Human rights violations at the border
Frontex is, directly and indirectly, complicit in serious human rights abuses, as numerous reports in recent years show. The agency and its director Fabrice Leggeri do not care much for the lives and rights of people on the run.
In recent years, it has been repeatedly recorded how human rights are violated at the EU’s external borders, under the eyes of Frontex. This often involves so-called “pushbacks”, i.e. the illegal rejection of refugees at the border without allowing them to apply for asylum. This not only violates the fundamental right to apply for asylum but often also the non-refoulement principle. This principle prohibits the deportation of people to places where they are threatened with torture or other human rights violations. The necessary clarifications are simply ignored in the case of pushbacks.
Violations in different areas
During pushbacks, Frontex repeatedly behaved passively or even took part in them. At the Serbian-Hungarian border, for example, thousands of people were deported without due trial. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) condemned Hungary for its handling of people on the run. At this time, Frontex was operating in this region and left the Hungarian regime of violence uncommented. The EU border agency only withdrew from Hungary in January 2021, after the ECJ ruling. It did not intervene on behalf of the refugees or against Hungary’s illegal deportations.
A similar situation presents itself in Greece, where Greek border guards regularly abandon refugees on the Aegean Sea. They destroy their boats and let them drift on the sea without an engine or in floating life rafts. The plan is obvious: they are to return to Turkey, without trial, collectively pushed back. It is now known that in 2020, in at least six of these pushbacks, Frontex vessels were on the scene.
According to other reports, Frontex officials were also directly involved in other actions. In 2016, for example, only a few days after their dangerous crossing by boat from Turkey to Greece, a Syrian family was transferred back to Turkey – notably without asylum procedures – escorted by Frontex officers. This case is also pending before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Nothing left for fundamental rights
The evidence of these and similar incidents led the EU Parliament to launch an investigation. The inquiry report states that Frontex was aware of fundamental rights violations in several cases, in areas where Frontex also participated in border control. However, the agency had neither prevented these incidents nor attempted to prevent future fundamental rights violations. The report also noted that Frontex has not adequately responded to either external or internal reports of human rights violations – the reporting system of so-called Serious Incident Reports, which is a tool for reporting human rights violations, does not work at all.
In addition to the violation of obligations under international law, there are countless physical and psychological uses of force by border officials against migrants, which are very often accompanied by pushbacks. People on the run are attacked with firearms, batons, attack dogs, sound cannons, and water cannons. They are robbed, tortured, abandoned, and killed. However, anyone who thinks this ought to prompt a decisive intervention by a European border management agency in the interest of “European values” remains disappointed.
When Fabrice Leggeri, the Executive Director of Frontex, visited the border between Belarus and Poland in October, he was positively impressed by the means used to “secure the border.” He praised the cooperation between Frontex and Poland since the beginning of the “crisis.” Meanwhile, he did not say a word about the thousands of people who were blocked at this very border under inhumane conditions. A few weeks later, Frontex announced its intention to participate in the deportation of 1700 Iraqi refugees from this very border region.
A look at the past months shows that Frontex, under appropriate public pressure, has distanced itself from all too obviously violent actions of certain national border authorities. However, as the executive body of the European policy of closure, Frontex contributes directly and indirectly to deterring and turning back people. The violence that accompanies this is accepted – or delegated, as shown not least by the ongoing collaboration between Frontex and the so-called Libyan “coast guard.”
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