On October 16, a canoe surprised the La Restinga dock. In the last year, this port of El Hierro has not stopped receiving precarious boats with hundreds of people on board. However, that night, something caught the attention of emergency services. Of the 75 occupants traveling on this Mauritanian barge, 63 were Asian. In addition, among the survivors was a complete family of ten Afghan refugees: a man, his two wives and the seven children of the two marriages. The escalation of violence in the countries of origin, climate change, as well as migration policies and the business of border control have pushed nationals from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Syria or Yemen to the route of the boats and cayucos towards the Canary Islands.
The family left their home in 2021, with the return of the Taliban to power. After two years moving through various parts of the country, they moved to Iran and then traveled to the African continent. From Guinea they went to Mauritania, and in the capital they boarded a canoe on the night of October 9, as reported by the Efe agency. According to UNHCR, Afghans have been fleeing the country since 1979. In this context of unfinished conflicts, this UN agency warns that half of the country’s population is in a situation of extreme hunger, with six million people at risk of famine. Furthermore, the lives of women and girls have lost their value. As UNHCR notes, most girls’ secondary schools remain closed, many girls have been forced into marriage and many women have lost their jobs.
Although after the return to power of the fundamentalist group, Spain has organized evacuation flights for people whose lives were in danger, thousands of Afghans have remained trapped in the country. For this reason, the Spanish Commission for Refugee Assistance (CEAR) demands the opening of regular and safe routes to Europe, humanitarian visas and agile family reunification processes.
According to Frontex data consulted by this newspaper, between January and September 2024, 109 Pakistanis, 13 Syrians, eight nationals from Yemen and 45 from Bangladesh arrived in the Canary Islands. The number of Afghans rescued on the West African route is not included in the analyzed record. “Without a doubt it is the result of new trends in migratory movements such as intensification, diversification, globalization and feminization,” explains Barbara Rostecka, doctor in Sociology and professor at the University of La Laguna (ULL).
In the case of Afghanistan, the reduction of protection opportunities in Iran and Pakistan influences the redirection of travel towards the European Union. These two countries have received 2.7 and 1.6 million Afghans respectively in the last thirty years. “They let them stay if they demonstrated their right to stay,” recalls the technical secretary of the Cultural Chair Globalization, Migrations and New Citizenships attached to the ULL. Now, forced returns have increased. “When people feel that they can no longer stay in the region, they look for other options,” adds the expert.
For its part, Yemen has been immersed in a civil war for nine years. Amnesty International defines the situation in the country as “one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world” with 4.56 million displaced people and more than 70,000 refugees and asylum seekers, according to UNHCR. Paradoxically, this year Spain imposed a transit visa on Yemenis, a requirement that, as CEAR denounces, prevents them from formalizing their asylum request at Spanish airports in a legal and safe manner. The entity considers in a statement that this measure is a contradiction, since the Yemeni is one of the nationalities with the highest degree of recognition of international protection in Spain.
The broken dreams of 12 Pakistanis in Barranco Seco
At the Foreigners Internment Center (CIE) in Barranco Seco, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, there remain twelve Pakistanis who arrived in the same canoe as the Afghan family. Chaplain Víctor Domínguez visits the center once a week, and maintains that the widespread feelings among Pakistanis are fear of deportation and frustration. “Fear because later they will experience dangerous situations. Furthermore, they feel their dreams are broken, since they are people who have risked their lives at sea,” he laments.
All Pakistani migrants who are in the CIE have requested asylum, but if their requests are not resolved favorably, they will likely be deported to Mauritania, a country more than 7,000 kilometers from Pakistan. The bilateral agreement between Mauritania and Spain establishes that the African state will readmit a national of a third state as long as they prove that they have transited through its territory.
Domínguez points out that this group of Pakistanis, who are mostly very young boys, tried their luck in Europe due to the poverty they suffered in their country. They moved away from the classic route and opted for one that was much further away but, according to them, safer. “We have told them that this route is more complicated. They tell us no, that the Mediterranean is more dangerous, where their lives are more in danger,” he clarifies.
