#conflits

Sur la Carte, il faut considérer Calais comme un mur et la France devrait donc être en vert.

La costruzione di muri: un business

Trent’anni dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino, l’Europa fa parlare di sé ancora una volta per i suoi muri di frontiera. Questa volta non è tanto l’ideologia che la divide, quanto la paura di rifugiati e migranti, alcune tra le persone più vulnerabili al mondo.

Riassunto del rapporto «The Business of Building Walls» [1]:

Chi ha ucciso il sogno di un’Europa più aperta? Cosa ha dato inizio a questa nuova era dei muri?
Ci sono evidentemente molte ragioni: il crescente spostamento di persone a causa di conflitti, repressione e impoverimento, l’ascesa di politiche securitarie sulla scia dell’11 settembre, l’insicurezza economica e sociale percepita in Europa dopo la crisi finanziaria del 2008, solo per nominarne alcune. Tuttavia, c’è un gruppo che ha di gran lunga da guadagnare da questo innalzamento di nuovi muri: le imprese che li costruiscono. La loro influenza nel dare forma ad un mondo di muri necessita di un esame più profondo.

Questo rapporto esplora il business della costruzione di muri, che è stato alimentato e ha beneficiato di un aumento considerevole della spesa pubblica dedicata alla sicurezza delle frontiere dall’Unione Europea (EU) e dai suoi Stati membri. Alcune imprese beneficiarie sono delle multinazionali che approfittano di un mercato globale per la sicurezza delle frontiere che si stima valere approssimativamente 17,5 miliardi di euro nel 2018, con una crescita annuale prevista almeno dell’8% nei prossimi anni.

È importante guardare sia oltre che dietro i muri e le barriere d’Europa, perché i reali ostacoli alla migrazione contemporanea non sono tanto le recinzioni, quanto la vasta gamma di tecnologie che vi è alla base, dai sistemi radar ai droni, dalle telecamere di sorveglianza ai sistemi biometrici di rilevamento delle impronte digitali. Allo stesso modo, alcuni tra i più pericolosi muri d’Europa non sono nemmeno fisici o sulla terraferma. Le navi, gli aerei e i droni usati per pattugliare il Mediterraneo hanno creato un muro marittimo e un cimitero per i migliaia di migranti e di rifugiati che non hanno un passaggio legale verso la salvezza o per esercitare il loro diritto di asilo.

Tutto ciò rende insignificanti le dichiarazioni della Commissione Europea secondo le quali essa non finanzierebbe i muri e le recinzioni. Il portavoce della Commissione, Alexander Winterstein, per esempio, nel rifiutare la richiesta dell’Ungheria di rimborsare la metà dei costi delle recinzioni costruite sul suo confine con la Croazia e la Serbia, ha affermato: “Noi sosteniamo le misure di gestione delle frontiere presso i confini esterni. Queste possono consistere in misure di sorveglianza o in equipaggiamento di controllo delle frontiere... . Ma le recinzioni, quelle non le finanziamo”. In altre parole, la Commissione è disposta a pagare per qualunque cosa che fortifichi un confine fintanto che ciò non sia visto come propriamente costruire dei muri.

Questo rapporto è il seguito di “Building Walls - Fear and securitizazion in the Euopean Union”, co-pubblicato nel 2018 con Centre Delàs e Stop Wapenhandel, che per primi hanno misurato e identificato i muri che attraversano l’Europa.

Questo nuovo rapporto si focalizza sulle imprese che hanno tratto profitto dai tre differenti tipi di muro in Europa:
– Le imprese di costruzione ingaggiate per costruire i muri fisici costruiti dagli Stati membri UE e dall’Area Schengen in collaborazione con le imprese esperte in sicurezza e tecnologia che provvedono le tecnologie, l’equipaggiamento e i servizi associati;
– le imprese di trasporto marittimo e di armamenti che forniscono le navi, gli aerei, gli elicotteri e i droni che costituiscono i muri marittimi dell’Europa per tentare di controllare i flussi migratori nel Mediterraneo, in particolare le operazioni di Frontex, l’operazione Sophia e l’operazione italiana Mare Nostrum;
– e le imprese specializzate in informatica e in sicurezza incaricate di sviluppare, eseguire, estendere e mantenere i sistemi dell’UE che controllano i movimento delle persone, quali SIS II (Schengen Information System) e EES (Entry/Exii Scheme), che costituiscono i muri virtuali dell’Europa.
Dei budget fiorenti

Il flusso di denaro dai contribuenti ai costruttori di muri è stato estremamente lucrativo e non cessa di aumentare. Il report rivela che dalla fine della guerra fredda, le imprese hanno raccolto i profitti di almeno 900 milioni di euro di spese dei paesi dell’UE per i muri fisici e per le recinzioni. Con i dati parziali (sia nella portata e che negli anni), i costi reali raggiungerebbero almeno 1 miliardo di euro. Inoltre, le imprese che forniscono la tecnologia e i servizi che accompagnano i muri hanno ugualmente beneficiato di un flusso costante di finanziamenti da parte dell’UE, in particolare i Fondi per le frontiere esterne (1,7 miliardi di euro, 2007-2013) e i Fondi per la sicurezza interna - Fondi per le Frontiere (2,76 miliardi di euro, 2014-2020).

Le spese dell’UE per i muri marittimi hanno raggiunto almeno 676,4 milioni di euro tra il 2006 e il 2017 (di cui 534 milioni sono stati spesi da Frontex, 28 milioni dall’UE nell’operazione Sophia e 114 milioni dall’Italia nell’operazione Mare Nostrum) e sarebbero molto superiori se si includessero tutte le operazioni delle guardie costiera nazionali nel Mediterraneo.

Questa esplosione dei budget per le frontiere ha le condizioni per proseguire. Nel quadro del suo budget per il prossimo ciclo di bilancio dell’Unione Europea (2021-2027), la Commissione europea ha attribuito 8,02 miliardi di euro al suo fondo di gestione integrata delle frontiere (2021-2027), 11,27 miliardi a Frontex (dei quali 2,2 miliardi saranno utilizzati per l’acquisizione, il mantenimento e l’utilizzo di mezzi aerei, marittimi e terrestri) e almeno 1,9 miliardi di euro di spese totali (2000-2027) alle sue banche dati di identificazione e a Eurosur (il sistemo europeo di sorveglianza delle frontiere).
I principali attori del settore degli armamenti

Tre giganti europei del settore della difesa e della sicurezza giocano un ruolo cruciale nei differenti tipi di frontiere d’Europa: Thales, Leonardo e Airbus.

– Thales è un’impresa francese specializzata negli armamenti e nella sicurezza, con una presenza significativa nei Paesi Bassi, che produce sistemi radar e sensori utilizzati da numerose navi della sicurezza frontaliera. I sistemi Thales, per esempio, sono stati utilizzati dalle navi olandesi e portoghesi impiegate nelle operazioni di Frontex.
Thales produce ugualmente sistemi di sorveglianza marittima per droni e lavora attualmente per sviluppare una infrastruttura di sorveglianza delle frontiere per Eurosus, che permetta di seguire e controllare i rifugiati prima che raggiungano l’Europa con l’aiuto di applicazioni per Smartphone, e studia ugualmente l’utilizzo di “High Altitude Pseudo-Satellites - HAPS” per la sicurezza delle frontiere, per l’Agenzia spaziale europea e Frontex. Thales fornisce attualmente il sistema di sicurezza del porto altamente militarizzato di Calais.
Con l’acquisto nel 2019 di Gemalto, multinazionale specializzata nella sicurezza e identità (biometrica), Thales diventa un attore importante nello sviluppo e nel mantenimento dei muri virtuali dell’UE. L’impresa ha partecipato a 27 progetti di ricerca dell’UE sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

– La società di armamenti italiana Leonardo (originariamente Finmeccanica o Leonardo-Finmeccanica) è uno dei principali fornitori di elicotteri per la sicurezza delle frontiere, utilizzati dalle operazioni Mare Nostrum, Hera e Sophia in Italia. Ha ugualmente fatto parte dei principali fornitori di UAV (o droni), ottenendo un contratto di 67,1 milioni di euro nel 2017 con l’EMSA (Agenzia europea per la sicurezza marittima) per fornire le agenzie di guardia costiera dell’UE.
Leonardo faceva ugualmente parte di un consorzio che si è visto attribuire un contratto di 142,1 milioni di euro nel 2019 per attuare e assicurare il mantenimento dei muri virtuali dell’UE, ossia il Sistema di entrata/uscita (EES). La società detiene, con Thales, Telespazio, che partecipa ai progetti di osservazione dai satelliti dell’UE (React e Copernicus) utilizzati per controllare le frontiere. Leonardo ha partecipato a 24 progetti di ricerca dell’UE sulla sicurezza e il controllo delle frontiere, tra cui lo sviluppo di Eurosur.

– Il gigante degli armamenti pan-europei Airbus è un importante fornitore di elicotteri utilizzati nella sorveglianza delle frontiere marittime e di alcune frontiere terrestri, impiegati da Belgio, Francia, Germania, Grecia, Italia, Lituania e Spagna, in particolare nelle operazioni marittime Sophia, Poseidon e Triton. Airbus e le sue filiali hanno partecipato almeno a 13 progetti di ricerca sulla sicurezza delle frontiere finanziati dall’UE, tra cui OCEAN2020, PERSEUS e LOBOS.

Il ruolo chiave di queste società di armamenti in realtà non è sorprendente. Come è stato dimostrato da “Border Wars” (2016), queste imprese, in quanto appartenenti a lobby come EOS (Organizzazione europea per la sicurezza) e ASD (Associazione delle industrie aerospaziali e della difesa in Europa), hanno ampiamente contribuito a influenzare l’orientamento della politica delle frontiere dell’UE. Paradossalmente, questi stessi marchi fanno ugualmente parte dei quattro più grandi venditori europei di armi al Medio Oriente e all’Africa del Nord, contribuendo così ad alimentare i conflitti all’origine di queste migrazioni forzate.

Allo stesso modo Indra gioca un ruolo non indifferente nel controllo delle frontiere in Spagna e nel Mediterraneo. L’impresa ha ottenuto una serie di contratti per fortificare Ceuta e Melilla (enclavi spagnole nel Nord del Marocco). Indra ha ugualmente sviluppato il sistema di controllo delle frontiere SIVE (con sistemi radar, di sensori e visivi) che è installato nella maggior parte delle frontiere della Spagna, così come in Portogallo e in Romania. Nel luglio 2018, Indra ha ottenuto un contratto di 10 milioni di euro per assicurare la gestione di SIVE su più siti per due anni. L’impresa è molto attiva nel fare lobby presso l’UE. È ugualmente una dei grandi beneficiari dei finanziamenti per la ricerca dell’UE, che assicurano il coordinamento del progetto PERSEUS per lo sviluppo di Eurosur e il Seahorse Network, la rete di scambio di informazioni tra le forze di polizia dei paesi mediterranei (in Europa e in Africa) per fermare le migrazioni.

Le società di armamenti israeliane hanno anch’esse ottenuto numerosi contratti nel quadro della sicurezza delle frontiere in UE. Nel 2018, Frontex ha selezionato il drone Heron delle Israel Aerospace Industries per i voli di sorveglianza degli esperimenti pilota nel Mediterraneo. Nel 2015, la società israeliana Elbit Systems ha venduto sei dei suoi droni Hermes al Corpo di guardie di frontiera svizzero, nel quadro di un contratto controverso di 230 milioni di euro. Ha anche firmato in seguito un contratto per droni con l’EMSA (Agenzia europea per la sicurezza marittima), in quanto subappaltatore della società portoghese CEIIA (2018), così come dei contratti per equipaggiare tre navi di pattugliamento per la Hellenic Coast Guard (2019).
Gli appaltatori dei muri fisici

La maggioranza di muri e recinzioni che sono stati rapidamente eretti attraverso l’Europa, sono stati costruiti da società di BTP nazionali/società nazionali di costruzioni, ma un’impresa europea ha dominato nel mercato: la European Security Fencing, un produttore spagnolo di filo spinato, in particolare di un filo a spirale chiamato “concertina”. È famosa per aver fornito i fili spinati delle recinzioni che circondano Ceuta e Melilla. L’impresa ha ugualmente dotato di fili spinati le frontiere tra l’Ungheria e la Serbia, e i suoi fili spinati “concertina” sono stati installati alle frontiere tra Bulgaria e Turchia e tra l’Austria e la Slovenia, così come a Calais e, per qualche giorno, alla frontiera tra Ungheria e Slovenia, prima di essere ritirati. Dato che essi detengono il monopolio sul mercato da un po’ di tempo a questa parte, è probabile che i fili spinati “concertina” siano stati utilizzati presso altre frontiere in Europa.

Tra le altre imprese che hanno fornito i muri e le tecnologie ad essi associate, si trova DAT-CON (Croazia, Cipro, Macedonia, Moldavia, Slovenia e Ucraina), Geo Alpinbau (Austria/Slovenia), Indra, Dragados, Ferrovial, Proyectos Y Tecnología Sallén e Eulen (Spagna/Marocco), Patstroy Bourgas, Infra Expert, Patengineeringstroy, Geostroy Engineering, Metallic-Ivan Mihaylov et Indra (Bulgaria/Turchia), Nordecon e Defendec (Estonia/Russia), DAK Acélszerkezeti Kft e SIA Ceļu būvniecības sabiedrība IGATE (Lettonia/Russia), Gintrėja (Lituania/Russi), Minis e Legi-SGS (Slovenia/Croazia), Groupe CW, Jackson’s Fencing, Sorhea, Vinci/Eurovia e Zaun Ltd (Francia/Regno Unito).

I costi reali dei muri e delle tecnologie associate superano spesso le stime originali. Numerose accuse e denunce per corruzione sono state allo stesso modo formulate, in certi casi perché i progetti erano stati attribuiti a delle imprese che appartenevano ad amici di alti funzionari. In Slovenia, per esempio, accuse di corruzione riguardanti un contratto per la costruzione di muri alle frontiere hanno portato a tre anni di battaglie legali per avere accesso ai documenti; la questione è passata poi alla Corte suprema.

Malgrado tutto ciò, il Fondo europeo per le frontiere esterne ha sostenuto finanziariamente le infrastrutture e i servizi tecnologici di numerose operazioni alle frontiere degli Stati membri. In Macedonia, per esempio, l’UE ha versato 9 milioni di euro per finanziare dei veicoli di pattugliamento, delle telecamere a visione notturna, dei rivelatori di battito cardiaco e sostegno tecnico alle guardie di frontiera nell’aiuto della gestione della sua frontiera meridionale.
Gli speculatori dei muri marittimi

I dati che permettono di determinare quali imbarcazioni, elicotteri e aerei sono utilizzati nelle operazioni marittime in Europa mancano di trasparenza. È dunque difficile recuperare tutte le informazioni. Le nostre ricerche mostrano comunque che tra le principali società implicate figurano i giganti europei degli armamenti Airbus e Leonardo, così come grandi imprese di costruzione navale come l’olandese Damen e l’italiana Fincantieri.

