Every year, hundred of thousands of refugees and migrants are willing to risk their lives in Mediterranean or Sahara, or risk freezing to death in snowy Alps to reach France (read our post in French: Situation des migrants en France : les actions de La Cimade et les mots de Raphaël Pitti) in the hope of a better, safer future. But once they reach Europe, many of them live in extremely deplorable conditions.
Last year we published a series of posts about the dire situation of migrants and how France and Belgium failed to protect some of them, allowing officials from Khartoum to identify dissidents before their deportation. You can read the articles (in French) here:
La France et la Belgique permettent-elles au Soudan de repartier d’Europe des opposants ?
La collaboration de Paris et Bruxelles avec le Soudan pour identifier les dissidents
The Guardian published an article by Daniel Boffey, the Guardian’s Brussels bureau chief, saying the Belgium’s coalition government is at risk of collapse over a scandal involving the forced repatriation of 100 people to war-torn Sudan. We retweeted this post:
Do #France & #Belgium allow #ICC indicted #alBashir to handpick political opponents for repatriation from #Europe? It was denounced in a recent post on @lemondefr and now Belgian government is at risk of collapse over #Sudan #migrants scandal. via @MaxDana https://t.co/C6079xFcwR
— MagkaSama Project (@MagkaSama) January 8, 2018
Here is what Boffey writes:
The consequences of decisions taken by Theo Francken, a member of the N-VA and the minister for asylum and migration, are being examined following claims that some Sudanese migrants came to harm after he allowed three of the country’s officials to inspect their cases before they returned. Fears have been raised that Sudan’s government, led by Omar al-Bashir, was in effect allowed to handpick political opponents for repatriation from Europe. Bashir, who came to power in 1989 after a military coup, is wanted in The Hague over allegations of crimes against humanity.
Another article published by The New Times gives more information about what is at stake. Milan Schreuer writes:
Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture, and the court that enforces the treaty says that prohibition also extends to the extradition of people to a foreign state if they are likely to be subjected to torture, according to Carl Devos, a political scientist at the University of Ghent. “If the investigation indeed shows that there is systematic torture upon return,” he said, “then not only Belgium but other European countries, too, and in extension the European Union itself, could be found guilty of violating Article 3.”
Michael Birnbaum, Brussels bureau chief covering Europe for The Washington Post, goes straight to the point in his article:
The accusations of torture emerged late last month, when Belgium’s Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper published interviews with two of the expelled Sudanese men who said they had been beaten after returning to Sudan. “They picked me up immediately after landing in Sudan, interrogated me for hours and struck my feet with sticks. They only released me two days later,” said one of the men according to the Belgian news account, which used a pseudonym for the man because he feared for his security. “I was so scared that I lay in bed at home for three days.” Another man said he was picked up by police and beaten for three hours during an interrogation, in which the officials accused him of being a political enemy.
Birnbaum describes what happened and the consequences for Sudanese migrants as they have been clearly threatened:
Lawyers for some of the migrants said the Sudanese officials threatened the detainees they talked to, warning that if they applied for asylum in Belgium, they would be targeted for abuse in Sudan if they returned home. That alleged threat could have served to discourage asylum requests, since half of Sudanese asylum seekers are rejected in Belgium.
The perilous journey to reach Europe seems to never end. Once migrants and refugees, dissidents and opponents survived the travel, they face (illegal) deportation and may risk their lives again, back in the country they fled…
