Vatican official decries rejection of African refugees

(April 23, 2010) A Vatican official has decried the rejection by European countries of African sea travellers fleeing persecution, saying it is a violation of fundamental human rights. Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, voiced the Holy See’s concern for refugees at an international seminar in Rome on migration. Archbishop Marchetto condemned those who do not "observe the principle of non-repression, which is at the base of the treatment that must be given to those fleeing from persecution." “If in the time of peace one does not succeed in having such a fundamental principle of humanitarian international law respected, how will it be observed in the time of war?" he asked. "Another right violated in the act of intercepting and rejecting migrants on African coasts of the Mediterranean, is that of the `just trial,`" the archbishop stated. He explained that this "includes the right to defend oneself, to be heard, to appeal against an administrative decision, the right to obtain a justified decision, and of being informed on the facts on which the sentence is based, the right to an independent and impartial court." Archbishop Marchetto affirmed that there is a tendency, among European countries, to encourage their counterparts of the southern coasts of the Mediterranean, to carry out more rigid controls on migrants.