Was in brussels for a 3 days earlier this week (some pictures here). As i have pointed out before Brussels is one of the my favorite cities in europe. Not only because i really like the roughness of the place, but also because seemingly endless imagination of the eurocrats that are based there!

On the train back to amsterdam Joeri pointed me to the foreword to the Communication from the European Commission to the spring European Council which was written by José Manuel Barroso. In this essay (titled ‘Keeping up the pace of change‘) Baroso suggest introducing a 5th fundamental freedom¹:

We have to build on this momentum and agree on a focusssed list of ambitious actions. Here are a few examples of what we need to do together:

[…] give europe a new “fifth freedom”, the free movement of knowledge to allow europe to Capitalize on its creative potential […]

Brilliant idea! (although it feels a bit as if Barrso is getting his ideas from what we have been saying for a while: see for example here or here) Now we just have to hope that they do not fuck up the free movement of knowledge in the same way they fucked up the free movement of people (by making it a freedom that can only be enjoyed on the inside of Europe).

Since about a year i have been coming across reports of sub-saharan migrants getting shot by Egyptian border police when attempting to enter Israel from egypt. So far i have refrained from listing them as part of the noborder.org dead count because Israel is not really Europe (although they participate in the UEFA cup and the Eurovision song contest). Since the beginning of 2008 these incidents seem to have increased in frequency as noted by Amnesty International (UK):

On 19 February Egyptian security forces shot dead a Sudanese man trying to cross into Israel bringing the total to five. Security officials said 50-year-old Ermeniry Khasheef was shot in the back after he ignored orders to stop as he attempted to cross barbed wire near the border town of Rafah, in the north of the Sinai Peninsula.

Three days earlier, an Eritrean woman, Mervat Mer Hatover was shot dead after she ignored orders to stop as she was attempting to jump over the barbed wire in the El Kuntilla border region, in south-eastern Sinai Peninsula. […]

An Amnesty International spokesperson said: ‘We’re concerned that the Egyptian border police are disregarding their duty in opening fire on people who may have in no way presented an immediate threat to life. ‘The international standards are clear: if lives are in immediate danger, then lethal force is permissible. If not, it is not. ‘Desperate migrants should not be at the mercy of border guards who disregard basic international standards over using their weapons.’

On 30 January two migrants from Ivory Cost were shot and killed trying to cross the border south of Rafah. According to the Egyptian security forces, a 22-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman bled to death before an ambulance could reach them. […] On 19 January, another man from Ivory Cost bled to death after he was shot in the thigh at the border with Israel.

Of course these are not the only cases where lethal force is being used against migrants trying to enter relatively wealthy countries and it is sickening to see how the border guards of Egypt, Morocco and Turkey are doing the dirty work of the governments of the EU or Israel who could never justify their own border guards opening fire on migrants trying to enter their territories. As the amnesty spokesperson said: ‘if lives are in immediate danger, then lethal force is permissible. If not, it is not.’ Africans crossing a fence hardly can be seen as posing a danger to anyone except themselves.

And while we are talking about dangerous behavior involving Israeli borders, i was quite stunned to read a couple of days ago that there seem to be people engaging in drug smuggling across the Lebanese – Israeli border. This particular border, between to countries that are technically at war with each other and which is probably one of the most surveilled and unstable places on the entire planet does not really strike me as the best place to run a drug smuggling outfit (unless of course if the inhabitants of northern Israel decided that getting stoned is the best way to ignore the whacky predictions of Hassan Nasrallah and pay a premium for their red lebanese).

Conni points to a photo set by the french photographer Anaïs Pachabezian showing the daily lives of sub-saharan migrants in Morocco and Mauritania. The pictures were taken in October 2007 in and near Oujda (Morocco) and on the Mauritanian coast:

A couple of years ago when we were busy with a number of campaigns against airlines who allowed forced deportations from europe on their flights i did a spoof website targeting the KLM (‘KLM – uw uitzettingsagent‘) that was part of a campaign with the same name of the now defunct autonoom centrum in Amsterdam.

It is kind of ironic to see that now more than 5 year later the KLM (in an email offer to the german members of their flying blue frequent flyer programme) advertises itself as a ‘fluchthelfer’ (german for ‘people smuggler’), which is exactly the opposite of what we accused them to be back then:

Of course it equally ironic that by now we are on most of the frequent flyer programs of the airlines we campaigned against. But then we already had a certain fascination for frequent flyer programs back in those days (which is beautifully expressed in gif animation on the page of the lufthansa deportation class active miles programme).

Update [12-02-08]: Predictably the Dutch version of the email offer fails to carry over the irony of the German version (did i ever mention that Dutch is quite an incomplete language?). I received the same email offer today and where the german says ‘fluchthilfen‘, the dutch version just says ‘break-away’ (em did i mention that dutch is basically a bad rip-off of german with a bit of english thrown in at random places?).

This saturday my friend Valery (together with Eric & Merijn) are hosting a mini conference called ‘Migrant Media Metropole – New labour struggles in the global city‘ at the Balie in Amsterdam.

