Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Senator Black.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, to the House. The Civil Engagement Group has tabled this motion because for a long time we have been deeply concerned about the way in which Europe has hardened its borders over the past decade, in our capacity as both European citizens and European parliamentarians. As Europeans, this hardening of borders is being carried out in our names. The tragic deaths we have seen in recent weeks in the Mediterranean Sea are directly related to European migration and border policies, for which we all bear some responsibility, whether we wish to acknowledge this or not. As the motion outlines, it is estimated that 27,000 people seeking refuge in Europe have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. These figures are widely understood to be a significant under-estimation.

Last week, on World Refugee Day, activists in Berlin read out the names of those 27,000 people. It took 32 hours. These are 27,000 people who came to our continent because they were fleeing war, persecution, the climate crisis and other horrific circumstances and were not met with anything close to resembling the founding values of the European Union, namely, human dignity, equality and human rights. Instead, they were met with hard borders and hard hearts that were constructed to keep asylum seekers outside of Europe. I want people to keep this in mind when they read the Government's counter-motion to this motion, to take in the contribution in relation to this, and to ask themselves why there is a counter-motion in this regard.

Over the past decade, European policy has increasingly been about keeping asylum seekers outside Europe. The deals that have been done with countries such as Libya had Turkey have resulted in systemic violations of fundamental human rights. I use the word "systematic" because the system we have designed is enabling this. Prior to 2017, the Irish Naval Service was engaging in search and rescue, SAR, missions in the central Mediterranean Sea through bilateral treaties. In 2015, our Naval Service rescued 8,592 people from the Mediterranean Sea. In 2017, we were to enter the EU's Operation Sophia, but the then Minister of State at the Department of Defence, Deputy Paul Kehoe told the Dáil that:

Transferring to Operation Sophia will result in the redeployment of Irish Naval Service vessels from primarily humanitarian search and rescue operation to primarily security and interception operations.

The result of this change in policy is clear. By 2018, the number of people the Naval Service rescued fell to 1,888 and in 2019 Operation Sophia stopped search and rescue completely.

Operation Irini, the successor to Operation Sophia, does not have a search and rescue mandate at all. Instead, we see the Libyan coastguard being notified when a ship is attempting to cross. If they make it to the ship, those people will be returned to detention centres in Libya where they will face horrific conditions which I will discuss further in a moment.

The agreement the EU made with Libya was formalised in the 2017 Malta Declaration, which had a number of objectives, including the "determination to act in full respect of human rights, international law and European values" and "to ensure adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants". Both of these objectives have clearly failed. It is also important to recognise that across Europe, civil society groups and NGOs have been criminalised for engaging in search and rescue. They are being criminalised merely for attempting to fill the gap that was left by EU countries when they abandoned their search and rescue responsibilities. We are all aware of the case of Seán Binder, who was put on trial by the Greek authorities, supposedly for espionage. Mr. Binder and other humanitarian workers were disgracefully targeted for their search and rescue work as part of wider criminalisation across Europe. This must stop. Our motion calls on the Government not only to work to end this criminalisation but to support the essential work these organisations do.

When migrants are returned to Libya, they are faced with hell on earth. Hundreds of millions of European taxpayers' money is being spent to fund centres where torture and violence are commonplace. I commend the Irish journalist Sally Hayden for her role in reporting on this, particularly in her excellent book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned.In Libyan detention centres, people who are seeking asylum are faced with violence, sexual violence, torture and murder. The conditions also cause disease, such as tuberculosis, TB, which can spread. Ms Hayden reports on the experience of people in the Tariq al-Sikka detention centre during a TB outbreak where people were left with no assistance. In Tripoli's Shara al-Zawiya centre, former detainees reported that guards raped women, and some were coerced into sex in exchange for their release or for essentials such as clean water. People who speak up against such abuses are tortured or, in some cases, are disappeared. Imagine what such gross violations of human rights will do to a person, their body and their mind. One story that stuck with me is that of a 20-year-old man who was trapped in a detention centre where the conditions were so horrific that he set himself on fire.

I could recount hundreds of stories of unnecessary human suffering, but instead, I will read a quotation from one of those who lived through the hell of this detention centre: “People want to die in the sea rather than in the detention centres"; "At this time human rights are sleeping"; "Life is very cheap". One quotation from the former head of policy and development at the UN Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, is also particularly striking: "One day I hope everyone will look back with incredulity on the EU's complicity with human rights abuses in Libya and the UN's failure to speak out on this matter." These abuses are not solely carried by militias or human traffickers, but they happen in centres that are run by the EU-backed Libyan Government of National Unity.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières have all condemned the EU's complicity in this. A 2021 report from Amnesty International highlighted that despite pledges to close the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration centres, similar patterns of violations have been reproduced in newly opened or re-opened centres. At an EU-level, instead of ending this shameful complicity and establishing safe routes, we have seen more calls for harder borders. Earlier this year, the leader of the European People's Party in the European Parliament, Manfred Weber, put out a statement regarding migration policy. In it, he called for the building of fences along the external border and for the construction of registration and reception centres outside Europe's borders. Let us be very clear; these are the policies of the far right. Parliamentarians from across political divides were very happy in 2016 to call out Donald Trump and his border wall for what it was. Why are we not doing the same thing when European politicians are calling for effectively the same on our continent?