EU accused of funding units that dump migrants in North African desert
The European Union is funding units in North Africa which reportedly round up migrants trying to reach Europe and dump them in the desert.
Tens of thousands of migrants have been detained each year and pushed back into remote areas including the Sahara. They faced kidnap, torture, sexual violence and death.
Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania were accused of carrying out the desert dumps and other human rights abuses after an investigation by the Washington Post, Lighthouse Reports, and other international media.
The EU has struck deals with all three countries to curb migrants trying to go to Europe from Africa, which includes funding to drive down numbers. Tunisia has received about £128 million, Mauritania £179 million and Morocco £533 million from Brussels.
“This is a difficult situation. It’s a fast-moving situation, and we will continue to work on it,” the European Commission chief spokesman said on Tuesday.
The report said 11 dumps of up to 90 migrants each, one as recently as this month, took place in the desert near Tunisia’s borders with Libya and Algeria. At least 29 people are believed to have died, with dozens more missing, after being expelled from Tunisia on the Libyan border.
European funding was being used to train and buy equipment for units involved in the round-ups and desert dumps, the investigation found.
Vehicles of the same make and model as ones provided by European countries to the three countries’ security forces were used to round up black migrants on the streets or transported them from detention centres, it was reported.
‘Clandestine operations’
The report said: “Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU.”
It described a “system of mass displacement” that was “run thanks to money, vehicles, equipment, intelligence and security forces provided by the EU and European countries”.
The report said refugees and migrants in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia were being “apprehended based on the colour of their skin, loaded onto buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often arid desert areas”, without water or food.
Others were taken to border areas where they were allegedly “sold by the authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom”.
The Lighthouse Reports said it interviewed more than 50 black migrants – all of them from sub-Saharan Africa and West Africa – who had been expelled from the three countries.
The report also cited two EU sources who acknowledged it was “impossible” to fully account for how the funding from Brussels was being used.
“Sometimes the situation is challenging in our partner countries,” a commission spokesman said, “[but they] remain sovereign states and they continue to be in control of their national forces.”
They said the EU monitored programmes it provided funding for, and noted pledges from partner countries to uphold international law and human rights.
European governments also came under scrutiny in the report, which said German police deployed 449 staff and spent more than £850,000 to train almost 4,000 Tunisian guards.
As the dumps continued, a £7.7m border-management training centre, funded by Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands, opened in Tunisia. Security forces there have at least 143 Nissan Navara pick-up trucks, which were provided by Italy and Germany to “fight human traffickers”.
In Mauritania, according to the report, embedded Spanish officials on the ground have enabled “aggressive tactics”, the Spanish authorities have funded new detention centres, and also “appear to be complicit in desert dumps.”
