Entries by jille

The PPT Judgment on The Human Right to Health of Migrant and Refugee Peoples (Berlin, 23-25 October 2020)

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal’s Judgment on The Human Right to Health of Migrant and Refugee Peoples (Berlin, 23-25 October 2020) 45° Session on the Violations of the Human Rights of Migrant and Refugee Peoples The Judgment and the Recommendations formulated by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (PPT) on The Human Right to Health of Migrant and […]

Call for Support Hearing in Berlin

(click here for Text in German)   There is a growing atmosphere of resentment directed at migrants and refugees: Asylum laws are being tightened, the European Union (EU) continuously attempts to seal external borders. Although the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its outstanding moral standards, including commitment to human rights, this very […]

Venue Berlin Hearing

Ort | Venue Refugio BerlinLenaustraße 3-4, 12047 Berlin Refugio is where new and old Berliners live and work together. Refugio is a project of Berlin City Mission, established in the summer of 2015.

Hearing Berlin in 2020

A human rights tribunal will take place in Berlin from October 23-25, 2020. Where we are hearing human rights violations of migrant and refugee peoples on acces to health.

 

There is a growing atmosphere of resentment directed at migrants and refugees: Asylum laws are being tightened, the European Union (EU) continuously attempts to seal external borders. Although the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its outstanding moral standards, including commitment to human rights, this very same EU allows thousands of people to die while crossing its borders. Sick, traumatised or pregnant people are frequently deported. Many refugees experience ever stricter asylum laws and racial discrimination, even from medical personnel, leading to a denial of their right to healthcare. These violations of the human right to health endangers these vulnerable people unacceptably. We are bringing charges on human rights violations of migrant and refugee peoples in the following areas: Access to health care Consequences of living standards in mass accommodation on mental and physical health Residence status, deportation and health  Criminalisation civil humanitarian assistance Germany‘s responsibility regarding the European policy of sealing external borders Racism, gender and age specific aspects are cross sectional topics throughout the indictment.

Folgende Organisationen sind schon dabei | Alliance partners already involved

  • Ärzte der Welt
  • BAfF, Bundesweite Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Psychosozialen Zentren für Flüchtlinge und Folteropfer
  • Borderline-europe – Menschenrechte ohne Grenzen e.V.
  • Deutsche Aidshilfe
  • Flüchtlingsrat Brandenburg
  • InEUmanity
  • International Women Space
  • IPPNW e.V.
  • Medibüro Berlin
  • Medico International
  • Respect
  • vdää
  • Women in Exile e.V.
  • Yaar e.V.

Weiterführende Informationen | Further information:

Kontakt zum Bündnis | Contact to the alliance: Susanne Dyhr, [email protected]

Facebook: facebook.com/ppt_berlin

Twitter: @ppt_berlin

Background Hearing Berlin 2020

A human rights tribunal will take place in Berlin from October 23-25, 2020. Inspired by solidarity between migrants, refugees and human rights organizations and other social movements towards equality and an inclusive society, more than 30 migrant and refugee organisations, endorsed by 100 movements, networks and organisations from different European countries launched the 45th Permanent People’s […]

Final Document PPT Session

PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL Spanish Italian   Founder: LELIO BASSO (ITALY)   President: PHILIPPE TEXIER (FRANCE) Vice-presidents: LUIZA ERUNDINA DE SOUSA (BRAZIL) JAVIER GIRALDO MORENO (COLOMBIA) HELEN JARVIS (AUSTRALIA) NELLO ROSSI (ITALY) Secretary General: GIANNI TOGNONI (ITALY)   Final Document on the sessions on the violation of human rights of migrants and refugee people Brussels – […]

Political Statement Co-convenors

Time for a New Transnational Solidarity  in favour of the Rights of Migrant People  Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Hearing On the Human Rights of Migrant and Refugee People  EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, BRUSSELS   Tuesday April 9, 2019 Spanish French Presentation Migrant organisations, trade unions, migrant solidarity groups, scholars and NGOs from the European Union (EU) participated in […]

Program Hearing Brussels

   

Session on the Human Rights of Migrants and Refugee Peoples

 9 April 2019   9.00 to 13.00

 

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, BRUSSELS

ROOM ASP 1G2

 (Interpretation:  EN, FR, ES, DE, IT, NL, EL, SV)

   

