By
March,
Greece will have built a 12km long anti-immigrant fence along its
border with Turkey. But perhaps throwing up a proper wall would have
woken the EU to its woeful immigration policy, spectulates a Berliner
Zeitung columnist.
It’s
a shame Greece isn’t going to put up that big wall after all. A
206-km fence along its entire land border to Turkey would have been
better. Better for the Greeks, whose small, overindebted and
disorganised country is utterly unable to cope with all the refugees
pouring in. Perhaps even better for the refugees themselves, who are
generally in for an extremely inhumane reception in Greece. Possibly
better even for us other Europeans, because it would have forced us
to face up to our own smug mendacity.
But
Athens, apparently intimidated by condemnations from every side, has
decided to back down. Now they plan to construct a relatively short
fence only 12.5 km long and three metres high. It is to run along the
Evros river, which is easy to swim and across which most of the
illegal immigrants to Greece came in 2010. It doesn’t take a
crystal ball to predict that the refugee smugglers will soon find
ways around this short stretch of fence.
Stuffing
refugees in overflowing camps
Which
means things will continue as before: with searchlights, blue lights,
loudspeaker announcements and even warning shots, Greek border guards
will continue trying to keep unwanted guests out of the country. Even
if it means, as the
human rights organisation Pro Asyl reports, panic-stricken
refugees running straight into the minefields that were laid back in
the days of Greco-Turkish enmity. To lend them a hand, other EU
countries have dispatched 175 border police equipped with guard dogs,
nightscopes and helicopters. Frontex,
the EU External Borders Agency, has just prolonged their mission
there to March.
But
for all that, 200-odd refugees sneak across the border every day,
estimates the Greek government. In fact 80% of all illegal immigrants
to the EU enter via Greece, mainly Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans, but
also people from Africa and the Far East who pay smugglers thousands
of euros to bring them into Europe. Most of them have no intention of
remaining in Greece, but are looking for a way into the richer
countries of Northern and Western Europe. But EU law is unequivocal:
under the Dublin
II Regulation, the country a refugee first arrives in is
responsible for handling his asylum application.
So
the Greeks keep stuffing more and more refugees in the already
overflowing camps, which are sometimes so cramped that people don’t
even have enough room to lie down to sleep. Nor are there enough
toilets to go round: Greek police have actually had to take refugees
into the fields to relieve themselves there. Medical care, legal
counselling, interpreters – none of that is available in the Greek
camps. A "humanitarian crisis situation that should not occur in
the EU”, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2010, out
of 30,000 asylum seekers, the Greek authorities recognised only 11 as
being in need of asylum.
German
public have made things easy for themselves
The
conditions are so appalling that courts in England, Norway and the
Netherlands have stopped sending refugees back to Athens. Even the
German Constitutional Court has called a halt to the deportations. In
so doing, the judges display more decency and discernment than the
politicians: the German, French and British interior ministers have
jointly sabotaged every attempt to reform the Dublin Regulation. The
EU Commission couldn’t even get asylum seekers to be temporarily
taken in elsewhere when a member state is faced with a massive surge
of refugees. The reason is that the existing rules are extremely
advantageous to the rich EU countries in the middle of Europe. The
numbers of asylum seekers in Germany have now dwindled to less than
one-tenth of the figures in the early 1990s.
So
the German public have made things easy for themselves in matters of
asylum. Immigrants who make it all the way here in spite of the
formidable obstacles are treated more or less decently. But we don’t
even want to know how the ones fare who get stuck long before
reaching our borders. We close our eyes so as not to see what happens
to the refugees who are prevented by Libya, at Italy’s behest, from
crossing the Mediterranean.
The
Greek wall might have rattled our complacency. We wouldn’t have
been able to overlook the eyesore of a long high border fence running
right across ancient Thrace. Fortress Europe? It’s already here –
and has been for some time.
Translated
from the German by Eric Rosencrantz