Migration and media-activists gather with theorists and labour organizers to discuss and share best practices in the fight against precarity and insecure labour conditions. Sharing inspiring examples of social justice unionism and creative campaigning like “Justice for Janitors” in the U.S. and “Cleaners For a Better Future” in the Netherlands. The aim is to challenge traditional labour practices, syndicate and inspire a sharper network of social activists, academics, media makers and artists to join contemporary urban labour struggles and confederate into a globalization from below.

This mini conference, which brings together lots of people i have been working with over the past few years, should be extremely interesting for anyone being even remotely interested in issues of migration and labour. Originally it was planned as part of the escalation strategy of the Cleaners For a Better Future campaign here in the Netherlands.

As part of this campaign cleaners, organized by the FNV trade union, in collaboration with activists from social movements in the Netherlands fought for a minimum hourly wage of €10 and a number of other social befits. The campaign made heavy use of direct actions (which is relatively new and uncommon for unions in the Netherlands) and ultimately succeeded in realizing all the demands of the cleaners:

We won 10 euros an hour for everyone starting on January 1st 2009. Workers above 8 years seniority will get the 10 euros in April of this year while everyone else will go from $8.50 to $9.70 an hour in April as well. We got an extra paid holiday, additional travel pay increase, Dutch and vocational training on company time for every worker, initial language to protect staffing levels upon contract change and full access. The contract will cost employers and clients 135 million euros. This is a national agreement covering 150,000 cleaners.

As far as i can tell this is mighty impressive (although V. who expected this struggle to go on for much longer describes this sudden victory as a ‘premature ejaculation’). It seems as if there are very few places in the world with a minimum hourly salary of 10 euros for cleaners (ironically one of them seems to be the kingdom of Belgium, where the minimum hourly salary for cleaners is €10.73 – but then cleaners are called ‘surface technicans‘ in Belgium).

Not sure if all of them are used to get persons across the US/mexican border, but ABC news has a little item (‘Fake FedEx trucks, when Drugs absolutely have to get there‘) on what they call ‘cloned vehicles’:

Savvy criminals are using some of the country’s most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Termed “cloned” vehicles, the report also warns that terrorists could use the same fake trucks to gain access to secure areas with hidden weapons.

The report says criminals have been able to easily obtain the necessary vinyl logo markings and signs for $6,000 or less. Authorities say “cosmetically cloned commercial vehicles are not illegal.”

A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz. An alert agent recognized that the “H” in the van’s serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a “P.”

Unfortunately the photos provided with the article are of inferior quality so i wont display them here. Check out the fake fedex truck and the fake border patrol truck on the ABCnews website.

The International Herald Tribune has an excellent article by Caroline Brothers on the spread of detention camps for foreigners that have mushroomed across the European Union (and the neighboring African and Eastern European countries). The article draws from the impressive work done my migreurop (and even links to their excellent map of migrants dentetion camps in Europe).

“Detention is a very serious measure in a democratic society – governments deprive people of their liberty when they are convicted of a serious crime,” said Katrine Camilleri, a refugee lawyer in Malta with the Jesuit Refugee Service, which on Dec. 18 published a report on conditions in detention centers in the 10 newest EU states.

“These people have committed no crime, and though human rights law allows for detention in very specific cases, even then you can’t detain people forever. Even 18 months is a very long time; it destroys them,” said Camilleri, who has just been honored by the UN refugee agency for her work in the face of arson attacks on her car and home.

The smallest centers hold a few dozen people; the biggest, more than 1,000. A network of them has quietly taken form with little scrutiny and few established norms, sometimes reusing old sites, like Rivesaltes in the south of France, which was one of the biggest French internment camps for Jews during World War II.

Go read the entire article here. [thanks to Isabelle for alerting me to this].

So 2007 is coming to an end and it is time to draw up the balance. when it comes to migrants who have died trying to reach Europe, 2007 has been an exceptional bad year even though the powers that be seem to think otherwise. Back in august the IHT quoted spanish and italian officials that proudly proclaimed that the number of arrivals at their shores had been down from the numbers for the same period in 2007:

The deadly flow of flimsy boats crammed with migrants heading north across the Mediterranean has slowed substantially this summer. After years of surging arrivals, Italy and Spain, the initial destinations for thousands fleeing Africa for safety or jobs in Europe, are reporting drops of a third or more compared with last year.

Government officials in both countries trumpet success from more sea-borne patrols and better cooperation with African nations across the Mediterranean to reduce journeys that have seen often-unwanted migrants wash up in Europe and claimed thousands of lives in the past decade, experts estimate.

But even as Spain is reporting a sizable decrease in drownings, success is far from complete. With more obstacles in place, migrants appear to be taking greater risks. Fortress Europe, a migrant advocacy group, reports that the number of deaths among those seeking to reach Italy has remained stable, despite the drop this year in overall arrivals, suggesting that those who try face a more perilous journey.

Looking at my own figures i can only second this impression given by Gabriele del Grande. 2007 has been worse both in terms of incidents (55 in 2006 compared to 90 in 2007) and the number of victims of the European border regime (653 persons have died trying to reach europe in 2006. 2007 has already cost 730 lives). Of course these numbers do not represent the real tragedies that are taking place as they are derived from those incidents that are reported in the international press and as they only count those who are confirmed to have died (the numbers would quadruple if they would include all those reported to be missing).

