A media report on Sunday in Berlin said the German Interior Ministry wants to stop migrants ever reaching Europe’s Mediterranean coast by picking them up at sea and returning them to Africa.
It quoted the ministry as advising the European Union to urgently adopt an Australian-style system under which migrants intercepted at sea are sent for processing at camps in third world countries.
A ministry official said on condition of anonymity that the elimination of the prospect of reaching the European coast could convince migrants to avoid embarking on the life-threatening and costly journey in the first place.
The source said: “The goal must be to remove the basis for people-smuggling organisations and to save migrants from the life-threatening journey.”
The source said the ministry was proposing that any of the migrants picked up in the Mediterranean, most of whom set off from conflict-torn Libya, should be sent to Tunisia, Egypt or other north African states to apply for asylum from there.
The source added: “If their asylum applications are accepted, the migrants could then be transported safely to Europe.”
The source said the ministry had no concrete plans or discussions at EU-level about the proposal.
Meanwhile, the opposition politicians have condemned the plan.
Bernd Riexinger, the Head of the opposition Left party, said it would be “a humanitarian scandal and a further step toward elimination of the right to asylum”.
Xinhua/NAN.
News Report says German ministry wants migrants returned to Africa
