Refugees arriving on Lesbos, November 2015. Flickr/Charles-André Habib. Some rights reserved.One after another, the opened borders of south-east Europe have slammed shut. The exhilarating, hellish utopia of the west Balkans route seems an increasingly implausible memory. The replacement, following the EU-Turkey Agreement of 18 March, looks a lot like the more straightforward hell of mandatory detention.
Since the deal came into force on 20 March, everyone arriving on the Greek islands has been taken straight to detention. The EU’s much-vaunted ‘hotspots’ have become vast detention centres. The Vial centre on Chios is already more than 50% over its capacity of 1,100 places, and has seen disturbances and a mass break-out. Over 2,300 people are detained in Moria on Lesbos. It is rumoured that people were not initially informed why they were being detained for several days after the deal, which would almost certainly be unlawful under EU law. Neither has there apparently been any individualised assessment of the need and appropriateness of detention, also required by EU law. Disabled people, young children, all are detained.
In the short-term, the political calculus is clear. Panicking EU leaders are desperate to “break the business model of the smugglers” and convince people that, even if they survive the risk of death in the Aegean, they will not be allowed to stay in Europe. The message is pure deterrence: last summer’s wave of public sympathy for refugees is forgotten.
