Translated "Avante!"article by Ângelo Alves, Member of the PCP Political Committee

At the moment of this article’s drafting, the humanitarian drama suffered by the Lifeline refugees and migrants, ought to be partially resolved. A drama witnessed, in loco, by João Pimenta Lopes, the PCP European Parliament MP, therefore bringing along the Portuguese communists’ solidarity. But the Lifeline refugees’ drama is far from being an isolated case and near its ending. Having found a solution is positive, although delayed. But it merely is one more case. More than a thousand human beings, according to the ACNUR ( UN Agency for the Refugees), were drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, since January last. There were 3115, in 2017 and 4962, in 2016. But the Mediterranean Sea is not the only place where thousands of people die, those who fled from conflicts, hunger and impoverishment. Since 2014, over 30 000 people ought to have died in the Sahara Desert, and to whom asylum was denied, in many of the South Mediterranean Sea Basin countries.

According to the ACNUR, every two seconds a person is forced to abandon the place where he or she inhabits, for violence and persecution reasons. It is estimated that forced displaced are round 68.5 million, throughout the world. From the latter, 28.5 million are refugees or asylum appliers, the other 40 millions are home displaced. All fled from war, hunger and several kinds of violence. Those who have but the option of leaving their country, mostly risk to loose their lives. They are easy extortion or organized crime networks targets, and of a number of inhuman attempts, as being abandoned at the “point zero”, in the Sahara desert, on their way to the Niger. A refugee, on board the Lifeline, declared his condition and conditions to which these human beings are being subjected to: “I prefer to die in the Mediterranean, than return to Libya”.

More than two thirds of the refugees come from five countries – Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia – all wars and interference targets carried out, directly or indirectly, by the major imperialist powers. Many others come from several African countries, a continent run across by several refugees and migrants, in external or home, and inter-African flows. The refugees outstanding majority, on the contrary, does not head unto more developed countries, and 85% of the world refugees are hosted by developing countries. The five countries with higher refugee population are: Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Lebanon and Iran. Among the 10 countries of higher refugees population, throughout the world, 4 belong to the less developed countries, worldwide – Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.

These data and numbers help to understand how criminal and mean is imperialism policy. The migrants and refugees are double victims of an exploiter, violent, inhuman and predator capitalism. Those who mostly hold responsibility over this issue are the same that, in the XXI st century capitalism, ignore the causes and “discuss” repugnant policies on how to “hold back” the flow of a very small part of its victims and how to “export” this “issue” away from their clean and Arian boarders. This is one of the best examples of how fascism is issued from capitalism. Trump and Salvini are just two examples…