How can anybody be so vile as to carry on being despicable and inhumane to those who endure this?
Published:
June 30, 2014 at 10:07pm
The corpses of 30 people have been retrieved from a boat packed with migrants off the coast of Sicily, the Italian navy reports. They suffocated because the vessel was so crowded.
The Italian navy rescued 5,000 people this past weekend.
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Ask Louise Vella, she’s a self-appointed, opinionated expert with a mission on these matters. Hardly a day goes by without a comment from her. Anyone who dares disagree with her views gets the standard retort: how about taking a few migrants to live in your house.
It always baffles me how racist individuals make no distinction whatsoever between asylum seekers, irregular migrants, economic migrants, and refugees.
The death of these people is on the conscience of whoever is supporting the status quo too (EU\PN\PL\JRS\UNHCR etc.). The message they’re sending is that you have to risk your life in order to have hope for a better life.
The political solution in my opinion is to enforce push-back (through amendment of treaties) and redirect all the money that the EU is currently spending on SAR towards aid in the form of education and strengthening of democracy for these problematic countries.
And then there’s one pertinent question. At a time when a perfectly planned crime is solved through shreds of evidence, how can it be that the culprits of this organised trafficking of hundreds of thousands are never (or very rarely) identified. Informed sources tell me that illegal immigrants are not even questioned on the matter.
The push-back/tough love stance everyone is going on about shows consummate lack of knowledge and imaginative empathy.
The human rights record in Libya and Egypt for these immigrants is appalling, and they leave Somalia in the first place because outside of Mogadishu it is lawless and Eritrea because the only career prospect for a man is to be forced into the dictatorship’s military.
What they advocate is just a policy of out of sight, out of mind.
So according to you Marlowe in the whole continent of Africa there isn’t one safe country for these people, and that your knowledgeable, genuinely empathic solution is to have them risk dying doing the crossing. Perfect!
It’s the same with the US border – the patrol have to let in people because they would be risking the lives of those very people coming in. This is just one link:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/24/opinion/kohn-undocumented-kids/index.html?iref=allsearch
The cartels sell the idea to these desperate people, and at the same time create the very conditions to make them leave (murder, etc).
@ Bonnici
You are either incredibly naive or deliberately disingenuous. If you are in a danger zone, the logical thing to do is escape, not wait around because things might get better.
Pushing boats back never stopped migration. Why would it do so now?
Pushing boats back doesn’t save lives. It destroys them.
@ Bonnici
Traffickers can be and are caught and prosecuted – when they are in the EU.
European countries have no jurisdiction over traffickers in countries of origin.
Your “political solution” based on push back is nothing more than a polite way of saying that you favour a racist and/or a segregationist solution. It is inhumane and stupid. It is easy for you to blame others isn’t it.
You and your push back friends are as much to blame with your idle rhetoric. It foments hatred and further despair. The criminals whom you want in jail love push back because it adds to the risk. The higher the risk, the greater the gain. But no, you would’t realise that would you because it’s not your fault but the it’s the EU, the PN, the MLP, the UNHCR, the NGOs and so on.
In Nigeria 180 young school girls were abducted by a fundamentalist faction. Imagine if there was your daughter among those children. Imagine some of those girls found themselves on the way to the Med and you and your ilk are advocating ‘pushing back’. Perhaps being rescued here or on other EU borders could save just one from a life of prostitution and abuse.
And yes, let’s educate them – and do you think people living in countries where the per capita GDP is lower than 5000 dollars are concerned more with going to school than with locating food and water? And, who is going to enforce education on foreign soil?
It is very difficult to fund the strengthening of democracy in certain places. Western and Russian intervention in the Middle East and Asia is living proof of that.
That said, you are right with respect to attacking the culprits of organised trafficking. However, wherever there is strife, inequity and ignorance, you will find criminals ready to make a “kill.”
So, the real political solution is not easy but it is certainly not one to be based on pushback. Quit this racist/segregationist nonsense and, instead, direct your efforts to making a constructive contribution to the situation.
After all, we are all to blame if we do not contribute positively to the problem.
Start by feeling compassion and empathy, that is one way of contributing. Start by publicly defending these migrants in the way many people are doing here. Go and aid the Jesuits. Be polite and smile to the migrants that you meet in your daily life. Joke with them and get to know them. You would be surprised at what kind of difficult lives some have had and yet maintain a permanent smile and jovial approach to life. You’d learn a thing or two.
Most deserve our help.
You’re missing 2 points here, Mr Bonnici: 1) the number of Africans who cross over to Europe is a small fraction compared to the hundreds of thousands who flee their countries and take refuge in neighbouring countries. You can look up some figures on IDPs to get an idea of what we’re talking about; 2) those who pluck up courage and try to cross the Mediterranean never consider Malta as their final destination (so, they have no intention of “invading”..”us”).
Whilst this goes on, the Chinese are busy silently “invading” those parts of Russia where depopulation has been extreme.
Depopulation in Russia has been occurring at the steady rate of 1 million a year.
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This news is absolutely horrific.
It cannot be considered as anything but a human rights situation.
Borders must be considered irrelevant when even a single human life is at stake.
Anything else is backward thinking.
Doesn’t any one care any more? These are human beings with families, fears and hope. We get all hot and bothered about cruelty to animals, and then when something like this happens not even a sound? Why, I sincerely cannot understand. I shudder to think what these people must have gone through.
There is no way to stop tragedies like this happening unless pushbacks of ALL boats with no exception are enforced.
Even the slightest hope that they will make it into Europe is enough for them to risk the crossing.
That hope needs to be taken away. There is no other way to avoid something like this happening again.
Your argument carries the seed of its own destruction. Despite all evidence to the contrary you persist in believing that if you keep trying, you will succeed.
That is exactly why pushing boats back – even if it were legally, logistically and humanely possible – would never stop people trying to leave again.
Chris M, if ever an extreme event of a big magnitude (God forbid!) hits these islands, forcing its residents to seek refuge elsewhere, would you expect other safer countries to welcome us in their midst or not ?
I agree with Pope Francis on this matter. Quote: “The culture of well-being, that makes us think of ourselves, that makes us insensitive to the cries of others, that makes us live in soap bubbles, that are beautiful but are nothing, are illusions of futility, of the transient, that brings indifference to others, that brings even the globalization of indifference. In this world of globalization we have fallen into a globalization of indifference. We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business.”
x’arukaza!
And Fr Mark Montebello has no words to spare about these deaths. Shame on him.
No, it’s only NATO that kills foreigners in his book. So, no NATO involvement, no Fr Montebello comment.