Powerless Refugees – a far too Powerful Network?
The Construction of
“Smuggling of Human Beings” Before and After
9.11.2001
(2005)
April
2005, the French-Spanish border: More than 200 Indian and
Pakistani nationals without papers were arrested on the most important
escape
route of the 20th century. They came from Germany and Italy and their
goal: the
legalisation that is presently possible in Spain. Subsequent to their
deportation from France, they admitted that they did not understand any
European language and were being released back into illegality.
No
interpreter was made available before the custodial judge. Muhammed,
31 years old: “It is a disgrace – since ten years in Europe and still
no
papers!”1 Imprisonment of up to 15 years served to helpers of
clandestine
border crossings, by law enforcement agencies in industrial countries,
is as
yet a relatively new offence.2 At the time of the block confrontation,
refugee
helpers were regarded as appropriate facilitators through whom the
freedom of
movement and human rights, under universal goals, could be expanded.
However,
the governments of industrial nations then proceeded to explain this
practice
as an embodiment of global criminality, as it had begun to threaten the
particular assets of these countries. Since the beginning of the 1990s,
these
countries have been coming together to defi ne an outer border and to
equip the
same such that it serves as a barrier against the unwanted migration
movement.
Thereby, they have also created an increasing need for assistance in
clandestine border crossings. In the face of such a need, a commercial
and
humanitarian service evolved, the magnitude of which remains as much in
the
dark as the extent of this clandestine immigration itself. It is this
“grey”
service sector that the law enforcement authorities, the political
class and
the media allocate the war cry: “trade of facilitating human
smuggling”. This
scandalous image of the enemy is brought very lightly to the forefront
of
public reality. The basic social realities of migration disappear
completely
behind this image. They have been mentioned here briefly, precisely to
bring
into perspective what is meant by the assistance tended to refugees or
to the
trade of facilitating human smuggling.
Today,
the people who cross borders without the necessary papers and
seek help for the same are from traditional transmigration countries
close to
the EU periphery. Besides, since the late 1980s, immigrants from
industrial
regions of the so-called third world, as well as refugees from poor and
war
beaten areas make it to Western Europe. If they do not belong to the
highly
qualified group being courted, then their legal entry is blocked.
Despite the
installation of elaborate surveillance equipment on the outer borders
and the
immigration constraints becoming bigger, it does not appear to scare
migrants
and asylum seekers away from their intentions. They take huge risks: As
boat
people in the Mediterranean they have to be prepared to drown. On the
illegal
land route, they can expect violent assault. In the border areas, where
they
are unfamiliar, they may end up being too deeply and personally
dependent on
the commercial refugee helpers. And later, even if they manage to
legalise
their stay halfway, there is a large possibility that they will be
deported.
When we talk about the migration movement today, we need to consider
the
enormous amount of violence that goes with it, but also the
determination and
the daringness with which these people leave their countries. Visa
restrictions
are not only hindrances in cases of migration due to poverty, but also
for
those seeking education and for the ambitious elite in the commercial
fi eld
throughout the world. Even members of these groups may not be able to
fulfi ll
the enormous fi nancial prerequisites of a visa application.
Furthermore, it
may happen that a visa application is rejected without explanation.
This would
result in the person being denied access to the entire European Union.
At the
rate at which elites are assigned trips and sojourns to industrial
countries,
they may also have to resort to the services of agents who would
facilitate
their entry. The investments in this sector, in respect of the expected
long-term income, could turn out to be considerable. Those who can
afford it
will come by plane and with a professionally faked passport. Since a
number of
years, we at the Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration FFM Berlin
(Research Association Flight and Migration) have been researching the
transit
situation of those who are called the “Refugees in Orbit”. In Warsaw,
Bucharest
and Kiev, we spoke to numerous refugees in order to fi nd out the chief
hindrances in the path to European fortification. Thereby, the existing
commercial influx of refugees was rarely the focus of our interest.
