“I'm delighted with France's stance, I think [the survivors from Ocean Viking] are being well-treated, but now we'd like to see what happens with them administratively.” On Sunday November 13th, two days after the humanitarian group SOS Méditerranée's ship docked at Toulon in France – having been refused entry by Italy and Malta – the socialist senator Marie-Arlette Carlotti visited the “waiting zone” where the migrants who were on board are now detained. They are being held in a CCAS holiday centre at the end of the Giens Peninsula on the Mediterranean coast for a maximum of 26 days. The logistics at the centre were organised by the lay Catholic order the Order of Malta and the Civil Protection voluntary association.
A “waiting zone” has a particular legal status; though it is on French soil it is considered to be outside France, so the migrants, who are all seeking asylum, are not deemed in law to have entered French territory. The survivors from the vessel are being treated the same way as all those who are held in waiting zones: after the official refugee protection agency the Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides (OFPRA) has given its views, the Ministry of Interior will decide whether to consider – or not – each migrant's request for asylum.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
In those cases where the authorities agree to consider an asylum request, the migrants in question will either stay in France or be “relocated” - to use the administrative jargon – to a willing European country while their asylum claims are fully examined. But those whose request will not be considered are “set” to return to their country of origin. That was the view of French interior minister Gérald Darmanin on November 10th when, as an “exceptional” measure, he agreed to open Toulon to the humanitarian ship. But, as ever, any such removal depends on the country in question agreeing to issue a “pass” for the migrant.
“What's struck me is why are there so many police officers here? Can this be explained to me?” asked Senator Guy Benarroche from the green EELV party, one of the organisers of the visit, as he entered the waiting zone; parliamentarians and journalists have a legal right to visit such zones and Mediapart was among those present. Indeed, half-a-dozen or so CRS riot squad police officers were guarding the entrance to the passageways to the flats, which are normally used for holidays.
An official from the local prefecture accompanying the visitors said the police were there to stop the survivors from leaving, as the holiday centre has no fence and a 'waiting zone' is a place of detention. In all, some 200 police officers and gendarmes were guarding the zone. The Parliamentary delegation, which also included green MP Hubert Julien-Lafferière, was accompanied by four members of the Association Nationale d’Assistance aux Frontières pour les Étrangers (ANAFÉ), a group authorised to observe 'waiting zones' at borders. It has been critical of rights violations it has seen in the past, for example at Roissy Airport near Paris and at Briançon in the south-east of of France.
Enlargement : Illustration 2
This waiting zone is temporarily lodging 190 men, women and children from around 15 nationalities, including Malian, Guinean, Bangladeshi, Sudanese, Syrian and Egyptian nationals. Morgane Lescot, a humanitarian worker who was on board Ocean Viking, said that away from public gaze the reception for the migrants at the naval base in Toulon had been “utterly cold, with soldiers and armed police and sniffer dogs”. She told Mediapart by phone: “The first contact that the people had was a body search.” This, she said, had made the migrants feel very anxious.
The local prefecture said that four people who had been removed from the ship and taken urgently to hospital in Bastia on Corsica on November 10th have since been brought to the waiting zone, while two others are currently being treated in hospital in Toulon. The 44 unaccompanied children on board the ship left the centre on Friday and went to an hotel in Toulon where they are being looked after by the local child services unit the Aide Sociale à l’Enfance (ASE), as the law requires. After verification – including potentially bone tests – it is possible that the juvenile status of some of the young people could be challenged and that they are then no longer looked after by the child services unit.
Barefoot or bare-chested
The Red Cross is in charge of the migrants' welfare at the Giens holiday centre. “The important thing is to re-establish family links by allowing them to communicate with their relatives,” the Red Cross's operational doctor for the site, Sébastien Madelpuech, told the visiting Parliamentarians. The migrants have been able to phone loved ones and contact them via social media. The Red Cross has also handed out clothes. “Many of them arrived barefooted or bare-chested,” explained Sébastien Madelpuech. His NGO is also dispensing medical care in dedicated tents, working with the emergency medical and psychological unit of the ambulance service SAMU.
After visiting the “Red Cross village” near the accommodation, the visitors went up to the terraces to meet the migrants. Looking out at the sea, some of the 20 or so young men there were on the phone or simply waiting, seemingly unsure what to do with themselves. “It's beautiful,” several exclaimed when questioned by a television journalist. They said they were happy to be safely away from the sea and to be in decent accommodation. But they also expressed concern about the future, saying they had no idea as to their likely fate.
Enlargement : Illustration 3
“We know nothing about our status,” Jamal-Elden, aged 23, who is originally from Sudan, said wearily in English. “Why are there so many soldiers and police? We're refugees,” he said. “We left Libya and had hoped that that in Europe everything would be possible for us in the future.” According to figures from refugee agency OFPRA seen by Mediapart, around 60% of requests made by Sudanese asylum seekers in 2021 ended with the applicant being afforded refuge.
