HOME Office inflexibility and mistreatment of refugees in several EU member states have been alleged in a report that reveals the harrowing experiences of Syrian and other migrants crossing Europe.
The report Roads to Nowhere, issued by migrant advocacy charity Migrant Voice, calls for a change to European legislation on asylum seekers.
It says hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in Britain and across Europe will be put at risk from today, when the terms of the Dublin Regulation – the EU policy instrument regulating responsibility for asylum applications – are due to change.
The Dublin Regulation stipulates that asylum seekers are the responsibility of the EU member state in which they first arrive, but exemptions on transfers conducted under it expire today.
Migrant Voice says border authorities in some struggling southern European economies are now routinely allocated refugees and asylum seekers who have no desire to be there, and their numbers are unevenly and unfairly distributed between member states.
The charity says evidence in the report reveals mistreatment in “multiple EU member states”, as well as inflexibility at the UK Home Office, which has often left people waiting for years for a decision.
Mohammad Ismail applied for asylum in Britain in 2014. He was initially taken to a Leeds detention centre and then a hostel, before being told he would be sent to Bulgaria because he had been fingerprinted there.
He said: “I moved to London and began signing in. One day I went to sign and they arrested me and took me to a detention centre in Dover, I was fortunate that a lawyer was able to get me out on bail before they deported me.
"To this day I have heard nothing from the Home Office, and I’m still signing. The lawyer has no answers, the people at the Home Office have no answer, even my MP has written a letter and still I don’t know what is happening.”
Another asylum seeker, who was deported to a Romanian camp under the Dublin Regulation, said: “Sometimes they would keep you handcuffed to bed for many days, up to a few days, denying water or food or toilet. There was suffocation, waterboarding, throwing tear gas into cells when people showed any protest.”
Migrant Voice is now calling for the EU to replace the Dublin Regulation with a Europe-wide single asylum application with a minimum standard of reception and integration. Its report also calls on the UK Government to change asylum rules to take individual circumstances into account – including refugees’ social and extended family connections to the UK.
Migrant Voice’s director Nazek Ramadan said: “The Dublin Regulation gambles with the lives of vulnerable people fleeing the world’s most desperate circumstances, treating refugees like balls to be bounced from country to country with no chance of building a real future.
“It doesn’t work for the asylum seekers who are, from today, at risk of being sent to countries that abuse them, it doesn’t work for the Home Office who are seeing migrants become undocumented, and it doesn’t work for struggling economies in southern Europe having to do more than their fair share. It would be a continent-wide disgrace for this to continue.”
Stuart McDonald, the SNP’s immigration spokesperson at Westminster, told The National: “This important report highlights how too often the Dublin regulations are being implemented completely inappropriately.
“This means refugees and asylum seekers facing mistreatment and abuse – instead of transfer to countries where they can be reunited with family and support networks. There is no doubt that there has to be a fundamental rethink on how Dublin is operated.
“The UK has relied on Dublin rules much more to push asylum seekers out, rather than to accept responsibility for those with links to here – and the report shows this is proving another counter-productive policy.
"It is more essential than ever that the Westminster government ups its game to ensure all those arriving in countries like Greece and Italy and who have ties to the UK are transferred here swiftly. “The Scottish Government has always said it is very willing to take its fair share of responsibility.”
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