The Schengen Wall
WESTERN EUROPE lem with such a broad definition is that it leaves unclarified the question of the type of society that is to be constructed, and the role of different social classes or social strata in the taking of decisions — not to mention the issue of institutional solutions with regard to the colonizing and oppressive states.
The North-South workshop, after making a grand tour of the international horizon, discussed the debt campaign, which was denounced bitterly by Raphael Constant, a West Indian lawyer, as a campaign aimed at salving the conscience of the workers' movement in the capitalist countries.
The same person, with the support of Herri Batasuna and the Catalan Communist Party, put forward the idea of a "bloc" or anti-imperialist front (including the peoples without a state, representatives of popular movements in the dominated countries and the revolutionary currents in the workers' movements of the imperialist countries).
It was too early for a decision to be taken on this. This was both for reasons of organizational weakness, but also, as the HB representative pointed out, for political reasons, given the political divergences of the assembly, between those with a socialist orientation and the others, and between those with an orientation to independence and those seeking a future in an autonomy that would allow the expression of the national culture.
As the representative of the Bloque Gallego remarked, to redefine North-South economic relations means thinking about the character of development, since it would no longer be based on the exploitation of the Third World.
### Genocide of Native
Americans
It was finally decided to launch campaigns for the demilitarization of the Mediterranean (but why only the Mediterranean?) and against the 500th anniversary of the "Discovery", that is to say the great European raid on the "New World" and the ensuing genocide of the Indian peoples. A postcard to be sent to the United Nations has been designed for this.
The assembly ended with two main decisions. One was to open up to the whole of Europe, not just the EC. The other was to adopt a Universal Declaration on the Collective Rights of Peoples, with the ambition of restoring individual rights within a community and defining democratic relations between peoples
Such a solidarity movement opens the way for a wide-ranging democratic strug. 18 ed can hope to give a social content. * gle to which all the oppressed and exploitInternational Viewpoint #189 • July 16, 1990
A BIG STEP FORWARD toward freedom of movement
Internationally, that is the way the Schengen accords have been presented. In tact, they involve an attack on the rights of asylum and of
Immigrants from countries impoverished by Imperialism, as well as the setting up of a centralized system of political surveillance. BEATRICE RAYMAN T he Schengen accords were signed in the town of the same name on June 14, 1985, as part of the plans for the Single European Market of 1993. They will replace checks at inner-EC borders by reinforced checks at the external frontiers of the member states, "in order to prevent clandestine immigration by nationals of states not belonging to the European Community."
The signing of this agreement between Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, West Germany and France was suspended in December 1989 because of reservations on the part of West Germany, which considered that it was unacceptable to exclude East Germany. At the time, the establishment of a " Europe without frontiers" was also called into question by Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Bel-
The Dutch and Belgian deputies condemned the threat to liberties posed by the creation of a centralized system of files on people, as well as the lack of guarantees for asylum seekers. But negotiations resumed in April 1990, and an agreement including East Germany in the Schengen accords, in the framework of the unification of Germany, could be signed before July 1 and go into force around January 1992
All the negotiations among the five states have been conducted in accordance with the principles of secret diplomacy, outside any parliamentary supervision, without consulting organizations that defend the right of asylum or the UN High Commission for Refugees and without any coordination with other states.
Such "clandestinity" is especially unacceptable because, after parliamentary ratification, the rules established by the Schengen group, which have important implications for the right of asylum, will prevail over the laws of the member states, and in one form or another are likely to be extended to the rest of the Community. In fact, Spain, Italy and Greece have already asked to be included in the Schengen group. But their candidacies were rejected on the grounds that their immigration policies were "lax"!
In addition to the "classical reasons" used to "justify" a refusal to admit certain foreigners, the Schengenians have come up with some new reasons for keeping people out. Initially, the accords led to reestablishing a visa requirement for most non-European nationals. A hundred and four countries are affected by this. In West Germany and the Benelux countries, visas were already required for residents of countries from which asylum seekers often come. Under the pretext of the struggle against terrorism, France rushed to include a visa requirement in its laws in September 1986.
Foreigners residing regularly in a member country will not need visas for trips of less than three months duration within the Schengen area. But they will be obliged to register in the countries they visit no later than three days after their arrival.
The scheme will give the police the right to pursue any "wanted" person throughout the common territory. It calls for the setting up of a central computer file on persons sought for extradition, missing persons and persons sought for their own protection or to prevent threats, persons wanted to appear or to testify in court, as well as undesirable foreigners who are not to be allowed to enter or stay
in the area covered by Schengen. In each of the signatory countries, a databank will be set up identical to the central one.
