Translated "Avante!" article by Albano Nunes, Member of the Secretariat of CC
Upon Lampedusa’s tragedy, in September 2013, which shocked the world, a shipwreck of greater proportions killed about 900 men, women and children,who had fled the war, oppression and poverty seeking a safe refuge, on April 19th last. Between these two tragedies, many others took the lives of thousands of human beings, arrived off from a destroyed Libya by imperialist aggression and having become a paradise for organized crime, and in the hope of crossing the Mediterranean.
Within the European Union, the leader class became agitated, observed minutes of silence and exhibited false compassion feelings, promised measures, contributing decisively in order to similar tragedies end. But what was undergone was precisely the opposite. Reinforced the “European fortress”, caused difficulties to legal emigration and the concession of the refugee status, introduced selective criteria towards emigration, according to the great companies’ interests and nurtured brain drain, having even replaced the Mare Nostrum Italian operation, prepared for the search and salvage at the high-sea, by the Triton operation, with less means and exclusively aimed for the EU boarders vigilance. It is enough to search the PCP’s site and the multiple adopted positions by the PCP’s MP’s at the European Parliament, in order to understand how reactionary and inhuman the EU emigration policy is, alias, more and more under the influence of the growth of xenophobe, racist and far right-wing growth, and that its own national exploitation and oppression policy develops /feeds.
Few positive measures were expected from the European Council, in April 24th last, but the direction of the taken measures (or their absence) is disturbing and signifies much about capitalism’s unjust and inhuman nature; it is important that an organization such as Caritas (in O Público, April 25th) stated that such measures “were an unacceptable war declaration on migrants and refugees”. This repressive approach ought to lead desperate people to run more and more risks”. In fact, there is nothing new concerning on what has been practised before the dramatic known results. Ridiculous available sums and means, accompanied by the absence of a drop of human solidarity, and what ought to be innovation holds but police
and repressive nature. With the pretext of destroying used boats by the traffickers, opening a new and dangerous line of imperialist interference and aggression, whdlist at the same time, search and salvage operations come in second place, and hastily, the non-legalization and asylum rights concession are not conceded, but on the contrary, emigrants’ extradition is practised.
One is before a phenomenon which is clearly aggravating in the future and only by searching its social roots, its eradication ought to become possible. ought to become possible. These men, women and children risk all they have because they cannot cope to live anymore in the poverty and misery situation which exists within their countries, running from endless wars and modern times concentration camps, in which many of the refugee camps have become, suffocating under rootless dictatorships, stepping on the most elementary human rights, aiming for a minimum security and a better life. They are human beings who run from hell in which the capitalist system in crisis and the imperialist aggression wars is changing vast world regions. As in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya ( a country destroyed by the EU aggression), Syria, Yemen and the martyr Palestine. And here reside the deep causes of the tragedy in the Mediterranean. These are the causes one ought to eradicate, by intensifying the struggle for peace, against imperialism and war.