Le imbarcazioni di pattugliamento di Damen sono servite per delle operazioni frontaliere portate avanti da Albania, Belgio, Bulgaria, Portogallo, Paesi Bassi, Romania, Svezia e Regno Unito, così come per le vaste operazioni di Frontex (Poseidon, Triton e Themis), per l’operazione Sophia e hanno ugualmente sostento la NATO nell’operazione Poseidon.

Al di fuori dell’Europa, la Libia, il Marocco, la Tunisia e la Turchia utilizzano delle imbarcazioni Damen per la sicurezza delle frontiere, spesso in collaborazione con l’UE o i suoi Stati membri. Per esempio, le sei navi Damen che la Turchia ha comprato per la sua guardia costiera nel 2006, per un totale di 20 milioni di euro, sono state finanziate attraverso lo strumento europeo che contribuirebbe alla stabilità e alla pace (IcSP), destinato a mantenere la pace e a prevenire i conflitti.

La vendita di imbarcazioni Damen alla Libia mette in evidenza l’inquietante costo umano di questo commercio. Nel 2012, Damen ha fornito quattro imbarcazioni di pattugliamento alla guardia costiera libica, che sono state vendute come equipaggiamento civile col fine di evitare la licenza di esportazione di armi nei Paesi Bassi. I ricercatori hanno poi scoperto che non solo le imbarcazioni erano state vendute con dei punti di fissaggio per le armi, ma che erano state in seguito armate ed utilizzate per fermare le imbarcazioni di rifugiati. Numerosi incidenti che hanno implicato queste imbarcazioni sono stati segnalati, tra i quali l’annegamento di 20 o 30 rifugiati. Damen si è rifiutata di commentare, dichiarando di aver convenuto col governo libico di non divulgare alcuna informazione riguardante le imbarcazioni.

Numerosi costruttori navali nazionali, oltre a Damen, giocano un ruolo determinante nelle operizioni marittime poiché sono sistematicamente scelti con priorità dai paesi partecipanti a ogni operazione di Frontex o ad altre operazioni nel Mediterraneo. Tutte le imbarcazioni fornite dall’Italia all’operazione Sophia sono state costruite da Fincantieri e tutte quelle spagnole sono fornite da Navantia e dai suoi predecessori. Allo stesso modo, la Francia si rifornisce da DCN/DCNS, ormai Naval Group, e tutte le imbarcazioni tedesche sono state costruite da diversi cantieri navali tedeschi (Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft, HDW, Lürssen Gruppe). Altre imprese hanno partecipato alle operazioni di Frontex, tra cui la società greca Motomarine Shipyards, che ha prodotto i pattugliatori rapidi Panther 57 utilizzati dalla guardia costiera greca, così come la Hellenic Shipyards e la Israel Shipyards.

La società austriaca Schiebel, che fornisce i droni S-100, gioca un ruolo importante nella sorveglianza aerea delle attività marittime. Nel novembre 2018, è stata selezionata dall’EMSA per un contratto di sorveglianza marittima di 24 milioni di euro riguardante differenti operazioni che includevano la sicurezza delle frontiere. Dal 2017, Schiebel ha ugualmente ottenuto dei contratti con la Croazia, la Danimarca, l’Islanda, l’Italia, il Portogallo e la Spagna. L’impresa ha un passato controverso: ha venduto dei droni a numerosi paesi in conflitto armato o governati da regimi repressivi come la Libia, il Myanmar, gli Emirati Arabi Uniti e lo Yemen.

La Finlandia e i Paesi Bassi hanno impiegato degli aerei Dornier rispettivamente nel quadro delle operazioni Hermès, Poseidon e Triton. Dornier appartiene ormai alla filiale americana della società di armamenti israeliana Elbit Systems.
CAE Aviation (Lussemburgo), DEA Aviation (Regno Unito) e EASP Air (Paesi Bassi) hanno tutte ottenuto dei contratti di sorveglianza aerea per Frontex.
Airbus, Dassault Aviation, Leonardo e l’americana Lockheed Martin hanno fornito il più grande numero di aerei utilizzati per l’operazione Sophia.

L’UE e i suoi Stati membri difendono le loro operazioni marittime pubblicizzando il loro ruolo nel salvataggio dei rifugiati in mare. Ma non è questo il loro obiettivo principale, come sottolinea il direttore di Frontex Fabrice Leggeri nell’aprile 2015, dichiarando che “le azioni volontarie di ricerca e salvataggio” non fanno parte del mandato affidato a Frontex, e che salvare delle vite non dovrebbe essere una priorità. La criminalizzazione delle operazioni di salvataggio da parte delle ONG, gli ostacoli che esse incontrano, così come la violenza e i respingimenti illegali dei rifugiati, spesso denunciati, illustrano bene il fatto che queste operazioni marittime sono volte soprattutto a costituire muri piuttosto che missioni umanitarie.
I muri virtuali

I principali contratti dell’UE legati ai muri virtuali sono stati affidati a due imprese, a volte in quanto leader di un consorzio.
Sopra Steria è il partner principale per lo sviluppo e il mantenimento del Sistema d’informazione dei visti (SIV), del Sistema di informazione Schengen (SIS II) e di Eurodac (European Dactyloscopy) e GMV ha firmato una serie di contratti per Eurosur. I sistemi che essi concepiscono permettono di controllare e di sorvegliare i movimenti delle persone attraverso l’Europa e, sempre più spesso, al di là delle sue frontiere.

Sopra Steria è un’impresa francese di servizi per consultazioni in tecnologia che ha, ad oggi, ottenuto dei contratti con l’UE per un valore totale di più di 150 milioni di euro. Nel quadro di alcuni di questi grossi contratti, Sopra Steria ha formato dei consorzi con HP Belgio, Bull e 3M Belgio.

Malgrado l’ampiezza di questi mercati, Sopra Steria ha ricevuto importanti critiche per la sua mancanza di rigore nel rispetto delle tempistiche e dei budget. Il lancio di SIS II è stato costantemente ritardato, costringendo la Commissione a prolungare i contratti e ad aumentare i budget. Sopra Steria aveva ugualmente fatto parte di un altro consorzio, Trusted Borders, impegnato nello sviluppo del programma e-Borders nel Regno Unito. Quest’ultimo è terminato nel 2010 dopo un accumulo di ritardi e di mancate consegne. Tuttavia, la società ha continuato a ottenere contratti, a causa del suo quasi monopolio di conoscenze e di relazioni con i rappresentanti dell’UE. Il ruolo centrale di Sopra Steria nello sviluppo dei sistemi biometrici dell’UE ha ugualmente portato alla firma di altri contratti nazionali con, tra gli altri, il Belgio, la Bulgaria, la Repubblica ceca, la Finlandia, la Francia, la Germania, la Romania e la Slovenia.

GMV, un’impresa tecnologica spagnola, ha concluso una serie di grossi contratti per Eurosur, dopo la sua fase sperimentale nel 2010, per almeno 25 milioni di euro. Essa rifornisce ugualmente di tecnologie la Guardia Civil spagnola, tecnologie quali, ad esempio, i centri di controllo del suo Sistema integrato di sorveglianza esterna (SIVE), sistema di sicurezza delle frontiere, così come rifornisce di servizi di sviluppo logistico Frontex. L’impresa ha partecipato ad almeno dieci progetti di ricerca finanziati dall’UE sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

La maggior parte dei grossi contratti riguardanti i muri virtuali che non sono stati conclusi con consorzi di cui facesse parte Sopra Steria, sono stati attribuiti da eu-LISA (l’Agenzia europea per la gestione operazionale dei sistemi di informazione su vasta scale in seno allo spazio di libertà, di sicurezza e di giustizia) a dei consorzi di imprese specializzate nell’informazione e nelle nuove tecnologie, tra questi: Accenture, Atos Belgium e Morpho (rinominato Idemia).
Lobby

Come testimonia il nostro report “Border Wars”, il settore della difesa e della sicurezza, grazie ad una lobbying efficace, ha un’influenza considerabile nell’elaborazione delle politiche di difesa e di sicurezza dell’UE. Le imprese di questo settore industriale sono riuscite a posizionarsi come esperti della sicurezza delle frontiere, portando avanti il loro discorso secondo il quale la migrazione è prima di tutto una minaccia per la sicurezza che deve essere combattuta tramite mezzi militari e securitari. Questo crea così una domanda continua del catalogo sempre più fornito di equipaggiamenti e servizi che esse forniscono per la sicurezza e il controllo delle frontiere.

Un numero alto di imprese che abbiamo nominato, in particolare le grandi società di armamenti, fanno parte dell’EOS (Organizzazione europea per la sicurezza), il più importante gruppo di pressione sulla sicurezza delle frontiere.

Molte imprese informatiche che hanno concepito i muri virtuali dell’UE sono membri dell’EAB (Associazione Europea per la Biometria). L’EOS ha un “Gruppo di lavoro sulla sicurezza integrata delle frontiere” per “permettere lo sviluppo e l’adozione delle migliori soluzioni tecnologiche per la sicurezza delle frontiere sia ai checkpoint che lungo le frontiere marittime e terrestri”.
Il gruppo di lavoro è presieduto da Giorgio Gulienetti, della società di armi italiana Leonardo, Isto Mattila (diplomato all’università di scienze applicate) e Peter Smallridge di Gemalto, multinazionale specializzata nella sicurezza numerica, recentemente acquisita da Thales.

I lobbisti di imprese e i rappresentanti di questi gruppi di pressione incontrano regolarmente le istituzioni dell’UE, tra cui la Commissione europea, nel quadro di comitati di consiglio ufficiali, pubblicano proposte influenti, organizzano incontri tra il settore industriale, i policy-makers e i dirigenti e si ritrovano allo stesso modo in tutti i saloni, le conferenze e i seminari sulla difesa e la sicurezza.

Airbus, Leonardo e Thales e l’EOS hanno anche assistito a 226 riunioni ufficiali di lobby con la Commissione europea tra il 2014 e il 2019. In queste riunioni, i rappresentanti del settore si presentano come esperti della sicurezza delle frontiere, e propongono i loro prodotti e servizi come soluzione alle “minacce alla sicurezza” costituite dall’immigrazione. Nel 2017, queste stesse imprese e l’EOS hanno speso fino a 2,56 milioni di euro in lobbying.

Si constata una relazione simile per quanto riguarda i muri virtuali: il Centro comune della ricerca della Commissione europea domanda apertamente che le politiche pubbliche favoriscano “l’emergenza di una industria biometrica europea dinamica”.
Un business mortale, una scelta

La conclusione di questa inchiesta sul business dell’innalzamento di muri è chiara: la presenza di un’Europa piena di muri si rivela molto fruttuosa per una larga fetta di imprese del settore degli armamenti, della difesa, dell’informatica, del trasporto marittimo e delle imprese di costruzioni. I budget che l’UE ha pianificato per la sicurezza delle frontiere nei prossimi dieci anni mostrano che si tratta di un commercio che continua a prosperare.

Si tratta altresì di un commercio mortale. A causa della vasta militarizzazione delle frontiere dell’Europa sulla terraferma e in mare, i rifugiati e i migranti intraprendono dei percorsi molto più pericolosi e alcuni si trovano anche intrappolati in terribili condizioni in paesi limitrofi come la Libia. Non vengono registrate tutte le morti, ma quelle che sono registrate nel Mediterraneo mostrano che il numero di migranti che annegano provando a raggiungere l’Europa continua ad aumentare ogni anno.

Questo stato di cose non è inevitabile. È il risultato sia di decisioni politiche prese dall’UE e dai suoi Stati membri, sia dalle decisioni delle imprese di trarre profitto da queste politiche. Sono rare le imprese che prendono posizione, come il produttore tedesco di filo spinato Mutinox che ha dichiarato nel 2015 che non avrebbe venduto i suoi prodotti al governo ungherese per il seguente motivo: “I fili spinati sono concepiti per impedire atti criminali, come il furto. Dei rifugiati, bambini e adulti, non sono dei criminali”.

È tempo che altri politici e capi d’impresa riconoscano questa stessa verità: erigere muri contro le popolazioni più vulnerabili viola i diritti umani e costituisce un atto immorale che sarà evidentemente condannato dalla storia.

Trent’anni dopo la caduta del muro di Berlino, è tempo che l’Europa abbatta i suoi nuovi muri.

▻https://www.meltingpot.org/La-costruzione-di-muri-un-business.html

How the arms industry drives Fortress Europe’s expansion

https://crisismag.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/cebccebfcf81ceb9ceb1-night1-copy.jpg?w=1024#.jpg

In recent years, rising calls for deterrence have intensified the physical violence migrants face at the EU border. The externalization of the border through deals with sending and transit countries signals the expansion of this securitization process. Financial gains by international arms firms in this militarization trend form an obstacle for policy change.

In March, April, and May of this year, multiple European countries deployed military forces to their national borders. This was done to assist with controls and patrols in the wake of border closures and other movement restrictions due to the Covid-19 crisis. Poland deployed 1,460 soldiers to the border to support the Border Guard and police as part of a larger military operation in reaction to Covid-19. And the Portuguese police used military drones as a complement to their land border checks. According to overviews from NATO, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands (military police), Slovakia, and Slovenia all stationed armed forces at their national borders.

While some of these deployments have been or will be rolled back as the Corona crisis dies down, they are not exceptional developments. Rather, using armed forces for border security and control has been a common occurrence at EU external borders since the so-called refugee crisis of 2015. They are part of the continuing militarisation of European border and migration policies, which is known to put refugees at risk but is increasingly being expanded to third party countries. Successful lobbying from the military and security industry has been an important driver for these policies, from which large European arms companies have benefited.

The militarization of borders happens when EU member states send armies to border regions, as they did in Operation Sophia off the Libyan coast. This was the first outright EU military mission to stop migration. But border militarization also includes the use of military equipment for migration control, such as helicopters and patrol vessels, as well as the the EU-wide surveillance system Eurosur, which connects surveillance data from all individual member states. Furthermore, EU countries now have over 1,000 kilometers of walls and fences on their borders. These are rigged with surveillance, monitoring, and detection technologies, and accompanied by an increasing use of drones and other autonomous systems. The EU also funds a constant stream of Research & Technology (R&T) projects to develop new technologies and services to monitor and manage migration.

This process has been going on for decades. The Schengen Agreement of 1985, and the subsequent creation of the Schengen Area, which coupled the opening of the internal EU borders with robust control at the external borders, can be seen as a starting point for these developments. After 2011, when the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ led to fears of mass migration to Europe, and especially since the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the EU accelerated the boosting and militarising of border security, enormously. Since then, stopping migration has been at the top of the EU agenda.

An increasingly important part of the process of border militarization isn’t happening at the European borders, but far beyond them. The EU and its member states are incentivizing third party countries to help stop migrants long before they reach Europe. This externalising of borders has taken many forms, from expanding the goals of EUCAP missions in Mali and Niger to include the prevention of irregular migration, to funding and training the Libyan Coast Guard to return refugees back to torture and starvation in the infamous detention centers in Libya. It also includes the donation of border security equipment, for example from Germany to Tunisia, and funding for purchases, such as Turkey’s acquisition of coast guard vessels to strengthen its operational capacities.

Next to the direct consequences of European border externalisation efforts, these policies cause and worsen problems in the third party countries concerned: diverting development funds and priorities, ruining migration-based economies, and strengthening authoritarian regimes such as those in Chad, Belarus, Eritrea, and Sudan by providing funding, training and equipment to their military and security forces. Precisely these state organs are most responsible for repression and abuses of human rights. All this feeds drivers of migration, including violence, repression, and unemployment. As such, it is almost a guarantee for more refugees in the future.