More
important to us was the question whether other immigration
possibilities would
open up from Western Europe to the outside: Our aim was to make the
transit
situation known to numerous groups and networks in West Europe, so that
new
support and start-up structures could be put into place. When we
visited Polish
deportation centres, we came across refugees and migrants predominantly
from
Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. At that time, they had been illegally
detained
and were set free subsequent to our investigations. The series of
publications
Against the European Fortress emerged through the course of the FFM
research.
The
observations and discussions, held within the framework of the
social research project on European fortification, refer for the most
part to
the following facts: The refugees and immigrants who consider the
services of a
commercial refugee helper, generally know what they are doing and
getting into.
My point of departure was therefore as follows: The primary subjects of
this
exercise are the refugees and immigrants themselves, even though they
may place
themselves in the hands of others, for a limited amount of time and a
spatial
horizon. They are positive and continue despite adversity in their
path. They
aim for a future within a society, namely a world where they can fi nd
their
own place. They participate in the worldwide social discussions that
appear as
big questions, such as whether the zoning of wealth and poverty can be
transcended through geographic mobility.
The
smugglers of human beings (on demand and in person), the
facilitators of escape and refugee helpers are secondary phenomenon.
Their
business takes place to some extent on the periphery. There is dirty
trade and
fair trade; there is trade with risks involved and trade with
guarantees. Often
the case is that a clear distinction between refugee helpers and the
refugees
themselves cannot be made. Refugees develop a certain expertise on a
country
and the prevalent border relations when they are stranded in the
transit country.
As refugee helpers they earn a small income until they can travel
further. In
such cases, facilitation of escape is a part of the migration movement
itself.
A
completely different understanding of the process of migration is
exhibited through the programmatic of the governments of industrial
countries
who have criminalised the refugee help process. Therefore, it is
assumed that
the “criminal trade of facilitating human smuggling” controls the
migration
movement completely. If one could break it up, the migration movement
would be
essentially mastered. The working hypothesis, which forms the basis of
every
approach, allows the following summary: The smugglers of human beings
and the
facilitators of escape are the players; the refugees on the other hand
are only
powerless victims.
Thus,
governments and law enforcement authorities mechanically
compartmentalise the migration process: into the super rich criminals
who are
unbelievable and the powerless have-nots who threaten the population to
the
extent that they are socially excluded if they have not already been
warded off
at the border. The all too powerful gangs harm the economy of the
country as
some who are smuggled in resort to illegal employment or have to be
looked
after by the state. Thus, the danger of migration becomes a two-faced
monstrosity. Due to this compartmentalised demonising, immigrants and
refugees
disappear from the social context and become figures that appear to be
excluded
from all societies.
I will
try to decode the social mechanics used by the authorities as a
defence against migration. What practices result through this
threatened
vision? How do the police, the lawyers and the judges of the migration
process,
which, after all, functions diffusely and horizontally, construct
hierarchical
organisational structures and powerless masses – the bad gangs on the
top and
the victims at the bottom? How do they unhinge criminal gangs from the
migration nets and then bring them to justice? How do they conjure away
the
social content of the migration movement? And fi nally: What has
changed in the
pursuit of humans in the face of the global anti-terrorism war?
Definition,
Authorities, Figures
In
1990, the German Act for Foreigners declared “illegal entry” a
criminal act. A signifi cant intensification of illegal border crossing
took
place in 1994 with the amendment of this Act, which falls within the
framework
of the so-called Act on Combating Crime, thus under the cover of
combating
organised crime. Since then, these offences are punishable with
imprisonment
from three to ten years. The duration of imprisonment for the crime of
abetting
“illegal entry” exceeds the sentence served by the illegal entrants
themselves.
