A refugee crisis is not something that humanity is facing for the first time. There are thousands of refugees in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia receiving limited global attention -- but the world has suddenly felt the pangs of a “refugee crisis” after death migrated to the threshold of Europe.
More than half of Syria’s population, along with a huge number from Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, has been displaced, making this one of the biggest refugee crises in history. The forces that have created this crisis are colossal in scope and historic in extent. It will not be resolved only through humanitarian support.
This refugee crisis is the dreadful by-product of an immoral policy of belligerent wars and regime change interventions pursued, uninterruptedly, by US imperialism, with the aid and involvement of its Western-European allies and the Arab countries, over the course of nearly a quarter century.
Decade-long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, waged under the pretext of a “war on terrorism” and justified with the infamous lies about Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction,” succeeded only in killing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.
They were followed by the US-NATO war for regime change that turned Libya into a so-called failed state. Then came the Syrian civil war -- fuelled by US imperialism and its cronies, with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad and imposing a more pliant Western puppet in Damascus.
Even as thousands of Syrians flee to Europe, the NATO powers are proposing to step up the bombing of their war-torn country and the move for a regime change in Syria. The rise of ISIS and the ongoing bloody sectarian civil wars in Syria and this region are the natural consequences of the US devastation of Iraq.
Though the Syrians are not in the disposition to accept Assad anymore, Russia, on the other hand, is supporting the Assad regime continuously. The people of Syria do not want Bashar al-Assad; they do not want ISIS either. They want democracy, peace, and human rights.
The refugees are continuing to take the Mediterranean route into Europe, despite the fact that this route is the most dangerous in the world because European governments have closed off land routes, increasingly limiting options to enter European territory via land. It doesn’t help that OIC and Arab League countries do not want to give any space to refugees.
Asylum-seekers remain unable to get close to the safe land-border areas. European governments treat the stream of refugees as a hostile invasion force.
This was most clearly articulated by the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban: “If we give them (the refugees) the impression that they are welcome, that would be a moral defeat.”
It is a paradox that, between 2007 and 2011, the EU provided its member states 2.2 billion Euros for refugees, but only a fraction of this amount has gone towards their accommodation and integration. Around half of that money has flowed into the construction of fences, surveillance, and methods of control.
The fence has forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to undertake the dangerous route through the Mediterranean, with thousands subsequently dying at sea.
Whilst intellectuals and politicians argue for free trade and free capital movement, the number who argue for the free movement of human beings is extremely limited, and no international organisation promotes it.
The EU must address the inadequacies of the Dublin system, which regulates the entry of migrants.
One of the most important problems in European asylum policy is the lack of co-operation amongst different members of the Council of Europe. The most serious concern, perhaps in this field, remains that of the “pushbacks.”
The pushback practice creates grave human rights concerns, as it fundamentally affects the right to leave a country and to seek asylum.
Amnesty International has proposed some key actions on this issue for the international community.
For instance, all the states must ratify a Refugee Convention. States must have fair domestic procedures to assess refugee claims, and must guarantee fundamental rights such as the right to seek asylum, education, and health care to refugees.
States should offer protection and assistance to victims of trafficking. Governments must abstain from engaging in xenophobia themselves, for example by implying or directly claiming asylum-seekers and migrants are to blame for economic and social problems.
The UN should establish a global refugee fund -- such a fund should fulfill all UN humanitarian appeals for refugee crises.
Westerners do not want to face the truth of what their governments are doing -- particularly NATO governments.
Imperialist countries never bring any stability. It infects entire regions with a disease of chronic destruction, dysfunction, and death.