EU border security agency Frontex has also extended its operations into non-EU-countries. Ongoing negotiations and conclusions of agreements with Balkan countries resulted in the first operation in Albania having started in May 2019. And this is only a small part of Frontex’ expanding role in recent years. In response to the ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015, the European Commission launched a series of proposals that saw large increases in the powers of the agency, including giving member states binding advice to boost their border security, and giving Frontex the right to intervene in member states’ affairs (even without their consent) by decision of the Commission or Council.

These proposals also included the creation of a 10,000 person strong standing corps of border guards and a budget to buy or lease its own equipment. Concretely, Frontex started with a budget of €6 million in 2005, which grew to €143 million in 2015. This was then quickly increased again from €239 million in 2016 to €460 million in 2020. The enormous expansion of EU border security and control has been accompanied by rapidly increasing budgets in general. In recent years, billions of euros have been spent on fortifying borders, setting up biometric databases, increasing surveillance capacities, and paying non-EU-countries to play their parts in this expansion process.

Negotiations about the next seven-year-budget for the EU, the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027, are still ongoing. In the European Commission’s latest proposal, which is clearly positioned as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the fund for strengthening member states’ border security, the Integrated Border Management Fund, has been allotted €12.5 billion. Its predecessors, the External Borders Fund (2007-2013) and the Internal Security Fund – Borders (2014-2020), had much smaller budgets: €1.76 billion and €2.70 billion, respectively. For Frontex, €7.5 billion is reserved, with €2.2 billion earmarked for purchasing or leasing equipment such as helicopters, drones, and patrol vessels. These huge budget increases are exemplary of the priority the EU attaches to stopping migration.

The narrative underlying these policies and budget growths is the perception of migration as a threat; a security problem. As researcher, Ainhoa Ruiz (Centre Delàs) writes, “the securitisation process also includes militarisation,” because “the prevailing paradigm for providing security is based on military principles: the use of force and coercion, more weapons equating to more security, and the achievement of security by eliminating threats.”

This narrative hasn’t come out of the blue. It is pushed by right wing politicians and often followed by centrist and leftist parties afraid of losing voters. Importantly, it is also promoted by an extensive and successful industrial lobby. According to Martin Lemberg-Pedersen (Assistant Professor in Global Refugee Studies, Aalborg University), arms companies “establish themselves as experts on border security, and use this position to frame immigration to Europe as leading to evermore security threats in need of evermore advanced [security] products.” The narrative of migration as a security problem thus sets the stage for militaries, and the security companies behind the commercial arms lobby, to offer their goods and services as the solution. The range of militarization policies mentioned so far reflects the broad adoption of this narrative.

The lobby organizations of large European military and security companies regularly interact with the European Commission and EU border agencies. They have meetings, organise roundtables, and see each other at military and security fairs and conferences. Industry representatives also take part in official advisory groups, are invited to present new arms and technologies, and write policy proposals. These proposals can sometimes be so influential that they are adopted as policy, almost unamended.

This happened, for instance, when the the Commission decided to open up the Instrument contributing to Security and Peace, a fund meant for peace-building and conflict prevention. The fund’s terms were expanded to cover provision of third party countries with non-lethal security equipment, for example, for border security purposes. The new policy document for this turned out to be a step-by-step reproduction of an earlier proposal from lobby organisation, Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). Yet, perhaps the most far-reaching success of this kind is the expansion of Frontex, itself, into a European Border Guard. Years before it actually happened, the industry had already been pushing for this outcome.

The same companies that are at the forefront of the border security and control lobby are, not surprisingly, also the big winners of EU and member states’ contracts in these areas. These include three of the largest European (and global) arms companies, namely, Airbus (Paneuropean), Leonardo (Italy) and Thales (France). These companies are active in many aspects of the border security and control market. Airbus’ and Leonardo’s main product in this field are helicopters, with EU funds paying for many purchases by EU and third countries. Thales provides radar, for example, for border patrol vessels, and is heavily involved in biometric and digital identification, especially after having acquired market leader, Gemalto, last year.

These three companies are the main beneficiaries of the European anti-migration obsession. At the same time, these very three companies also contribute to new migration streams to Europe’s shores through their trade in arms. They are responsible for significant parts of Europe’s arms exports to countries at war, and they provide the arms used by parties in internal armed conflicts, by human rights violators, and by repressive regimes. These are the forces fueling the reasons for which people are forced to flee in the first place.

Many other military and security companies also earn up to hundreds of millions of euros from large border security and control projects oriented around logistics and transport. Dutch shipbuilder Damen provided not only many southern European countries with border patrol vessels, but also controversially sold those to Libya and Turkey, among others. Its ships have also been used in Frontex operations, in Operation Sophia, and on the Channel between Calais and Dover.

The Spanish company, European Security Fencing, provided razor wire for the fences around the Spanish enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, in Morocco, as well as the fence at Calais and the fences on the borders of Austria, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Frontex, the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), and Greece leased border surveillance drones from Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). These are Israeli military companies that routinely promote their products as ‘combat-proven’ or ‘battlefield tested’ against Palestinians.

Civipol, a French public-private company owned by the state, and several large arms producers (including Thales, Airbus, and Safran), run a string of EU-/member state-funded border security projects in third party countries. This includes setting up fingerprint databases of the whole populations of Mali and Senegal, which facilitates identification and deportation of their nationals from Europe. These are just a few examples of the companies that benefit from the billions of euros that the EU and its member states spend on a broad range of purchases and projects in their bid to stop migration.

The numbers of forcibly displaced people in the world grew to a staggering 79.5 million by the end of last year. Instead of helping to eliminate the root causes of migration, EU border and migration policies, as well as its arms exports to the rest of the world, are bound to lead to more refugees in the future. The consequences of these policies have already been devastating. As experts in the field of migration have repeatedly warned, the militarisation of borders primarily pushes migrants to take alternative migration routes that are often more dangerous and involve the risks of relying on criminal smuggling networks. The Mediterranean Sea has become a sad witness of this, turning into a graveyard for a growing percentage of refugees trying to cross it.

The EU approach to border security doesn’t stand on its own. Many other countries, in particular Western ones and those with authoritarian leaders, follow the same narrative and policies. Governments all over the world, but particularly those in the US, Australia, and Europe, continue to spend billions of euros on border security and control equipment and services. And they plan to increase budgets even more in the coming years. For military and security companies, this is good news; the global border security market is expected to grow by over 7% annually for the next five years to a total of $65 billion in 2025. It looks like they will belong to the very few winners of increasingly restrictive policies targeting vulnerable people on the run.

▻https://crisismag.net/2020/06/27/how-the-arms-industry-drives-fortress-europes-expansion
#industrie_militaire #covid-19 #coronavirus #frontières_extérieures #Operation_Sophia #Eurosur #surveillance #drones #technologie #EUCAP #externalisation #Albanie #budget #Integrated_Border_Management_Fund #menace #lobby_industriel #Instrument_contributing_to_Security_and_Peace #conflits #paix #prévention_de_conflits #Aerospace_and_Defence_Industries_Association_of_Europe (#ASD) #Airbus #Leonardo #Thales #hélicoptères #radar #biométrie #identification_digitale #Gemalto #commerce_d'armes #armement #Damen #European_Security_Fencing #barbelé #European_Maritime_Safety_Agency (#EMSA) #Elbit #Israel_Aerospace_Industries (#IAI) #Civipol #Safran #base_de_données

–—

Pour @etraces :

Civipol, a French public-private company owned by the state, and several large arms producers (including Thales, Airbus, and Safran), run a string of EU-/member state-funded border security projects in third party countries. This includes setting up fingerprint databases of the whole populations of Mali and Senegal, which facilitates identification and deportation of their nationals from Europe

GUARDING THE FORTRESS. The role of Frontex in the militarisation and securitisation of migration flows in the European Union

https://i.imgur.com/CAr08Sh.png

The report focuses on 19 Frontex operations run by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (hereafter Frontex) to explore how the agency is militarising borders and criminalising migrants, undermining fundamental rights to freedom of movement and the right to asylum.

https://www.tni.org/files/styles/content_full_width/public/af_infografia_frontex_eng_0.jpg?itok=en5KE_zd#.jpg

This report is set in a wider context in which more than 70.8 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced, according to the 2018 figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (UNHCR, 2019). Some of these have reached the borders of the European Union (EU), seeking protection and asylum, but instead have encountered policy responses that mostly aim to halt and intercept migration flows, against the background of securitisation policies in which the governments of EU Member States see migration as a threat. One of the responses to address migration flows is the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (hereafter Frontex), established in 2004 as the EU body in charge of guarding what many have called ‘Fortress Europe’, and whose practices have helped to consolidate the criminalisation of migrants and the securitisation of their movements.

The report focuses on analysing the tools deployed by Fortress Europe, in this case through Frontex, to prevent the freedom of movement and the right to asylum, from its creation in 2004 to the present day.

The sources used to write this report were from the EU and Frontex, based on its budgets and annual reports. The analysis focused on the Frontex regulations, the language used and its meaning, as well as the budgetary trends, identifying the most significant items – namely, the joint operations and migrant-return operations.

A table was compiled of all the joint operations mentioned in the annual reports since the Agency was established in 2005 up to 2018 (see annexes). The joint operations were found on government websites but were not mentioned in the Frontex annual reports. Of these operations, we analysed those of the longest duration, or that have showed recent signs of becoming long-term operations. The joint operations are analysed in terms of their objectives, area of action, the mandates of the personnel deployed, and their most noteworthy characteristics.

Basically, the research sought to answer the following questions: What policies are being implemented in border areas and in what context? How does Frontex act in response to migration movements? A second objective was to analyse how Frontex securitises the movement of refugees and other migrants, with the aim of contributing to the analysis of the process of border militarisation and the security policies applied to non-EU migrants by the EU and its Member States.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/guarding-the-fortress

Pour télécharger le rapport_
▻https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/informe40_eng_ok.pdf

#rapport #TNI #Transnational_institute

voir aussi :
Asylum Outsourced : McKinsey’s Secret Role in Europe’s Refugee Crisis
►https://seenthis.net/messages/862826

#Frontex aircraft : Below the radar against international law

https://digit.site36.net/files/2020/06/OSPREY1_OSPREY3_Frontex-e1591910024885-1024x483.jpeg

For three years, Frontex has been chartering small aircraft for the surveillance of the EU’s external borders. First Italy was thus supported, then Croatia followed. Frontex keeps the planes details secret, and the companies also switch off the transponders for position display during operations.

The European Commission does not want to make public which private surveillance planes Frontex uses in the Mediterranean. In the non-public answer to a parliamentary question, the EU border agency writes that the information on the aircraft is „commercially confidential“ as it contains „personal data and sensitive operational information“.

Frontex offers EU member states the option of monitoring their external borders using aircraft. For this „Frontex Aerial Surveillance Service“ (FASS), Frontex charters twin-engined airplanes from European companies. Italy first made use of the service in 2017, followed a year later by Croatia. In 2018, Frontex carried out at least 1,800 flight hours under the FASS, no figures are yet available for 2019.

Air service to be supplemented with #drones

The FASS flights are carried out under the umbrella of „Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance“, which includes satellite surveillance as well as drones. Before the end of this year, the border agency plans to station large drones in the Mediterranean for up to four years. The situation pictures of the European Union’s „pre-frontier area“ are fed into the surveillance system EUROSUR, whose headquarter is located at Frontex in Warsaw. The national EUROSUR contact points, for example in Spain, Portugal and Italy, also receive this information.

In addition to private charter planes, Frontex also uses aircraft and helicopters provided by EU Member States, in the central Mediterranean via the „Themis“ mission. The EU Commission also keeps the call signs of the state aircraft operating there secret. They would be considered „sensitive operational information“ and could not be disclosed to MEPs.

Previously, the FOIA platform „Frag den Staat“ („Ask the State“) had also tried to find out details about the sea and air capacities of the member states in „Themis“. Frontex refused to provide any information on this matter. „Frag den Staat“ lost a case against Frontex before the European Court of Justice and is now to pay 23,700 Euros to the agency for legal fees.

Real-time tracking with FlightAware

The confidentiality of Frontex comes as a surprise, because companies that monitor the Mediterranean for the agency are known through a tender. Frontex has signed framework contracts with the Spanish arms group Indra as well as the charter companies CAE Aviation (Canada), Diamond-Executive Aviation (Great Britain) and EASP Air (Netherlands). Frontex is spending up to 14.5 million euros each on the contracts.

Finally, online service providers such as FlightAware can also be used to draw conclusions about which private and state airplanes are flying for Frontex in the Mediterranean. For real-time positioning, the providers use data from ADS-B transponders, which all larger aircraft must have installed. A worldwide community of non-commercial trackers receives this geodata and feeds it into the Internet. In this way, for example, Italian journalist Sergio Scandura documents practically all movements of Frontex aerial assets in the central Mediterranean.

Among the aircraft tracked this way are the twin-engined „DA-42“, „DA-62“ and „Beech 350“ of Diamond-Executive Aviation, which patrol the Mediterranean Sea on behalf of Frontex as „Osprey1“, „Osprey3“ and „Tasty“, in former times also „Osprey2“ and „Eagle1“. They are all operated by Diamond-Executive Aviation and take off and land at airports in Malta and Sicily.

https://digit.site36.net/files/2020/06/G-DMPP_Diamond_Twin_Star_42_27359520403-240x180.jpg

„Push-backs“ become „pull-backs“

In accordance with the Geneva Convention on Refugees, the EU Border Agency may not return people to states where they are at risk of torture or other serious human rights violations. Libya is not a safe haven; this assessment has been reiterated on several occasions by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, among others.

Because these „push-backs“ are prohibited, Frontex has since 2017 been helping with so-called „pull-backs“ by bringing refugees back to Libya by the Libyan coast guard rather than by EU units. With the „Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance“, Frontex is de facto conducting air reconnaissance for Libya. By November 2019, the EU border agency had notified Libyan authorities about refugee boats on the high seas in at least 42 cases.

Many international law experts consider this practice illegal. Since Libya would not be able to track down the refugees without the help of Frontex, the agency must take responsibility for the refoulements. The lawyers Omer Shatz and Juan Branco therefore want to sue responsibles of the European Union before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Frontex watches refugees drown

This is probably the reason why Frontex disguises the exact location of its air surveillance. Private maritime rescue organisations have repeatedly pointed out that Frontex aircrafts occasionally switch off their transponders so that they cannot be tracked via ADS-B. In the answer now available, this is confirmed by the EU Commission. According to this, the visibility of the aircraft would disclose „sensitive operational information“ and, in combination with other kinds of information, „undermine“ the operational objectives.

The German Ministry of the Interior had already made similar comments on the Federal Police’s assets in Frontex missions, according to which „general tracking“ of their routes in real time would „endanger the success of the mission“.

However, Frontex claims it did not issue instructions to online service providers to block the real-time position display of its planes, as journalist Scandura described. Nonetheless, the existing concealment of the operations only allows the conclusion that Frontex does not want to be controlled when the deployed aircraft watch refugees drown and Italy and Malta, as neighbouring EU member states, do not provide any assistance.

