While the world is shocked about the wall that Donald Trump says he wants to build to keep people from Mexico out of the US borders, that he is forbidding people from specific countries to enter the USA; and while everybody points to these right-wing extremists and these racists that are guilty, all the governments in the European Union are involved in following the same mechanism that Trump follows.
Dublin IV
Last year, thousands of people died on their way to Europe, just in front of the borders of the European Union. This year, the European Commission has proposed the fourth reform of the Dublin agreement which regulates the “distribution of refugees” over the EU. The reform is going to be an aggravation of a situation which is already inhuman.
What is this fourth reform about? According to the Dublin IV proposal, which is planned to be voted in the first half of 2017, deportations to “safe countries of origin” will be easier, also for minors. Travelling further than the first country a person officially entered will be punished harder, for example with imprisoning, but also through cancellation medical care and education of minors, and with holding people from a complete asylum procedure. Also, the borders are sealed off with more violence, outside and within the EU.
The Buffer Zone around Europe
At the same time, more money is given to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, where since 6 October 2016 the staff is duplicated. This agency controls the borders of the EU, and selects the people to go in.
Moreover, a buffer zone in North Africa is built up, through official and unofficial deals from EU states with governments in the North of Africa, giving them money to stop people travelling through their countries towards Europe. This includes border protection like patrol systems and detention facilities in- and outside the EU. For example, in Libya a 168 km long and 2 m high construction is being build. However, the easiest way for the EU to stop refugees and migrants in Africa is to imprison them, which happens with the The Geneva Global Detention Project. That Project currently counts 33 detention facilities for migrants in Libya, 16 in Morocco, five in Senegal, two in Tunisia and one in Mauritania.
Walls and Control inside the EU
But also within the EU borders are built, from Macedonia over Serbia to Hungary where there are high technical constructions made to prevent people from going there: The Hungarian police are advertising for 3,000 “border-hunters”, who will reinforce up to 10,000 policemen, policewomen and soldiers patrolling a razor-wire fence built to keep migrants out.
Besides stopping people before the borders, those that still made it to Europe are likely to be deported in the next coming years. Like German politician Horst Seehofer said: “2017 must be inmarked by repatriation.” („Das Jahr 2017 muss im Zeichen der Rückführungen stehen.“). And that means people are not only deported to the country they come from, but also to other so-called “safe third countries”, if the EU cannot legitimate deporting people from Afghanistan or Somalia. Then people are being expanded to countries like Turkey, Kosovo and Morocco; the countries that are officially considered “safe”. However, it is ignored that the situation in these countries is far below human rights, especially for people without papers. In Morocco, some of the deported people are just thrown out at the streets, others are being brought to Oujda, a place near Algeria where they are put into a pit which was built for people entering from Algeria. In Mali, for instance, a detention facility is being built to fill up with people who did not got asylum in the EU.
Money instead of Life
With all this, it is going to be almost impossible to enter the EU if you have a specific nationality, or actually if you are from almost all the other countries outside the EU and North America, no matter what the condition in your home country is like. In this way, the Global North can go on with their exploitation of people and nature all over the world, in order to make profit for a small group of people in this system. Because this is the logic of the capitalist system we are living in: we live to make money, instead of economy helping all the people to live. With Dublin IV and all the current regulations of the EU and her states, the people who are living in the periphery of this economic and political power system are directly and indirectly (via withdrawal of raw materials) exploited by this system; they will not “disturb” the centres – the EU and North America – any longer…
So it is not only the right-wing extremists building walls, being racists, exploiting people. It is also the liberal parties, the social-democratic parties planning to trade with people; and the left-wing parties are not excluded in these processes.
If we demonstrate against Trump, what about our own governments in the EU?
