Amnesty International has revealed its pro-immigration prejudice by criticising member states of the European Union for spending hundreds of millions of euros trying to build effective border control.
In a report published this week, Amnesty International complains that, “EU migration policies and border control practices are preventing refugees from accessing asylum in the EU.”
The report insists EU member states must “start putting people before borders.”
The organisation also criticises the policy by which “the EU and member states are also cooperating with and funding neighbouring countries, such as Turkey, Morocco and Libya, to create a buffer zone around the EU in an effort to stop migrants and refugees before they even reach Europe’s borders.”
The report says that 23,000 people “are believed” to have lost their lives since 2000 trying to reach Europe.
Spain comes in for particular criticism because its allocation of funds between 2007 and 2013 showed it spent 30 times more defending its borders than on improving conditions for migrants, the biggest difference in the EU.
Spain suffers particular pressure from migrants because it is the only European Union country which shares a land border with Africa. As Breitbart London reported in June, the two North African Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have suffered floods of sub-Saharan migrants. In March, 1,000 people tried to jump a Spanish built triple-layer fence separating the city from Morocco, with half of them getting through – the biggest such crossing in nearly a decade.
Last month about 500 African migrants leapt a towering, triple-layer border fence to cross from Morocco into Melilla.
In June, the European Commission promised Spain it would receive an extra €10m (£8m) from the EU to fight illegal immigration into the enclaves. The money is to be used to strengthen border fences, fund voluntary return programmes for migrants who manage to enter the two territories illegally and make improvements to government-run migrant reception centres.
Nevertheless, Amnesty International accuses Spain of being one of the EU countries from which “migrants and refugees are being expelled unlawfully…without access to asylum procedures and often in ways that put them at grave risk. They are ill-treated by border guards and coastguards.”
The report criticises EU countries for spending millions of euros each year “on fences, sophisticated surveillance systems and patrolling their borders.”
In what the report calls “a revealing indicator of relative priorities,” the EU spent “nearly €2bn (£1.58bn) protecting its external borders between 2007 and 2013, but only €700m (£555m) on improving the situation for asylum-seekers and refugees within the EU over the same period.”
“The effectiveness of EU measures to stem the flow of irregular migrants and refugees is, at best, questionable. Meanwhile, the cost in human lives and misery is incalculable and is being paid by some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” said John Dalhuisen, Europe and Central Asia Programme Director at Amnesty International.
The report says “refugees and migrants are increasingly taking the more dangerous sea routes to Greece and Italy” because of “ever greater obstacles to reaching Europe by land.”
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