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Austria-UK: "Asylum Airlines" business plans reach UK

01 August 2008

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In early 2007, Austrian immigration lawyer Hermann Heller and "aviation experts" Carl Julius Wagner and Heinz Berger announced they are planning to cash in on EU plans for joint deportation flights with their project "Deportation-Lines" (Statewatch vol 17 no 1). "Asylum airlines" is a concept developed by the five richest countries in the world at the Evian meeting in June 2005 and has now become a viable business option for venture capitalists. Heller, Wagner and Berger have been developing a new deportation aircraft with small padded cells in which refugees and migrants can be locked up without having to be physically restrained by police for the duration of the flight. They will make resistance futile by removing deportations from the public gaze, making them cheaper for governments because less labour-intensive.

As the business plan is too ambitious for Austria, with its 71 deportation flights a year, the businessmen are approaching EU governments, most recently the UK government, to ensure sufficient "demand", that is enough migrants and refugees to deport as well as mileage in order to determine the type of aircraft to be converted. The Independent newspaper reported that Heinz Berger, who has worked with British companies providing security at British airports, has identified Britain as a key market, although there is also "ongoing interest all over Europe" for an airline that will organise flights around Europe, picking up failed asylum-seekers from various countries and then fly them back to their "home" nations around Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

http://no-racism.net,
http://www.independent.co.uk 27.12.07

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