NOTE Getting your Badge to enter the EP: The entry to the European Parliament is at the Simone Veil entrance of the ASP building - on the side of the Place Luxembourg. GUE/NGL people will wait those who need a badge, on the stairs of this entrance, with a poster of the event, from 8:15 to 8:45. So people need to get to the Parliament at 8.00 am

NOTE: Please bring your banners, posters, publications etc for display at the Parliament and at the Demo

Programme

09:00 – 09:45 Welcoming words and introduction 

  • Gabi Zimmer, President of GUE/NGL
  • Claude Moraes, Chair of the Comittee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
  • Jille Belisario, Transnational Migrant Platform-Europe
  • Braulio Moro, France Amerique Latine (FAL)
  • Simona Fraudatario, Gianni Tognoni, Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

09:45 - 11:15 Report and perspectives of the PPT deliberations

The PPT Session on migrants and refugee people
Philippe Texier, President of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

Legal strategies for Italian and European responsibility
Antonello Ciervo, Chiara Favilli, Luca Masera (Asgi)

Policies of criminalisation, conscription and marginalisation
Frances Webber, Human Rights lawyer and Vice-Chair of the Institute of Race Relations

Crimes of the system: a vacuum in international law
Perfecto Andrés Ibáñez, member of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

Looking forward: concluding Declaration and comments by the panel of judges
Bridget Anderson, Luciana Castellina, Mireille Fanon-Mendès-France , Claire-Marie Lievens, Patricia Orejudo

11:15 - 11:45 Citizens’ networks as example of "civil disobedience"

Adham Darawsha, Councillor for CultureS and Democratic Participation, City of Palermo

Miguel Roldan, fire fighter – case of criminalisation of solidarity.

11 :45- 12:40 Interventions of participant parliamentarians and social movements: Going Forward to political action

Moderators: Brid Brennan (TNI) and MEP Miguel Urbán (GUE/NGL)

Moderation: Brid Brennan, TNI (Ireland) & MEP Miguel Urban, Podemos (Spain)

  • Root Causes - Forced displacement of Migrant and Refugee People
    Free Trade & Investment Agreements, War, Climate Change
    Mohammed Hakech (LVC/Morocco); Samah Ibrahim Representative of UAWC/Palestine; Lamine Bathily (Sindicato Popular de Vendedores Ambulantes-Barcelona);Clara Osagiede (RMT/TU/UK)
  • Journeys & Borders – Dead & Disappeared (Med & Aegean Sea)
    Crime against Humanity Role of Corporations in Border Wars
    Representative of Sea Watch, Germany; Imed Soltani (Land for All/Tunis); Monica Vargas (TNI/Spain); Driss El Korchi (MCDC/Belgium)
  • Fortress Europe – Hostile Environment
    Detention, Deportation, Racism and Islamophobia
    Liz Fekete (IRR/UK), Renata Molina (FAL/France); Hatem Gheribi (Watch the Med AlarmPhone/Europe)
  • Gender Rights / Women Organising
    Fatou Secka (Equis-MG/Spain); Petra Snelders (Respect/Europe); Angie Garcia (Waling Waling/UK); Jara Henar (Stop Mare Mortum)
  • Youth & Children
    Luciano Banchio (Espacio del Inmigrante/Spain); Glen Sangcap (CFMW/Italia)
  •  Resistance & Alternatives, Transnational Activism and Solidarity
    LAB representative (Basque Country); Khadija Najlaoui (UNITE/UK); Nonoi Hacbang (TMP-E/Europe); Cristina Brovia; Deborah Valencia (MELISSA /Greece)

12:40 – 13 :00 Conclusions 

  • Franco Ippolito, on the behalf of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal
  • Federico Pacheco, La Via Campesina
  • MEP Marie-Christine Vergiat, member of the Subcommittee for Human Rights
  • Hosted in the European Parliament by

 

 More than 500 organisations have worked together in solidarity with the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal

For more information please contact: [email protected]

 

PPT evidence at the APPG on the Hostile Environment

Evidence presented by Liz Fekete on behalf of the PPT at the APPG on Race and Community & APPG on
Migration Putting People First: Protecting Public Services from the Hostile Environment,
4 April 2019, Committee Room 9, Palace of Westminster.

On 3-4 November 2018, migrants’ rights groups, trades unionists and race experts came together to put the ‘hostile environment’ on trial at the fourth European session of the Permanent People’s Tribunal on the violations with impunity of the human rights of migrant and refugee peoples. An expert jury heard testimony from witnesses drawn from frontline services, academia, migrants’ networks and, crucially, migrants and refugees themselves, including former immigration detainees, care workers, cleaners and domestic workers.