This rarely results in imprisonment but receives punishment in the form
of
deportation. The respective paragraphs of the Act for Foreigners and
the new
Residential Act states, in summarized form, that it is a punishable
offence to
support non-EU citizens entering the EU without the required papers and
further
it is also an offence to support their stay in the country. If this
occurs in
an organised manner, then the punishment is intensified. The definition
of the
offence focuses on the gain that comes along with the abetment of the
illegal
crossing of the border and not the relationship of dependence of the
smuggled
on the smugglers. Gain can, for example, mean to host and feed
travellers at
home in exchange for a small fee. The law enforcement authorities
believe that
it is about making money that is skimmed off and centralised and thus
reaches
astronomical figures. Only the big, diversified companies would be
capable of
laundering this money and reinvesting it. Thus, for the authorities,
the trade
of facilitating human being smuggling serves as a possibility through
which the
so-called organised crime expands its base within West Europe. Thereby,
the
offence of smuggling people is based on a phantom world that in no way
corresponds to empirical studies.
Under
the omen of fear in the face of the dangers of organised crime,
the government has established a new area of activity for law
enforcement
authorities, i.e. to combat the trade of illegal human smuggling. It
also
directs the Federal Border Guard (FBG) to enforce these new tasks. The
most
visible step was the shift of the big units of the Federal Border Guard
to the
new East German border. Less visible was the nationwide centralisation
of
tracing groups. At the head office of the Federal Border Guard, a
central point
for combating illegal entry by foreigners has been put in place by the
Home
Office. This unit works together with different authorities and
maintains a
central computer with data on the subject. The groups set up by the FBG
and the
police for the purpose of tracing commercial refugee helpers are
closely
connected to the units who have their focus on organised crime. Besides
the
patrolling of border areas, the same methods are applied in tracing
commercial
refugee helpers and organised criminals: These consist mainly of
tapping
transnational telephone conversations of selected communities as well
as
through the monitoring of money flow between industrial countries and
the
peripheries.
These
conclusions are confirmed if one attends legal proceedings and
goes through the bills of indictment.
The
incriminating material is generally on CDs: Recorded telephone
conversations of proportions that completely exceed the imagination of
the
simple visitor to such proceedings. Lawyers generally present only
select
translations and transcribed passages. Some smuggled entrants were
summoned to
the proceedings as witnesses for the prosecution. They had been stopped
and
questioned by the police before they managed to reach their final
destination.
Many realise only once they receive summons to the proceedings the
precise
purpose of police questioning and this itself contradicts police
protocol. The
proceedings that we visited as FFM always began as indictments against
alleged
parts of the organised crime structures. In the course of the
proceedings, it
always emerged that the so-identified organised criminal gangs abroad
are
nebulously conjured and in reality they are constructed out of often
repeated,
not identifiable names through the tapping of telephone lines. While
observing
these proceedings, the following becomes evident: the migration
movement in
question and also the border crossing process were, in reality highly
fragmented and improvised. The main criminal element is the
complaisance with
which hosts are reimbursed out of pocket expenses. Since in the said
paragraphs
of the Act for Foreigners even assistance provided with respect to
secret
accommodation is punishable, the judges concentrate on the reproaches
to
accommodation and assistance in their further inland travel.
What
qualitative clues can one obtain from police statistics on the
“criminal trade of people smuggling”? The statistics are based on the
“capture”
of illegal entrants by the border police. If one converts the number of
illegal
entrants, the smuggled and the facilitators of human smuggling, by the
border
police on a yearly average, the following picture is obtained: Every
year
25,000 persons are arrested as illegal immigrants, of which 5,000 are
presumed
to have been smuggled in. 1,800 refugee helpers are reported to have
participated in these operations. In 1998, these numbers reached their
all time
high of over 30,000 arrests of illegal immigrants and since then they
have sunk
to below 20,000. At the beginning, the focus area of “arrests” was the
German-Polish border and then the German-Czech border. In the meantime,
it has
been detected that there are more illegal immigrants on the German
border to
Austria, France and the Benelux countries than on the East German
border. From
point of view of the border police, it has become quieter on the
German-Polish
border. This may also be attributed to the fact that the federal
government
shifted the intensity of control to other border regions and thereby
Saxony and
Bavaria had more illegal immigrants and smuggling.
