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Amnesty International slams Spain’s ‘double standards’ on immigration

Human rights NGO Amnesty International has criticised Spain’s “double standards” vis-a-vis refugees, highlighting the contrast between its open arms policy to Ukrainian refugees and the “brutality” with which it treats African migrants in Ceuta and Melilla.

Published: 29 March 2022 11:55 CEST

Amnesty International slams Spain's 'double standards' on immigration

Spanish soldiers stand guard as migrants wait on rocks off the shore of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in May 2021. Amnesty International’s 2021/2022 report has criticised the Spanish government's treatment of African migrations compared to its open arms policy for Ukrainian or Afghans. (Photo by Antonio Sempere / AFP)

Amnesty International (AI) has criticised Spain for using “double standards” when it comes to the situation of refugees.

The Spanish branch of the human rights group, which made the comments coinciding with the release of AI’s global 2021/2022 report, argues that on the one hand the Spanish government is making efforts to provide a quick response to those escaping conflict in Ukraine or Afghanistan but by contrast uses excessive violence or persecution against African migrants crossing into Spain.

“We can’t one day welcome with open arms those who escape war, and the next day beat and use extreme brutality against those who jump the fence in Melilla,” said the director of Amnesty International Spain Esteban Beltrán.

“It’s incoherent to demand a coordinated and open response for refugees in the European Union, and then carry out quick returns, even of minors, and justify everything based immigration control.

“Spanish authorities must decide whether they want to comply with international law at their borders, or if they’re only going to do so when it is of interest to them,” Beltrán concluded.

Amnesty International’s 2021/2022 report explains in its section on Spain how after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, the Spanish government evacuated 2,026 people and for the first time allowed people of Afghan nationality to apply for asylum in the Embassy of Spain in Pakistan.

As a further example of Spain’s double standards, the report points out the “overcrowding and precariousness” in migrant centres in the Canary Islands, referring to the poor conditions as “avoidable” and down to “poor management”.

Asylum-seekers in Spain have allegedly not been given access to adequate information about their rights, and Spanish authorities have not guaranteed their timely registration or the processing of their applications.

The human rights group with its headquarters in London also accuses Spain of “illegally and collectively” returning migrants to Morocco, including unaccompanied migrants.

In 2021, a total of 22,200 people arrived by sea to the Atlantic archipelago and at least 955 of them, including approximately 80 minors, drowned before they could reach Spanish shores.

The report, which analyses the human rights situation in 154 countries, also speaks negatively of the impunity displayed at Spanish nursing homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, when hundreds of infected elderly people were not properly cared for or were left to die alone.

Amnesty International also stresses there’s been “another pandemic” in Spain in the sense of the lack of adequate access to healthcare for people with chronic diseases, the elderly, and people with mental health problems whilst Covid-19 has dominated health personnel’s workload.

Freedom of expression and the right to protest also continues to be threatened in the Spanish state according to the annual report, citing examples such as the absence of reform of the so-called gag law and the application of Spain’s Criminal Code in cases such as the conviction and imprisonment of rapper Pablo Hasel.

The “excessive” use of force by Spanish law enforcement officers in order to break up demonstrations, such as the inappropriate use of foam balls, continues to be denounced by Amnesty International.

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With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced on Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.