Amnesty International has decried the "systematic violations" of the rights refugees and migrants on the French-Italian border after conducting an observation mission on October 12-13. The mission was in the Briancon area of the French Alps, not far from the Italian village Claviere, the focus of recent polemics connected with the crossing of the border by French gendarmie.
The human rights organization called on the French government to stop ignoring the situation.
'Long list' of violations
During the mission conducted between October 12 and 13 on the French-Italian border, observers from Amnesty International France and other NGOs found a ''long list'' of violations. One of these is the pushing back of 26 people from the Montgenèvre border police post towards Clavière, the first village on the Italian side, without examining their individual situations or giving them the possibility to request asylum.
Another was that the French authorities had not taken into consideration the fact that 8 of them were under age 18 despite their having told the police this fact. Amnesty International also noted that the French authorities had engaged in discriminatory checks, followed migrants into the mountains, threatened and insulted them, hindered them from requesting asylum and failed to provide them with interpreters. The human rights organization said that these ''illegal'' practices and behaviors were unacceptable in a state of law and that the ''inhumanity and hypocrisy'' of such ''outrages'' were intolerable.
Some 60 volunteers took part in the mission, including 6 lawyers from the GAP court in French and 3 Italian lawyers, with the support of other NGOs including Anafé, La Cimade, Médecins du Monde, Médecins sans Frontières, Secours Catholique Caritas France, Chemins Pluriels, Emmaüs France, ASGI, GISTI, Icare 05, Refuges Solidaires and Tous Migrants.
First-hand accounts of violations
The observers of the organization collected many first-hand accounts of human rights violations and lack of attention to vulnerable individuals, as well as threats from the police. Moussa, from Ivory Coast, pushed back towards Italy on October 12, said that he had been walking along a oath when the police told him to stop or they would shoot him.
Panicking, he slipped an injured his knee but was prevented from seeing a doctor at the police station, he told Amnesty International. He was later sent back to Italy and only at that time was he able to be examined and treated by a volunteer doctor. Ibrahim, also from Ivory Coast, was arrested by the French gendarme on October 13 on mountain paths along the border. He said that the police had told him that he wasn't French and so could not live in France. When he was taken to the police station, he said that he was under age 18 but the police responded that most people lied about tehir age and so why should them believe him. Ibrahim was thus pushed back into Italy without access to the protection he has a right to, Amnesty International said.