▻https://digit.site36.net/2020/06/11/frontex-aircraft-blind-flight-against-international-law
#avions #Italie #Croatie #confidentialité #transparence #Frontex_Aerial_Surveillance_Service (#FASS) #Multipurpose_Aerial_Surveillance #satellites #Méditerranée #Thermis #information_sensible #Indra #CAE_Aviation #Diamond-Executive_Aviation #EASP_Air #FlightAware #ADS-B #DA-42 #DA-62 #Beech_350 #Osprey1 #Osprey3 #Tasty #Osprey2 #Eagle1 #Malte #Sicile #pull-back #push-back #refoulement #Sergio_Scandura

Walls Must Fall: Ending the deadly politics of border militarisation - webinar recording
This webinar explored the trajectory and globalization of border militarization and anti-migrant racism across the world, the history, ideologies and actors that have shaped it, the pillars and policies that underpin the border industrial complex, the resistance of migrants, refugees and activists, and the shifting dynamics within this pandemic.

- #Harsha_Walia, author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013)
- #Jille_Belisario, Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe (TMP-E)
- #Todd_Miller, author of Empire of Borders (2020), Storming the Wall (2019) and TNI’s report More than A Wall (2019)
- #Kavita_Krishnan, All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA).
▻https://www.tni.org/en/article/walls-must-fall
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8B-cJ2bTi8&feature=emb_logo

#conférence #webinar

Le business meurtrier des frontières

http://m0.libe.com/blogs/cache/9f/9b/9f9b9e3f728b037834ad8cc337e2b232.jpg

Le 21ème siècle sera-t-il celui des barrières ? Probable, au rythme où les frontières nationales se renforcent. Dans un livre riche et documenté, publié aux éditions Syllepse, le géographe Stéphane Rosière dresse un indispensable état des lieux.

Une nuit du mois de juin, dans un centre de rétention de l’île de Rhodes, la police grecque vient chercher une vingtaine de migrant·e·s, dont deux bébés. Après un trajet en bus, elle abandonne le groupe dans un canot de sauvetage sans moteur, au milieu des eaux territoriales turques. En août, le New York Times publie une enquête révélant que cette pratique, avec la combinaison de l’arrivée aux affaires du premier ministre conservateur Kyriakos Mitsotakis et de la diffusion de la pandémie de Covid-19, est devenue courante depuis mars.

Illégales au regard du droit international, ces expulsions illustrent surtout le durcissement constant de la politique migratoire de l’Europe depuis 20 ans. Elles témoignent aussi d’un processus mondial de « pixellisation » des frontières : celles-ci ne se réduisent pas à des lignes mais à un ensemble de points plus ou moins en amont ou en aval (ports, aéroports, eaux territoriales…), où opèrent les polices frontalières.
La fin de la fin des frontières

Plus largement, le récent ouvrage de Stéphane Rosière, Frontières de fer, le cloisonnement du monde, permet de prendre la mesure d’un processus en cours de « rebordering » à travers le monde. À la fois synthèse des recherches récentes sur les frontières et résultats des travaux de l’auteur sur la résurgence de barrières frontalières, le livre est une lecture incontournable sur l’évolution contemporaine des frontières nationales.

D’autant qu’il n’y a pas si longtemps, la mondialisation semblait promettre l’affaissement des frontières, dans la foulée de la disparition de l’Union soviétique et, corollairement, de la généralisation de l’économie de marché. La Guerre froide terminée annonçait la « fin de l’histoire » et, avec elle, la disparition des limites territoriales héritées de l’époque moderne. Au point de ringardiser, rappelle Stéphane Rosière, les études sur les frontières au sein de la géographie des années 1990, parallèlement au succès d’une valorisation tous azimuts de la mobilité dans le discours politique dominant comme dans les sciences sociales.

Trente ans après, le monde se réveille avec 25 000 kilomètres de barrières frontalières – record pour l’Inde, avec plus de 3 000 kilomètres de clôtures pour prévenir l’immigration depuis le Bangladesh. Barbelés, murs de briques, caméras, détecteurs de mouvements, grilles électrifiées, les dispositifs de contrôle frontalier fleurissent en continu sur les cinq continents.
L’âge des « murs anti-pauvres »

La contradiction n’est qu’apparente. Les barrières du 21e siècle ne ferment pas les frontières mais les cloisonnent – d’où le titre du livre. C’est-à-dire que l’objectif n’est pas de supprimer les flux mondialisés – de personnes et encore moins de marchandises ni de capitaux – mais de les contrôler. Les « teichopolitiques », terme qui recouvre, pour Stéphane Rosière, les politiques de cloisonnement de l’espace, matérialisent un « ordre mondial asymétrique et coercitif », dans lequel on valorise la mobilité des plus riches tout en assignant les populations pauvres à résidence.

De fait, on observe que les barrières frontalières redoublent des discontinuités économiques majeures. Derrière l’argument de la sécurité, elles visent à contenir les mouvements migratoires des régions les plus pauvres vers des pays mieux lotis économiquement : du Mexique vers les États-Unis, bien sûr, ou de l’Afrique vers l’Europe, mais aussi de l’Irak vers l’Arabie Saoudite ou du Pakistan vers l’Iran.

Les dispositifs de contrôle frontalier sont des outils parmi d’autres d’une « implacable hiérarchisation » des individus en fonction de leur nationalité. Comme l’a montré le géographe Matthew Sparke à propos de la politique migratoire nord-américaine, la population mondiale se trouve divisée entre une classe hypermobile de citoyen·ne·s « business-class » et une masse entravée de citoyen·ne·s « low-cost ». C’est le sens du « passport index » publié chaque année par le cabinet Henley : alors qu’un passeport japonais ou allemand donne accès à plus de 150 pays, ce chiffre descend en-dessous de 30 avec un passeport afghan ou syrien.
Le business des barrières

Si les frontières revêtent une dimension économique, c’est aussi parce qu’elles sont un marché juteux. À l’heure où les pays européens ferment des lits d’hôpital faute de moyens, on retiendra ce chiffre ahurissant : entre 2005 et 2016, le budget de Frontex, l’agence en charge du contrôle des frontières de l’Union européenne, est passé de 6,3 à 238,7 millions d’euros. À quoi s’ajoutent les budgets colossaux débloqués pour construire et entretenir les barrières – budgets entourés d’opacité et sur lesquels, témoigne l’auteur, il est particulièrement difficile d’enquêter, faute d’obtenir… des fonds publics.

L’argent public alimente ainsi une « teichoéconomie » dont les principaux bénéficiaires sont des entreprises du BTP et de la sécurité européennes, nord-américaines, israéliennes et, de plus en plus, indiennes ou saoudiennes. Ce complexe sécuritaro-industriel, identifié par Julien Saada, commercialise des dispositifs de surveillance toujours plus sophistiqués et prospère au rythme de l’inflation de barrières entre pays, mais aussi entre quartiers urbains.

http://m0.libe.com/blogs/cache/fd/92/fd92c8dbc5786db94dd97322ee1dba8b.jpg

Un business d’autant plus florissant qu’il s’auto-entretient, dès lors que les mêmes entreprises vendent des armes. On sait que les ventes d’armes, alimentant les guerres, stimulent les migrations : un « cercle vertueux » s’enclenche pour les entreprises du secteur, appelées à la rescousse pour contenir des mouvements de population qu’elles participent à encourager.
« Mourir aux frontières »

Bénéfices juteux, profits politiques, les barrières font des heureux. Elles tuent aussi et l’ouvrage de Stéphane Rosière se termine sur un décompte macabre. C’est, dit-il, une « guerre migratoire » qui est en cours. Guerre asymétrique, elle oppose la police armée des puissances économiques à des groupes le plus souvent désarmés, venant de périphéries dominées économiquement et dont on entend contrôler la mobilité. Au nom de la souveraineté des États, cette guerre fait plusieurs milliers de victimes par an et la moindre des choses est de « prendre la pleine mesure de la létalité contemporaine aux frontières ».

http://m0.libe.com/blogs/cache/06/0a/060a41da8a6773e94c7d443ac22d245a.jpg

Sur le blog :

– Une synthèse sur les murs frontaliers : ►http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2019/01/28/lamour-des-murs

– Le compte rendu d’un autre livre incontournable sur les frontières : ▻http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2019/08/03/frontieres-en-mouvement

– Une synthèse sur les barricades à l’échelle intraurbaine : ►http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2020/10/21/gated-communities-le-paradis-entre-quatre-murs

▻http://geographiesenmouvement.blogs.liberation.fr/2020/11/05/le-business-meurtrier-des-frontieres

The big wall

https://thebigwall.org/wp-content/uploads/thebigwall_1_cut-1024x933.jpg

An ActionAid investigation into how Italy tried to stop migration from Africa, using EU funds, and how much money it spent

►https://thebigwall.org/en
►https://seenthis.net/messages/905345

#Italie

How Private Security Firms Profit Off the Refugee Crisis

The UK has pumped money to corporations turning #Calais into a bleak fortress.

Tall white fences lined with barbed wire – welcome to Calais. The city in northern France is an obligatory stop for anyone trying to reach the UK across the channel. But some travellers are more welcome than others, and in recent decades, a slew of private security companies have profited millions of pounds off a very expensive – an unattractive – operation to keep migrants from crossing.

Every year, thousands of passengers and lorries take the ferry at the Port of Calais-Fréthun, a trading route heavily relied upon by the UK for imports. But the entrance to the port looks more like a maximum-security prison than your typical EU border. Even before Brexit, the UK was never part of the Schengen area, which allows EU residents to move freely across 26 countries. For decades, Britain has strictly controlled its southern border in an attempt to stop migrants and asylum seekers from entering.

As early as 2000, the Port of Calais was surrounded by a 2.8 metre-high fence to prevent people from jumping into lorries waiting at the ferry departure point. In 1999, the Red Cross set up a refugee camp in the nearby town of Sangatte which quickly became overcrowded. The UK pushed for it to be closed in 2002 and then negotiated a treaty with France to regulate migration between the two countries.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1613495639826-paloma-laudet29.jpeg?resize=800:*#.jpg

The 2003 Le Toquet Treaty allowed the UK to check travellers on French soil before their arrival, and France to do the same on UK soil. Although the deal looks fair on paper, in practice it unduly burdens French authorities, as there are more unauthorised migrants trying to reach the UK from France than vice versa.

The treaty effectively moved the UK border onto French territory, but people still need to cross the channel to request asylum. That’s why thousands of refugees from conflict zones like Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Sudan and Somalia have found themselves stranded in Calais, waiting for a chance to cross illegally – often in search of family members who’ve already made it to the UK. Many end up paying people smugglers to hide them in lorries or help them cross by boat.

These underlying issues came to a head during the Syrian crisis, when refugees began camping out near Calais in 2014. The so-called Calais Jungle became infamous for its squalid conditions, and at its peak, hosted more than 7,000 people. They were all relocated to other centres in France before the camp was bulldozed in 2016. That same year, the UK also decided to build a €2.7 million border wall in Calais to block access to the port from the camp, but the project wasn’t completed until after the camp was cleared, attracting a fair deal of criticism. Between 2015 and 2018, the UK spent over €110 million on border security in France, only to top it up with over €56 million more in 2018.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1613495326154-paloma-laudet01.jpeg?resize=800:*#.jpg

But much of this public money actually flows into the accounts of private corporations, hired to build and maintain the high-tech fences and conduct security checks. According to a 2020 report by the NGO Care4Calais, there are more than 40 private security companies working in the city. One of the biggest, Eamus Cork Solutions (ECS), was founded by a former Calais police officer in 2004 and is reported to have benefited at least €30 million from various contracts as of 2016.

Stéphane Rosière, a geography professor at the University of Reims, wrote his book Iron Borders (only available in French) about the many border walls erected around the world. Rosière calls this the “security-industrial” complex – private firms that have largely replaced the traditional military-industrial sector in Europe since WW2.

“These companies are getting rich by making security systems adaptable to all types of customers – individuals, companies or states,” he said. According to Rosière, three-quarters of the world’s border security barriers were built in the 21st century.

https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1613495451657-paloma-laudet05.jpeg?resize=800:*#.jpg

Brigitte, a pensioner living close to the former site of the Calais Jungle, has seen her town change drastically over the past two decades. “Everything is cordoned off with wire mesh," she said. "I have the before and after photos, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s just wire, wire, wire.” For the past 15 years, Brigitte has been opening her garage door for asylum seekers to stop by for a cup of tea and charge their phones and laptops, earning her the nickname "Mama Charge”.

“For a while, the purpose of these fences and barriers was to stop people from crossing,” said François Guennoc, president of L’Auberge des Migrants, an NGO helping displaced migrants in Calais.

Migrants have still been desperate enough to try their luck. “They risked a lot to get into the port area, and many of them came back bruised and battered,” Guennoc said. Today, walls and fences are mainly being built to deter people from settling in new camps near Calais after being evicted.

In the city centre, all public squares have been fenced off. The city’s bridges have been fitted with blue lights and even with randomly-placed bike racks, so people won’t sleep under them.

“They’ve also been cutting down trees for some time now,” said Brigitte, pointing to a patch near her home that was once woods. Guennoc said the authorities are now placing large rocks in areas where NGOs distribute meals and warm clothes, to prevent displaced people from receiving the donations. “The objective of the measures now is also to make the NGOs’ work more difficult,” he said.

According to the NGO Refugee Rights Europe, about 1,500 men, women and minors were living in makeshift camps in and around Calais as of April 2020. In July 2020, French police raided a camp of over 500 people, destroying residents’ tents and belongings, in the largest operation since the Calais Jungle was cleared. An investigation by Slate found that smaller camps are cleared almost every day by the French police, even in the middle of winter. NGOs keep providing new tents and basic necessities to displaced residents, but they are frustrated by the waste of resources. The organisations are also concerned about COVID-19 outbreaks in the camps.

As VICE World News has previously reported, the crackdown is only pushing people to take more desperate measures to get into the UK. Boat crossings reached record-highs in 2020, and four people have died since August 2020 while trying to cross, by land and sea. “When you create an obstacle, people find a way to get around it,” Guennoc said. “If they build a wall all the way along the coast to prevent boat departures, people will go to Normandy – and that has already started.” Crossing the open sea puts migrants at even greater risk.

Rosière agrees security measures are only further endangering migrants.“All locks eventually open, no matter how complex they may be. It’s just a matter of time.”

He believes the only parties who stand to profit from the status quo are criminal organisations and private security firms: “At the end of the day, this a messed-up use of public money.”

▻https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx8yax/how-private-security-firms-profit-off-the-refugee-crisis

En français:
À Calais, la ville s’emmure
▻https://www.vice.com/fr/article/wx8yax/a-calais-la-ville-semmure

Financing Border Wars. The border industry, its financiers and human rights

https://www.tni.org/files/styles/cover_image/public/cover-images/financingborderwars-report-tni_cover.png?itok=ObB74Gyj#.jpg

This report seeks to explore and highlight the extent of today’s global border security industry, by focusing on the most important geographical markets—Australia, Europe, USA—listing the human rights violations and risks involved in each sector of the industry, profiling important corporate players and putting a spotlight on the key investors in each company.

