The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella has assured the families of the victims of the Crotone shipwreck that he will take care of the situation and that the Afghans “They are asylum seekers and their situation takes precedence”. Words that follow those of the Interior Minister by a few days Matteo Piantedosi, who blamed the “irresponsible parents” who took their children away. So much so that he turns to those ready to go: “Stay there – he explained – we’re coming to get you“. Many migrants came here in the February 26 tragedyAfghanistan, the country that, along with Syria, swelled the Eastern Mediterranean route of migrants. And the minister sparked much controversy when he wanted to make it clear that he would not leave “desperate”: “I was brought up to ask myself what I can give my country”. But what would become of the minister if he really were an Afghan refugee? What awaits the millions of displaced people from the country? But above all how they have reacted so far Europe and Italy to Afghan applicants? If you really want to identify, there is even a risk that Piantedosi himself from the “we’ll come and get you” will help hinder them.
In August 2021 i Taliban They returned to power after the US and Western allies decided to withdraw their forces and leave the country. A presence that lasted twenty years, long enough to persuade millions of Afghans to change. It disappeared within a few weeks. Those responsible say what remains World Food Program (Pam) of the UN: “hell of Earth“. That’s how they define Afghanistan, where 23 million of people are starving and there is not enough money coming from the west to save children from malnutrition. “Over the past two winters, the majority of people in many areas have had to choose between staying warm and eating,” the United Nations reports. In addition, those who have worked in institutions or collaborated with Western forces are being persecuted, tortured and risking their lives. Women and girls were stripped of their rights Education was deniedwhile activists, journalists and NGO workers are victims of violence, rape and stoning, while early marriages are on the rise.
Of the 28 million Afghans in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2.7 million fled abroad after August 2021 and the majority are women and children. Those who manage to escape mostly end up inside Pakistan or in Iran, where 85% of Afghan refugees are currently staying. Pakistan, which has enough problems as it is, is now one of the top countries in the world for “welcome” refugees. Safe and healthy? Corruption and intolerance are commonplace. Many Afghans tell of living in hiding, covering themselves in an abaya and leaving only their eyes uncovered to blend in with local women, the Guardian reported. No socializing or education for them because cases of detention and rejection of Afghans, including children. So if you can, take to the streets again. But let’s get one thing straight: How can Afghan refugees not just hop on a plane? “And yet they have the money to pay the human traffickers and to risk their lives at sea,” a part of public opinion has always accused. “The truth is that to this day there is no one view which makes it possible to look for asylum seekers in the target country and in any case many refugees do not have a valid passport or identity card. The only way to exercise safely and regularly is to humanitarian programsbut precisely because of the limited places, most of them are forced to undertake irregular and dangerous journeys,” UNHCR told the Social Editor.
In 2021, the European Union and its states pledged to commit to the evacuation of local personnel and vulnerable Afghans. But after August of that year, when Italy evacuated 5,000 people from its collaborators, attitudes changed. “Most Member States with some exceptions stopped the evacuation of their own personnel on site and endangered Afghans,” report the European organizations alongside the Afghan diaspora. The hope is the humanitarian corridors, flights departing from Iran and Pakistan thanks to humanitarian organizations. But the EU has not yet granted this 36,000 contingentsand even these have not been achieved to the extent that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Philip Grandi, had to appeal to the member states to at least comply with this obligation. Italy initialed its protocol in November 2021 1200 shares recording in two years. 800 concern humanitarian corridors activated thanks to organizations such as arc, charity And Community of Sant’Egidio, who have so far covered the costs including reception. And only 400 are i resettlements UNHCR grants, with individuals being admitted directly to ordinary government-funded admissions. Four hundred people in two years. “We wrote to Piantedosi to ask for more quotas because thousands of people write to us at risk,” ARCI explains to ilfattoquotidiano.it. But the minister of “I’ll come and get you” has not yet responded.
The Arci in charge of immigration Philip Miraglia He has no doubts: “There is no will to let people arrive legally and safely.” This is shown by the humanitarian visas that Italy could issue in the face of particular risk situations. And they get stuck in ours instead Dishes, where some lawyers challenge the denials and find themselves against the Home Office, which refuses to hear about humanitarian visas. Currently, among those denied visas are families in Turkey, the world’s first country for refugees and partners of the Union in the bilateral declaration of March 18, 2016, with the EU investing more than nine billion in Ankara to prevent migrants from continuing to Europe. Thousands of Afghans are coming to Turkey, but today a country destabilized by the economic crisis and the February 6 earthquake awaits them. Anyone who looks at Europe is watching Greece. Getting started is getting more and more complicated. Reports from organizations like Human Rights Watch The violence of the Greek police is not expected. “Beating, stripped naked, mocked, robbed” are common words. In order to reject them, Athens even uses other migrants whom it promises to issue documents to. There are those who were put on a boat, taken to Turkish waters and, for lack of a motor, “let go”. Others said they were fair thrown into the water about a hundred meters from the coast. One of them died.
