PRO ASYL Presseerklärung | Press Release

15 July 2004

Cap Anamur: Schily tries to turn rescuers into perpetrators

PRO ASYL: „Not the ship crew but the European asylum
and migration policies belong in the dock“

“The way the Minister of the Interior Otto Schily tries to put the crewmembers of the Cap Anamur on the same level with smugglers is unbearable. In the dock belong not the rescuers of the shipwrecked, but much more so a false European asylum and migration policy“ states Karl Kopp of Pro Asyl.

Otto Schily has in the last years significantly participated in shaping this European policy of walling-off and defence. As of now, the European Ministers of the Interior know only one answer to the thousands dying on the exterior borders of Europe: more efficient barring of the continent.

The fortress builders Schily and Pisanu remain silent on crucial questions:

• Is there a “area of freedom, security and justice”, if already the shelter seekers’ attempt of reaching this place is life threatening?
• Of what is a securitised European asylum law worth when access to the territory remains blocked?
• Will democratic states and their citizens be able to live on with cemeteries developing and growing larger day by day around them in the Adria, the Ägais and the street of Gibraltar?

Schily and his European colleagues keep negating their responsibility for the scandalous fact that the dying continues on the exterior borders and that a booming commercial branch of smugglers can offer their service “Passage to Europe” with increasing cynicism and human contempt.

The debate around the Cap Anamur has put these questions on the European agenda.

Criminalization and defamation of humanitarian aid.

With the attempt of criminalizing human aid, Schily and Pisanu try to set an example. In the future, ship crews shall look the other way and move on, immigrant support groups shall be intimidated. Future shelter seekers are taught the message: If you make it to our shores, camp and custody await you.

Italy as well as Germany passed draconian laws against “smugglers” that undergo international agreements. In opposition, the EU directive of the Council from November 28th 2002 on “ defining the facilitation of unauthorised entry, movement and residence“ explicitly provides the possibility of exempting humanitarian aid from punishment.

No one responsible – no shelter on high sea

Schily says there is no asylum branch office in international waters.

To whom should the 37 shipwrecked have filed their request for refuge?

They posed their asylum request to a German captain on a German ship – in international waters that is. The captain is subject to German laws and has dutifully passed their request on to the competent German authorities. A captain is no asylum authority but has to fulfil above all a humanitarian duty: to bring shipwrecked people to a safe harbour. Just that harbour was denied to the Cap Anamur and the 37 shipwrecked.

Germany and Italy could have ended this drama already on the first of July 2004 in an unspectacular and humane manner. Schily and Pisanu blocked, remained silent and after a few days relegated the responsibility to Malta. The island state is famous and infamous for imprisoning asylum seekers right away. Malta responded directly: We are not responsible either. There is a EU Regulation (Dublin I and Dublin II) on the question of which state shall be responsible for an asylum procedure. Yet it shows that in case of doubt such as this one, this responsibility rule leads to unified irresponsibility.

What can be done?

The dismantling of the barriers and the building of a danger-free passage for refugees to Europe is a major supposition, because even a liberal asylum law will otherwise remain inefficacious. An effective access to the territory and to a fair asylum procedure is indispensable, if member states shall meet their international obligations as set by the Geneva Refugee Convention. Instead of further shifting the responsibility for the reception of refugees, it is the European states’ duty to relieve the countries of origin. A generous refugee resettlement program should be promptly installed on EU-level, as it is suggested by the European Commission. Yet these additional access and protection forms must not be implemented on the back of the individual asylum laws in Europe. “The dismantling of the fortress walls, the building of an European asylum law, that deserves its name, and the opening of possibilities for legal immigration is the only practicable way to put an end to the thousands dying at Europe’s borders,” concludes Kopp.