human smuggling

People smuggling is a translation of the English term smuggling of migrants from the additional protocol against the smuggling of migrants by land, sea and air to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime . It is to be distinguished from the term human trafficking ( trafficking in persons ) in the additional protocol for the prevention, combating and punishing of human trafficking, especially women and children.

term

The German expression "Schleusung von Migranten" ( people smuggling ) denotes the bringing about the unauthorized entry of a person into a contracting state, of which he is not a national or in which he does not have a permanent residence, with the aim of directly or indirectly obtaining financial or other material To create an advantage (Art. 3 lit. a additional protocol smuggling).

In contrast, the term "human trafficking" denotes the recruitment, transport, transfer, lodging or reception of people through the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, through kidnapping, fraud, deception, abuse of power or the exploitation of particular helplessness or by granting or Acceptance of payments or benefits to obtain the consent of a person who has power over another person for the purpose of exploitation (Art. 3 lit. a Additional Protocol Human Trafficking).

While human trafficking refers to the involuntary, violent removal of people for the purpose of their exploitation at the destination, this is not necessary for people smuggling. For example, it is sufficient to produce or provide a forged travel or identity document to enable an illegal border crossing and an unlawful stay in the destination country (Art. Par. 1 Additional Protocol on Smuggling).

According to the additional protocol on smuggling in the contracting states, it is not migrants but the organized criminal groups involved that are punished for people smuggling (Art. 5, 6 of the additional protocol on smuggling).

In Germany, the smuggling of aliens is § 96 , § 97 Residence Act (so-called. Smuggling ) punishable in Austria as smuggling under § 114 FPG .

Essence

The smuggling of people is mostly related to illegal migration . The smugglers receive large sums of money from the people smuggled in the media.

People smuggling is an economic factor in international organized crime . The criminologist Andrea Di Nicola and the journalist Giampaolo Musumeci describe its mechanisms and power structures in their book Confessions of a Human Trafficker. The billion dollar business with the refugees . Di Nicola and Musumeci argue that people smuggling is the most profitable business after drug trafficking . Your book also shows close connections between the smuggling business and the drug trade. If people smugglers are caught, the smuggling bosses and middlemen mostly remain undetected, as in the drug trade.

Deaths

Illegal immigration is dangerous. The smuggled people are regularly exposed to danger to life and limb. For example, an attempted people smuggling came to a tragic end shortly before reaching the UK. On June 19, 2000, British customs officials discovered the bodies of 58 people in a truck behind tomato crates at Dover ferry terminal . Police investigations later found that 54 men and four women had left the Chinese province of Fujian to illegally immigrate and find work in the United Kingdom. Their long journey across Russia, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands came to an abrupt end when the container was not ventilated while crossing the English Channel on a ferry and the group suffocated in the hold.

In a boat accident off Lampedusa on October 3, 2013, around 390 people were killed. Over 480 people drowned in a refugee boat accident in September 2014 . On April 19, 2015, what is probably the largest shipwreck in the Mediterranean in 50 years occurred with an estimated 800 deaths. On the night of August 26th to 27th, 2015 in Parndorf, Burgenland, the bodies of 71 people who had been smuggled were discovered in a parked refrigerator truck, who presumably had suffocated in it ( refugee tragedy near Parndorf ). A few hours after the body was found in Austria, up to 200 refugees drowned off the coast of Libya on the evening of August 27, 2015 after the boat with 400 passengers capsized. On the morning of September 2, 2015, the corpse of the 3-year-old toddler Aylan Kurdi was washed up on the beach in the Turkish city of Bodrum, he was a Syrian refugee who capsized with his 5-year-old brother Ghalib and his mother Rehan in a rubber dinghy full of refugees and drowned. On April 20, 2016, eyewitness reports revealed that up to 500 migrants are said to have drowned in the Mediterranean the week before. At the end of May 2016, 880 people drowned in one week, and at least 100 suspected refugees a week later off the Libyan coast.

literature

Jürgen Kepura, Frank Niechziol, Markus Pfau: Smuggling crime - basics of phenomenology, etiology and police intervention. Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, Frankfurt 2015. ISBN 978-3-86676-386-9 .

Markus Pfau: Smuggling Crime - An Analysis of the Phenomenon and Police Intervention Strategies. Tectum-Wissenschaftsverlag, Marburg 2012. ISBN 978-3-8288-3009-7 .

Ernesto Kiza: Deadly Borders - The Fatal Effects of European Immigration Policy. A theoretical-empirical study of the deaths of illegalized migrants in the context of new migration dynamics and restrictive migration policies . Lit-Verlag, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-8258-1305-5 (Studies on Migration and Minorities; 18).

Matthias Neske: people smuggling. Germany as a transit and destination country for irregular migration . Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8282-0397-6 (dissertation, University of Bamberg 2007).

Sophie Westermann: Irregular Migration - Is the Nation State Overstretched? State governance put to the test . Tectum-Verlag, Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8288-9863-9 .