On the basis of visits, interviews with former detainees and a small-scale survey we have compiled a report on the conditions in the Chop detention centre in western Ukraine, Zakarpattya. The report reveals severe problems in the way the centre is run and the conditions detainees are facing.
Update: The detention centre was renovated in the end of 2009. The report draw on the situation before. We are working on actualisation.
“The European Commission had already allocated EUR 30 million under its ENPI 2007 National Programme for Ukraine improving infrastructure and procedures related to the accommodation and treatment of irregular migrants (“Readmission-related assistance”). Under this project, it is planned to create five additional Migrant Custody Centres in Ukraine. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has already pre-selected some sites which need now to be evaluated for their suitability for being refurbished into custody centres.” (Dirk Schuebel 2008, ICMPD GDISC ERIT Newsletter No. 1)
In the moment, it is planned to built up one of these additional detention centres in Dercen. Members of the BMP visited the village in March 2010.
Press Statement by the Ukrainian Refugee Council:
Letter from the Odessa Association of African Refugees (OAAR) in Ukrainian to the Regional UNHCR office Kiev and representatives of humanitarian organizations, ambassadors and representatives of international and national mass Medias. For all people, who respect the principles of human right and Democracy.
Dörthe Hagenguth, a photojournalist contacted the BMP in 2009 to come into contact with refugees in Transcarpatia.
Here you can see her really impressive Audioslide-Show (English):
After Tampere and The Hague, the Stockholm program will constitute the next 5-year-framework for Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) within the EU and its member states. The new program claims to build up the ‘area of freedom, justice and security’, but in fact it will continue to implement an even tighter regime of surveillance and control and will promote a securitisation of social life, undermining all civil rights and privacy despite contrary claims. On monday the 30th of november and tuesday the 1st of december a number of actions and other events was held in Brussels to protest against this new 5 year programme of death and detention.
The bordermonitoring project participated in these protests and published a press release:
Continue reading ‘Protest and events against the adoption of the Stockholm program in Brussels’
The fact that in 2005 the Frontex Headquarters opened in Warsaw, may certainly be considered as a writing on the wall. In the EU “illegal immigration” from and via the east was and still is considered as the main challenge to be met by Migration Control.
The eastern route and the IOM
In the early nineties at the latest the Ukraine caught the eye of the so-called risk analysts, not merely as an emigration country but also as an essential passage for the “eastern human trafficking route”. The country was not an EU-candidate and therefore – contrary to its western neighbouring states Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Rumania – also not under the obligation to adopt the so-called Schengen Standards. Against this background the IOM (1) at first played the executive part in “outposting” the EU Migration Regime to the most important transit migration country in the east. As early as 1998 an IOM team of experts met with high-ranking Ukrainian government officials in Kiev to start up a “Migration Management Program“. At several levels it was directed against transit migration: the registration and documentation of refugees and immigrants, the set-up of a first deportation camp in Pawschino (2), training courses for the Ukrainian border guards at the US-Mexican border and equipment of a pilot project in Kharkiv (at the Russian border) with radio and infrared technology. “In the course of their work the IOM specialists were confronted with a – for them surprising – problem: they found that more than 70% of the transit migrants entered the Ukraine legally. The government was therefore offered help in introducing new laws and visa regulations. Thus immigration into the Ukraine was first criminalized under the direction of the IOM, in order to be subsequently fought against with means made available by the IOM” (3).
Continue reading ‘Go East! “European Neighbourhood Policy” and Frontex in the Ukraine’
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