AKEL on EU Summit on Migration …yet more hypocritical tears shed by the EU on the migration issue
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 4th February 2017, Nicosia
The leaders of the EU met yesterday in Malta to take, once again, decisions on the migration issue. Once more, however, the EU’s leaders, including of course President Anastasiades as well, failed to confront the essence of the problem.
They didn’t take any decisions to implement a permanent system for the hosting of refugees in all EU Member States, according to each state’s capabilities.
They said nothing about the creation of legal and safe routes so that refugees and migrants can apply for asylum in Europe.
They didn’t show that they are at long last moved by the deaths of refugees from the freezing cold and shortcomings.
The leaders of the EU focused on the dramatic situation in the central Mediterranean and Libya, with the aim of stemming the refugees arriving to Europe.
They are building fences and walls.
They are launching new military operations and maritime patrols.
They are setting up refugee “concentration camps” in neighboring countries.
They are enhancing the draconian anti-immigrant laws and the return of refugees to countries that are anything but safe.
The real aim through the policy of the “external dimension of immigration” is to establish partnerships, whether through economic incentives or blackmail with Libya and other North African states including dictatorships and undemocratic regimes, so that they will make them operate as border-guard henchmen who will do all the “dirty work” on behalf of the EU. That is, to entrap refugees outside “fortress Europe”.
Yesterday the EU and its leaders once again recounted the number of refugees drowning on Europe’s doorstep in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean. Once again, they are pretending that they don’t know about the poverty, misery and devastation that is uprooting so many thousands of people from Libya and other African countries.
The EU leaders however ought yesterday to have begun their Summit meeting by reflecting on the EU’s grave responsibilities for the ongoing endless bloodshed and the collapse of the state in Libya, which in actual fact had created the ground for the consolidation of the Islamic State in that country.
They should also have remembered that the leading states of the EU were at the forefront of the military raid waged by NATO against Libya in 2011, even receiving the congratulations of the USA because they had conducted 85% of the bombing that tore the country apart and destroyed it.
Today, Europe and humanity are reaping the results of these actions and policies…
