Right to Asylum

Marc Bossuyt is Professor emeritus of International Law (University of Antwerp), Honorary Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons, President emeritus of the Constitutional Court of Belgium.

• Foreword Table of Contents List of Abbreviations Prologue Introduction 0.1 A Remarkable Job 0.2. How did all this Work out? 0.3. My Story 0.4. Some Sensitive Cases 0.5. Other Individual Cases 0.6. Hearing of Asylum Seekers 0.7. The Asylum ‘Kitchen’ 1. ‘Vox clamantis in deserto’ 1.1 Preparations in a Period of ‘Care Taking Business’ 1.2 My First Steps as Commissioner General 1.3 Chairperson of the UN Commission on Human Rights 1.4 A Chinese Misunderstanding 1.5 Ghanaian Asylum-Seeker Networks 1.6 The Reception Conditions ‘Crying Vengeance to Heaven’ at the National Airport 1.6.1 ‘Care Taking Business’ under Martens VII 1.6.2 Repelling Responsibility under Martens VIII 1.7 ‘Refugee Policy Collapses’ 1.8 The Asylum Crisis in Switzerland 2. Patrick Ryan, an Irish Asylum Seeker 2.1 The Asylum Application Intersects with the Extradition Request 2.2. My Recommendation: Send Ryan to Ireland 2.3. Favourable Opinion of the Court on Extradition to the UK 2.4. Ryan not Extradited: Thatcher is Furious about Martens 2.4.1 The Transfer to Ireland 2.4.2 Margaret Thatcher Furious and Jean Gol Unleashed 2.5 Virulent Reactions in the Irish and British Parliaments 2.6 British Rage Prevents a Fair Trial: No Extradition by Ireland 2.7 PS: No Cowardice, but Fair Sharing of Responsibility 3. ‘Nerves are Getting Tighter and Tenser’ 3.1 ‘The Commissioner General has Ideas but no Staff’ 3.1.1 ‘Time for Action’ 3.1.2 ‘The Commissioner General at the Wailing Wall’ 3.2 ‘Great hordes of East Europeans’ 3.3 Third Annual Report: ‘Extreme Generosity does not Solve Anything’ 3.4 Removing Illegal Aliens and Repartition of Asylum Seekers 3.4.1 The Charters of Edith Cresson 3.4.2 The Lint Reception Centre Hype 3.5 The Law of July 1991 Comes into Force 4. Walid Bennani, an Islamist Refugee from Tunisia 4.1 Ennahdha: A Democratic Fundamentalism? 4.2 False Passport: Refusal of Access to the Territory 4.2.1 My Favourable Opinion 4.2.2 The Minister Disregards my Favourable Opinion 4.2.3 The President of the Tribunal Assists: Deportation Ban 4.2.4 The Conseil d’Etat also Helps: Suspension of the Order 4.3 Access to the Territory, to Leave within Five Days 4.3.1 I Invoke all Possible Arguments 4.3.2 The Minister Persists 4.3.3 Waiting for Suspension and Annulment 4.4 Finally Recognised, but Tunisia Insists 4.5 PS: People’s Representative in Tunisia 5. From the ‘Charters’ Incident to a ‘Revue’ 5.1 ‘My Charters’ 5.1.1 Reactions to an ‘Electroshock’ 5.1.2 Appreciated Firmness 5.1.3 The Dust is Settling 5.1.4 The House Justice Committee 5.1.5 PS: Frontex’s ‘Special Flights’ 5.2 Progress could not be Maintained 5.2.1 An Influx of Ex-Yugoslavs 5.2.2 Status of Displaced Persons from the Former Yugoslavia 5.3 The Revue of the Commission General 5.3.1 The Fictional Press Conference 5.3.2 A Monologue on Statistics 5.3.3 The Ghanaians at Petit-Château 6. The Basque-Spanish Couple Moreno-Garcia 6.1 Unfavourable Opinion of the Court on the