Executive summary

Migration will be one of the defining human rights issues of the 21st century. The growing pressures to migrate combined with the increasingly militarised state security response will only exacerbate an already desperate situation for refugees and migrants. Refugees already live in a world where human rights are systematically denied. So as the climate crisis deepens and intersects with other economic and political crises, forcing more people from their homes, and as states retreat to ever more authoritarian security-based responses, the situation for upholding and supporting migrants’ rights looks ever bleaker.

States, most of all those in the richest countries, bear the ultimate responsibility to uphold the human rights of refugees and migrants recognised under International Human Rights Law. Yet corporations are also deeply implicated. It is their finance, their products, their services, their infrastructure that underpins the structures of state migration and border control. In some cases, they are directly involved in human rights violations themselves; in other cases they are indirectly involved as they facilitate the system that systematically denies refugees and migrants their rights. Most of all, through their lobbying, involvement in government ‘expert’ groups, revolving doors with state agencies, it becomes clear that corporations are not just accidental beneficiaries of the militarisation of borders. Rather they actively shape the policies from which they profit and therefore share responsibility for the human rights violations that result.

This state-corporate fusion is best described as a Border Industrial Complex, drawing on former US President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers of a Military-Industrial Complex. Indeed it is noticeable that many of the leading border industries today are also military companies, seeking to diversify their security products to a rapidly expanding new market.

This report seeks to explore and highlight the extent of today’s global border security industry, by focusing on the most important geographical markets—Australia, Europe, USA—listing the human rights violations and risks involved in each sector of the industry, profiling important corporate players and putting a spotlight on the key investors in each company.
A booming industry

The border industry is experiencing spectacular growth, seemingly immune to austerity or economic downturns. Market research agencies predict annual growth of the border security market of between 7.2% and 8.6%, reaching a total of $65–68 billion by 2025. The largest expansion is in the global Biometrics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) markets. Markets and Markets forecasts the biometric systems market to double from $33 billion in 2019 to $65.3 billion by 2024—of which biometrics for migration purposes will be a significant sector. It says that the AI market will equal US$190.61 billion by 2025.

The report investigates five key sectors of the expanding industry: border security (including monitoring, surveillance, walls and fences), biometrics and smart borders, migrant detention, deportation, and audit and consultancy services. From these sectors, it profiles 23 corporations as significant actors: Accenture, Airbus, Booz Allen Hamilton, Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Deloitte, Elbit, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, IBM, IDEMIA, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Mitie, Palantir, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Serco, Sopra Steria, Thales, Thomson Reuters, Unisys.

– The border security and control field, the technological infrastructure of security and surveillance at the border, is led by US, Australian, European and Israeli firms including Airbus, Elbit, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, Leonardo and Thales— all of which are among the world’s major arms sellers. They benefit not only from border contracts within the EU, US, and Australia but also increasingly from border externalisation programmes funded by these same countries. Jean Pierre Talamoni, head of sales and marketing at Airbus Defence and Space (ADS), said in 2016 that he estimates that two thirds of new military market opportunities over the next 10 years will be in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Companies are also trying to muscle in on providing the personnel to staff these walls, including border guards.

- The Smart Borders sector encompasses the use of a broad range of (newer) technologies, including biometrics (such as fingerprints and iris-scans), AI and phone and social media tracking. The goal is to speed up processes for national citizens and other acceptable travellers and stop or deport unwanted migrants through the use of more sophisticated IT and biometric systems. Key corporations include large IT companies, such as IBM and Unisys, and multinational services company Accenture for whom migration is part of their extensive portfolio, as well as small firms, such as IDEMIA and Palantir Technologies, for whom migration-related work is central. The French public–private company Civipol, co-owned by the state and several large French arms companies, is another key player, selected to set up fingerprint databases of the whole population of Mali and Senegal.

– Deportation. With the exception of the UK and the US, it is uncommon to privatise deportation. The UK has hired British company Mitie for its whole deportation process, while Classic Air Charter dominates in the US. Almost all major commercial airlines, however, are also involved in deportations. Newsweek reported, for example, that in the US, 93% of the 1,386 ICE deportation flights to Latin American countries on commercial airlines in 2019 were facilitated by United Airlines (677), American Airlines (345) and Delta Airlines (266).

- Detention. The Global Detention Project lists over 1,350 migrant detention centres worldwide, of which over 400 are located in Europe, almost 200 in the US and nine in Australia. In many EU countries, the state manages detention centres, while in other countries (e.g. Australia, UK, USA) there are completely privatised prisons. Many other countries have a mix of public and private involvement, such as state facilities with private guards. Australia outsourced refugee detention to camps outside its territories. Australian service companies Broadspectrum and Canstruct International managed the detention centres, while the private security companies G4S, Paladin Solutions and Wilson Security were contracted for security services, including providing guards. Migrant detention in third countries is also an increasingly important part of EU migration policy, with the EU funding construction of migrant detention centres in ten non-EU countries.

- Advisory and audit services are a more hidden part of public policies and practices, but can be influential in shaping new policies. A striking example is Civipol, which in 2003 wrote a study on maritime borders for the European Commission, which adopted its key policy recommendations in October 2003 and in later policy documents despite its derogatory language against refugees. Civipol’s study also laid foundations for later measures on border externalisation, including elements of the migration deal with Turkey and the EU’s Operation Sophia. Since 2003 Civipol has received funding for a large number of migration-related projects, especially in African countries. Between 2015 and 2017, it was the fourth most-funded organisation under the EU Trust Fund. Other prominent corporations in this sector include Eurasylum, as well as major international consultancy firms, particularly Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers, for which migration-related work is part of their expansive portfolio.

Financing the industry

The markets for military and border control procurement are characterized by massively capital intensive investments and contracts, which would not be possible without the involvement of financial actors. Using data from marketscreener.com, the report shows that the world’s largest investment companies are also among the major shareholders in the border industry.

– The Vanguard Group owns shares in 15 of the 17 companies, including over 15% of the shares of CoreCivic and GEO Group that manage private prisons and detention facilities.

- Other important investors are Blackrock, which is a major shareholder in 11 companies, Capital Research and Management (part of the Capital Group), with shares in arms giants Airbus and Lockheed Martin, and State Street Global Advisors (SsgA), which owns over 15% of Lockheed Martin shares and is also a major shareholder in six other companies.

- Although these giant asset management firms dominate, two of the profiled companies, Cobham and IDEMIA, are currently owned by the private equity firm Advent International. Advent specialises in buyouts and restructuring, and it seems likely that it will attempt to split up Cobham in the hope of making a profit by selling on the component companies to other owners.

- In addition, three large European arms companies, Airbus, Thales and Leonardo, active in the border security market, are partly owned by the governments of the countries where they are headquartered.

In all cases, therefore, the financing depends on our money. In the case of state ownership, through our taxes, and in terms of asset management funds, through the way individual savings, pension funds, insurance companies and university endowments are directly invested in these companies via the giant Asset Management Funds. This financing means that the border industry survives on at least the tacit approved use of the public’s funds which makes it vulnerable to social pressure as the human rights costs of the industry become ever more clear.
Human rights and the border industry

Universal human rights apply to every single human being, including refugees and migrants. While the International Bill of Human Rights provides the foundation, including defining universal rights that are important in the context of migration, such as the right to life, liberty and security of person, the right to freedom from torture or cruel or inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, and freedom from discrimination, there are other instruments such as the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention or Geneva Convention) of 1951 that are also relevant. There are also regional agreements, including the Organisation of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that play a role relevant to the countries that have ratified them.

Yet despite these important and legally binding human rights agreements, the human rights situation for refugees and migrants has become ever more desperate. States frequently deny their rights under international law, such as the right to seek asylum or non-refoulement principles, or more general rights such as the freedom from torture, cruel or inhumane treatment. There is a gap with regard to effective legal means or grievance mechanisms to counter this or to legally enforce or hold to account states that fail to implement instruments such as the UDHR and the Refugee Convention of 1951. A Permanent Peoples Tribunal in 2019 even concluded that ‘taken together, the immigration and asylum policies and practices of the EU and its Member States constitute a total denial of the fundamental rights of people and migrants, and are veritable crimes against humanity’. A similar conclusion can be made of the US and Australian border and immigration regime.

The increased militarisation of border security worldwide and state-sanctioned hostility toward migrants has had a deeply detrimental impact on the human rights of refugees and migrants.

– Increased border security has led to direct violence against refugees, pushbacks with the risk of returning people to unsafe countries and inhumane circumstances (contravening the principle of non-refoulement), and a disturbing rise in avoidable deaths, as countries close off certain migration routes, forcing migrants to look for other, often more dangerous, alternatives and pushing them into the arms of criminal smuggling networks.

– The increased use of autonomous systems of border security such as drones threaten new dangers related to human rights. There is already evidence that they push migrants to take more dangerous routes, but there is also concern that there is a gradual trend towards weaponized systems that will further threaten migrants’ lives.

– The rise in deportations has threatened fundamental human rights including the right to family unity, the right to seek asylum, the right to humane treatment in detention, the right to due process, and the rights of children’. There have been many instances of violence in the course of deportations, sometimes resulting in death or permanent harm, against desperate people who try to do everything to prevent being deported. Moreover, deportations often return refugees to unsafe countries, where they face violence, persecution, discrimination and poverty.

- The widespread detention of migrants also fundamentally undermines their human rights . There have been many reports of violence and neglect by guards and prison authorities, limited access to adequate legal and medical support, a lack of decent food, overcrowding and poor and unhealthy conditions. Privatisation of detention exacerbates these problems, because companies benefit from locking up a growing number of migrants and minimising costs.

– The building of major migration databases such as EU’s Eurodac and SIS II, VIS gives rise to a range of human rights concerns, including issues of privacy, civil liberties, bias leading to discrimination—worsened by AI processes -, and misuse of collected information. Migrants are already subject to unprecedented levels of surveillance, and are often now treated as guinea pigs where even more intrusive technologies such as facial recognition and social media tracking are tried out without migrants consent.

The trend towards externalisation of migration policies raises new concerns as it seeks to put the human costs of border militarisation beyond the border and out of public sight. This has led to the EU, US and Australia all cooperating with authoritarian regimes to try and prevent migrants from even getting close to their borders. Moreover as countries donate money, equipment or training to security forces in authoritarian regimes, they end up expanding and strengthening their capacities which leads to a rise in human rights violations more broadly. Nowhere are the human rights consequences of border externalisation policies clearer than in the case of Libya, where the EU and individual member states (in particular Italy and Malta) funding, training and cooperation with security forces and militias have led to violence at the borders, murder, disappearances, rape, enslavement and abuse of migrants in the country and torture in detention centres.

The 23 corporations profiled in this report have all been involved in or connected to policies and practices that have come under fire because of violations of the human rights of refugees and migrants. As mentioned earlier, sometimes the companies are directly responsible for human rights violations or concerns. In other cases, they are indirectly responsible through their contribution to a border infrastructure that denies human rights and through lobbying to influence policy-making to prioritize militarized responses to migration. 11 of the companies profiled publicly proclaim their commitment to human rights as signatories to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), but as these are weak voluntary codes this has not led to noticeable changes in their business operations related to migration.

The most prominent examples of direct human rights abuses come from the corporations involved in detention and deportation. Classic Air Charter, Cobham, CoreCivic, Eurasylum, G4S, GEO Group, Mitie and Serco all have faced allegations of violence and abuse by their staff towards migrants. G4S has been one of the companies most often in the spotlight. In 2017, not only were assaults by its staff on migrants at the Brook House immigration removal centre in the UK broadcast by the BBC, but it was also hit with a class suit in Australia by almost 2,000 people who are or were detained at the externalised detention centre on Manus Island, because of physical and psychological injuries as a result of harsh treatment and dangerous conditions. The company eventually settled the case for A$70 million (about $53 million) in the largest-ever human rights class-action settlement. G4S has also faced allegations related to its involvement in deportations.

The other companies listed all play a pivotal role in the border infrastructure that denies refugees’ human rights. Airbus P-3 Orion surveillance planes of the Australian Air Force, for example, play a part in the highly controversial maritime wall that prevents migrants arriving by boat and leads to their detention in terrible conditions offshore. Lockheed Martin is a leading supplier of border security on the US-Mexico border. Leonardo is one of the main suppliers of drones for Europe’s borders. Thales produces the radar and sensor systems, critical to patrolling the Mediterrean. Elbit Systems provides surveillance technologies to both the EU and US, marketed on their success as technologies used in the separation wall in the Palestinian occupied territories. Accenture, IDEMIA and Sopra Steria manage many border biometric projects. Deloitte has been one of the key consulting companies to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency since 2003, while PriceWaterhouseCoopers provides similar consultancy services to Frontex and the Australian border forces. IBM, Palantir and UNISYS provide the IT infrastructure that underpins the border and immigration apparatus.
Time to divest

The report concludes by calling for campaigns to divest from the border industry. There is a long history of campaigns and movements that call for divestment from industries that support human rights violations—from the campaigns to divest from Apartheid South Africa to more recent campaigns to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The border industry has become an equally morally toxic asset for any financial institution, given the litany of human rights abuses tied to it and the likelihood they will intensify in years to come.

There are already examples of existing campaigns targeting particular border industries that have borne fruit. A spotlight on US migrant detention, as part of former President Trump’s anti- immigration policies, contributed to six large US banks (Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Fifth Third Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, SunTrust, and Wells Fargo) publicly announcing that they would not provide new financing to the private prison industry. The two largest public US pension funds, CalSTRS and CalPERS, also decided to divest from the same two companies. Geo Group acknowledged that these acts of ‘public resistance’ hit the company financially, criticising the banks as ‘clearly bow[ing] down to a small group of activists protesting and conducting targeted social media campaigns’.

Every company involved or accused of human rights violations either denies them or says that they are atypical exceptions to corporate behavior. This report shows however that a militarised border regime built on exclusion will always be a violent apparatus that perpetuates human rights violations. It is a regime that every day locks up refugees in intolerable conditions, separates families causing untold trauma and heartbreak, and causes a devastating death toll as refugees are forced to take unimaginable dangerous journeys because the alternatives are worse. However well-intentioned, any industry that provides services and products for this border regime will bear responsibility for its human consequences and its human rights violations, and over time will suffer their own serious reputational costs for their involvement in this immoral industry. On the other hand, a widespread exodus of the leading corporations on which the border regime depends could force states to change course, and to embrace a politics that protects and upholds the rights of refugees and migrants. Worldwide, social movements and the public are starting to wake up to the human costs of border militarisation and demanding a fundamental change. It is time now for the border industry and their financiers to make a choice.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/financingborderwars

#TNI #rapport
#industrie_frontalière #militarisation_des_frontières #biométrie #Intelligence_artificielle #AI #IA

#Accenture #Airbus #Booz_Allen_Hamilton #Classic_Air_Charter #Cobham #CoreCivic #Deloitte #Elbit #Eurasylum #G4S #GEO_Group #IBM #IDEMIA #Leonardo #Lockheed_Martin #Mitie #Palantir #PricewaterhouseCoopers #Serco #Sopra_Steria #Thales #Thomson_Reuters #Unisys
#contrôles_frontaliers #surveillance #technologie #Jean-Pierre_Talamoni #Airbus_Defence_and_Space (#ADS) #smart_borders #frontières_intelligentes #iris #empreintes_digitales #réseaux_sociaux #IT #Civipol #Mali #Sénégal #renvois #expulsions #déportations #Mitie #Classic_Air_Charter #compagnies_aériennes #United_Airlines #ICE #American_Airlines #Delta_Airlines #rétention #détention_administrative #privatisation #Broadspectrum #Canstruct_International #Paladin_Solutions #Wilson_Security #Operation_Sophia #EU_Trust_Fund #Trust_Fund #externalisation #Eurasylum #Deloitte #PricewaterhouseCoopers #Vanguard_Group #CoreCivic #Blackrock #investisseurs #investissement #Capital_Research_and_Management #Capital_Group #Lockheed_Martin #State_Street_Global_Advisors (#SsgA) #Cobham #IDEMIA #Advent_International #droits_humains #VIS #SIS_II #P-3_Orion #Accenture #Sopra_Steria #Frontex #Australie

Outsourcing oppression. How Europe externalises migrant detention beyond its shores

https://www.tni.org/files/styles/cover_image/public/cover-images/outsourcingoppression-report-tnicover.png?itok=mwQBC1JP#.jpg

This report seeks to address the gap and join the dots between Europe’s outsourcing of migrant detention to third countries and the notorious conditions within the migrant detention centres. In a nutshell, Europe calls the shots on migrant detention beyond its shores but is rarely held to account for the deeply oppressive consequences, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced disappearance, violence, sexual violence, and death.

