EUROPEAN DIACONAL FORUM
"The Mediterranean Sea, a bridge among people from 3 continents
or a new wall against desperate boat people ?
I shall tell three stories from the Southern part of Europe, which at the same time is the Northern part of the Mediterranean area. This double geographic role of the so called Southern Europe must be considered, when you look at countries as Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, even France, but also Albania, Macedonia or the various countries from the Balkans. Their history, their culture, their economic links are often far stronger with the East and the South of the Mediterranean Sea that with Brussels or Helsinke.
1) The boat people
Every night there are boats, old and nearly unusable ships are crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Turkey to the Greek Islands or to Italy, from Albania or Macedonia to Italy, from Malta to Italy, from Morocco to Spain etc.
Many boats arrive and unload their cargo on some lonely shore, abandoning their passengers somewhere at a lonely strand. Other ship crews force the people to jump into the water and to reach the shore by swimming. Not all arrive, especially women or children. Other ships have an average on the open sea and cannot go on. The crew will not send the SOS signal, but will get on a smaller boat and disappear leaving their passengers on the sinking ship. Who knows how many disappeared this way in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Other ships and boats are discovered by the border police with their special units and high tech instruments. In certain cases the ship will be forced to return tothe harbour of origin, p.e., Vlona/Albania. These boats and ships will try again tomorrow. Others are pushed back into the open sea. Very often the police behave in a more humanitarian way. They will accompany the ship, or if the ship is no longer safe, the passengers, to a harbour of the Greek Islands or Southern Italy. From there they are accompanied in closed centres and after a very short time, most of them will be expelled and brought back to where they come from. They will try again and again, first paying smugglrs, later on getting into the hands of traffickers, who will exploit their labour fource or their bodies for prostitution, as these people are no longer able to pay the fees of the smugglers. Smugglers and traffickers may be the same people.
Some official numbers which concern only the cases where the police could get hold of a ship or a boat, coming from Albania to Italy during the year 2000 are as follows:
This is only the tip of the iceberg of the traffic of boat people in the Mediterranean area, apart from all those who try to reach Italy via the green border of Slovenia.
Italy and Greece are considered the weak points of the EU border system. Again and again, Italy is accused of letting these people in and allowing them to reach Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland etc. This is only partially true. The Dublin Agreement and other bilateral agreements now allow the other countries to return these asylum-seekers to Italy. In all inter-governmental meetings Italy is challenged to improve its border control system. Does it mean to build a wall in the Mediterranean Sea?
So this is just a little story on what is happening in the Southern countries of Europe.
2) Trafficking of women and children
We have heard that traffickers bring into Italy, Greece or Spain women and children, in order to exploit them. This happens in various ways : women can be brought in for labour, closed into hidden places and forced to work, for example for the textile industry. Other traffickers buy children from their relatives or kidnap them, forcing them to beg or steal. Now also the traffic of organs became an important business. There are precise rules, how much they must produce, otherwise there will be harsh punishments.
Women and children are also bought in for prostitution. The rules are extremely severe and disobedience is not tolerated.
Here is just one specific story, that of Linda : Linda worked in Milan, she was forced into prostitution. A street worker of an evangelical church got into contact with her. Some days later we heard that she was in hospital in very bad condition. A car had run into her on purpose, while she was waiting for clients. This is a common punishment for women, who in some way try to get out of business or at least to have contacts beyond their "work".
Here are some figures for the year 2000 :
It has been estimated, that there is about 25000 foreign prostitutes in Italy. Nearly all of them are working because of desperate need, one can say they are forced to prostitute themselves, although a distinction must be made:
a) desperate economic need, but no constraint or exploitation by other
persons, such as smugglers or traffickers.
b) dependency on traffickers, until they have paid their "debt", once having paid up, they are "free" but do not have any possibility to go to their country of origin, or to find another job in Italy. So they find themselves remaining in prostitution.
c) Totally dependent from traffickers, forced to produce as much as possible, without any rights, total "property" of the traffickers. Often sold from one trafficker to another. In Italy about 1500 are in this desperate, hopeless situation.
The women and children come from many different regions, certainly many from Eastern Europe, but they also come from China, India, Philippines, a particularly high number from Nigeria. For each ethnic group the situation and the procedure is different, which also means , that the support and the counselling must be different.
Human beings are owned by others, basic ethic values are no longer understood by those who work in this business. The bridge of cultural exchange in the Mediterranean Sea seems to break down.
3) Small churches, working in the field of asylum and migration, the case of the Italian Protestant churches :
In Italy there are around 60.000 Protestants, belonging to the family of the Conference of European Churches. They work together in the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, FCEI. One of the priorities of the FCEI is the Refugee and Migrant Service. It is a priority for the following reasons :
a) being a small minority the Protestants are well aware of what it means to be a marginalised group. Nowadays protestants are no longer persecuted, so they feel it their duty to be along side of the persecuted:
b) To host the stranger is part of the identity of Christians
c) A practical reason: out of 3 Protestants in Italy 2 are immigrants, 1 is of Italian origin.
d) Most congregations get in contact with migrants and refugees and feel the need to find practical answers, but also to share their community life with them.
The SRM has five major mandates:
a) awareness building, information
b) advocacy
c) social integration
d) "to be church together"
e) specific needs: women and prostitution, migrants in prison, but also refugees in nearby countries: Albania, Kosovo, Serbia. Then co-operation with the churches in the Mediterranean area: Greece, France, Spain, Middle East.
How do we work?
a) Involvement of most congregations: needs, where the SRM should give support or co-ordinate: training, counselling for specific cases or for starting and implementing programmes, resources.
b) Networking: we strongly feel the need to work with alliances, being very small on our own: specially for advocacy: reflection group, Amman Process, member of CCME and GEN. In many cases we do the co-ordinating and/or participate actively;
c) Pilot projects to experiment good practice;
d) Support to neighbouring countries;
e) Resources:
Some considerations on resources for the migrant and refugee sector in general for the Southern European churches in particular:
1) 1997 has been the year of the "Uprooted". During that year many initiatives for awareness building and sensibilisation have been promoted. Many good initiatives have started.
2) Since 1998 all human and financial resources for migrants and refugees have been cut, as well by governments and international institutions, as also by church related agencies.
3) Most funds go to Eastern Europe, which is understandable, being aware of the enormous needs. Nevertheless the influx of migrants and asylum seekers from the Mediterranean Area to Europe is really considerable, looking at numbers and seen the enormous effort, which is made by the governments to contain this influx with military measures.
4) The hospitality for strangers is a basic part of our identity as churches and expectations are high towards all churches. How do we respond and how do we share our resources?
5) The small churches in the South are struggling, but need burden sharing, in order not to give up, as some churches already did.
Reassuming it seems necessary to reconsider in general the resourcing of the work with migrants and refugees. In particular the churches in the South of Europe are really contributing, but the situation seems very unequal: mainly small churches face a situation of big migration influx, because the external European borders are mainly there, apart from those in the East.
Smaller churches have also more difficulties to do fundraising. The whole project issue may also need a revision:
1) Positive effects of the project policy:
2) Negative effects of the project policy:
These questions have the effect, that churches will more and more move out of the work with migrants and refugees and big agencies will take over. Churches will more and more close themselves to the issue and will leave it to the highly competent big agencies. This may produce good work, but the link and the specific role of churches will more and more get lost. The church related agencies will no longer be very different than all other big NGOs. Churches and agencies will drift more and more apart. Specially small churches but not only, will pay a high price for this, loosing one basic part of their identity, that is the diaconal involvement of all Christians.