5096 two years ago. A total of 110,947 people risked their lives at sea to reach Europe last year, down from 1,015,078 in 2016.

Australia — with a generous ­official migration program and a dismissive approach to queue-jumping asylum-seekers — is viewed by centrists and right-wing parties as offering some solutions for ­Europe, even though the continent’s borders and geographical nuances are very different.

Last month’s Labor move to soften Operation Sovereign Borders has yet to fully register in ­Europe. But as the policy shift in Europe saves lives and reduces economic migration, eyebrows may be raised as Australians ponder whether to ease back on a plan that has done the same for years.

Bill Shorten’s policy is to offer five times more places in Australia for community-sponsored refugees. Labor has also endorsed doctor-ordered medical evacuations from Manus Island and Nauru, raising questions about the future of offshore processing.

While Chancellor ­Angela Merkel once invited Syrians — and large numbers of North Africans — to Germany with her ­famous line, “We can do this”, the political will to accommodate waves of migrants into Europe has sunk rapidly in line with the rise of populism and the difficulties of ­assimilation.

The EU now investigates offshore processing in Africa; trains Libyan coastguards to stop the boats; and does expensive deals with non-EU countries such as Turkey to halt migration in the first place. Does this sound ­familiar?

Right-wing Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has hailed Australia’s methods.

“You know that in Australia there is the principle of ‘no way’ — none of those who are rescued at sea sets foot on Australian soil,” Salvini said in August.

“This will have to be achieved (in Italy). My goal is not redistribution (of refugees) in Europe, but in the countries of departure … Bangladesh, Eritrea, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Pakistan, Mali.”

After the Italian election last year, Italy began to close its ports to any boats with migrants on board and accelerated the return of failed refugees, insisting that Libya is a safe country to which they can return.

Salvini claims he has reduced the number of migrants to Italy by a whopping 81 per cent and his Australian-like policies have seen support for his party, the Northern League, double to 34 per cent since the election.

The number of migrants landing in Italy has plummeted from 120,000 in 2017 to about 23,000 just 12 months later.

TAUS Inquirer graphics migrants sea

Most recently, Salvini turned his attention to charity rescue ships, which he has long accused of running a taxi service from Libya to Italy.

At the end of last year the ­Medecins Sans Frontieres boat Aquarius was stuck in dock in Marseilles after Italian prosecutors in Catania accused the charity of dumping toxic and infectious waste from the ship as regular ­rubbish. It was also deregistered by Panama.

A few weeks ago MSF announced it was pulling out of the Mediterranean altogether after assisting nearly 30,000 people in the waters between Libya, Italy and Malta since early 2016.

“This is the result of a sustained campaign, spearheaded by the Italian government and backed by other European states, to delegitimise, slander and obstruct aid ­organisations providing assistance to vulnerable people,’’ MSF said in a statement.

However, several other charity boats, such as the Sea-Watch 3 and the German organisation Sea-Eye, continue to operate near Libyan waters.

Sea-Watch spokeswoman Giorgia Linardi says the aggressive attitude dates back began more than 18 months. “This has started in the beginning of 2017 and it has been increasing, increasing, increasing,” she said.

When the charity boats are on the seas the crews witness things that governments prefer not to see, says another rescue group, the Barcelona-based Open Arms.

These include violent tactics by the Libyans to turn boats back, stopping rescue attempts, and leaving migrants to drown after slashing their rubber dinghies.

Rescued migrants claim that multiple ships now ignore their stranded rafts, not wanting to be tied up for days following a rescue as crews struggle to find an open port to dock.

For the past fortnight Sea-Watch 3 has been trying to find a European port to dock its recent pick-up of 39 migrants just 28 nautical miles off Libya. The Sea-Eye ship is also looking for a place to land the load of migrants it has brought closer to European shores. Salvini has firmly rejected offers from left-leaning Italian mayors to let the ships in.

Meanwhile the medical team of the Sea-Watch 3 sent a message earlier in the week highlighting the ongoing dangers on board as the political arguments continued.

“(Each migrant’s) fragile mental state is further threatened by a group dynamic of many unbalanced people in close proximity to each other,’’ it said, adding that prolonged uncertainty was putting a lot of them under tension, and the migrants were losing trust, thus “endangering the security of the entire ship’’.

Yet it has been the case for many months that policies for ­migrants to land in Europe have tightened, especially at well-known landing spots from Greece to Spain.

The shift has put many charity workers on the wrong side of the law when attempting to rescue ­migrants and there are already ­accusations that Sea-Watch 3’s latest mission in refusing to return the migrants to Libya has bordered on a smuggling operation.

A few years ago Sara Mardini was in the Mediterranean Sea pushing a deflated rubber boat for several hours so her family and fellow Syrian asylum-seekers could reach the EU’s periphery, the Greek island of Lesbos.

Mardini’s younger sister Yusra, who also jumped into the water to assist, would go on to be part of the refugee team at the Rio Olympics, while Sara decided to interrupt her studies in Germany — where the family ended up — to help other refugees.

She joined the Greek-based charity group Emergency ­Response Centre International, which not only received thousands of distraught refugees on Lesbos, but helped the new arrivals negotiate the Greek registration system.

Today, Mardini is on bail waiting to see if she is to be formally charged with people-smuggling after spending 106 days in an Athens prison, Korydallos, before being released just before Christmas. Mardini believes the action against charity groups is deliberate, and intended to make the migrants land elsewhere.

“There is still fear inside of me, so I imagine that everyone else on the island now is scared,” she says. Mardini and three fellow charity workers — Irishman Sean Binder and Greek nationals Panos Moraitis and Nassos Karakitsos — have been accused of intercepting Greek and European coastguard communications to provide intelligence to refugee boats and meet them far offshore.

The prosecutor also alleges they helped the illegal entry of ­migrants for profit, claims that the four have firmly denied.

In Spain, the migrant monitor Helena Maleno Garzon, who often passes on information about distressed boats of refugees seeking to reach Spain from Morocco via the Strait of Gibraltar, is ­another high-profile charity worker charged with criminal offences.

She faces a court date in Tangiers this month for assisting people-smugglers and the trafficking of migrants. Earlier she was quoted as saying: “We cannot open the door to the idea that people who call to save people from drowning at sea should be imprisoned. The crime would be to not make that phone call.”

In Andalusia — a popular Spanish landing point on the ­migratory route from North Africa — the far-right party Vox won a shocking 12 seats in last month’s ­regional elections, and the right-wing People’s Party increased its seats by 12.

For the first time in 36 years, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party has emerged without an overall majority in the region.

In England, too, the sudden shift in political tone has caught some by surprise. A group of 15 London activists who chained themselves to a Titan Airlines 767 at Stansted airport in March last year to prevent the forced deportations of failed asylum-seekers from Nigeria, were shocked to be found guilty not of the notional charge of trespass, but of terrorism offences.

They will be sentenced next month. One of the 15, Ben Smoke, says: “The fact that we were found guilty of this has huge ramifications on the ability of people to ­engage in what is a very long ­tradition of direct action in this country. It is part of the contract of our democracy.”