Platform for a world without racism
"Fortress Europe" in the offence
State-controlled defence from refugees
Since 1993 in Vienna the Intenational Centre for Migration Policy
Development (ICMPD) is existing, which has big influence in
state-controlled
migration research. That institution has not attracted much attention
till
now. It
has an important role in registration, analysis and closing of
international
refugee-movements and flight-routes. Also in developing a new, "near
to
home", european refugee-policy during and after the war in Kosovo, the
ICMPD
plays an important part. Enough, to take more concern in the ICMPD.
1. Development of the ICMPD and connections to other international
organisations
After liquidation of the Eastern Bloc and the beginning of the war in
Jugoslavia a new unit was formed, separated out of the IGC
(Inter-governmental
Consultations on Asylum, Refugee and Migration Policies in Europe,
North
America and Australia, head office in Geneva), the agency of
coordination for
the western refugee- and migration-policy (memberstates: Australia,
Belgium,
Denmark, Germany, Finland, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Canada, the
Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, USA and the
UNHCR
and IOM - international Organisation for Migration) The aim of this new unit
- the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) - was to
involve the central-, eastern- and above all the south-eastern
countries in a
general european policy on refugees. The headoffice of the ICMPD is in
Vienna.
(Adress: A-1040 Wien, Möllwaldplatz 4). The ICMPD has been founded on
June
1st 1993 by swiss authorities, represented by the federal agency for
refugees, and austrian authorities, represented by the ministry of
interior.
In the
following years Hungary and Slovenia became members, Poland and the
Czech
Republic are preparing for membership. Currently 20 governments are
supporting the ICMPD. The ICMPD is cooperating by contract with IOM
(fields of
engagement: international support for return programs, studies
concerning flight
and migration, Know-how about refugee-camps; in Kosovo the IOM
transfered a
part of the UCK into post-war "KosovoCorps"). The ICMPD-staff has
diplomatic
status since 1997. It is a multifuncional Think-Tank which has
branches in
eastern-european universities and influence in the international
migration-sciences. In the last years the centre tried to develop
migration-control and
strategic advice above all on the Balkan.
In the end of 1997 the Austrian forum for migration-studies - AFM
(Österreichisches Forum für Migrationsstudien - ÖFM) has been
established by
austrian and swiss representatives as three-year pilot-project of the
ICMPD.
Aims
of ÖFM are to set up a documentation, information and research
department to
support all people that are working in the field of migration-research
in
german-speaking countries, above all in Austria. The ÖFM is financed
by the
Austrian Ministry of Interior and the Swiss foundation for population,
migration and ecology. The headoffice of ÖFM is like the ICMPD on
Möllwaldplatz 4,
A-1040 Wien.
Since 1991 minister-conferences take place in Europe, which have the
aim
to tie up the central- and eastern-european countries to the Schengen
and
EU-policy. That structure of all-european conferences with a permanent
secretariat in Vienna (ICMPD), various working-groups and an
institutionalised
all-european cooperation of public authorities, which are engaged in
the
field of
refugee- and bordercontrol, is summarized under the term "Budapest
Process". Currently representatives of 38 governments and 10
international
organiziations are coordinated in that group. The following aims of
the Budapest
Process are mentioned in an official report: "the compilation of an
inventory of
the needs of the Central and Eastern European countries (e.g.
training,
computers, vehicles and communication equipment) and of possible
offers from
Western European sources and exploration of possibilities of
additional
financial assistance to improve border control and facilitate return
programs. The
emphasis is thus shifting towards measures to combat migrant
trafficking,
border control and readmission agreements". In the last years
comittees of
the Budapest Process changed their method of working. They do not only
engage
with "low intensity areas" of longterm adapting bordercontrol
equipment,
measures and laws against refugees to the western standards, but they
start
actions of coordinated search and deportations. The aim of the western
population planers is not adjustment, but to pick up preventive
measures
which will
keep away migrants and refugees form the beginning to reach their
potential
destination. This "new" understanding is based on the ethnic
principle, that
people should mainly live where their "home" is, where their "race" is
"at
home", where their "soil" is.
One of the conferences after the installation of the Budapest Process
-
the "Extraordinary Conference of the Budapest Process on illegal
migration in
Southeast Europe" took place on Juni 29th and 30th 1998 in Budapest.
