arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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Death toll rises to 2000 by Tom De Meester Thursday June 15, 2000 at 12:17 AM |
| TomPM.DeMeester@rug.ac.be |
We have a sad message for you: the number of cases of people who died because of the policies of "Fortress Europe" has risen to over 2000. We need to get this news in the newspapers! Policy makers and the general public need to know what the results are of these short-sighted and narrow-minded policies.
We strongly believe that it is impossible to shut down borders for people when capital and goods are moving freely. Europe needs contact with the rest of the globe as much as the rest of the globe needs contact with Europe. This attempt to keep out migrants and refugees is based on
intolerance and xenophobia and needs to be stopped.
Please help us by sending this press release to:
- the mainstream media (newspapers, tv, radio, magazines)
- the alternative media (NGO magazines, internet discussion lists)
- your members or member organisations
- keeping UNITED informed (sending newspaper cuttings, translations of the press release, etc.)
Press Release 14/06/2000
The tragic result of European Refugee policies:
DEATH TOLL RISES TO 2000
More than 2000 refugees and migrants have died in and around Europe since 1993 as a result of European refugee policies. Instead of finding a safe place and a better perspective for their life people have drowned, suffocated, been beaten to death by racist attackers, gagged to death by
policemen or committed suicide in dispair.
These deaths can be put down to border militarisations, asylum laws, detention policies, deportations and carrier sanctions, summarised as "Fortress Europe". As possibilities for legal entry for refugees and migrants are more and more restricted, and as borders are made more impermeable, people are forced to take more and more dangerous routes.
The cases that have been documented by UNITED include amongst others:
Nearly weekly people drown during their attempt to cross the Mediterranean.
On the 31st of December 1999, 39 people drowned in the Adriatic Sea when their rubber boat sank.
A Reuters news item quotes a Spanish report about 120 assumed deaths in the first four month of this year of people who drowned while attempting to cross the Strait of Gibraltar.
On 6 May an Algerian asylum seeker desperately committed suicide at the detention centre at Frankfurt/Main (Germany) airport after being held there over 8 months.
In August last year a stowaway clinging to the underside of a lorry was crushed to death while disembarking in Dover (Great-Britain).
UNITED protests against the deadly realities of Fortress Europe. It will be impossible to shut the borders totally. As capital and goods freely cross borders, people will continue to follow. We need to work towards long-term
solutions for global problems instead of dnying these facts.