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Shkruar nga Belen Fernandez
The "Aljazeera" news agency has devoted an article to the pact between Rama and Melon for refugees. According to her, we are dealing with an illegal pact that seriously violates human rights....
Imagine for a moment that you are a racist Western government plagued by an influx of asylum seekers, many of them dark-skinned. Wouldn't you dream of 'packing' them off to a faraway land to be dealt with out of the public eye and mind?
Well, that dream is now becoming a reality for Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of the far-right Fratelli d'Italia party, is overseeing a deal with Albania to open two asylum processing centers. Located in the northern Albanian areas of Shengjin and Gjadri, the centers are expected to hold up to 36,000 people a year. The scheme will cost Italy at least €670 million over the initial five-year period.
Meloni, who came to power on a series of fascist promises, including a pledge to curb immigration, traveled to Albania on June 5 to visit asylum processing centers - which she says will be ready by August. The visit came on the eve of the European Union elections, which Fratelli d'Italia won in spectacular fashion.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has evaluated the Italy-Albania agreement as an "important initiative" that constitutes an "example of thinking outside the box, based on the fair sharing of responsibilities with third countries, in accordance with the obligations under of international law".
Remember that the agreement is actually a violation of international law governing rescue at sea.
It is also not clear why Albania, a country that was itself a short-lived colony of Italy and played no part in the disastrous European colonial enterprise that set the stage for current migration patterns, should be responsible for "sharing" the burden of refugees.
But the practice of asylum processing is not as new and "outside the box" as von der Leyen suggests. Since 2001, for example, Australia has diverted asylum seekers arriving in the Pacific island nation of Nauru as well as Manus Island of Papua New Guinea – an arrangement that proved physically and psychologically devastating and led to many suicides.
Making the picture even more sadistic is the shameful expense of Australia's offshore operations. In 2022, Human Rights Watch reported that detaining a single asylum seeker on Nauru or Manus Island cost about 1.8 million British pounds ($2.3 million) a year.
Meanwhile, Britain is threatening to finally implement in July its long-awaited plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda - which despite its dismal human rights record - has been designated as the only destination for UK-bound refugees. .
Despite the offshore precedents, the Italy-Albania agreement is unique in one aspect: The processing centers in Shengjin and Gjadër will be under Italian and not Albanian jurisdiction.
It sounds colonial.
In a January report on the deal, Amnesty International noted that Italy has been an "outsider for border control", having cooperated for the past two decades with Libya - another former Italian colony - in impeding the movement of asylum seekers.
Over the years, Italian contributions to the partnership have included facilitating Libya's interception at sea of thousands upon thousands of refugees, who were then returned to Libyan detention centers to face a range of risks, ranging from enforced disappearances to to torture and murder.
Tunisia has also received Italian aid to crack down on immigration, a deal that has fueled human rights abuses but has failed solidly to deter Europe-bound asylum seekers.
And while Meloni has touted Albania's scheme as a "tremendous deterrent against illegal immigrants trying to reach Italy and Europe," it will no doubt just be a costly forum for politically motivated human rights abuses. .
As Amnesty International pointed out, Shengjin is located more than 500 nautical miles (926 km) from the central area of the Mediterranean Sea, where most refugees are rescued, meaning it would take two or three days to transport the survivors.
These are people who are "frequently traumatized" for a variety of reasons, from experiencing torture in captivity to suffocating loved ones. The report stated: "In such situations, requiring them unnecessarily to spend days on board lifeboats, where the crews cannot fully meet their needs, constitutes a breach of international standards for search and rescue and may in itself constitute ill-treatment".
On Albanian land - or is it Italian land again? – these same people will be swallowed endlessly by a neo-colonial detention apparatus, safely out of sight and out of mind.
According to Meloni, the Italy-Albania agreement is a "model" that can be "repeated in many countries" and can even "become part of the structural solution" of the EU.
But if this is "thinking outside the box," it's time to get back inside. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Aljazeera"
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