Key findings

– The European Union (EU), and its member states, externalise detention to third countries as part of a strategy to keep migrants out at all costs. This leads to migrants being detained and subjected to gross human rights violations in transit countries in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, West Asia and Africa.

– Candidate countries wishing to join the EU are obligated to detain migrants and stop them from crossing into the EU as a prerequisite for accession to the Union. Funding is made available through pre-accession agreements specifically for the purpose of detaining migrants.

– Beyond EU candidate countries, this report identifies 22 countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and West Asia where the EU and its member states fund the construction of detention centres, detention related activities such as trainings, or advocate for detention in other ways such as through aggressively pushing for detention legislation or agreeing to relax visa requirements for nationals of these countries in exchange for increased migrant detention.

- The main goal of detention externalisation is to pre-empt migrants from reaching the external borders of the EU by turning third countries into border outposts. In many cases this involves the EU and its member states propping up and maintaining authoritarian regimes.

– Europe is in effect following the ‘Australian model’ that has been highly criticised by UN experts and human rights organisations for the torturous conditions inside detention centres. Nevertheless, Europe continues to advance a system that mirrors Australia’s outsourced model, focusing not on guaranteeing the rights of migrants, but instead on deterring and pushing back would-be asylum seekers at all costs.

- Human rights are systematically violated in detention centres directly and indirectly funded by the EU and its member states, including cases of torture, arbitrary and prolonged detention, sexual violence, no access to legal recourse, humanitarian assistance, or asylum procedures, the detention of victims of trafficking, and many other serious violations in which Europe is implicated.

- Particularly horrendous is the case of Libya, which continues to receive financial and political support from Europe despite mounting evidence of brutality, enslavement, torture, forced disappearance and death. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), implement EU policies in Libya and, according to aid officials, actively whitewash the consequences of European policies to safeguard substantial EU funding.

- Not only does the EU deport and push back migrants to unsafe third countries, it actively finances and coercively pushes for their detention in these countries. Often they have no choice but to sign ‘voluntary’ agreements to be returned to their countries of origin as the only means of getting out of torturous detention facilities.

- The EU implements a carrot and stick approach, in particular in its dealings with Africa, prolonging colonialist dynamics and uneven power structures – in Niger, for example, the EU pushed for legislation on detention, in exchange for development aid funding.

– The EU envisages a greater role for migrant detention in third countries going forward, as was evidenced in the European Commission’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum.

- The EU acts on the premise of containment and deterrence, namely, that if migrants seeking to reach Europe are intercepted and detained along that journey, they will be deterred from making the journey in the first place. This approach completely misses the point that people migrate to survive, often fleeing war and other forms of violence. The EU continues to overlook the structural reasons behind why people flee and the EU’s own role in provoking such migration.

– The border industrial complex profits from the increased securitisation of borders. Far from being passive spectators, the military and security industry is actively involved in shaping EU border policies by positioning themselves as experts on the issue. We can already see a trend of privatising migrant detention, paralleling what is happening in prison systems worldwide.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/outsourcingoppression

pour télécharger le rapport :
▻https://www.tni.org/files/publication-downloads/outsourcingoppression-report-tni.pdf

#externalisation #rétention #détention #détention_arbitraire #violence #disparitions #disparitions_forcées #violence #violence_sexuelle #morts #mort #décès #Afrique #Europe_de_l'Est #Balkans #Asie #modèle_australien #EU #UE #Union_européenne #torture #Libye #droits_humains #droits_fondamentaux #HCR #UNHCR #OIM #IOM #dissuasion #privatisation

#Border_Profiteers. Corporations profiting from borders, detentions and deportations - Berlin edition

https://seenthis.net/local/cache-vignettes/L212xH300/Border-Profiea1c-b6061.jpg

Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

We map out the rising number of #high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders.

From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

The Guardian has mapped out the result of the EU’s investment: a digital wall on the harsh sea, forest and mountain frontiers, and a technological playground for military and tech companies repurposing products for new markets.

https://i.imgur.com/H565BYR.png

The EU is central to the push towards using technology on its borders, whether it has been bought by the EU’s border force, Frontex, or financed for member states through EU sources, such as its internal security fund or Horizon 2020, a project to drive innovation.

In 2018, the EU predicted that the European security market would grow to €128bn (£108bn) by 2020. Beneficiaries are arms and tech companies who heavily courted the EU, raising the concerns of campaigners and MEPs.

“In effect, none of this stops people from crossing; having drones or helicopters doesn’t stop people from crossing, you just see people taking more risky ways,” says Jack Sapoch, formerly with Border Violence Monitoring Network. “This is a history that’s so long, as security increases on one section of the border, movement continues in another section.”

Petra Molnar, who runs the migration and technology monitor at Refugee Law Lab, says the EU’s reliance on these companies to develop “hare-brained ideas” into tech for use on its borders is inappropriate.

“They rely on the private sector to create these toys for them. But there’s very little regulation,” she says. “Some sort of tech bro is having a field day with this.”

“For me, what’s really sad is that it’s almost a done deal that all this money is being spent on camps, enclosures, surveillance, drones.”

Air Surveillance

Refugees and migrants trying to enter the EU by land or sea are watched from the air. Border officers use drones and helicopters in the Balkans, while Greece has airships on its border with Turkey. The most expensive tool is the long-endurance Heron drone operating over the Mediterranean.

Frontex awarded a €100m (£91m) contract last year for the Heron and Hermes drones made by two Israeli arms companies, both of which had been used by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip. Capable of flying for more than 30 hours and at heights of 10,000 metres (30,000 feet), the drones beam almost real-time feeds back to Frontex’s HQ in Warsaw.

Missions mostly start from Malta, focusing on the Libyan search and rescue zone – where the Libyan coastguard will perform “pull backs” when informed by EU forces of boats trying to cross the Mediterranean.

https://i.imgur.com/AsNnGoD.png

German MEP Özlem Demirel is campaigning against the EU’s use of drones and links to arms companies, which she says has turned migration into a security issue.

“The arms industries are saying: ‘This is a security problem, so buy my weapons, buy my drones, buy my surveillance system,’” says Demirel.

“The EU is always talking about values like human rights, [speaking out] against violations but … week-by-week we see more people dying and we have to question if the EU is breaking its values,” she says.

Sensors and cameras

EU air assets are accompanied on the ground by sensors and specialised cameras that border authorities throughout Europe use to spot movement and find people in hiding. They include mobile radars and thermal cameras mounted on vehicles, as well as heartbeat detectors and CO2 monitors used to detect signs of people concealed inside vehicles.

Greece deploys thermal cameras and sensors along its land border with Turkey, monitoring the feeds from operations centres, such as in Nea Vyssa, near the meeting of the Greek, Turkish and Bulgarian borders. Along the same stretch, in June, Greece deployed a vehicle-mounted sound cannon that blasts “deafening” bursts of up to 162 decibels to force people to turn back.

Poland is hoping to emulate Greece in response to the crisis on its border with Belarus. In October, its parliament approved a €350m wall that will stretch along half the border and reach up to 5.5 metres (18 feet), equipped with motion detectors and thermal cameras.

Surveillance centres

In September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as prison-like. The €38m (£32m) facility for 3,000 asylum seekers has military-grade fencing and #CCTV to track people’s movements. Access is controlled by fingerprint, turnstiles and X-rays. A private security company and 50 uniformed officers monitor the camp. It is the first of five that Greece has planned; two more opened in November.

https://i.imgur.com/yvPgDsz.png

▻https://twitter.com/_PMolnar/status/1465224733771939841

At the same time, Greece opened a new surveillance centre on Samos, capable of viewing video feeds from the country’s 35 refugee camps from a wall of monitors. Greece says the “smart” software helps to alert camps of emergencies.

Artificial intelligence

The EU spent €4.5m (£3.8m) on a three-year trial of artificial intelligence-powered lie detectors in Greece, Hungary and Latvia. A machine scans refugees and migrants’ facial expressions as they answer questions it poses, deciding whether they have lied and passing the information on to a border officer.

The last trial finished in late 2019 and was hailed as a success by the EU but academics have called it pseudoscience, arguing that the “micro-expressions” the software analyses cannot be reliably used to judge whether someone is lying. The software is the subject of a court case taken by MEP Patrick Breyer to the European court of justice in Luxembourg, arguing that there should be more public scrutiny of such technology. A decision is expected on 15 December.

►https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/06/fortress-europe-the-millions-spent-on-military-grade-tech-to-deter-refu

Ca me fait penser à cet article :

Hurler son ras-le-bol
Stéphane Baillargeon, Le Devoir, le 2 novembre 2019
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/809289

#conflits #manifestations #résistance #révoltes #pacifisme #Liban #Chili #Equateur #Catalogne #Hong-Kong #activisme

« La pire violence est rationnelle »
ping @davduf

v. aussi le #livre :
Le déchaînement du monde. Logique nouvelle de la violence

https://extranet.editis.com/it-yonixweb/IMAGES/DEC/P3/9782707198150.jpg

Le monde est déchaîné. La violence n’y a pas reculé, comme le pensent certains. Elle a changé de formes, et de logique, moins visible, plus constante : on est passé de l’#esclavage au #burn-out, des #déportations à l’#errance chronique, du #tabassage entre collégiens à leur #humiliation sur les réseaux sociaux, du #pillage des colonies aux lois expropriant les plus pauvres... L’#oppression_sexuelle et la #destruction_écologique, elles, se sont aggravées.
Plutôt qu’enrayée, la violence a été prohibée, d’un côté, pour « pacifier » policièrement les sociétés, et systématisée de l’autre, à même nos subjectivités et nos institutions : par la logique comptable, sa dynamique sacrificielle, par la #guerre_normalisée, la #rivalité_générale et, de plus en plus, les nouvelles #images. Si bien qu’on est à la fois hypersensibles à la #violence_interpersonnelle et indifférents à la #violence_de_masse. Dans le désastre néolibéral, le mensonge de l’abondance et la stimulation de nos forces de vie ont fait de nous des sauvages d’un genre neuf, frustrés et à cran, et non les citoyens affables que la « civilisation » voulait former. Pour sortir de ce circuit infernal, et de l’#impuissance_collective, de nouvelles #luttes d’émancipation, encore minoritaires, détournent ces flux mortifères d’énergie sociale. Mais d’autres les convertissent en haines identitaires et en replis patriotes. Qui l’emportera ? De quel côté échappera toute la violence rentrée du monde ?

►https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Le_d__cha__nement_du_monde-9782707198150.html

#violence #pouvoir #François_Cusset #violence_imminente #fantasme #rationalité #pacification

ping @cede @karine4

(je passe sur le regard de la Banque mondiale sur le rôle de l’école)

L’école, ce sont des financements publics, c’est donc le mal, il faut donc l’éradiquer, et la rendre au privé. L’OCDE, le FMI, la BM, la main dans la main, pour appliquer cette politique suicidaire. On a en 2020, le monde que l’on fantasmait à la fin du XXème siècle, un monde dangereux et dévasté, où les nouvelles générations sont moins éduquées que les précédentes.

Point intéressant : la grande majorité (64 %) des revirements médicaux identifiés proviennent d’études indépendantes, les essais industriels ne représentant que 9 % du total. « Les revirements mettent en lumière l’importance de financer la #recherche clinique de façon #indépendante, #publique et non entachée de #conflits_d’intérêts », concluent les auteurs.

#big_pharma

#paix #guerre #livre #bibliographie #conflits #peacemaking
#ressources_pédagogiques

Merci!

#Mali #Syrie #Érythrée #Nigéria #Sénégal #Gambie #Palestine #Bangladesh #Égypte #Libye

Athènes face au défi de la fin de la #houille

La Grèce, longtemps troisième productrice de charbon d’Europe, veut fermer la plupart de ses centrales thermiques en 2023 et mettre fin à sa production d’ici à 2028. En Macédoine-Occidentale, les habitants s’inquiètent des conséquences socio-économiques.

Kozani (Grèce).– Insatiables, elles ont absorbé en soixante-cinq ans plus de 170 kilomètres carrés, dans la région de Macédoine-Occidentale, dans le nord de la Grèce. Les mines de #lignite ont englouti des villages entiers. Les excavateurs ont méthodiquement déplacé la terre et creusé des cratères noirâtres. Les forêts se sont métamorphosées en d’immenses plaines lacérées de tapis roulants. Tentaculaires, ceux-ci acheminent les blocs noirs de lignite jusqu’aux imposantes #centrales_thermiques, au loin.

Contraste saisissant avec les îles idylliques qui font la célébrité du pays, ce paysage lunaire est surnommé « le #cœur_énergétique » de la Grèce. Quatre #mines_à_ciel_ouvert s’étirent ainsi aujourd’hui des villes de #Kozani à #Florina.

« Il fallait trouver toujours plus de lignite pour produire l’#électricité du pays », précise le contremaître Antonis Kyriakidis, attaché à ce territoire sans vie qui lui donne du travail depuis trente ans. La recherche de cet « #or_noir » a créé des milliers d’#emplois, mais a dangereusement pollué l’atmosphère, selon plusieurs études.

https://static.mediapart.fr/etmagine/default/files/2021/06/03/pt-energy-transition-in-greece-1.jpg?width=4256&height=2841&width_format=pixel&height_format=pixel#.jpg

L’ensemble de ce #bassin_minier, le plus important des Balkans, propriété de la compagnie électrique grecque #D.E.I – contrôlée par l’État – va cependant bientôt disparaître. Le gouvernement de droite Nouvelle Démocratie a programmé l’arrêt des dernières centrales thermiques dans deux ans et la fin de la production de lignite en 2028, suivant l’objectif de #neutralité_carbone de l’UE d’ici à 2050.