While i have seen no year-ed figures for the number of arrivals it seems safe to say that spending money on stupid joint operations and videos aimed at scaring people away does not exactly work as intended. Neither does it keep people from coming to Europe nor does it keep them from dying while trying.

Update 26-12-2007: There is an excellent article (in German) about the same topic and specifically about the questionable role of frontex available on telepolis. Deadly incidents in the western mediterranean/atlantic in 2007Deadly incidents in the Eastern mediterranean in 2007

Yesterday a number of eastern european countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia & Slovenia) implemented the schengen agreement, by removing border control posts on the internal Schengen border crossings. Of course this does not mean that there will be no more border controls between these countries as there will be ‘random’ border police checks up to 30km away from the actual border.

As we have argued before the Schengen agreement is not so much about abolishing border(control)s but intended to modernize the system of selective admission to the national economies of western (and now central) Europe. From the perspective of nation states the ability to control the border-crossing public is traded-in for having a centralized database containing background information about suspected individuals (and stolen property) from all the member states.

For some reason this deal seems to make sense to most people (those inside the Schengen zone that is, as the external borders of the Schengen zone are much harder to cross for people trying to gain access) and so there have been various celebrations over the last couple of days. The only people who are not celebrating are those idiots from the GVU (the German equivalent of the RIAA/MPAA):

In an interview GVU’s director, Ronald Schäfer, warned that they were expecting more pirated CDs/DVDs in Germany now that the border with the Czech Republic would open (he comes short of suggesting that we should re-erect the iron curtain in order to keep those evil warez out of Germany). What a moron! He should shut the fuck up and go x-mas shopping! He probably also believes that region coding was a good idea and that piracy funds terrorism.

Just finished reading a fairly intresting reserach paper by Hein de Haas of the International Migration Institute in Oxford that deals with the ‘The myth of invasion – Irregular migration from West Africa to the Maghreb and the European Union‘. In the paper de Haas attempts to show that immigration to Europe by western African migrants crossing the Mediteranian or Atlantic is fairly small both when compared to migration of western africans to North African Countries and compared to other ways of gaining access to the EU (mostly by overstaying visa).

While this is probably a fairly realistic conclusion when it comes to the relative numbers, his estimations concerening the absolute numbers (25.000 successful crossings per year) are fairly unconvincing: there is almost no reliable empirical data on undocumented border crossings available and that does not get much better by ‘triangulating’ a bunch of unreliable data sources. Still the paper makes a fine antidote to ramblings about hordes of african would-be terrorist immigrants who are waiting in Africa planning organized assaults on our coasts.

For those to lazy to read the 83 page paper, here are two extracts from the conclusion:

This study showed that apocalyptic representations of a massive exodus of desperate Africans who are pushed out of the continent by poverty, war and drought are fundamentally flawed. The popular perception that irregular migration from Africa is growing at an alarming rate is deceptive. Since the introduction of visa requirements for North African countries by Italy and Spain in the early 1990s, illegal crossings of the Mediterranean Sea have been a persistent phenomenon. Rather than an increase per se, the major change has been that, after 2000, sub-Saharan Africans started to join and have now overtaken North Africans as the largest category of irregular boat migrants. Although almost all West African countries are represented in these flows, most migrants tend to come from a relatively small number of countries, in particular Senegal, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria. It is a myth that all West African migrants crossing the Sahara to North Africa are ‘in transit’ to Europe. There are probably still more sub-Saharan Africans living in North Africa than in Europe. Libya in particular is an important destination country in its own right, in particular for Chadians, Nigeriens and Sudanese. Other North African countries house smaller but growing West and Central African communities. […]

The common portrayal of irregular African migrants as “desperate” and impoverished victims of “unscrupulous” traffickers and “merciless” criminal-run smuggling networks is inconsistent with empirical evidence that the vast majority of migrants move on their own initiative. Migration is generally a conscious choice and often a family investment rather than a desperate move. Migrants are generally not among the poorest and least educated of their origin communities. Smugglers are usually not part of international organised crime, but tend to be locally based and operate alone or in relatively small, flexible networks. Migrants travel in stages and typically pay smugglers for one difficult leg of the journey.

Bonus: the cover of page of the study shows a photo of a fragment from a painting hanging in a restaurant in Dakar showing a number of wooden Cayucos which are commonly used for the voyage to the Canary Islands. One of the boats is named ‘Barsaa ou barsaqq’, which according to de Haas means ‘Barcelona or hell’ (according to this earlier story in the Guardian it translates to ‘Barcelona or afterlife’, but given that Egypt’s top religious advisor has just issued a fatwathat muslims who die attempting to reach Europe can not be considered to be martyrs, hell might indeed be a more precise location (at least when it comes to muslims)).

See also this video for more Barsaa/Barsaqq statements (and somebody needs to tell de Haas that the boats are called Cayucos and not Pirogues).