31
states took place in that conference, including Albania, Bosnia and
Herzegowina,
Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Mazedonia, Greece, Hungary,
Italy,
Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. Further participants: European
Council, European Commission, IGC, ICMPD, Interpol, IOM and UNHCR. In
that
conference the Balkan States (except the Federal Republic of
Jugoslavia, which
didn´t take part) have been obliged to destroy the "turkish-albanian"
route, on
which the "illegal movements" on land or "further accross the Adriatic
Sea
and Italy to Western Europe" are happening. The following measures
have been
concluded: installation of visa-duty and restriction of visa-giving
also by
South-East European countries; enforcement of so called complete
controls on
all borders, that means that on all check points all persons have to
be
controlled individually; construction of monitoring of highways in the
hinterland of the borders; installation of carrier sanctions against
carriers, which
are transporting "illegals"; development of a readmission system also
between the states of South-East Europe; exchange of
contact-policemen;
intensification of criminal prosecution of illegal migrants and
refugee
smugglers;
installation of national centres for fact compilations "about new
migration
routes, the means of transport used, document fraud, instances of
trafficking
and trafficking organisations". Each country has to send a regular
report to
the ICMPD in Vienna since August 15th 1998. The Western States are
obliged
to support the border police and authorities along the South-East
European
route with advice and to publish short-term reports about the
development of
"illegal migration and trafficking activities; to send experts for
some time
to "troublesome border crossings" and "at portions of the green and
blue
borders, that are particularly prone to illegal migration" with the
mission to
observe and advise the work of the border police; document-experts
should be
stationed on airports and harbours in South-East Europe which shall
instruct the local police and travel agencies on identifying document
fraud;
and to
improve equipment and training of border police.
2. New European refugee-policy
The main project of the ICMPD and its director Jonas Widgren towards
government institutions is to make refugee and migration policy a kind
of
leading
science in politology and to produce paradigmatic guidelines for
almost all
government departments: The cause of everything that happens in the
world,
from population increase to ecological catastrophes, is said to be the
worldwide migration stream, that is a challenge for the security of
the
West. The
international refugee policy becomes a main sphere of policy,
meanwhile
geo- and military policy, ecology and internal security, foreign
policy and
development aid is subordinated. Interested governments shall be
supported in
elaborating political measures to anticipate "migration movements from
East
to West and from South to North". All in reconsideration of "how
integration
can happen and how to handle emigration - without provocating
xenophobia in
destinated countries but in cooperation with countries of origin". The
ICMPD operates like a defensive plant against migration, for
protecting the
western countries of refugees against migration. To reduce flight
movements and
to smash flight routes different governments aim at the development of
preventive measures like the elaboration of studies and statistics.
How the
construction of "organised trafficking crime" (which plays an
important role in
Austrian politics) is connected to the work of ICMPD and AFM has to be
explored in future.
The decisive contribution of the european struggle to ban the problem
of
refugees for the Kosovo War 1999 and for future conflicts is neither
the
concrete prevention of migration nor the delegation of that to
military and
relief organizations. It is the rediscovery of the "right for home"
which is
specified as combat against causes for flight. It is based on the
ethnic
conception, that human beings have their roots in their native
country. To go
somewhere else could mean dissatisfaction. This kind of refugee policy
prevents
the thought of living somwhere else in peace. The idea is that people
belong
to the place of "their origin". A life of freedom in another country
is
accepted under these circumdstances only as an interim solution. The
interim
solution of a refugee camp becomes a longterm solution more and more.
"Near to
home"-placement in refugee camps as possible near of "regions of
crisis"
shall secure, that "uprooting of protection seekers from their home
and
culture will be worked against and that return will be facilitated"
(from a
working paper for the responsible EU-Council Commission in March
1999).
At the beginning of 1999 the Amsterdam Treatee came into force, in
agreement of the EU-summit of Amsterdam from June 1997. To become the
most
important European task the refugee policy of the particular states
shall be
combined step by step. As a result the coordinated foreign and refugee
policy on
the EU-level shall be withdrawn from the control of judicial powers.