Extradition Requests 6.2 ‘A Slap in the Face’: Further Examination of their Asylum Applications 6.3 A Thunderbolt: the President of the Tribunal Releases them 6.4 Spanish Relief: Moreno-Garcia not Recognised 6.5 The Permanent Board Takes its Time 6.6 The Turning Point of Stefaan De Clerck: Extradition Granted 6.7 ‘The Conseil d’Etat Disavows the Minister’ 6.8 The Minister Backs out: Extradition Withdrawn 7. No Longer ‘Mop under an Open Tap’ 7.1 Breakage of the Dyke and Quicksand 7.2. My Alarm is Heard 7.3 Sikhs: Fruit Pickers in South Limburg 7.4 Candidate in the European Elections 7.5 ‘A Small Fracture in the Tourmalet’ 8. Ahmed Zaoui, an Islamist Asylum Seeker from Algeria 8.1 Zaoui and the FIS in Algeria 8.2 First Asylum Application: Exclusion Clause Applied 8.3 The Permanent Board Confirms Exclusion Clause 8.4 Brussels Court of Appeal: Four-Year Conditional Sentence 8.5 Second Asylum Application: No New Elements 8.6 Benothmane’s ‘Suicide’ 8.7 Hot Potato Sent to Switzerland 8.8 Burkina Faso, Malaysia, and New Zeeland 9. ‘Malaise at CG’ and ‘Asylum Seeker “Deceased”’ 9.1 ‘Malaise at the Commission General’ 9.1.1 The System of Awarding Points 9.1.2 My Impeachment Requested 9.1.3 ‘Accusations out of Ignorance, if not Bad Faith’ 9.2 Finally, some Good News 9.3 ‘Failed Asylum Seekers Ill-Treated’ 9.3.1 Reactions to Senator Germain Dufour’s Accusations 9.3.2 ‘Marie-Louise Dead in N’djili Jails’ 9.3.3 ‘I Read too many Detective Novels’ 9.3.4 ‘Marie-Louise Risen’ 9.3.5 The Seventh Annual Report 10. Séraphin Rwabukumba, Cousin of the Rwandan President 10.1 A Cousin of President Juvénal Habyarimana’s Widow 10.2 Departure from Rwanda in a French Military Plane 10.3 Further Examination of his Asylum Application 10.4 ‘Not a Land of Asylum’: Application of the Exclusion Clause 10.5 ‘Negationist’: Permanent Board Confirms Exclusion Clause 10.6 A Web of Asylum Applications 10.7 Order to Leave the Territory: The Conseil d’Etat Blows Hot and Cold 10.8 PS: Regularized, and almost Belgian Citizen 11. I Recognize both too Many and not Enough Refugees 11.1 “Schemes at the Commission General” 11.1.1 Search at the Commission General 11.1.2 Fraud in the Asylum Procedure 11.1.3 Sita and the ‘Zairean Network’ 11.1.4 Harb and the ‘Lebanese Network’ 11.1.5 In the End, it was Much to do about Nothing 11.1.6 The First Marshal and the X Witnesses 11.2 Criticism from all Sides 11.2.1 The Leman Centre 11.2.2 The asbl ‘Aid to Political Refugees’ 11.2.3 Pieter De Gryse: ‘Embellish’ and ‘Blacken’ 12. Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Head of the Rwandan Gendarmerie 12.1 My Refusal for Omission 12.2 Recognition by the Permanent Board 12.3 Accused by the Procurator of the International Criminal Tribunal 12.4 Judgement of the Trial Chamber 12.4.1 Saint-André College of Kigali and the Kansi Parish 12.4.2 The Responsibility of Ndindiliyimana 12.4.3 Mitigating Factors 12.5 Acquitted by the Appeals Chamber 12.6 PS: Some Observations 13. Unhappy with ‘Economic Refugees’ and my Status 13.1 The Statement of the Bishops of Belgium 13.1.1 My Letter to the Cardinal 13.1.2 ‘What about “Economic Refugees”?’ 