Who
will be arrested as a human smuggler? The ultra large majority live
directly in the German-Polish or German-Czech border area. 15% to 35%
are
Germans and Poles respectively. Czech citizens form the majority. From
the
observations of individual proceedings and from the evaluation of the
judgements, it is known that many persons with scarce earning or the
jobless
come under the category of the facilitators of human smuggling. Their
organisational contribution is relatively simple. Germans are fi ned by
the
court; Poles and Czechs receive a few months of imprisonment. Beside
this
rather diffusive social spectrum, towards the end of the 1990s, all
taxi
drivers in the East German border area came under the purview of the
tracing
teams. In some cities, the FBG had initiated proceedings against more
than one
third of all taxi drivers with the charge of human smuggling. They were
not
blamed for getting people across the border but rather for the
passengers,
without immigration papers, who they had driven inland.3
Thus,
to the main question that should be asked on the data: Who are these
arrested illegal entrants? In the statistics, they are mentioned
according to
their nationality. According to the FBG-Annual Report, since 1996,
foremost are
persons from (ex-)Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq who have been coming
to
Germany. As of 1998, there are statistics on illegal immigrants in all
industrial nations and here as well, names of the same countries come
up most
often. Following the wars by NATO or USA and its allies in Kosovo
(1999),
Afghanistan (2001/02) and in Iraq (2003), the number of clandestine
entrants
and those smuggled in has reduced by almost half. On the other hand,
more and
more Russian citizens are being entered into the statistics. Here we
refer to
the refugees of the war in Chechnya. Refugees from these countries have
been
heading the asylum statistics worldwide for quite some time, in respect
of the
filing of applications as well as with regard to the acceptance of
their
status. Before the most powerful nations of the world started wars in
their
countries, these people practically could not be deported even if their
application for asylum was rejected. Thus, they embody the perfect type
of
“unwanted” persons. But one should not forget that they represent only
a
diminishing part of the total immigration number listed by the
industrial
countries from year to year. Therefore it can be concluded that penal
action
against the “trade of facilitating human smuggling” aims, to a
considerable
extent, at denying access to the securing of a refugees’ status in
Germany and
in Western Europe. In December 1998, the authorities responsible for
asylum
decisions estimated that half of the asylum applicants in Germany had
been
smuggled into the country. Have law enforcement authorities tried to
trace
refugees and immigrants from Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Afghanistan, and from
Iraq/Kurdistan with particular eagerness? Aren’t the so-called bands of
people
smugglers constructed and identified with extraordinary effort, whereas
the
migration network from Ukraine or Moscow remains rather unhindered? A
point to
note is that since four or five years, there has been a discussion on
the
liberalisation of the visa restrictions in the EU – vis-à-vis central
and
Eastern Europe, vis-à-vis Ukraine and Russia. In strategy plans, it has
been
put down that the new neighbours have to be treated with
“friendliness”. It has
been recommended that a multiple visa, obtainable easily at the border,
should
be made possible in the near future, a visa that the bearer can use as
a cheque
card. Although countries on the southern Mediterranean coast as well as
the
eastern European countries will introduce new passports on biometric
basis, for
people from the South there is no hope for an easing of visa
regulations,
rather the contrary. In the so-called countries “with high migration
risk”,
international organisation brings in, along with the stereotype
“unscrupulous
trade of facilitating human smuggling”, information campaigns aimed at
stopping
refugees and immigrants before they leave their home country. This
works as a
preventive instrument in controlling migration. In the 1998 strategy
document
of the EU on Migration and Asylum politics it was mentioned that, “It
appears
that the assumption is not too vague, to expect that a large part of
all
illegal immigrants would have refrained from fleeing, had they, before
they
began their travel, received an appropriate picture of the reality that
awaited
them.” The first information campaigns were carried out in Romania and
Albania
in 1990 by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) under
contract by
the industrial countries. An example from the recent past: The IOM
distributed
30,000 radios across Afghanistan before the US attack and aired a daily
radio
programme which was aimed at averting masses of fleeing people during
the US bombing.
