by Raffaele Crocco
From a journalist’s perspective, it is an interesting section: it exposes all the many cracks in this thing we call the European Union, which is becoming less and less about unity – about a common house. For human rights activists, it is easy to summarise its nature: the European Union’s new immigration plan is rubbish.
Why is that? Because it effectively eradicates any remaining vestige of the idea of political asylum and international protection for those arriving from countries at war or in a life-threatening situation. The filters created by the new rules are crazy and unrealistic, they do not take into account what is happening and close the door on those who want to survive.
Europe, which sees itself as the “home and guardian of human rights”, is turning out to be a closed fortress of the privileged. The privileged are mostly misguided, for two reasons.
The first reason is that while we officially have no emigration phenomenon in Europe, we keep talking about immigrants – with an I in front, please, the word migrant is a propaganda invention. In Europe, people who want to come here to look for a job, for the future, cannot enter, they will not get a permit. The only people who will be able to enter are those who, on arrival, declare themselves to be refugees, i.e. fleeing war, and as soon as they land, they become asylum seekers.
According to international law – and according to common sense, which is based on truth and not on propaganda lies – they are not migrants. This is shown by the fact that to get there they risk their lives on mad journeys through the desert, on barges or on the so-called “Balkan route”. If they were migrants, they would arrive – like our fathers – by boat, train or plane. Instead, we are building walls in Europe to keep the world out, just as the United States has done on its border with Mexico. It is the same situation.
The second reason is that in the hypocrisy of the situation and in the cowardice of wanting to clear our consciences with an apparent “welcome” for refugees, European lawmakers are making laws that displease everyone: the left, which says it is defending human rights, and the right, which would like to see everyone at home, perhaps with a nice Mattei plan.
In short, everyone is angry. And in the middle are those who are in danger of dying every day because of our lies. Or see every possible dream of the future and life smashed against the wall of our hypocrisy.
On the cover photo, refugees protest against poor living conditions at Camp Lipa (Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina) ©Ajdin Kamber/Shutterstock.com
