Border Wars and Asylum Crimes By

By Frances Webber

The criminalisation of asylum claimants who arrive with no documentation is the latest salvo in a ‘war on asylum’ which employs every possible method to keep the world’s unwanted masses, the displaced, the desperate and the destitute, away from the shores of Europe – from legal obstacles such as the common visa list,4 imposing impossible visa requirements on nationals of all refugee-producing countries, to British immigration officers stopping Roma passengers boarding aircraft at Prague airport,5 gunboats and military aircraft patrolling the Mediterranean and the coast of west Africa,6 landmines on the Greek border with Turkey7 and the shooting of people attempting to scale the barbed wire fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco.8 Anything goes, so long as the goal of keeping out poor asylum seekers and migrants is achieved.

London: Statewatch, 2006. 37p.