Two secret codicils establish a list of countries whose residents have to be systematically watched from the point of view of "immigration" and "security." Entry into the EC fortress can be denied to anyone considered liable to represent a "threat to the public order, national security or international relations" of one of the signatory countries. In line with this, residence permits for foreigners living in France can be put in question on the grounds that they would be "persona non grata" in another country of the Community. In the present form of the scheme, foreigners denied residence permits would be on police wanted lists as long as the police had no proof that they had actu ally left the territory.
### Carriers considered responsible
In contravention of the Treaty of Rome, which "forbids the expulsion or turning back at frontiers of persons whose lives and liberties are in danger", (Art. 33), in the Schengen Europe asylum seekers will no longer have any guarantee of access to the common territory. They may be turned back even before their dossiers are examined. The carriers will be considered responsible on the arrival on the common territory for foreigners who do not have the required documents, and they will be subject to "penal and/or administrative sanctions."
Lacking competence to assess the validity of applications for asylum, officers of transport firms will be inclined, in order to "limit risks," to accept only those foreigners who have every sort of guarantee, which is rarely the case for people who fear for their security and are fleeing their countries. The penalization of "companies at fault," like other actions provided for by the Schengen accords, is already being applied in some European countries. Lufthansa was recently condemned by a Frankfurt court for having taken foreigners on board who lacked the required documents.
The states granting the visas will be responsible for dealing with applications for asylum. In the case of illegal arrivals, the country responsible will be the first whose borders the applicant crossed When applicants are denied the status of refugee in one country of the group, they "can" still apply to a neighboring country, but that country "can" henceforth "refer to the previous denial" to refuse to examine the application.
In the present witch hunt against "false asylum seekers" in all European countries where there is immigration, this "possibility" for rejecting applications without consideration is apt to become the rule, and close the doors of member countries to applicants once rejected elsewhere.
The contracting states pledge to "consider" applications for asylum, but this obligation does not necessary involve authorization for the applicants to enter or stay in the territory. Every state, moreover, retains its "right to turn back applicants for asylum on the basis of its own rules or international provisions or to transport them to a third state."
With the Schengen protocol, the Single Europe of the bosses has forged a formidable weapon for selecting its clientèle. In bringing the legislation of the various countries into line with the most restrictive, the European bourgeoisies have taken the opportunity assault on a right that had already been under piecemeal attack from some West European states.
The Schengen group's offensive on the right of asylum fits into the logic of the attacks on immigrants raging in most European countries. Applicants for asylum are being equated with "potential illegal immigrants, swindlers, or even terrorists or drug traffickers, while all too often European government leaders support the countries that daily violate human rights and force people to flee.
In France in November 1989, Pierre Joxe, the minister of the interior, did not hesitate to condemn "thousands of foreigners who abuse the right of asylum" and "come to France not because their liberty is threatened but because they are unemployed." He added that the number of applicants for asylum "has grown to unacceptable proportions in the last two years." However, the major inflows of refugees into Europe in recent years have come from countries with which France and other continental EC members have not had any special ties, and which have not traditionally fed migratory movements.
WESTERN EUROPE
In certain north European countries (Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands), the offensive against the right of asylum has taken the form mainly of creating substatuses offering less protection. An applicant for asylum can be admitted there as a Category A refugee under the Geneva convention or as a Category B refugee, which involves residence and work permits; or as a refugee on "humanitarian" grounds, which offers a provisional right of residence linked to the evolution of the political situation in the person's country of origin. But neither Category B nor "humanitarian" asylum, which are the most commonly given, assure real protection for the applicants.
In January 1990, the Swedish government decided to send back 5,200 Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria who had been granted "humanitarian" asylum, on the grounds that they came under the category of an "ethnic minority that felt discriminated against without really being in danger."
However, the attacks against asylum have not been limited to the setting up of sub-statuses. In the Netherlands in 1987, out of 8,556 applicants, 237 were granted Category A status, that is 2.8%; 444, Category B status, that is, 5.8%; and 450, "humanitarian status," that is, 5.5%. The other 86.7% of applications were rejected outright.
Since October 1986, following an offensive by racists, Denmark, which had been one of the less restrictive countries as regards the right of asylum, became one of the most tightly closed states in capitalist Europe. It began to demand visas from applicants and make airlines responsible for the arrival on its territory of people without the right papers.
shame embers of the Seteredum of 19
WESTERN EUROPE Sjöbo voted overwhelmingly (67.5%) against accepting refugees in the territory of the municipality.
In West Germany, the right of asylum is expressly guaranteed in the constitution. But since 1980, the authorities have tightened checks on the border, stepped up dissuasive measures and prolonged procedures in order to limit the number of refugees and select out candidates for asylum.
