Amnesty warns transit centres may ‘drive asylum underground’
Human rights group Amnesty International has published a report condemning proposed EU ‘transit process centres’ and warning that if they are set up asylum may be driven underground.
Proposals for the centres are to be discussed at this week’s EU summit in Thessaloniki, Greece. However Britain has signalled that it will drop proposals for interning refugees in asylum camps outside the union after opposition from Germany, Sweden and others.
Instead Tony Blair and other leaders at the summit are expected to endorse spending more money on border controls, boosting visa systems and paying third countries to take back citizens living illegally in the union.
They are also expected to debate British proposal for ‘protection zones’ for refugees in conflict regions such as the Horn of Africa, which it is hoped will curb the number of asylum seekers and illegal migrants and stem people-smuggling.
The 40 page report from Amnesty International, entitled ‘Unlawful and Unworkable: extra-territorial processing of asylum claims’ looked at both the legal and political issues surrounding the centres.
Amnesty International UK Refugee Affairs Programme Director Jan Shaw said that the centres would be unlawful as well as impractical and morally flawed.
‘Contrary to their stated aim, the centres could result in more not less illegal migration, driving asylum underground. It could mean that potential asylum-seekers end up in the hands of people smugglers as they desperately attempt to find some means of escaping persecution’.
The group is concerned that such centres would undermine the entire international system of refugee protection. They blame a political obsession with forcing down the number of asylum applications in the UK as a factor behind the proposals.
