The Banality of Crimes against Migrants

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/editorial-on-crimes-against-migrants-a-1175239.html

Ioannis Kalpouzos and Itamar Mann October 28, 2017

Around the world, migrants are locked up in camps, abused and often driven to the brink of starvation. Many die as a result. These crimes should finally be punished, by the International Criminal Court.

Agnes Callamard, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, and Arbitrary Executions, presented animportant new report to the UN General Assembly on Friday. The report is on “Unlawful Death of Refugees and Migrants”

Militarized borders have soon been deployed against migrants on the fault lines between the “developed” and the “developing” worlds.

Australia has introduced windowless and allegedly un-drownable rafts to push refugees back to foreign shores. In 2015, European countries sought and obtained a UN Security Council Resolution to use force against smugglers in the Mediterranean, a extraordinary measure clearly signaling the unprecedented militarization of border controls.

Australia has struck agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea and used private corporations like G4S and Ferrovial to host and run camps of indefinite and inhumane detention. The EU has used Turkey and, most lately, Libyan militia to ensure migrants don’t make it across the Mediterranean.

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) is increasingly accused of ‘torture-like’ practices in support of the Government’s deportation imperatives. Some of its detention facilities are also privately run.