At that time, it was preferable to get help from a refugee helper if
one wished
to get out of the country as the border area in Afghanistan was
extremely
dangerous for refugees.4
Upheavals
in the Path of the Global Anti-Terrorism War In the early 1990s,
at the centre point of the tracing of facilitators of human smuggling
were
communities from eastern and southern Europe, who were freely connected
to the
so-called organised crime networks. The changing face of war
preparations
brought people from Kosovo, the Kurds from Iraq and Afghanistan into
the vision
of those combating the trade of human smuggling. Then what does this
have to do
with the proclaimed image of the enemy attributed to organised
criminality?
Maybe there was really a certain connection between these two elements
of the
tracing, based on Yugoslavian/Kosovar nationality. The predominant
presumption
has been that the Balkan route was formed as a result of all worldly
dangers –
weapons, drugs and of course also people – were smuggled.
The
Iraqi-Kurdish and Afghan immigrant groups exhibit hardly any
enterprise in the black economy. Even in terms of numbers, illegal
immigrants
from these countries are hardly that signifi cant when compared to
immigrants
from the ex-Soviet Union. Such was the effort put in by the Ministry of
the
Interior to trace the helpers of refugees from Iraq, an unprecedented
effort at
an international level and in historical comparisons of the 1990s.
Manfred
Kanther, the then Minister of the Interior, coined the term in late
1997,
“migration movement organised by criminals”, referring to the fleeing
Iraqis.
The Ministry of the Interior was obsessed, at that time, with setting
an
example by cutting off the route of the Iraqis. In January 1998, the
Advisory
Committee of the EU adopted, under German influence, its first refugee
policy
action plan under the title, Influx of migrants from Iraq and
neighbouring
regions. In October 1999, the EU Advisory Committee agreed upon further
refugee
policy action plans in the same manner, this time with reference to
Kosovo/Albania and Afghanistan.
An
impression forces itself in the face of this huge political-policing
operation against the Iraqi Kurds and Afghans: These measures have
nothing to
do with tracing organised crime networks. However, the same methods and
techniques were used by the police tracing units for organised crime
and for
the war against the trade of facilitating the smuggling of people. In
other
respects, it is clearly false labelling. As a matter of fact, the BKA
has been
reducing posts of its organised crime units. Whether this development
is at the
national level and whether similar changes are occurring within the EU
is to be
researched. It is certain that at the same time, new police security
measures
are in place and that too under the tag of anti-terrorism. Even here,
the
monitoring of transnational money fl ow and tapping of telephone lines
plays a
signifi cant role. Therefore, it is not surprising that of late
unwanted
refugees and immigrants are associated less with organised criminality
from the
East/South East, but more and more with “terrorist” dangers from the
South. The
EU Ministers of the Interior at conferences seem to presume, in all
seriousness, that the same networks used by the Islamist terrorists and
their
periphery in Europe, smuggle in boat people from the Mediterranean.
They
recently set up tracing teams that are meant to fight the
trans-Mediterranean
trade of facilitating people smuggling as well as Islamist terrorism.
What
consequences will this lead to? Will the same methods that seem
legitimate against Islamist terrorists, be applicable to
trans-Mediterranean
migration? Tony Blair, Otto Schily, Giuseppe Pisanu and other
politicians of
the EU countries have suggested exterritorial and extralegal EU refugee
camps
to be constructed across EU borders. A new generation of control
technology
will be introduced through the anti-terrorist campaigns and at the same
time,
they will be tested in the battle against the facilitation of human
smuggling
and irregular migration. Even more troublesome is the predominant
“preventive”
thinking that is emerging with regard to the migration movement. As in
the
strategy applied in Enduring Freedom, the US Anti-terrorism war
strategy, there
is a downright fanatical conviction that industrial countries can
intervene in
advance through early warning systems and through the predicted damage
caused
by outbreak of tensions at crucial places. The unwanted migration
movement – as
also the presumed terrorists – can be stopped at their place of origin
or far
away in transit.