13.1.3 Opinions Expressed in Newspapers 13.1.4 The Bishops Nuance 13.2 The Commissioner General is both Happy and Unhappy 13.2.1 ‘Satisfied’: my Eight Annual Report 13.2.2 Dissatisfied with my Status and that of my Deputies 13.3 En Route to the Court of Arbitration 13.3.1 The European Commission and Court in Strasbourg 13.3.2 My Appointment to the Court of Arbitration 13.4 Some thoughts 13.4.1 My Exit Interview: ‘Much hypocrisy and demagogy’ 13.4.2 Endless criticism 14. Peixotin, Maiztegui, Moreno-Garcia and Jaione 14.1. Another Basque: Exiled in Venezuela 14.1.1. Peixotin’s Complicated Story 14.1.2 Peixotin’s Application is ‘Moot’ 14.1.3 The Demining Works: Peixotin Granted Access to the Territory 14.2 And Another Basque: Exiled in Mexico 14.2.1 Persistent Attempts to Drive him Back to Mexico 14.2.2 Further Examination of an Asylum Application of an EU-Citizen 14.3 Once again Spain: EAW for Moreno and Garcia 14.3.1 Statute-Barred Facts: The Examining Judge Refuses the EAWs 14.3.2 Refusal by the Chamber of Indictment despite Three Cassations 14.3.3 Observations on EAWs against Moreno-Garcia: Relief 14.4 Jaione’s Handover: Strasbourg Washes its Hands of the Matter 15. A ‘Never-Ending Quest’ for Human Resources 15.1 Step by Step Towards Progress 15.1.1 ‘Savings’ that Cost a Lot of Money 15.1.2 A First Reinforcement: too Late and too Little 15.1.3. Minister Louis Tobback (too late) Competent: The Snowball Effect is Triggered 15.1.4 The Turbo of Minister Louis Tobback: From 3,000 to 1,000 Asylum Applications 15.2. ‘What have we Learned?’ 15.2.1 The ‘Snowball Effect’ 15.2.2 Costly ‘Savings’ 15.2.3 The ‘Cascade Effect’ 15.2.4 The Transfer from Justice to the Interior 15.2.5 The Junction of the Responsibility for the Procedure and for the Reception 16. Asylum Legislation: a ‘Ping-Pong’ between Legislator and High Courts 16.1 The Gol Law (14 July 1987): Belgium Takes the Asylum Procedure in its Own Hands 16.1.1 The New Refugee Bodies: The French Model 16.1.2 The New Refugee Law: A Cumbersome Procedure 16.2 The Wathelet Law (18 July 1991): Levelling the Angles 16.2.1 Limiting the Ministerial Intervention: A Step in the Right Direction 16.2.2 The Double Five Percent Rule: An Original Attempt 16.3 The Tobback Law (6 May 1993): A Dynamic Approach 16.3.1 The President of the Tribunal has no Jurisdiction: A Rearguard Fight 16.3.2 Enforcement Notwithstanding any Remedy: An Ambivalent Solution 16.3.3 Suspension before the Conseil d’Etat Re-instated A Thunderbolt 16.4 The Asylum Procedure before the Conseil d’Etat: Problems of all Kinds 17. The Conseil d’Etat: The Bottleneck in the Asylum Procedure 17.1 The Vande Lanotte Laws (10 and 15 July 1996): Grunts in the Margin 17.1.1 Adaptation to Dublin and Schengen: No Procedural Relief 17.1.2 Asylum Recourse to the Conseil d’Etat: A ‘Useful Remedy’? 