Tag: wars

  • We condemn EU’s anti-migrant ” Mos Maiorum ” – ILPS

    ilps_may20natoprotest

    ILPS-Phils Statement
    23 October 2014

    The ILPS-Philippines joins migrant Filipinos in condemning before the European Union Office in the Philippines the on-going police operations launched by 26 European countries to detect, detain and deport what they brand as “irregular migrants”.

     This herding cracked by the whip of the incumbent Italian presidency of the Council of the EU is particularly vile. It coined the operations as “Mos Maiorum” (ancestral custom, way of the elders or social mores of ancient Rome). It harks back to Imperial Rome whose “legal citizens” are only those ruling inside the city walls and living by the sweat of slaves.  All others are “barbarians” and deserve to be expelled or conquered by the sword, this time by the Carabinieri and 20,000 troops.

     The current immigration problem in Europe comes not from discrimination alone but from the crisis itself of modern imperialism. The most recent influx of European immigrants came from the implosion of the Soviet Union and the Balkanization of Eastern Europe. The current surge of immigrants into Europe, and more particularly Italy, comes mainly from the conflict areas such as Syria and Eritrea – countries whose peoples have fallen prey to imperialist wars of intervention and aggression.

     Migrants are not questions of security and criminality. They are a consequence of wars and conflicts, especially in the Middle East and Africa. They grow with the inequalities and underdevelopment under imperialist rule from Latin America to Asia.

     According to the United Nations, there are 51 million refugees. In 2013 alone, there were 17 million people fleeing. “Fortress Europe” has not stemmed this stream of human beings even with costly walls.

     About two billion Euros were invested in the buffer zone around EU. Frontex received in 2013 as much as 85 million Euros. Europe launched Eurosur, in charge of the European border control, which will receive during the next six years approximately 250 million Euros.

     According to research, the amount of cameras and kilometers of fences on the European borders is an over-kill. Tens of thousands of border patrols were hired to be based at the borders, from Bulgaria to Spain. In countries as the UK, Hungary and Austria, refugees are locked up in jails. In Greece, Malta, Poland and Bulgaria, even non-accompanied minor asylum-seekers are locked up.

    To solve the “illegal” migrant problem with detect-detain-deport solutions will only repeat and compound the problem. The migrant problem, from outside Europe, and from within Europe itself, must be approached with full respect for refugee and migrants rights.

     

    When Jean-Claude Juncker won the backing of the European Parliament to become the new head of the EU Commission, he promised a complete restructuring of the financial supervision by the “Troika” – the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank.  This is a step in the right direction. However, this should not be for their own “democracy” but for more democracy by the direct actions of migrants and the peoples of host nations in Europe.

     

  • 500 Migrants Feared Dead After Boat Sinks In Mediterranean

    Ideastream.org, September 15, 2014

    The International Organization for Migration says the incident took place last week when people smugglers rammed a vessel carrying hundreds of refugees hoping to reach European waters.

    Italian navy rescue asylum seekers

    Some 500 migrants trying to make their way from Egypt to Malta by boat are believed to have drowned last week after people smugglers reportedly rammed and sank their vessel, according to the International Organization for Migration.

    The IOM report is based on reports from the few survivors of the tragedy who say the group of Syrians, Palestinians, Egyptians and Sudanese had hoped to eventually reach Europe.

    In a separate incident, some 70 Libyans were feared drowned in a similar tragedy involving the sinking of a migrant boat.

    The Telegraph says of the first tragedy that “if confirmed [it] would rank as the worst disaster in the Mediterranean for years.”

    The newspaper says the story “was recounted by two Palestinians who spent more than a day floating in the water before being picked up by a Panama-flagged merchant vessel about 300 miles off Malta.

    “They were brought to the port of Pozzallo in Sicily at the weekend, where they told their story to IoM officials.

    “Nine other survivors were rescued by Greek and Maltese rescue vessels.”

    The survivors said there had been a confrontation as smugglers tried to move migrants to a smaller boat. Christiane Berthiaume, a spokeswoman for the International Organization for Migration, told The Associated Press that traffickers “used one boat to knock the other,” apparently causing the sinking.

    By way of background, the AP says: “Refugee numbers have swelled as thousands of people flee conflicts in Syria, Iraq and across the Middle East and Africa, boarding unsafe smugglers’ boats in Libya. Nearly 110,000 people have been rescued since January, but at least 1,889 others have died making the perilous crossing, according to the U.N. refugee agency.”

    We have reported on a number of such incidents in the past, going back as far as 2011.

    Last month, NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reported on Italy’s efforts to tackle the problem, saying: “Reports of migrant boats in distress have become a near-daily news headline over the past year.”

    Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.