Although it`s good to see that the EU foreign
ministers have at last "launched a naval operation aimed at stopping
human-traffickers" transporting desperate people from Libya to Europe, the fact
that the operation has no UN endorsement, means that it is destined to fail
(Morning Star,23/06/15). Not only is it too late, it will focus on gathering and
pooling "information" about the gangs and
networks organising the "migration".
Why wasn`t this done months ago? The UK
Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon has even talked about "encouraging a policy of
return", presumably by aid budgets being used to encourage long-term economic
development.
This arrogant Tory government, and presumably
all the members of the EU, are still clinging to the ridiculous notion that it
is the "pull factor" which is responsible for the crisis, and that encouragement
is all that is required to send the people back. Surely there is someone in
government who read the report on Eritrea by the UN Human Rights council, which
concluded that the Afwerki regime was committing such "gross human-rights
violations" that they constituted "crimes against humanity"? Is it surprising,
then, that hundreds of thousands of Eritreans are resorting to using
these deadly escape routes? How disgraceful it is that the international
conscience is only pricked when their suffering happens to occur in European
waters!
Instead of devoting so much time and energy on
scoring political points by the imposition of yet more austerity on a bankrupt
Greece, European politicians, backed by the UN and the IMF, would be better
advised to focus on an examination of the "push factors", and to stop kidding
themselves. The idea of sending people back to countries where executions and
torture are rife should never be on the table; "information gathering" on
people-traffickers is yet another example of governments "kicking the can down
the road"! By all means "dismantle the business model" of the traffickers, but
don`t pretend to be solving the real problem!
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