17.2 Social Assistance: The Nerve of Asylum 17.2.1 Obligations towards Foreigners Illegally Staying in the Country 17.2.2 The Onkelinx Law (30 December 1992): Confusion on all Floors 17.3 The Judgment of 22 April 1998: The Court of Arbitration Understood it Otherwise 17.3.1 Social Assistance as Long as the Appeals Brought before the Conseil d’Etat are not Decided 17.3.2 The Consequences of the Judgment of 22 April 1998: all Records Broken 17.3.2.1 The Saint-Pierre Hospital: Heart Concerns 17.3.2.2 The Ultimate Skid 18. Semira Adamu, Removals, and Regularizations 18.1. The Death of Semira Adamu: a Drama in Zaventem 18.1.1 Semira Adamu: Figure Head of Resistance against Removals 18.1.2 Her Stay at the Closed Reception Centre 127bis 18.1.3 Reactions to the Death of Semira Adamu 18.1.4 Minister Louis Tobback Resigns 18.2. The Sequels of Semira Adamu: More Human and Efficient 18.2.1 The Commission Vermeersch I: The Inevitable Recourse to Legitimate Violence 18.2.2 The Correctional Tribunal: Heavy Penalties 18.2.3 The Commission Vermeersch II: Ethical Justification for Coercive Measures 18.2.4 ‘Sudanese Transmigrants Badly Treated’: ‘Not Truthful’ 18.2.5 The Commission Bossuyt: Promoting Transparency and Dialogue 18.3. Regularization Commissions: Multiple Pitfalls 18.3.1 Regularization as a Favour 18.3.2 Regularization as a Right 18.3.3 Status of Candidate-Regularised 18.3.4 A Good Idea only in Appearance 19. Some Reflexions 19.1 The Cases of Famous Asylum Seekers 19.1.1 The IRA Terrorist: Father Ryan 19.1.2 The Four Basques: Moreno-Garcia, Peixotin and Maitegui 19.1.3 Two Islamist Fundamentalists: Bennani and Zaoui 19.1.4 Two Rwandans: Rwabukumba and Ndindilyimana 19.2 Some Anecdotes 19.2.1 Fraud of Nigerian Asylum Seekers 19.2.2 Rwanda, the Land of a Thousand Hills 19.3 The Push and Pull Factors 19.3.1 The Push Factors 19.3.2 The Pull Factors 20. An Extra: Criticism by a ‘Renegade’ 20.1 Judges on Thin Ice 20.2 The Precursors of Indirect Violations 20.2.1 Moroccan Lt.-Col. Amekrane v. the United Kingdom . 20.2.2 A German from Virginia: Soering v. the United Kingdom 20.3. The Restraint Phase (before Mamatkulov and Askarov) 20.3.1. The first two Asylum Judgments 20.3.2 Protection beyond the Geneva Convention 20.3.3 Slovak Roma: Conka v. Belgium 20.4. Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey: ‘An Excess of Power’ 21. The Court of Strasbourg as an Asylum Court 21.1 A Congolese DSP Officer and a Credulous Court: N. v. Finland 21.2 Reception in Closed Centres in Belgium 21.2.1 Tabitha: Mubilanzila Mayeka and Kaniki Mitunga 21.2.2 Two Palestinians: Riad and Idiab 21.2.3 A Chechen Mother: Muskhadzhiyeva et al. 21.2.4 A Sri Lankan Mother: Kanagaratnam et al. 21.2.5 A Cameroonian Woman: Yoh-Ekale Mwanje 21.3 Terrorism-Related Belgian Cases 21.3.1 An Iraqi Terrorist Deported to Kurdistan: M.S. 21.3.2 A Tunisian Terrorist Deported to the USA: Trabelsi 21.4 Three Disastrous Judgments 21.4.1 An Afghan Interpreter: M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece 21.4.2 Africans Arriving by Boat: Hirsi Jamaa et al. v. Italy21.4.3 An Illegal Georgian: Paposhvili v. Belgium Epilogue 22.1. Twenty-five Years after 22.1.1 The Evolution in Nationalities 22.1.2 Expansion of Beneficiaries of International Protection 22.1.3 The ‘Juridictionalisation’ of the Asylum Procedure 22.2 European Interference 22.2.1 The Court of Strasbourg 22.2.2 The European Union 22.2.3 The EU Response to the Asylum Crisis 22.3 Is the Present Asylum Model Sustainable? Bibliography Register of Persons