2023-04-20 16:22:05
Return by any means and at any cost. This is what the methods of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) suggest. It does not matter if the practices used circumvent the rules established by other States. Between 2012 and 2014 at least, Switzerland used the services of a small French company to send migrants back on board jets to Italy.
Everything suggests that they were special camouflaged flights. They were registered as scheduled flights, but only those to be returned and security and management personnel were on board. It was a way to make difficult removals, bypassing Italian directives that refused special flights. This method also made it possible not to attract the attention of the National Commission for the Prevention of Torture (CNPT) which accompanies all the special flights but not all of the other returns by air.
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Between 2014 and 2016, the Confederation had done everything to keep these methods secret and not to reveal the contracts it had concluded with airlines in the context of these expulsions. She feared that relations between Switzerland and Italy would deteriorate and these expulsions would be compromised if the public found out. The Federal Administrative Court finally forced Bern to disclose certain contracts that The mail has obtained.
An investigation by the German-speaking media Republic reveals that this practice is not buried. Two Algerians were sent back by this type of plane last May. Asked, the SEM uses the language of wood. He says he has no statistics on the size of the planes used. The contracts transmitted are redacted. We don’t know how much money the state commits to turning back rejected asylum seekers. Or how these returns potentially likely to violate human rights take place since no civilians are on board. One can seriously question the financial and environmental cost of resorting to this type of refoulement at the expense of the taxpayer.
In a context where returns to Croatia are increasingly disputed and Italy has temporarily suspended the application of the Dublin agreements, there are fears that new questionable methods will be put in place. The State Secretariat for Migration must be more transparent about the execution of deportations in order to prove that they respect human rights. This is a subject of major public interest, that of elementary respect for human dignity!
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