The Greek government was never softened by the Afghan crisis, which helped justify it Wall 5 meters high, 35 kilometers long and ready to double in size within a year. Then there are the new ships, the increase in patrols and the July election for a centre-right executive branch seeking a second term. But entering Greece is not everything. We must avoid the notorious refugee camps on the islands Greeks, where overcrowding is the lesser of two evils. A European-funded state of limbo in which people wait years for their asylum application to be answered. Despite the living conditions, the cases of relocations to other European countries amount to several thousand. The alternative to an increasingly impenetrable Greece is this Bulgaria, and then on to Serbia. In February 18 Afghans died in an abandoned truck near the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. They came from Turkey en route to Western Europe, hidden under wooden planks and packaged “like in a tin can,” witnesses said. All died of suffocation. Do you want to endanger sea routes? If it wasn’t a question of money, it would be a real dilemma. The so-called Balkan routes they have indeed become the martyrdom of many. From Hungary by Orban In the forests of Bosnia, walls and violence have altered the paths and made them increasingly inaccessible. Difficulties that turn into millions of euros for traffickers. Everything has a price, even advice on which way to go. Because you have to escape from the police, paramilitaries, dogs and drones. “Afghans are among the asylum seekers most affected by violence and from being rejected at the EU borders,” says a recent report by the inter-European network Protection of rights at the borderswhich has collected thousands of rejection cases at EU borders: more than half concern Afghan applicants.
Italy, that of Minister Piantedosi, is making its contribution. With the “informal resumes” chain in 2020, Italy rejects 1,294 people, including many Afghans. Back to the Slovenian police, who handed them over to the Croatians, who finally abandoned them in the forests of Bosnia, often after they had been beaten or burned, even having their shoes removed and robbed of all their belongings. People have been rejected dozens of times. Families who have lost hope and live on their sanity between Serbia and Bosnia. Informal readmissions are illegal, based on a bilateral agreement with Slovenia that our Parliament has never ratified. This will prevent the agreement from changing current Italian and European asylum rules. The courts have them sentenced managed to disrupt practices that have subjected migrants to “inhuman and degrading treatment”. The Minister of We come and get you should at least be reminded of his intention, We reject you. 2020 when he signed the circular on readmissions to Slovenia. And recently in the role of Minister when he “legitimacy‘ with the announcement that he wanted to restore it.
But not only those arriving by land are turned away. Italy was also condemned for the informal readmissions carried out in the US Ports of Ancona, bari And Venice. Afghans who have attempted to board ferries from Greece and Albania know the risk of not setting foot ashore is high. Practice is back in fashion, times are ticking. The people entrusted to the commanders, who “detain” them on the ships and bring them back, carry out illegal pushbacks because without administrative regulation against which you can appeal in accordance with the statutory provisions. On the other hand, those who embark in Turkey and, like the shipwrecked people of Crotone, have days of voyages to Puglia and Calabria ahead of them, must reckon with the difficulties mentioned above, especially if they travel with women and children. The fact that an Afghan refugee manages to arrive in Italy almost seems like a miracle. If we don’t do enough in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, we’ll do everything from Turkey to Europe’s borders to stop it getting there. That says it European charity: “Member States have focused their efforts more on countering the arrival of Afghans than on implementing effective protection policies for those of them seeking asylum, as needs have increased dramatically.”
Luckily someone does. But the problems certainly don’t end with the arrival in Europe. “Many European governments have the examination of Afghan asylum applications suspended already in August 2021, in the midst of a humanitarian emergency,” recalled the European Council for Refugees and People in Exile. And yet the number of pending asylum applications continues to rise, according to Eurostat data. Not only that, loudEuropean Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) Protection rates for Afghan asylum seekers have been declining, with figures varying significantly from one Member State to another. Why? You are not welcome, plain and simple. Minus the minister’s recent joke, but also President Mattarella’s commitment, there are no legal and safe ways enter Europe, including Italy. The fundamental right to asylum and the fact that you are fleeing a tragedy count for nothing. In fact, the EU invests hundreds of millions every year to prevent the Afghans from reaching us. And in the unfortunate event that they make it, we will try to send them back, possibly in an “informal” way and without leaving any trace.