With
the shift in focus from the fi ght against organised crime to
anti-terrorism, the fencing of refugees from the East/South East has
also moved
to fencing in the South. Of course we must move carefully with this
assumption:
It is not the human race that lets itself be divided along geopolitical
functions but border regimes. In reality, it is really so that the East
European EU border is crossed not only by people from Ukraine and
Russia but
also by people from Chechnya, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and even
African
countries. In the Polish deportation centres, we came across only very
specific
parts of the clandestine transit migration. And in the future, it will
have to
consider that European migration politics will no longer differentiate
between
legal and illegal, but rather select within the groups of undocumented
people,
those who are more and less “unwanted”. Thereby a new racist impulse
threatens,
as the tracing of people will be based more strongly on criteria such
as
physiognomy and colouring.
The
assumption that the all-powerful transnational criminal gangs had
the migration business in their control is something that even the law
enforcement authorities cannot argue so correctly anymore. In the face
of refugees
who, for example, on the southern Mediterranean coast simply buy a
wooden boat
so that they get across to Italy or Spain, it makes no sense to talk
about
powerless victims of the human trafficking system anymore. That they
place
their life and limb at risk for their future – that is what makes
people afraid
in Europe. It is also the determination and knowledge of the
accessibility of
other continents that led in recent years, at many places to a
strengthening of
the bargaining position of refugees with refugee helpers. In fact, the
cost of
boats, human smuggling and other services, which refugees fall back on
in case
of emergency or based on their need, has reduced.
In
view of human rights and civil society, there is always a long-term
hope: to strengthen the rights and empower refugees and immigrants. If
they
obtain access to secure ship travel, if they do not have to fear the
various
hurdles in their path, if the sealed off borders are reopened, then the
unscrupulous as well as fair business of commercial refugee helpers
will lose
meaning.
Translation:
Rubaica Jaliwala
Footnotes
1 EFE/Expatica, “Last dash across border for
desperate refugees” Expatica, 26 April 2005,
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_
article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=19478&name=Last+dash+across+border+for+desperate+refugees.
2 Seen historically, the moulding of this
offence began in the 80s and 90s of the 19th century. At that time, the
German
Reich had started criminalising certain aspects of the East and
Transit
Migration on its Eastern border, which is relevant even today with
respect to
the complexity of the offence of facilitating border crossing. The
combat of
the East Jewish migration to the West as well as the flight out of Nazi
Germany
depict further cornerstones in the historical development of this
offence.
3 FFM
(Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration), Die Grenze.
Flüchtlingsjagd in
Schengenland, FFM (ed.); Flüchtlingsrat Niedersachsen; pro asyl,
(Hildesheim
2003), p. 101 et sqq. See also FFM (Forschungsgesellschat Flucht and
Migration), Ukraine. Vor den Toren der
Festung Europa. Die Vorverlagerung der Abschottungspolitik,
publications of FFM
5, (Berlin 2003).
4 Helmut
Dietrich, “Im Windschatten der Bomber. Kriegsziel
Flüchtlingsbekämpfung:
Kosovo, Afghanistan und Irak”, Fantômas. Magazin
für linke Debatte und Praxis. Sonderbeilage zu ak –
analyse und kritik 3, (2003), p. 13-17.
Dietrich, Helmut (2005): Powerless Refugees - a far too Powerful Network? The Construction of "Smuggling of Human Beings" Before and After 9.11.2001. In: Fitz, Angelika; Kröger, Merle; Schneider, Alexandra; Wenner, Dorothee: Import Export. Cultural Transfer. India, Germany, Austria. Halle 2005. pp. 177-183