Fatih Erel
GENEVA: The UN human rights chief on Wednesday criticized EU states for preventing asylum seekers from reaching Europe and the U.S.
“I am deeply concerned about the current overriding focus of EU states on preventing migrants from reaching Europe, and rushing to deport many who do,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in the 37th session of the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday.
“The EU and its members need to review the approach they are taking in the Mediterranean, to ensure that they are not indirectly supporting the return of migrants to Libya, where they face a real risk of torture, sexual violence and other serious violations.”
Hussein noted that over two-thirds of the national parliaments in EU countries now include political parties with extreme positions against migrants, and in some cases, Muslims and other minority communities.
“This discourse based on racism, xenophobia and incitement to hatred has now expanded so significantly that in several countries it is dominating the political landscape as we saw during the election campaign in Italy in recent weeks,” he added.
About the U.S., Hussein said: “I am shocked by reports that migrants intercepted at the southern borders, including children, are detained in abusive conditions such as freezing temperatures and that some young children are being detained separately from their families.”
“Detentions and deportations of long-standing and law-abiding migrants have sharply increased, tearing families apart and creating enormous hardship,” he said.
Hussein said: “Recent attempts to justify indiscriminate, brutal attacks on hundreds of thousands of civilians by the need to combat a few hundred fighters as in Eastern Ghouta, are legally, and morally, unsustainable.
“The conflict in Syria entered a new phase of horror. In addition to the staggering bloodshed in Eastern Ghouta, which was discussed in urgent debate last week, escalating violence in the province of Idlib is placing some two million people in danger,” Hussein said.
The commissioner said a health centre was attacked every four days in 2017 and over a thousand airstrikes and ground-based strikes last year.
“It must be recalled how the massive violations committed by the government of Syria and its local allies, beginning in 2011, created the initial space in which extremist armed groups later flourished,” he said.
“When you are prepared to kill your own people, lying is easy too. Claims by the government of Syria that it is taking every measure to protect its civilian population are frankly ridiculous,” he said.
Reminding the words of the UN chief, “hell on earth” for Eastern Ghouta, Hussein said: “Next month or the month after, it will be somewhere else where people face an apocalypse — an apocalypse intended, planned and executed by individuals within the government, apparently with the full backing of some of their foreign supporters.
“It is urgent to reverse this catastrophic course, and to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court,” he added.
Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, has been under siege for the last five years and humanitarian access to the area, which is home to some 400,000 people, has been completely cut off.
In the past eight months, forces of the Bashar al-Assad regime have intensified their siege of Eastern Ghouta, making it nearly impossible for food or medicine to get into the district and leaving thousands of patients in need of treatment.
On Feb. 24, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria without delay. (AA)
