Refugees: the solution is, but you Europe prefer war

Emilio Drudi

"There is no military solution to end the emergency created by the trafficking of men in the Sicilian Channel" is how it is expressed in recent days, Ban Ki Moon. On the same concept the Secretary General of the UN has insisted, with even greater force, during the brief inspection in the Mediterranean where, on the ship San Giusto, the Navy, the accompanied the premier Italian Matteo Renzi and Federica Mogherini , foreign policy chief of the European Union. "The authorities - said - must focus on saving lives." This priority, emphasized on behalf of the UN, in the words of Renzi - as reported by the Republic - became instead "stop the human traffickers to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe."
It does not look exactly the same. But, in any case, how to stop these traffickers? The proposed strategy is known: go to Libya to bomb and destroy the boats, with the "justification", far from being shared by the UN and by virtually all experts in international law, that it would not of an act of war but of a police operation. It seems like in the alternative, however, the hypothesis, ventilated several times, a huge naval blockade off the coast of Africa. Another obvious act of war.
The fact is that both options, the day of reckoning, are configured in fact as indiscriminate expulsions, more or less disguised. This policy has already cost two convictions to Italy by the European Court of Human Rights. But anyhow we continue to put in the pipeline actions to give answers to the "fears" unjustified North of the world and not to the general problem of immigration, let alone the rights, needs the protection of the same refugees, which is expected to send back to Africa if intercepted at sea or force you to stay on the ground, Libyan hell. Returned, in short, to the blackmail of the traffickers or to the countries they have fled to escape dictatorships, wars, persecution, terrorism, hunger and poverty are endemic. Terrible conditions, often caused by the very decisions of neocolonial hegemony made in Africa and the Middle East by the very North of the world that now raises barriers against migrants. And it is also a barrier Triton, the operation of surveillance of borders (which does not have the mandate to organize a network of relief), for which the European Union in recent days has tripled the resources and funding, reaching over 9 million per month, the same expense instead was deemed excessive for Mare Nostrum.
Here, Mare Nostrum. In his meeting with Ban Chi Moon, Renzi has not sent word. And yet this would be the best response to the recommendations of the United Nations secretary general. There seems no doubt, in fact, that the ships of Mare Nostrum mobilized, would have much more hope of saving hundreds of lives swallowed by the sea in the last four months, including about 800 of the sinking on 19 April. Not by chance are months demanding the restoration of this institutions in the forefront as the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and practically all the most important and active humanitarian institutions, beginning with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Doctors without Borders, Doctors for Human Rights. And all, on the occasion of the arrival of Ban Chi Moon, have revived the demand. Significant, in particular, the intervention of William Lacy Swing, IOM Director General, who recalled how, in the year to date, you are well registered 1,750 dead and missing at sea against 56 last year: over thirty times more. Yet nothing: silence in silence in Brussels and Rome.
Against this choice Italian and European protest is mounting: events, subscriptions, debates, appeals, principals, posters. That is growing, albeit in a disjointed and confused, a vast body of opinion, which is maybe hard to find voice and space in the media, but it is there and is looking for the way to be heard. The point is to find a moment of synthesis to translate this instance of change in political action. Or at least in an action capable of inducing, almost forced, the "corridors of power" to confront and take them into account.
