Refugee crisis in Europe: Walls, 1.000 kilometers of wire, violence, torture, looting of people

The refugee crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus shows that an entire era has passed since Angela Merkel decided to open the borders in 2015.

Today, even the President of the European Council advocates walls on borders.

Refugee policy was discussed for the last time in the European Union (EU) at the autumn summit in October.

And again, the heads of state and government parted ways without an agreement. A new one has been added to the old point of contention – how to fairly distribute refugees arriving in southern countries such as Greece and Italy: should we build walls and fences?

That would be the completion of the construction of the fortress of Europe, which is claimed to live some other values. But it seems that the political zeitgeist has been moving in the direction of isolation for a long time.

Wires have long been in fashion

In October, twelve countries made a proposal to build border walls and wires with European money, among them all the countries of the Visegrad Group and the Baltic countries, followed by Bulgaria, Austria, Denmark, Greece and Cyprus. Slovenia also expressed its support, but without signing.

As the new Austrian chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said, the past months have shown that the "migration pressure" is not easing.

According to the Frontex border agency, 135.000 refugees have set foot on EU soil this year, which is twice as many as last year, marked by the pandemic and border closures. But that figure is far from the peak of the wave in 2015, when over a million people entered the EU.

The head of the European Commission (EC), Ursula von der Leyen, therefore recently opposed the proposal: "In the European Commission and the European Parliament, there has long been an attitude that we should not finance wire fences and walls."

But now, during a trip to Warsaw where he promised Poland EU solidarity because of the events on the border with Belarus, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, said the opposite without hesitation.

"There is a debate on whether physical barriers should be financed by the EU," he began, "there should be a demonstration of the EU's ability to demonstrate solidarity with members who are on the front line and protect their national borders, which are also the external borders of the EU."

It is unclear whether Michel's trip was agreed with the more influential EU members, but at least he can count on the sure support of the 12 signatories of the October letter. At the national level, the construction of walls is in full swing anyway. Hungary started with this when in 2015 it installed a double-wire fence on the border with Serbia and thus redirected the flow of the Balkan route towards Croatia.

Greece, Bulgaria and Slovenia followed. There are now around 1.000 kilometers of border wires across the EU.

Violent suppression of newcomers

In the Mediterranean Sea, so-called pushbacks have been taking place for years - the violent return of immigrants across borders, prohibited by international conventions.

There, EU ships push refugee boats back into Libyan waters, where they are bought by the Libyan coast guard.

Italy officially cooperates with Libya, training its border guards and providing equipment, although there are constant reports of people being tortured and robbed in Libyan refugee camps.

There are reports of pushbacks in Greece, Croatia and Bulgaria.

In one case, the Serbian Constitutional Court confirmed a pushback from Serbia, which Deutsche Welle (DW) exclusively wrote about.

It is a rare case in Europe that a Constitutional Court rules against its own state in this matter.

"The current practices of certain countries are worrisome. Walls and wire, violent pushbacks, during which migrants are beaten, stripped and thrown into rivers or sent to their deaths in the sea," UN Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi recently enumerated before members of the European Parliament. "There is also an attempt to avoid obligations by paying some other countries to take responsibility."

The non-governmental organization "Border Violence Monitoring Network" calculates that Greece alone displaced around six thousand refugees on land and sea from the beginning of last year to the summer of this year.

The Danish Refugee Committee counts over 18.000 such cases in Croatia since the beginning of the pandemic, and the UNHCR lists around 15.000 cases in Libya during that period.

"Cold Eye of the Heart"

During the debate in the European Parliament, Dutch conservative MP Jeroen Leners defended the closure of Europe.

"You see that many who want to go to Europe now are not refugees and that those who do not need international protection are abusing the asylum procedure at the expense of people who are really in trouble," Lehners said.

"You see criminal gangs that have turned migration into a multibillion-dollar business, and dictators who are using migration for a hybrid war against the EU."

The first part of the statement is probably an allusion to statistics that at one time showed a huge influx of immigrants from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, who almost never get asylum in the EU.

But the data show that last year the main countries of origin were convincingly Syria and Afghanistan, followed by Venezuela and Colombia, whose citizens mostly come to Spain.

Then there are refugees from Iran, Pakistan and Turkey.

But recent years have shown that the mood has changed in countries like Denmark, which has long been considered a liberal haven within the EU.

Despite protests from international organizations, the government in Copenhagen wants to repatriate Syrian refugees, arguing that parts of the country, such as the capital Damascus, are now safe.

The liberal Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Feld recalls what was signed seven decades ago in the Geneva Convention on Refugees, while millions of Europeans were on the run themselves.

"Today, fortunately, we are the safest, richest and freest continent in the world. We have forgotten the year 1951 and, instead of helping refugees, we are turning Europe into a walled community," she said.

"I feel cold when I hear the president of the European Council say that the EU can certainly pay for the construction of walls on the borders," added Feld.

We will have to wait a bit for the position of the next German government on this topic, but otherwise, it is difficult to find any government throughout the EU that has the will to deal with refugees.

During the summit in October, Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bartel was one of the few who spoke differently.

"Various European countries are not treating these people properly," he said, "orderly migration must remain possible. We have to find the right balance."