Historically, Pakistanis have chosen the Mediterranean and Balkan routes to reach the European Union. In 2023, 80% of them reached the European continent through Italy, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). This route involves traveling by plane first to the United Arab Emirates and then to Egypt or Libya. From the latter country, people cross the central Mediterranean to reach Italy. A trip that can cost up to $5,000.
Libya, one of the main transit countries for Asian migrants in recent years, has been accused by some non-governmental organizations and by several journalistic investigations of torture and violation of human rights towards the migrant population. People trying to cross the Mediterranean in precarious boats are intercepted on the high seas by Libyan rescue forces in operations funded by the EU. Once they return to Libya, detention centers await them in which all types of violations are committed: “Refugees and migrants in Libya, both detained and not detained, are systematically subjected to a string of abuses by the militias, armed groups and security forces,” says Amnesty International. The same organization detailed that in 2023 almost 4,000 foreigners remained arbitrarily detained in detention centers in the country.
The effect of climate change
An IOM report on Pakistanis in Europe states that the majority come from two regions: Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, an area to the west of the country bordering Afghanistan in permanent conflict. At the same time, Pakistan is a country subject to the consequences of climate change. “Recent extreme weather events exemplify the extreme climate vulnerability facing Pakistan,” said Amnesty International. Heavy snowfalls and floods, such as the one that occurred in 2022, which according to the UN left more than 1,700 dead and affected more than 30 million people, put food security at risk, increased poverty and the spread of diseases, such as malaria or typhoid fever.
Bangladesh is also suffering from the effects of climate change. A 2021 CEAR report concludes that it is one of the most prone countries in the world to natural disasters, which have already forced more than 4.4 million people into forced displacement. “It is estimated that millions of Bangladeshis will be internally displaced due to environmental disasters in the coming years, but here, in Europe, the wealthiest will arrive as always,” Rostecka anticipates.
Over the years, Bangladeshis have reached European soil through the Central Mediterranean route to reach European soil. According to UNHCR, at the beginning of this year, Bangladesh was the main country of origin of migrants who landed in Italy via Libya, a country that has already been accused of violating human rights towards migrants.
The business of borders
Strengthening border surveillance determines which routes migrants can use. “The regulatory development, such as visas, fines for transport companies, readmission agreements and the parallel emergence of institutional structures such as Frontex, even some NGOs, created to control the established order, all they achieve is legitimize very varied forms of legal violence against migrants,” emphasizes the doctor in Sociology.
Along these lines, in 2023 an agreement on migration control was signed between Tunisia and the EU with the aim of promoting measures to fight irregular migration and which has involved a disbursement of 900 million euros. This agreement has had a special impact in Italy, where arrivals in one year have been reduced by half: until October of this year, just over 50,000 people had arrived, while in 2023, 105,561 migrants disembarked, according to Frontex data. However, Tunisia has also been in the spotlight as a country that violates human rights.
According to Amnesty International, the Tunisian authorities have abandoned asylum-seeking migrants in desert areas of the country and during rescues on the high seas the Tunisian security forces have put people’s lives in danger. The same organization highlights that this systematic violation is directed especially against black people. In fact, the country’s president, Kais Said, even stated that the country was in danger of losing its Arab culture and becoming “just an African country,” due to the presence of sub-Saharan migrants. His words unleashed a racist wave in the streets against the black population.
Last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged copying Italian President Giorgia Meloni’s plan and establishing refugee centers outside the European Union’s borders. Italy set up migrant identification and repatriation centers in Albania. Among the people sent to this facility were Bangladeshi nationals. However, Italian authorities had to remove some of them to the country after a court in Rome concluded that Bangladesh was not safe. For Rostecka, political decisions “influence the reconfiguration of routes and drive a dark scale of risks and human losses, but they neither control nor can control the survival impulse of entire peoples.”
#Violence #climate #change #business #border #control #push #Asians #Canary #Islands #route