Since 1980, visas have been been obligatory for citizens from Sri Lanka, EthioBangladesh. In 1981, transit visas were made obligatory for Afghans; and in 1982, for Ethiopians. A law passed on January 14, 1981, made airlines liable to fines if they brought in foreigners without the necessary visas. This was a particularly effective measure, judging from the fact that between 1981 and 1983, the number of applicants for asylum entering through Frankfurt airport dropped from
Legally, the border police can only reject a request for asylum if the refugee in question has resided in a third state for more than a year. However, in recent years many people have been illegally turned back by the West German police. Refugees have been turned away without any official decision, forced either to continue their flight in the same airplane or to return to the country from which they came.
Five year wait for asylum applicants
At Frankfurt airport, if the border police suspect that a plane is carrying refugees, the checks are carried out on board. Since 1980 applicants for asylum no longer have the right to work during the time their applications are being processed (although getting very limited social welfare benefits), and this period can last for
They are often housed in camps and obliged to remain there. What is more, with the massive influx of refugees of "German stock" coming from the East European countries, "non-Germans" have become "undesirables," as attested by a series of measures taken by the Ministry of the Interior to encourage them to return to their countries of origin.
In France, on May 21, the parliament passed a law legalizing the "accelerated" processing of dossiers. To wipe out the backlog, the budget of the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) was increased to 52 million francs in 1989 to 142 million in 1990. Some 120,000 dossiers were supposed to be processed in 1990, as against 31,167 in 1989, with a bonus for officials who handled them quickly. In addition, a 100 million francs were alloted to the budget of the Ministry of the Interior to 20 asmoved from the counted. assure that those rejected were actually International Viewpoint #189 • July 16, 1990
This policy can only lead to summary treatment of applications, designed to systematically deny applications for asylum. "Every day we see hasty rejections of requests for asylum, without any interviews with the applicants, and based on an interpretation of the Geneva Conventions so restrictive that Jews fleeing Nazi Germany would have been excluded from its protection, had it existed at the time," a leader of the Committee to Defend the Right of Asylum said in December 1989.
The Europe that today claims it is threatened by an invasion from the third world, in order to justify adopting more restrictive measures, in fact only took in 5.8% of the world's refugees in 1988.
At the time, desperately poor countries sometimes had to take in nearly 3,000 refugees a day. In 1988, Europe accepted 737,600 refugees. According to the minimal estimates of the UN High Commission for Refugees, there are presently between 18 and 20 million refugees in the world, most of them taken in by the poorest countries.
Poor countries take in most
Somalia, the Sudan and Pakistan have taken 4,137,000 refugees from Ethiopia, Uganda, Zaire, Chad and Afghanistan. Southeast Asia has taken 160,000. Central America has taken 346,000 refugees, mostly coming from neighboring coun tries and further south. Does the arrival of 3,000 Tamils in the Netherlands justify the visions of an invasion that we are being bombarded with? Refugees represent a very small burden for the countries of Europe. Among the countries that are today members of the Schengen group, in proportion to the native population, refugees represent 0.31% for France, 0.37% for Belgium and 0.21% for West Germa-
The increase in the number of applications for asylum in the European countries (104,000 in 1984; 183,000 in 1987) has not been accompanied by a greater number of refugees being accepted but by a decrease. The European governments are granting refugee status with an eyedropper and forcing all those rejected into illegality and insecurity.
Some applicants who have not been recognized as refugees because of an overly restrictive interpretation of the Geneva Convention, but cannot be sent back to their countries of origin, where, it is admitted, they would be in danger because of the political situation, find themselves in a nightmare world.
1992
OPEN THE FRONTIERS
They are not sent back, but are forced to live illegally, without residence permits, without jobs, without resources, with no protection against the unbridled exploitation of modern slavers, and in fear of any police identity check, which could lead to their expulsion from the country, since they are in an irregular situation.
In 1987, in West Germany, refugee status was granted to only 9.4% of the 87,539 applications dealt with. In 70% of the cases, the requests were rejected. In France, according to OFPRA, the percentage of rejections has risen from 30% in 1983 to 72% in 1989. The rate of rejection, moreover, varies enormously in accordance with the geographical origins of applicants. In France, for example, in 1988, 89.5% of requests from citizens of Southeast Asian countries were accepted but only 10.5% of those from Africans. States conspire to strengthen barriers
Since 1975, the TREVI group (Terrorism, Radicalism, Extremism, International Violence), bringing together the interior and justice ministers of the EC countries, has been meeting as discreetly as Schengen group, to coordinate collaboration between police and serves with the aim of, among things, harmonizing visa systems and criteria for the granting of asylum.
Through the Schengen accords, the discreet labors of the TREVI group, and the adoption of more and more restrictive laws, a Europe of discrimination and exclusion is being prepared for us.
If we want a Europe where refugees will have the same living conditions and the same social and political rights as the native populations, a Europe of freedom of movement and equal rights, of solidarity and unity between European and immigrant workers, we will have to get ready to fight for it, against the plans for 1992 already set in motion. *