When humanity sinks – Article by AKEL Political Bureau member Eleni Mavrou

 

 

Sunday 18 June 2023, HARAVGI newspaper

300, 400, 500…people drowned on Thursday morning off Pylos, the deepest point in the Mediterranean Sea.

The lists of deaths in “our sea” are endless. A few months ago, dozens of other people drowned off Calabria in Italy. A few days ago another boat capsized off Qasr Al-Akhyar, Libya, again plunging dozens to their deaths. The blood of thousands of innocent people has been staining the idyllic Mediterranean beaches for years.

In the face of this unprecedented humanitarian crisis, “united” Europe is behaving inhumanely – even though it bears a large share of the responsibility for the holocausts that are forcing millions of people to flee their homelands.

Human rights and freedoms are being violated. A kind of apartheid is slowly being imposed. The numbers of inhumane concentration camps at the EU’s borders are multiplying – is this not what the recent Migration Agreement provides for?

The EU vision is collapsing, given that the broken proclamations of equality and solidarity is accompanied by the falsification of freedom. The European Union is spending billions of euros on building fences to keep out “invaders”. It spends billions on patrols to hunt down those chased by ongoing wars and misery.

Not that we here in Cyprus are lagging behind. We keep putting up fences and cramming people in the containers of the notorious “Pournara” emergency reception centre. Furthermore, we tolerate the fascists organizing marches against “illegal immigration” – yes, the very same forces who didn’t even have the humanity to observe a one-minute silence in Parliament in memory of those who drowned just a few hours ago in Pylos.

Despite the fact that we ourselves have experienced as a people displacement as refugees in our own country.

When will Europe accept that “as long as a world of anguish borders a zone of calm, there will be movements of desperate people from one state to another”?

When will Europe accept that refugees are the result of overwhelming forces: wars, dictatorships, scarcity, abject poverty, the natural human yearning for something better uproot thousands of people from their homes and drive them on a journey that frequently leads to death?

The dramatic increase in the number of refugees seeking safety by embarking on dangerous sea voyages, including in the Mediterranean, has become permanent news on our television sets. And so the inhumane becomes the norm. This is precisely how the three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose body was found face down, half-buried in the sand on a Turkish coast in 2015, was forgotten. Soon the mothers and children who drowned locked in the hold of a ship off Pylos will be forgotten.

It is on our short memories that those forces and circles who promote these inhumane policies we have seen intensify in recent years rely on.

But we must not forget that there is nothing more barbaric than war. And instead of looking for scapegoats among the refugees, let us face the human tragedy unfolding around us and demand that governments at long last take action – not just to tackle the consequences of displacement as refuges, but more importantly to address their causes.