What did this public opinion tribunal teach us and what did it reveal?

From the outset I should say that the evidence we received and heard both as written and oral testimony pointed to the fact that the issue of public services could not be divorced from the hostile environment of employer sanctions, the criminalisation of work and workplace exploitation. Denial of services and a nativist approach to migrant workers goes hand in hand. And that’s the main message of the PPT that I am bringing here today.

The PPT foregrounded the widespread subcontracting and outsourcing which leads to the creation of ‘sites without rights’ or ‘spaces for exploitation’. We heard from witnesses repeatedly how ‘migrant’ status puts people outside the protection of public services andthe law, including labour laws – witness the failure to enforce the minimum wage for migrant workers and the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in 2013.

Testimony from trades unionists and workers in specific sectors showed how migrants can be virtually disenfranchised: hotels and housekeeping, warehousing, road haulage, in food and agriculture, in construction (where bonded labour is even used) and in care and domestic work, where a mainly legal female workforce faces sex, race and class discrimination, usually with no access to legal remedies.

The creation of illegality is intimately tied to the deterrence logic of the hostile environment which dissuades people from accessing public services including health care. It starts with the conscription of employers, landlords, university staff and medics, into surveillance and enforcement. But we heard too how it builds on the legal measures that have criminalised work since the 1990s - the ban on work for asylum seekers, the introduction and intensification of employer sanctions, salary thresholds for settlement and family reunification, the creation in 2016 of a new criminal offence of illegal working.

I am sure the APPG on Race & Community has been addressing some of these issues, such as how employer sanctions affect immigration enforcement through raids on mainly small, BAME-owned workplaces. One witness, Bobby Chan of the Min Quan Advocacy Group, claimed the law has been weaponised by Home Office officials with unchecked power to close a business down. He told how frequent raids, accompanied by physical brutality, were in fact a legalised shakedown rather than real immigration enforcement, with those arrested being released within minutes but employers expected to pay fines of £20,000 a time. This is leading to contempt for the law.

A number of witnesses described the perverse impact of immigration rules. Kent Refugee Help explained how the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule creates crime, by creating destitution. Leeds Migrant Action and Dr Jon Burnett of Swansea University spoke of the ‘captive labour’ of detained asylum seekers, denied permission to work in the UK but performing nearly a million hours of menial work in detention without the protection of labour laws, at less than a seventh of the minimum wage. This again leads to contempt for the government, an exploitative employer which argues that it is fine to pay detainees £1 an hour because ‘this is not work, but a way of passing time’.

Yes, the evidence presented to the PPT pointed to the dangers in data sharing and the shameful exclusion from services, but it also highlighted the need to understand how government policy and law provide the structures for super-exploitation. Creating a climate of fear where the sick and undocumented are too frightened to access public services places enormous power in the hands of unscrupulous employers and also creates divisions among NHS staff, with some workers, as Dr Neal Russell explained, willingly using racial profiling to decide who should pay for services within a charging system that is out of reach for poorly paid migrant workers. (This same doctor was one of several who returned medals awarded for fighting Ebola in West Africa because they believe creating fear and mistrust in the NHS is wrong and that ‘collectively, as human beings we should never allow anything to stand in the way to access to health care’)

All the written evidence presented to the PPT can be found on the website of the Transnational Migrants Platform where we will also download videos of some of the testimony. Next week we are meeting in the European parliament to discuss our findings with parliamentarians and our colleagues in Barcelona, Palermo and Paris who also organised hearings. Although the UK is the only country where the hostile environment has officially been acknowledged as a state policy objective, it is practised in effect in every EU country, and by the EU which has announced its intention to suspend search and rescue in the Mediterranean. The EU is complicit in sending boat people back to Libyan detention centres where they are subjected to forced labour (yes, the issue of labour exploitation returns!), as well as sexual abuse, trafficking and torture including electric shocks, burns, lashes and even flaying.

The PPT indictment, by immigration expert Frances Webber, is available in the current issue of the IRR’s journal Race & Class.We will be bringing out a book including all the testimonies next year. The courage and commitment of the witnesses who appeared before the PPT is acknowledged by all of us who took part as the driver of the judgment which is now being finalised and will be delivered to the Home Office shortly.