La production annuelle d’électricité tirée de la combustion de lignite est passée de 32 GW à 5,7 GW entre 2008 et 2020. Trois centrales sont aujourd’hui en activité sur les six que compte la région. Il y a quinze ans, 80 % de l’électricité grecque provenait du charbon extrait de ces mines, ouvertes en 1955, contre 18 % aujourd’hui.

Seule la nouvelle unité « #Ptolemaida_V » continuera ses activités de 2022 à 2028. Sa construction a commencé il y a six ans, alors que la #décarbonisation n’était pas officiellement annoncée. La Grèce veut désormais privilégier le #gaz_naturel en provenance de Russie ou de Norvège, grâce à différents #gazoducs. Ou celui tiré de ses propres ressources potentielles en Méditerranée. Elle souhaite aussi développer les #énergies_renouvelables, profitant de son climat ensoleillé et venteux.

Selon le plan de sortie du lignite, dévoilé en septembre 2020 par le ministère de l’environnement et de l’énergie, la Macédoine-Occidentale deviendra une région « verte » : on y développera l’« agriculture intelligente »*, le photovoltaïque ou le tourisme. Une grande partie des mines de D.E.I seront réhabilitées par l’État, enfouies sous des lacs artificiels. La #transition sera assurée, détaille le plan, à hauteur de 5,05 milliards d’euros, par différents fonds nationaux et européens, dont 2,03 milliards issus du #mécanisme_européen_pour_une_transition_juste (#MJT). Le gouvernement espère aussi attirer les investisseurs étrangers.

Dubitatif dans son bureau lumineux, Lazaros Maloutas, maire centriste de Kozani, la plus grande ville de cette région qui compte 285 000 habitants, peine à imaginer cette métamorphose dans l’immédiat. « Tout le monde est d’accord ici pour dire que la #transition_énergétique est nécessaire, mais l’agenda est beaucoup trop serré », explique-t-il.

Il insiste poliment sur le fait que « les autorités doivent échanger davantage avec les acteurs locaux ». Il garde en mémoire cet épisode de septembre 2019, lorsqu’il a appris « avec surprise » le calendrier précis de la décarbonisation « à la télévision ». À des milliers de kilomètres, depuis le sommet Action Climat de l’ONU à New York, le premier ministre, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, annonçait que les mines et centrales thermiques du coin fermeraient d’ici à 2028.

« Le ministre de l’énergie n’est ensuite venu ici qu’à deux reprises en 2020 », ajoute Lazaros Maloutas, qui a boycotté l’une de ses visites, comme d’autres élus locaux avec lesquels il a formé l’Association des communes énergétiques.

Cette transition constitue pourtant un « enjeu majeur », martèle de son côté Anastasios Sidiropoulos, le responsable de l’#Agence_régionale_de-développement (#Anko), située à quelques bâtiments de la mairie de Kozani. « Plus qu’une transition écologique, c’est une #transition_économique totale qui se joue ici. »

En dépit du déclin de la production ces dix dernières années, « les mines et centrales restent fondamentales pour l’#économie_locale ». « La compagnie D.E.I emploie 3 100 salariés, mais le secteur fait aussi vivre au moins 5 000 intermittents et travailleurs indépendants », détaille-t-il. Il s’alarme du contexte régional déjà déprimé dans lequel s’inscrit cette transition : une population vieillissante, un taux de chômage de 26 %, des jeunes qui fuient les communes, etc. « Selon nos études de terrain, il faudrait se donner jusqu’à 2040 pour réussir cette transition », affirme Anastasios Sidiropoulos.

Il compare avec amertume l’échéance de sortie de lignite de la Grèce, troisième producteur de charbon de l’Union européenne (UE), à celle de l’Allemagne ou de la Pologne. Berlin se donne vingt-neuf ans pour fermer progressivement ses dix mines à ciel ouvert. Varsovie prévoit aussi la fermeture de ses treize mines de lignite d’ici à 2049.

L’effondrement de la « montagne » D.E.I

En Grèce, la compagnie d’électricité D.E.I veut toutefois aller vite. La crise de la dette a affaibli l’entreprise qui a privatisé une partie de ses activités depuis 2014. Ses cheminées vieillissantes et ses mines lui coûtent 300 millions d’euros par an, notamment en raison de la #taxe_carbone et du système d’échange de quotas d’émission.

D.E.I assure qu’elle ne fuit pas ces terres qu’elle a totalement acquises en 1975. « Nous avons une #dette_morale envers les personnes qui ont soutenu D.E.I toutes ces années. Notre engagement est absolu », insiste d’un ton solennel Ioannis Kopanakis, le directeur général adjoint de la compagnie qui assure, dans un courriel, que les 3 100 employés « auront tous une alternative ». Le sort incertain des milliers de #travailleurs_indépendants inquiète toutefois les syndicats.

D.E.I conservera certains terrains où elle érige déjà avec #RWE, le géant allemand de l’électricité, le plus grand #parc_photovoltaïque du pays, d’une puissance de 2 GW. Avec l’arrivée de nouvelles entreprises, les riverains craignent la chute des #salaires, autrefois fixes chez D.E.I. « Il existe un tel manque de transparence sur les plans des nouveaux investisseurs que les habitants ont l’impression que l’on donne le territoire aux étrangers », relève pour sa part Lefteris Ioannidis.

L’ancien maire écologiste de Kozani (2014-2019) milite vivement en faveur d’une transition « très rapide, car il y a urgence ». Mais il reconnaît que la mentalité régionale d’« État charbonnier est difficile à changer », avec une relation de quasi-dépendance à un employeur. Les investisseurs étrangers étaient jusqu’ici absents de la #Macédoine-Occidentale, où D.E.I avait tout absorbé. « C’était une montagne ici, elle faisait partie du paysage », précise Lefteris Ioannidis.

Son ombre plane sur les villages perdus, desservis par des routes vides aux panneaux rouillés et stations-essence abandonnées. À #Agios_Dimitrios, les six cents habitants ont vue sur l’imposante centrale thermique du même nom qui barre l’horizon. L’un d’eux, Lambros, dénonce le rôle de l’État, qui « n’a jamais préparé cette transition pourtant inéluctable. Elle arrive violemment ». Il a davantage de mal à en vouloir à D.E.I qu’il n’ose critiquer publiquement, comme d’autres ici qui entretiennent un sentiment ambivalent à son égard. « D.E.I, c’était Dieu ici. Elle est notre bénédiction comme une malédiction », dit cet homme charpenté, dont la fumée de cigarette s’échappe dans l’air chargé de poussière.

« Il y avait un problème de #pollution, des #cancers ou #maladies_respiratoires, mais les ouvriers fermaient les yeux car ils mangeaient à leur faim. Ils avaient des tarifs réduits sur l’électricité, se remémore le villageois. C’était une fierté de produire l’électricité de tout le pays et maintenant on va importer du gaz d’Azerbaïdjan [grâce au #gazoduc_transadriatique – ndlr]. J’ai aussi peur qu’on déplace le problème pour des raisons économiques et non environnementales. » Il craint l’importation de lignite depuis les Balkans voisins qui, contrairement à la Grèce, taxent faiblement les émissions de carbone. Il sait que d’autres pays de l’UE l’on fait en 2019, « pourquoi pas la Grèce », interroge-t-il. Lambros redoute la montée des #prix de l’électricité ou du chauffage pour les habitants.

L’un des défis pour la région est en effet de conserver ces bas #tarifs et l’indépendance énergétique obtenue avec ces centrales polluantes. La ville d’#Amynteo a tenté une initiative en ce sens, en inaugurant il y a six mois une nouvelle centrale #biomasse. Une cheminée fumante se dresse à côté d’une ancienne centrale thermique en friche où errent quelques chiens.

Les deux fours ingurgitent des tonnes de résidus de tournesols, blé, copeaux de bois venu de Grèce, de Bulgarie et d’Ukraine, permettant de chauffer 8 000 foyers. « Notre but, à terme, est de brûler uniquement de la biomasse locale en provenance des champs alentour », assure le directeur, Kostas Kyriakopoulos. Il rappelle toutefois que si une centrale biomasse peut alimenter quelques milliers de foyers, « elle ne peut pas couvrir les besoins en chauffage à grande échelle ».

▻https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/050621/athenes-face-au-defi-de-la-fin-de-la-houille
#DEI

« Mais nous devons admettre qu’au 21ème siècle, les gouvernements ne peuvent plus répondre à tous les besoins de la population. » (Margaret Chan, directrice générale de l’OMS)

Et donc, dans ce cas, pourquoi, dès lors ne pas confier la santé publique aux intérêts privés ?

►https://www.rts.ch/info/economie/8660012-les-genereux-donateurs-de-l-oms-orientent-ils-sa-politique-.html

De la bonne gouvernance concernant les #conflits_d'intérêts
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2012/05/24/directrice-controversee-margaret-chan-reste-a-la-tete-de-l-oms_1706812_3244.

J’ai été un homme d’affaire toute la vie. Je les ai presque tous soutenus financièrement. J’ai donné aux démocrates, j’ai donné à Hillary, j’ai donné à tout le monde parce que c’était mon boulot. Je les arrose et j’obtiens tout ce que je veux. Et quand je les appelle, je vous le dis : ils me lèchent le cul. (D. Trump)

#enfumage #lobbying #dérégulation (en mode brutal)

Ces réfugiés dans leur propre pays

En 2018, il y a eu autant de nouveaux « déplacés internes » dans 55 pays que de réfugiés en séjour dans le monde entier.

A voir le nombre de personnes exilées à l’intérieur de leur propre pays, celui des réfugiés paraît faire moins problème. A fin 2018, le nombre de réfugiés recensés dans le monde entier atteignait 28,5 millions, soit autant que celui des « déplacés internes » supplémentaires enregistrés au cours de la seule année dernière.

Selon le Rapport global 2019 de l’Observatoire des situations de déplacement interne (IDMC) du Conseil norvégien des réfugiés, dont le siège se trouve à Genève, on comptait, à fin 2018, 41,3 millions de personnes vivant en situation de déplacés internes dans 55 pays, suite à des catastrophes naturelles ou à des conflits. Il s’agit d’un effectif record de personnes déplacées dans leur propre pays du fait de conflits, de violence généralisée ou de catastrophes naturelles.
Catastrophes naturelles

Parmi les désastres qui ont provoqué l’an dernier quelque 17,2 millions de nouveaux déplacements, certains sont très probablement dus au changement climatique. Ainsi, les incendies qui ont détruit une grande partie de la forêt californienne et qui ont contraint 1,2 million d’Américains – sans compter les morts – à abandonner leur domicile et à s’installer ailleurs peuvent probablement être attribués au réchauffement climatique et à la sécheresse.

Au contraire, le Bangladesh n’a enregistré l’an dernier « que » 78’000 déplacements de personnes en raison des inondations. C’est presque l’équivalent de la population de la ville de Lucerne qu’il faut recaser sur des terrains sûrs dans un pays comptant 1’100 habitants au kilomètre carré. Le Bangladesh prévoit de construire trois villes de taille moyenne pour accueillir les déplacés récents et ceux qui ne vont pas manquer d’affluer dans les années à venir. Mais que pourra-t-on faire lorsque le niveau de la mer montera ?

Au Nigeria, cet immense pays de plus de 100 millions d’habitants, 80% des terres ont été inondées par des pluies torrentielles, causant 541’000 déplacements internes.

Problème : les personnes qui, en raison d’inondations ou de conflits locaux, doivent chercher refuge ailleurs dans leur propre pays se rendent systématiquement dans les villes, souvent déjà surpeuplées. Comment imaginer que Dhaka, la capitale du Bangladesh récemment devenue une mégapole approchant les 17 millions d’habitants, puisse encore grandir ?
Violences et conflits

En 2018 toujours, 10,8 millions de personnes ont connu le sort des déplacés internes en raison des violences ou des conflits qui ont sévi surtout dans les pays suivants : Ethiopie, République démocratique du Congo (RDC), Syrie, Nigeria, Somalie, Afghanistan, République centrafricaine, Cameroun et Soudan du Sud. Outre ces mouvements internes, des personnes sont allées chercher secours et refuge notamment en Turquie (3,5 millions), en Ouganda (1,4 million) ou au Pakistan (1,4 million).

Les trois pays qui comptent le plus de déplacés internes dus à la violence sont la Syrie, (6,1 millions de personnes), la Colombie (5,8 millions) et la RDC (3,1 millions). S’agissant de la Syrie, nous savons que la guerre civile n’est pas terminée et qu’il faudra faire des efforts gigantesques pour reconstruire les villes bombardées.

Mais que savons-nous de la Colombie, depuis l’accord de paix entre le gouvernement de Santos et les Farc ? En 2018, il y a eu 145’000 nouveaux déplacés internes et de nombreux leaders sociaux assassinés : 105 en 2017, 172 en 2018 et 7, soit une personne par jour, dans la première semaine de janvier 2019.

L’Assemblée nationale colombienne ne veut pas mettre en œuvre les accords de paix, encore moins rendre des terres aux paysans et accomplir la réforme agraire inscrite à l’article premier de l’accord de paix. Les Farc ont fait ce qu’elles avaient promis, mais pas le gouvernement. Ivan Duque, qui a remplacé Manuel Santos, s’est révélé incapable de reprendre le contrôle des terrains abandonnés par les Farc – et repris par d’autres bandes armées, paramilitaires ou multinationales, ou par des trafiquants de drogue. Triste évolution marquée par une insécurité grandissante.

Et que dire de la RDC ? C’est au Kivu, Nord et Sud, véritable grotte d’Ali Baba de la planète, que les populations sont victimes de bandes armées s’appuyant sur diverses tribus pour conserver ou prendre le contrôle des mines riches en coltan, diamant, or, cuivre, cobalt, étain, manganèse, etc. Grands responsables de ces graves troubles : les téléphones portables et autres appareils connectés à l’échelle mondiale ainsi que les multinationales minières.

Il y a probablement bien d’autres pays de la planète où les violences sont commises par des multinationales qui obligent les habitants locaux à fuir devant la destruction de leurs villages et de leurs terres. Où vont-ils se réfugier ? Dans les villes bien sûr, où ils espèrent trouver un toit. Mais un toit ne suffit pas, ni l’éventuelle aide humanitaire apportée par la Croix-Rouge et les Etats occidentaux. Quand débarquent des dizaines de milliers de déplacés, les municipalités doivent aussi construire des écoles, des hôpitaux, assurer la distribution d’eau potable et l’évacuation des eaux usées.

Dans les pays africains où il arrive que moins de la moitié des habitants aient accès à l’eau potable, un déplacement important risque fort de remettre en cause tout le programme gouvernemental. Le rapport de l’Observatoire des situations de déplacement interne va même jusqu’à prévoir que certains des Objectifs de développement durable fixés par les Nations unies en 2015 ne pourront jamais être atteints.

https://www.domainepublic.ch/wp-content/uploads/grid-2019-report.png

Displaced people: Why are more fleeing home than ever before?

More than 35,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day in 2018 - nearly one every two seconds - taking the world’s displaced population to a record 71 million.

A total of 26 million people have fled across borders, 41 million are displaced within their home countries and 3.5 million have sought asylum - the highest numbers ever, according to UN refugee agency (UNHCR) figures.