To
organize a cooperation between judicial power and departments of
interior in the
European Union basically new, they create a common "space of freedom,
security and law". The questions of asylum and migration policy is
largely
suspended from direct parliamentary control. These authorities shall
be
concentrated upon a small group of migrations-experts policy within
the
council. The
common regulation of migration by the external borders, was intended
of the
Schengen treatee. Now it is completed by the concentration of decision
making
bodies in EU. The defense against refugees enacted in the Schengen
Area has
not become invalid: it includes the visa-duty for people from more
than 130
countries, the punishment of carriers that are transporting passengers
without sufficient travel documents, the installation of prisons for
refugees in
transit areas of airports, collecting and central administration of
data
about hundreds of thousand Non-EU-Citizens, improved border control
with
helicopters, vision by night equipment, speedboats, dogs, controls in
a 30
kilometer border zone, controling irrespective of suspicion on railway
stations and
in trains, the contribution of the population to the observation of
the
border zone, financing and supporting of trainings for the border ion
of
demographic areas around the European centre. The policy of the EU
states has to be orientated in the future on that areas - divided in
"contentric circles".
The authors of the Austrian "strategy paper on
migration and
asylum policy" are writing down the continuation of a history that was
made
by culprits. The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees was
established after the Second World War, after the results of twelve
years
German und
Austrian regional planning. It was an attempt, to create an
international
valid law, to prevent a catastrophe, like it was before and during the
Second
World War the closure policy of all countries against refugees from
the
german sphere of influence. The new strategy planners proceed now that
the
Convention wasn´t directed at asylum seekers, that took refuge from
ethnic
motivated violence. This hypothesis is the heart of the aspired
european
New-construcition of the refugee right. It shall guarantee, that in
future
"ethnic"
refugees shall have only temporary limited toleration (like for
example
Kosovo-Albaniens), instead of sueing for asylum by law. Perhaps it is
no
accident, that exactly that states, that have produced the biggest
refugee
movements
half a century ago, now are projecting new strategies of population
technic. The aim of the new european defense policy is not directed to
refugee
streams but on the reform of legal, political, military instruments
for the
foreign policy of the EU as a new world power. The breaking of
international
treatments is accepted consciously. Priority interest is to bring
together
military, economic, humanitarian, diplomatic and legal measures for
the
enforcement of european interests against other states. That is world
power
policy.
Criticism for example of the breaking of the Convention is too less,
because
the interests in power policy are in any case stronger than in
individual
human rights.
What the technocrates of refugee defense are projecting as a vision of
regional planning for tomorrow has already been realized by western
governments, relief organizations and militaries. The GFK has
practically
been put out
of force by UN protecting areas and NATO protectorates. What shall be
"protected" are constructed ehtnic collectives in protection areas and
protectorates. Ethnically clean inside, outside barbed wire and NATO
guards.
That new
"internethnic conflict management" doesn´t aim to remove the local
reasons
for flight but the refugees themselves. The example Kosovo shows that
strategy. Austria and Germany attached great importance on deporting
all
Kosovo-Albanians back to the "Kfor-protectorate". As a basis for
determining
the number
of "ethnic Albanians" in european countries, a statistics of the
(ICMPD -
International Centre for Migration Policy Development) in Vienna was
taken.
In fact the ICMPD admits that a clear ethnic identification is
difficult,
because the majority of the migrants came with Jugoslavian passport,
but it
bases their proceedings on the supposition, that somebody is simply
definable
as Kosovo-Albanian. Any difference of migrants is cancelled from the
beginning. The only criterion is ethnic determination - "ethnic
membership".
Literary tips: Helmut Dietrich, Harald Glöde, Kosovo - der Krieg gegen
die
Flüchtlinge (the war against refugees); Berlin, February 2000,
Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration; Verlag Libertäre
Assiziation VLA
Jungle World Nr. 34, August 16th 2000; Dossier "Kerne und Kreise -
Intime
Integration; Kerneuropa entwickelt sich zum Zentrum einer neuartigen
Herrschaftsordnung (Cores and circles - intimate integration - the ET
developes to
the centre of a new order of domination)"
Platform for a world without racism: www.no-racism.net
Email: fewor@no-racism.net
Forschungsgesellschaft Flucht und Migration: www.berlinet.de/mh/ffm
Jungle World: www.jungle-world.com
International Centre for Migration Policy Development: www.icmpd.org
Austrian Forum for Migration-Studies - AFM (österreichisches Forum für
Migrationsstudien): www.oefm.org
At least a request: groups and persons, that have more information
about
the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)
please send
these to the platform for a world without racism. We had just few
information sources about ICMPD.