One of the most lucid analysis, accompanied by concrete proposals for action to be implemented as soon as possible, appears to Sos Extermination in Mare, a group promoted by Barbara Spinelli, MEP of the Left, which was supported by intellectuals and intellectuals, lawyers, journalists, politicians. For example, Erri De Luca, Lorenza Carlassere, Sandra Bonsanti, Fulvio Vassallo Palaeologus, Gustavo Zagrebelsky. "What happened on the night of 18 and 19 April, the largest extermination in the sea after the war - they write - it marked a turning point. From that date it must put an emergency instead of emergency. We need to give to reality the name it deserves: we are faced with war crimes and murder in peacetime. Crime is not episodic, but systemic and must be put on a par with wars and famines acute and prolonged. The Mediterranean never ceases to fill the dead. The extermination lasted for at least 18 years: most of the two world wars put together, most of the Vietnam War. And 'indecent talk about' cemetery Mediterranean '. Let's talk about the mass grave: there is plaque that sets forth the names of fugitives who have left to die. The actions to be taken urgently to be, all at the height of this crime ... I'm not at diplomatic missions or military in Libya, where - even to blame the Union, its governments, the United States - not there's more party state. Even less are the blockades, aid to dictatorships from which escape the asylum seekers, the silence on the extensive destabilization in the Mediterranean (Syria and Iraq to Palestine, from Egypt to Morocco) of which the West is responsible for years ".
The "actions of utmost urgency" invoked link to prepare legal escape manned by the European Union and the United Nations, so as to remove the traffickers the "monopoly" of the journeys of hope; patrols and Rescue example of Mare Nostrum; intervention of UN peacekeepers to bring aid to the displaced in the transit countries and the first stop; the revision of the regulations of Dublin which bind refugees to the first country to which asylum-seekers and the adoption of a new reception system in Europe.
A Sos Extermination in Sea also joined Don Mussie Zerai, Habeshia on behalf of the agency. And Don Zerai speaks of war, in even more raw: "The European Union, Nobel Prize for Peace, is conducting an undeclared war against migrants and refugees unarmed knocking at its doors in search of protection. The refusal to Brussels to field a program equivalent to Mare Nostrum, refusal confirmed even with the recent strengthening of Triton, is tantamount to a clear declaration of war against asylum seekers and immigrants. This is: let die at sea this desperate people is a passive way to fight a war they do not want to declare. And the death toll is, in fact, real war from 1750 from January to date, according to the IOM. But in fact there are many more. The IOM refers only to the dead and the missing at sea. Other 'census' which, like that of the New Committee Desaparecidos, try to monitor even the 'dead ground' (in Libya, during the crossing of the Sahara, in an attempt to overcome the barriers of barbed wire that 'defend' the land borders Europe, etc.) speak of more than 1,900. And the estimate is still downward, because little or nothing filters from Libya and other African countries. They are broken lives which demand justice. After the massacre of Lampedusa, in October 2013, we have seen and heard politicians promise of great institutional responsibility "ever more tragedies like this." But today we are crying again hundreds, thousands of victims. A slaughter continues at the gates of Europe. A Europe that is betraying the core values ​​of its history. The point of being came to consider, through the mouth of some of his most representative in Brussels, the permissibility of 'agreements with dittatori'africani, just to keep migrants away from its borders. "
On "what to do", Habeshia agrees with the demands of Sos Extermination in Sea, plus a proposal for a special plan to be implemented immediately. "It 'obvious - says Don Zerai - that the problem is greater and more urgent, at this time, the refugees are massed in Libya, waiting for boarding. It makes no sense to assume yet another barrier, bombing and destroying the boats. Any type of barrier is destined to fall. The result would be only a further deterioration of the condition of migrants. It is to launch, then, a shared program for the reception of those refugees and their proportional distribution to shares in all 28 EU countries. No one million as like 'shoot' certain politicians. Appropriate assessments speak of 300, 400, up to 500 thousand people. Well, if they were really 500,000, the highest rating, to each of the European countries it would touch an average of less than 18,000. Taking the necessary compensation, on the basis of various criteria for allocating shares (population, economy and GDP, geographical coverage, etc.) Each of the individual European countries would be well able to absorb a flow like that. This plan should be both a point of arrival and the restart: a kind of 'amnesty' to clear a situation that will otherwise become ungovernable and then to launch a system of different interventions to address the problem. Interventions 'structural' because it is a problem 'structural', which has exploded in recent years but that is only the beginning: just consider the escalation of the global number of refugees reached the record figure of 53 million. "