Why are so many people being driven away from their families, friends and neighbourhoods?
Devastating wars have contributed to the rise

Conflict and violence, persecution and human rights violations are driving more and more men, women and children from their homes.

https://i.imgur.com/eyNpxwF.png https://i.imgur.com/f4EdIt8.png

In fact, the number of displaced people has doubled in the last 10 years, the UNHCR’s figures show, with the devastating wars in Iraq and Syria causing many families to leave their communities.

Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Yemen and South Sudan, as well as the flow of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar to Bangladesh, have also had a significant impact.

Most do not become refugees

While much of the focus has been on refugees - that’s people forced to flee across borders because of conflict or persecution - the majority of those uprooted across the world actually end up staying in their own countries.

These people, who have left their homes but not their homeland, are referred to as “internally displaced people”, or IDPs, rather than refugees.

https://i.imgur.com/GinVmPf.png

IDPs often decide not to travel very far, either because they want to stay close to their homes and family, or because they don’t have the funds to cross borders.

But many internally displaced people end up stuck in areas that are difficult for aid agencies to reach - such as conflict zones - and continue to rely on their own governments to keep them safe. Those governments are sometimes the reason people have fled, or - because of war - have become incapable of providing their own citizens with a safe place to stay.

For this reason, the UN describes IDPs as “among the most vulnerable in the world”.

Colombia, Syria and the DRC have the highest numbers of IDPs.

However, increasing numbers are also leaving home because of natural disasters, mainly “extreme weather events”, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), which monitors the global IDP population only.

The next biggest group of displaced people are refugees. There were 25.9 million by the end of 2018, of whom about half were children.

One in four refugees came from Syria.

The smallest group of displaced people is asylum seekers - those who have applied for sanctuary in another country but whose claim has not been granted. There were 3.5 million in 2018 - fewer than one in 10 of those forced to flee.
Places hit by conflict and violence are most affected

At the end of 2018, Syrians were the largest forcibly displaced population. Adding up IDPs, refugees and asylum seekers, there were 13 million Syrians driven from their homes.

Colombians were the second largest group, with 8m forcibly displaced according to UNHCR figures, while 5.4 million Congolese were also uprooted.

If we just look at figures for last year, a massive 13.6 million people were forced to abandon their homes - again mostly because of conflict. That’s more than the population of Mumbai - the most populous city in India.

Of those on the move in 2018 alone, 10.8 million ended up internally displaced within their home countries - that’s four out of every five people.

A further 2.8 million people sought safety abroad as newly-registered refugees or asylum seekers.

https://i.imgur.com/kHBEC6V.png https://i.imgur.com/Z9XQrO0.png https://i.imgur.com/tchE36H.png

Just 2.9 million people who had previously fled their homes returned to their areas or countries of origin in 2018 - fewer than those who became displaced in the same period.

The world’s largest new population of internally displaced people are Ethiopians. Almost three million abandoned their homes last year - many escaping violence between ethnic groups.

The conflict in the DRC also forced 1.8 million to flee but remain in their home country in 2018.

In war-torn Syria, more than 1.6 million became IDPs.

Venezuelans topped the list of those seeking asylum abroad in 2018, with 341,800 new claims. That’s more than one in five claims submitted last year.

Hyperinflation, food shortages, political turmoil, violence and persecution, have forced hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans to leave their homeland.

Most left for Peru, while others moved to Brazil, the US or Spain. More than 7,000 applied for asylum in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago - just seven miles off Venezuela’s coast - last year alone.

Annielis Ramirez, 30, is among the thousands of Venezuelans seeking a better life on the islands.

“All my family is in Venezuela, I had to come here to work and help them,” she says. "I couldn’t even buy a pair of shoes for my daughter. The reality is that the minimum salary is not enough over there.

“I’m here in Trinidad now. I don’t have a job, I just try to sell empanadas [filled pastries]. The most important thing is to put my daughter through school.”
Those driven from their homelands mostly remain close by

Almost 70% of the world’s refugees come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia, according to the UNHCR. And their neighbouring nations host the most.

Most Syrians have escaped to Turkey and more than half of Afghan refugees are in Pakistan.

https://i.imgur.com/hx5npYI.png https://i.imgur.com/yTlR4VZ.png

Many South Sudanese go to nearby Sudan or Uganda. Those from Myanmar - the majority Rohingya refugees displaced at the end of 2017 - mainly fled to Bangladesh.

Germany, which doesn’t border any of those countries with the largest outflows, is home to more than half a million Syrian and 190,000 Afghan refugees - the result of its “welcome culture” towards refugees established in 2015. It has since toughened up refugee requirements.

When assessing the burden placed on the host countries, Lebanon holds the largest number of refugees relative to its population. One in every six people living in the country is a refugee, the vast majority from across the border in Syria.

The exodus from Syria has also seen refugee numbers in neighbouring Jordan swell, putting pressure on resources. About 85% of the Syrians currently settled in Jordan live below the poverty line, according to the UN.

Overall, one third of the global refugee population (6.7 million people) live in the least developed countries of the world.
Many go to live in massive temporary camps

Large numbers of those driven from their home countries end up in cramped, temporary tent cities that spring up in places of need.

The biggest in the world is in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where half a million Rohingya now live, having fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar.

The second largest is Bidi Bidi in northern Uganda, home to a quarter of a million people. The camp has seen many arrivals of South Sudanese fleeing civil war just a few hours north.

https://i.imgur.com/3YJHtsH.png

Bidi Bidi, once a small village, has grown in size since 2016 and now covers 250 sq km (97 sq miles) - a third of the size of New York City.

But what makes Bidi Bidi different from most other refugee camps, is that its residents are free to move around and work and have access to education and healthcare.

The Ugandan government, recognised for its generous approach to refugees, also provides Bidi Bidi’s residents with plots of land, so they can farm and construct shelters, enabling them to become economically self-sufficient.

The camp authorities are also aiming to build schools, health centres and other infrastructure out of more resilient materials, with the ultimate aim of creating a working city.

https://i.imgur.com/mRwoEr1.png

Among those living in Bidi Bidi are Herbat Wani, a refugee from South Sudan, and Lucy, a Ugandan, who were married last year.

Herbat is grateful for the welcome he has received in Uganda since fleeing violence in his home country.

“The moment you reach the boundary, you’re still scared but there are these people who welcome you - and it was really amazing,” he says. “Truly I can say Uganda at this point is home to us.”

Lucy says she doesn’t see Herbat as a refugee at all. “He’s a human being, like me,” she says.

However, despite the authorities’ best efforts, a number of challenges remain at Bidi Bidi.

The latest report from the UNHCR notes there are inadequate food and water supplies, health facilities still operating under tarpaulins and not enough accommodation or schools for the large families arriving.
Displacement could get worse

Alongside conflict and violence, persecution and human rights violations, natural disasters are increasingly responsible for forcing people from their homes.

Looking at data for IDPs only, collected separately by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), natural disasters caused most new internal displacement cases last year, outpacing conflict as the main reason for people fleeing.

On top of the 10.8 million internally displaced by conflict last year, there were 17.2 million people who were forced to abandon their homes because of disasters, mainly “extreme weather events” such as storms and floods, the IDMC says.

The IDMC expects the number of people uprooted because of natural disasters to rise to 22 million this year, based on data for the first half of 2019.

Mass displacement by extreme weather events is “becoming the norm”, its report says, and IDMC’s director Alexandra Bilak has urged global leaders to invest more in ways of mitigating the effects of climate change.

Tropical cyclones and monsoon floods forced many in India and Bangladesh from their homes earlier this year, while Cyclone Idai wreaked havoc in southern Africa, killing more than 1,000 people and uprooting millions in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Idai was “one of the deadliest weather-related disasters to hit the southern hemisphere”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

Although linking any single event to global warming is complicated, climate change is expected to increase the frequency of such extreme weather events.

The WMO warns that the physical and financial impacts of global warming are already on the rise.

Phan Thi Hang, a farmer in Vietnam’s Ben Tre province, has told the BBC his country’s changing climate has already had a “huge impact” on rice yields.

“There has been less rain than in previous years,” he says. "As a result, farming is much more difficult.

“We can now only harvest two crops instead of three each year, and the success of these is not a sure thing.”

He says he and his fellow farmers now have to work as labourers or diversify into breeding cattle to make extra cash, while others have left the countryside for the city.

Like Phan’s fellow farmers, many IDPs head to cities in search of safety from weather-related events as well as better lives.

But many of the world’s urban areas may not offer people the sanctuary they are seeking.

Displaced people in cities often end up seeking shelter in unfinished or abandoned buildings and are short of food, water and basic services, making them vulnerable to illness and disease, the IDMC says. They are also difficult to identify and track, mingling with resident populations.

On top of this, some of the world’s biggest cities are also at risk from rising global temperatures.

https://i.imgur.com/QUL6s0x.png

Almost all (95%) cities facing extreme climate risks are in Africa or Asia, a report by risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft has found.

And it’s the faster-growing cities that are most at risk, including megacities like Lagos in Nigeria and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Some 84 of the world’s 100 fastest-growing cities face “extreme” risks from rising temperatures and extreme weather brought on by climate change.

This means that those fleeing to urban areas to escape the impact of a warming world may well end up having their lives disrupted again by the effects of rising temperatures.

▻https://www.bbc.com/news/world-49638793
#conflits #violence #Bidi-Bidi #camps_de_réfugiés #bidi_bidi #vulnérabilité #changement_climatique #climat #villes #infographie #visualisation

#Metalor cuts ties with small mines over sustainable gold

https://www.swissinfo.ch/image/45036026/3x2/640/426/807ffc336eeea2b1b02226508b03b938/Rq/metalor.jpg

Swiss gold refinery Metalor Technologies has announced it will no longer deal with artisanal mining operations. The company cites the increasing cost of ensuring that gold is being produced by small mines in compliance with human rights and environmental standards.

Metalor has come under repeated fire for doing business with gold mines in South America that care neither for their workers or surrounding habitat. Some of the gold being refined has also been linked by NGOs to money laundering.

The company has refuted many of the charges being levelled at it by human rights groups. But it had nevertheless already ceased doing business with artisanal mines in Peru last year whilst declaring self-regulated measures to combat abuses in the gold trade. Monday’s announcement also signals the end to its artisanal activities in Colombia.

Pressure groups has complained that Metalor’s due diligence was failing to spot back doors through which “dirty gold” was allegedly reaching the refinery.

“The increasing complexity of the supply chain in this sector makes it increasingly difficult for Metalor to continue its commercial relations with artisanal mining operations,” said Metalor CEO, Antoine de Montmollin, in a statement.

“Metalor regrets this well-considered decision, but we will not compromise on defending a more sustainable value chain in the gold sector.”
’Skirting the issue’

Mark Pieth, a champion for greater accountability in the Swiss commodities sector, slammed the refinery’s decision. He believes that cutting ties with trouble spots in response to criticism is not the answer because it strips entire communities of their livelihood.

“It’s really skirting the issue because in fact the refineries should take responsibility and they should be helping to clean up rather than just cutting and running,” Pieth, who is publishing a book on gold laundering this month, told swissinfo.ch.

Pieth also points that sourcing gold exclusively from large-scale mining is no guarantee of a problem free supply chain. Large-scale mining has been associated with environmental pollution, as well as with the displacement and expropriation of indigenous communities.

Hosting four of the world’s major refineries, Switzerland has virtually cornered the market in gold processing. In 2017, the country imported 2,404 tonnes of gold (worth a total of CHF69.6 billion or $69.7 billion) while 1,684 tonnes were exported (CHF66.6 billion).

Last year, the government issued a report of the gold sector and said it was working with the industry to improve “sustainability standards”.

If Swiss refineries shun artisanal gold, this will likely be snatched up by refineries in the United Arab Emirates or India that care even less about following good practices, noted Pieth.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/image/33628832/3x2/640/426/e1eae75c4f705221c68090748b4d1f7b/aI/rtr2yz3n-33628834.jpg

ping @albertocampiphoto

Boycotting artisanal gold miners is not the answer

https://www.swissinfo.ch/image/45037978/3x2/640/426/b5d5471739b3110aa896697316fd75cc/dF/71947865_highres.jpg

Switzerland’s anti-corruption champion #Mark_Pieth thinks Metalor was wrong to drop artisanal miners.
The sudden decision by the giant Swiss refinery Metalor to throw a blanket ban on gold from small-scale mines in Colombia and Peru is an understandable knee-jerk reaction to growing public horror at the human rights, environmental and organised crime issues linked to artisanal mining.

Yet it is a short-sighted business decision, or rather, wilfully blind.

It is true that conditions in many artisanal mines and their surrounding communities can be appalling and dangerous – particularly illegal mines hijacked by organised criminals rather than traditional mining communities where the activity is merely informal.

I have seen with my own eyes women handling mercury with their bare hands and men working 28-day shifts in slave-like conditions in precarious tunnels carved into the rockface, surviving in shanty towns notorious for gun violence, forced prostitution and hijacking like Peru’s La Rinconada.

But – and it’s a big but – if other refineries follow suit rather than engaging with the issues and trying to solve them, it will be catastrophic for the 100 million people worldwide who rely on artisanal mining for their livelihoods.

About 80% of miners work in small-scale mines, but generate only 20% of the 3,200 tonnes of newly mined gold that is refined worldwide every year. The remaining 80% of our gold comes from sprawling industrial mines owned by powerful corporations like US-based Newmont Mining and the Canadian multinational Barrick Gold.

Firstly, it is simply not economically possible to disregard 20% of the world’s gold production. If responsible refineries refuse artisanal gold, it will instead end up in the cauldrons of poorly regulated refineries with zero care for compliance in the United Arab Emirates or India.

Secondly, it is a basic factual mistake to believe that gold from large-scale industrial mines is any cleaner than artisanal gold.

Toxic substances leech into drinking water supplies and major rivers with fatal consequences, through the collapse of cyanide pools (such as the Baia Mare disaster in Romania) or toxic mine drainage after the mines are abandoned. Huge piles of contaminated waste rubble, or tailings, turn landscapes into no-go wastelands.

Violent land-grabbing facilitated by corruption is common: in Ghana, there is even a word, galamsey, for traditional miners pushed into illegality through forced displacement without compensation.

Most importantly, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its Alignment Assessment 2018 deplores the “risk-averse approach to sourcing” that Metalor has been panicked into taking, and this form of “internal embargo” on artisanal mining. It’s not hard to see why: it doesn’t solve the problems faced by artisanal miners, but instead takes away their only source of livelihood while allowing the refinery to tick a box and turn a blind eye.

So, what should Metalor and other responsible gold refineries with the collective power to change the industry do?

First, acknowledge the scale of the problems and show willingness to engage – with the problems and with others trying to solve them.

Second, pinpoint the obvious no-go areas. Gold coming from conflict areas (like Sudan) or mined by children (child miners are common in many countries, including Burkina Faso, Niger and Côte d’Ivoire), for example.

And third, work together with other refineries to jointly tackle the issues of artisanal mining and help raise standards for those 100 million impoverished people who rely on it.

Metalor cites “resources to secure compliance” as a reason for its blanket ban on artisanally mined gold. But the cost of proper, transparent audits tracing back through the entire gold supply chain is mere pocket money for a refinery of this size – and if the refineries engage in collective action, it’s a matter of gold dust.

▻https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/opinion_metalor--mark-pieth-gold/45037966
#boycott