EU pushbacks of 40,000 migrants linked to 2,000 deaths

EU member states used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders, resulting in the death of more than 2,000 people, a probe by the Guardian newspaper has revealed.

Malta is included among the culprits mentioned in the report along with EU border agency Frontex, Greece, Croatia, Italy and Spain.

The Guardian’s analysis is based on reports released by UN agencies, combined with a database of incidents collected by non-governmental organisations. The report describes the pushbacks as “one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades.”

“European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation”.

According to the report Malta, which declared its ports closed early last year, citing the pandemic, has continued to push back hundreds of migrants using two strategies: enlisting private vessels to intercept asylum seekers and force them back to Libya or turning them away with directions to Italy.

The report links Malta’s response to the decision by Italy and the EU to withdraw their ships from the central Mediterranean, to leave it in Libya’s hands, leaving Malta exposed to more arrivals. Citing migration researcher Matteo de Bellis the report claims that from early 2020 the Maltese government used tactics to avoid assisting refugees and migrants in danger at sea, “including arranging unlawful pushbacks to Libya by private fishing boats, diverting boats rather than rescuing them, illegally detaining hundreds of people on ill-equipped ferries off Malta’s waters, and signing a new agreement with Libya to prevent people from reaching Malta.”

The report also refers to voice messages obtained in The Guardian in May 2020 which confirmed the Maltese government’s strategy to use private vessels, acting at the behest of its armed forces, to intercept crossings and return refugees to Libyan detention centres.

Malta was not alone in utilising strategies to push back migrants to Libya with some countries resorting to violence. Greece is said to have pushed back 6230 asylum seekers from its shores in a context where the use of excessive and disproportionate violence have become “a normality”.

UNHCR data suggests that since the start of the pandemic, Libyan authorities, with Italian support, have intercepted and pushed back to Tripoli about 15,500 asylum seekers.

The controversial strategy has caused the forced return of thousands to Libyan detention centres where, according to first hand reports, they face torture. Hundreds have drowned when neither Libya nor Italy intervened.

In 2020, UNHCR data shows that 788 migrants died trying to reach Spain. Croatia, whose police patrol the EU’s longest external border, has also intensified systemic violence and pushbacks of migrants to Bosnia. The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) recorded nearly 18,000 migrants pushed back by Croatia since the start of the pandemic. Over the last year and a half, the Guardian has collected testimonies of migrants who have allegedly been whipped, robbed, sexually abused and stripped naked by the Croatian police force. Some migrants were even spray painted with red crosses on their heads.