Detention and Discrimination: How COVID-19 has Backslid Human Rights for Migrants and Refugees
Morgan Fox, Online Staff Writer
September 6, 2020
COVID-19 has put other issues in the backseat, but that doesn’t mean they’re not happening, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be paying attention. The pandemic has created an excuse for policymakers, law enforcement officials, and increasingly vitriolic politicians to deny refugees and migrants basic human rights.
Discriminatory policies have been enacted which arbitrarily detain and quarantine groups of refugees and migrants, while xenophobic rhetoric has continued to rise. Meanwhile, these groups now find themselves disproportionately at risk of contracting COVID-19, partly due to the overcrowding and poor conditions of the camps and centres that they’re quarantined in.
The treatment of migrants and refugees is not a new problem. In 2015, more than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, and hundreds of thousands more have entered the continent each year since, creating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War Two. Countries have struggled to deal with the influx, and divisions between EU members have worsened over how to handle the crisis. Responses have varied drastically between states, from welcoming refugees openly to building fences along national borders. Unsurprisingly, 2020 has had fewer migrants and refugees entering Europe than initially expected, but from January to May, 31,600 crossings were still recorded.
While discriminatory policies towards refugees and asylum-seekers have always existed, the pandemic has given lawmakers the opportunity to further isolate and single out migrants and asylum-seekers as a dangerous ‘other’. This spring, the Greek government resumed its plan to evict over 11,000 refugees from government-provided housing by June 1st, leaving them without access to financial assistance from the government or practical access to Greek social services. A less drastic policy adopted by multiple European countries entails quarantining migrants in detention centres, specific housing blocks, or whole neighbourhoods. These migrants and asylum-seekers often face stricter regulations and punishments, and in certain cases, are being kept in lockdown while the rest of the country exits it. In Serbia, government-run housing for refugees, migrants, and asylum-seekers operated under a 24-hour lockdown, instead of a nightly curfew. The country exited lockdown in early May, but these centres remained under a special regime. In certain municipalities the armed forces were deployed to guard camps, claiming that this was needed to protect citizens from petty crime and harassment, despite no increase of such incidents. Similarly, in Greece, migrant camps have remained in lockdown while the rest of the country began returning to normality in May, despite no evidence of new cases in the overcrowded camps. European governments are using the pandemic as a pretext to isolate and target the vulnerable migrant and refugee community.
Certain responses to the virus have also fueled the narrative and overall sentiment that migrants and asylum-seekers are a threat to the general population. While this opinion was already popular enough to permit policies that have detained migrants and refugees in detention centres and unofficial ghettos, it has also led to severe scapegoating. Far-right anti-immigrant rhetoric has accompanied COVID-19, but migrants and asylum-seekers have found themselves especially vulnerable. The Greek government has argued that refugees cannot be “pampered” and must “fend for themselves”. Similarly, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has stated that Hungary is “fighting a two-front war: one front is called migration, and the other one belongs to the coronavirus. There is a logical connection between the two, as both spread with movement.” Dangerous misinformation like this has continued to spread, despite the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stating the migrants are no more likely to carry the disease than anyone else.
Many of these policies and public opinions already existed before COVID-19, but the situation refugees and migrants find themselves in has been made unimaginably worse by the pandemic. Refugee camps and detention centres are densely populated and lack access to access to basic sanitation and hygiene – in short, it’s impossible to wash hands or social distance. Germany has garnered widespread admiration for their limited number of cases and how they’ve handled coronavirus, but many of their cases came from overcrowded facilities housing asylum-seekers who lacked face masks, hand sanitizer, or disinfectant.
It isn’t all terrible, and there are exceptions. In early April, Portugal granted residence rights to all migrants and asylum-seekers, providing access to health care and other public services. But these examples are rare. As a consequence of COVID-19, the European Asylum Support Office predicts that the EU will face an increase in asylum applications, as other countries fail their citizens in the wake of the pandemic. Simultaneously, European countries are further militarizing and arming their borders. These two ideas fundamentally oppose each other, and as the numbers of migrants and armed border enforcers simultaneously increase, it seems all the more likely that violence and discrimination are inevitable.
It seems as if Europe is always facing some sort of identity crisis - liberal or conservative, open or closed, integration or independence. But what does it say if some of the wealthiest countries in the world choose to not help and protect some of the most vulnerable people? Nothing good, to be sure.