Alongside Jamal-Elden was Ahmed, aged 15, who had left Syria with his uncle. Then there was Famakau, from Mali, who showed us around the studio in which he is lodged with five other men. The area was clean and the bedding in a good state. “The boat team were so organised, I'm really grateful to them,” he said. “I spent a year in Algeria then a year in Libya. The Arabs over there torture and rape,” he added, recalling his long journey to get here. For Malians around 22% of asylum claims are successful.
Opposite the holiday centre a communal living room has been turned into a makeshift office for the prefecture and the border police the Police Aux Frontières (PAF). “Officers from the PAF pass on notice of meetings with protection officers from OFPRA,” explained Lucien Giudicelli, secretary general at the prefecture for the Var département or county. Madeline Brocchetto, who is head of OFPRA's taskforce handling asylum claims at the borders, said that 16 of their agents were conducting interviews with the survivors from the ship to assess whether their “request for asylum was clearly well-founded or not”. The meetings, which last 35 to 40 minutes each, had already begun that morning. By midday 30 meetings had taken place and the OFPRA teams think they will have completed their work by this Tuesday.
Interpreters only available by phone
The Parliamentarians expressed concerns about what they saw as a very fast process, which they feared might undermine the migrants' rights. “Do you think 48 hours is enough with regard to the meticulous work that you have to carry out?” Marie-Arlette Carlotti asked the official heading the OFPRA mission. “The threshold level is not that of a request made in country,” Madeline Brocchetto replied.
The interviews are carried out in marquees erected behind the holiday centre, with interpreters not present in person but available simply on the phone. From outside one could hear an OFPRA official ask for a translation. “What were resources like on the boat, was there anything to drink, to eat?” the official wanted to know. In another tent one could make out another official saying: “If you have any difficulty in understanding please let me know.” Laure Palun from the monitoring group ANAFÉ expressed concerns. “When you go past you hear what's being said. Confidentiality isn't being guaranteed,” she told officials.
Ultimately it is for OFPRA to propose and for the minister of the interior to decide whose requests for asylum will ultimately be considered. “He does what he wants, he's a minister,” said Guy Benarroche mockingly. “After the interviews that have taken place this Sunday, he can make a decision as early as this evening.”
If a migrant is denied the opportunity to make an asylum request, a judge will then rule on whether the migrant should stay in the waiting zone, before they can be taken away by the border police. The judge has four days to reach a decision, which can be appealed. The interior minister's decision can also be challenged in an administrative court.
Code on foreigners' rights stuck on the wall in a hurry
The migrants should also have access to a lawyer to help them at every step of the procedure. “The prefecture hasn't contacted us to provide lawyers on site,” said Sophie Sophie Caïs, head of the advocates' association for the Toulon area, who was also present on the Sunday morning visit.
“We're working on the hoof, we put this site up in record time,” pointed out Lucien Giudicelli, secretary general at the prefecture. He immediately made two studios available for the lawyers' offices, rooms that still needed to be prepared.
Given the complexity of the administrative steps, the Parliamentarians had doubts whether the migrants were being properly informed of their rights. “You see, that's information!” said Guy Benarroche to Marie-Arlette Carlotti as he pointed out the articles of the French code governing foreigners and asylum seekers' rights – known as the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (CESEDA) – which had been hastily stuck up on an outside wall. “It's written so small I can't read it right to the end,” said socialist senator Marie-Arlette Carlotti. “And as it's only in French, just the Malians can read it!”
“The people were informed of their rights as they disembarked,” responded Lucien Giudicelli. Madeline Brocchetto from OFPRA added: “The issues at stake are explained in the interview.”
At the end of the three-hour visit Guy Benarroche acknowledged: “Thanks to the Red Cross and Civil Protection the humanitarian welcome is good. All types of food are being served, including halal.” Nonetheless, members of ANAFÉ saw a problem. “There's no doctor on the site this Sunday,” said one. “In case of need they have to call SOS Médecins [editor's note, an on-call medical emergency service]. For psychological care, the CUMP [editor's note, the medical and psychological emergency unit] has a problem getting hold of interpreters who have swamped by the demand.”
In political terms, Marie-Arlette Carlotti said she was “dismayed” at the absence of responsibility being taken at a European level. “The minister of the interior wanted to show that he was both humane and rigorous. But in reality he had little choice, in order that these people didn't die,” she said. “The problem is that, spurred on by the far-right, European leaders look first and foremost at their own domestic politics before respecting maritime, international and European laws. Our countries do nothing even though, because of economic and climactic reason, there will be more and more migrants.”
Guy Benarroche, who is against waiting zones in principle, said the minister of the interior had no obligation “either legally or politically” to lock up Ocean Viking's survivors. The group ANAFÉ said: “In reality all these people are vulnerable because of the days they spent at sea and the journeys they've endured. OFPRA should therefore recommend that they are freed so that they can make their requests for asylum in peace.”
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- The original French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter