The rescuers prepare for the calm days, more than the stormy ones.
On land in small towns near the Libyan coast, refugees from Africa and the Middle East are crowded into safe houses, waiting for good weather. When the sea quiets, the refugees pack onto rubber dinghies or large wooden fishing vessels and set off in the early morning toward Europe.
An average of 3,500 people have died each year while trying to make the journey to Italy from North Africa since 2014. Their vessels are overcrowded, unseaworthy, and have a near-nothing chance of making it to Europe. Most of the boats sink just 20 to 40 miles from the Libyan coast.
These are preventable deaths. Since 2014, the European Union has deliberately chosen to keep their coast guard patrol boats far from where the shipwrecks happen, a decision detailed in an internal letter obtained by The Intercept and other leaked documents. Saving more lives, the logic goes, will only encourage more refugees to come. The result is that rescue boats are kept away from where rescues are actually needed.
The Italian navy used to run patrols near the Libyan coast. Their operation, called Mare Nostrum — “our sea” in Latin — involved a large mobilization of ships, planes, and helicopters in international waters close to Libya, where boats carrying refugees regularly capsized and sank. Mare Nostrum was enormously successful — in the year it ran, it saved over 150,000 people. Still, on October 31, 2014, Italy announced it would phase out the program.
The following day, Frontex, the European Union’s border agency, took over with an operation called Triton. In a press release at the time, Frontex said its operation followed in the wake of Mare Nostrum and was intended to support the Italian authorities. There was one key difference from Mare Nostrum, however: Frontex would limit its patrols to just 30 miles off Italy’s coast, which was about 130 miles from Libya — at least a 12-hour sail. Frontex was deliberately not patrolling the area where most of the shipwrecks occurred.
What’s more, according to an internal letter obtained by The Intercept, the director of operations at Frontex privately told Italian authorities that his ships should not be called on to immediately respond to distress calls from outside their 30-mile patrol area.
“Frontex is concerned about the engagement of Frontex deployed assets in the activities happening significantly outside the operational area,” Frontex’s director, Klaus Roesler, wrote to the head of Italy’s Immigration and Border Police, Giovanni Pinto, on November 25, 2014. The letter has been referenced in Italian newspapers and released with redactions that covered detailed descriptions of how Frontex coordinated its assistance with rescue efforts. The Intercept is publishing the letter in full for the first time.
Italian marines rescue refugees from a capsized boat in the Mediterranean between Libya and Italy on May 25, 2016. Many refugees depart on overcrowded dinghies that have little chance of making it to Europe.
Photo: Italian Navy/Marina Militare/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Like any other vessels at sea, Frontex ships are obligated under maritime law to respond to distress calls when ordered by the relevant national authorities. For the Italians, an overloaded boat with an untrained captain was a distress situation by default. Typically, someone calls the Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Rome by satellite phone from a boat or from the Libyan coast, and Italy initiates search and rescue.
But for Frontex, at the time, that was not enough proof.
“Frontex is of the opinion that a satellite phone call is not per se a SAR [search and rescue] event and strongly recommends that actions should be taken to investigate and verify and only afterwards, and in case of distress, activate other maritime assets,” Roesler wrote, referring to a distress call via satellite phone. “Frontex doesn’t consider the [Operational Patrol Vessel] for such initial investigations outside the operational area as necessarily operational and cost effective activities.”
He continued: “General instructions to move to an area outside [European Patrol Network] Triton operational area are not coherent with the operational plan and unfortunately will not be considered for the future.”
In other words, Frontex knew it had to respond to emergency calls. But it was deliberately patrolling in the wrong area and quibbling with definitions of distress, meaning that its ships would almost certainly arrive late, if at all.
Frontex’s press office did not answer repeated requests for comment on Roesler’s 2014 letter. The agency would not clarify if the letter still represented Frontex policy, nor if the agency still believed a distress call via satellite phone was not necessarily a search and rescue event. In mid-2015, the EU tripled Frontex’s budget for Triton, matching what had once been spent on Mare Nostrum, and Frontex moved patrols another 30 nautical miles to the south, extending farther from the Italian coast. A Frontex press release at the time hailed an “enlarged Triton helping rescue migrants.” But in reality, Frontex was still six to 10 hours away from where most shipwrecks take place.
The withdrawal is consistent with the European Union’s overall approach to dealing with refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, marked by a change in emphasis from search and rescue to border security. The shift has created a tension between official EU policy and the efforts of nonprofits still doing rescue work off of Libya.
The argument against proactive rescue operations is that they create a “pull factor” for migrants. With patrols running closer to the coast, smugglers can use cheaper boats, less fuel, and little food, because migrants only have to make it as far as the patrol boats, and not the Italian coast. In turn, this could cause prices to go down and create a perception that the route is safer.
Frontex’s director, Fabrice Leggeri, echoed this position in a recent interview with the German newspaper Die Welt. “We must prevent supporting the business of criminal networks and traffickers in Libya by picking up the migrants ever closer to the Libyan coast by European boats,” Leggeri said. Frontex’s press office would not explicitly state that the agency considers rescue operations a pull factor, but a spokesperson did link NGO presence to increased migration flows.
The pull factor thesis was one reason many European governments were reluctant to fund efforts like Mare Nostrum. “We do not support planned search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” a British foreign minister told parliament in 2014. “We believe that they create an unintended ‘pull factor,’ encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.”
If proactive patrolling creates a pull factor for migration by making the route safer, then by the same logic, removing those patrols makes the route more deadly. Even Frontex’s own internal assessments predicted that when the patrol areas moved north, more people would drown. A Triton concept document from August 2014 states bluntly that it “has to be stressed that the withdrawal of naval assets from the area, if not properly planned and announced well in advance, would likely result in a higher number of fatalities.”
Photo: Salvatore Laporta/LightRocket/Getty Images
Working to stop these deaths are rescue operations run by nonprofits, which are now the front line of response to the refugee crisis. They arrive first to the site of capsizing boats near the Libyan coast and call for backup from the Italians, who then call on Frontex if necessary. The European authorities, which patrol hours away, usually come later, transferring the refugees to their ships and bringing them to refugee camps in Sicily.
On a recent mission, it was clear that nonprofits are scrambling to fill the gaps left by reduced European Union patrols.
The rescue started with a phone call. It was 10 in the morning and the Golfo Azzurro, a 120-foot fishing trawler repurposed for sea rescue by the Spanish nonprofit Proactiva Open Arms, was in international waters some 30 miles north of Tripoli. Gerard Canals, the coordinator of the mission, received notice from the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Center of three rubber boats in distress near our position, each with over 100 people aboard, including young children.
The Golfo Azzurro lurched to the right as the captain changed course. Lifeguards clipped fins to their belts and donned helmets and life jackets. Others prepared the Golfo’s two RHIBs — small rigid-hulled inflatable boats with powerful engines. Crew threw large bags of bright orange life vests into the RHIBs and took off with a wave from the captains. As they planed across the sea toward the refugees’ reported position, the Golfo Azzurro faded off into the horizon.
After about an hour, the captains of the two RHIBs stopped to take their bearings. We were in the exact position given by the Italian authorities and there was nothing in sight: no rubber boats, no Libyan fisherman, no birds. Just 360 degrees of horizon.
“We’re all alone out here,” said Ani Montes, one of the RHIB captains. The waves had picked up slightly. The other RHIB captain suggested we go south, in case the distressed boats drifted. We took off again, jumping across small waves and landing each time with a heavy thud. A few minutes later, Montes spotted a dot on the horizon. “There,” she shouted. “There they are.”
As we neared the rubber boat, the lifeguards looked surprised: There were supposed to be three boats, but we could see only one. The rubber dinghy was about 30 feet long and overflowing with people. Men sat around the edge of the boat, and women and children huddled in the center. The people aboard looked agitated, crowded, and cold. As we approached in the RHIB, a few waved, but most just shivered and stared. The crew was handing out lifejackets to the refugees, who were mostly from West Africa, when a call came in by radio from the Golfo Azzurro — they had found the other two boats, each carrying another 120 people. The Italian coast guard was on its way to help, the captain said, but it would be some hours before its ship arrived.
One of the RHIBs stayed with the first boat, while we made our way back to the Golfo Azzurro. Floating aside the ship, the refugees aboard one of the rubber boats waited calmly. The other boat, however, had partially deflated and people were standing and nervous. They repeatedly called us over to point out the deflated parts of the boat, which sagged under the weight of the people aboard, barely above water. Too many people standing can cause the dinghy to tip, so one by one, the lifeguards pulled women and children from the deflated boat and transferred them to the Golfo Azzurro, hoping to take some weight off while waiting for the coast guard.
The lifeguards traded stories of past rescues. Faustino Marta, a lifeguard from Argentina, was struck by the sheer number of lives at stake. “Three boats — that’s over 300 people,” Marta said. “If we hadn’t come, that’d be like a full commercial jet crashing in the sea out here.”
Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images
Last summer, there were more than a dozen different nonprofits patrolling near Libya, but over the winter, it was just Proactiva Open Arms and a joint operation between Médecins Sans Frontières and SOS Méditerranée. Refugees keep risking the journey, hoping to be rescued, like a potentially deadly trust fall at sea. Canals and the other crew aboard the Golfo Azzurro said this is why they must patrol closer to Libyan waters.
“Independently of what happens afterwards, we’re here to make sure no one drowns,” Canals said.
Technically, each country in the Mediterranean has responsibility for coordinating its own search and rescue zone, or SAR Zone, but Libya’s coast guard is tiny and as decentralized as the rest of its wartime government, and unable to handle the numbers of boats departing its shores. What’s more, there have been reports that members of the Libyan coast guard are involved in trafficking migrants.
Canals said he sees an additional role for Proactiva in putting pressure on European authorities to do more to rescue refugees. While patrolling these waters, Proactiva and other NGOs often come across refugee boats in need of assistance for which no distress call has been made, as not all boats have satellite phones. By reporting the distress cases themselves, NGOs force the Italian and European authorities to initiate a rescue they would otherwise never have undertaken.
“After the Italians left the SAR area, it took the NGOs to get them to come back,” said Joey Timmerman, an engineer aboard the Golfo Azzurro who has worked with three different NGOs in the area. “Once it’s reported, it’s an emergency.”
Wrapped in blankets, refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa stand on the deck of the Golfo Azzurro rescue vessel after arriving at the Italian port of Messina in January. The more than 299 refugees aboard the ship had been rescued by members of Proactiva Open Arms.
Photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP
Yet the pull factor thesis has strong adherents. A senior European border official with close knowledge of Frontex operations and decision-making in the upper ranks of the European Union confirmed that pull factors were the reason Frontex’s patrol zone was limited in 2014, and why Frontex and Italian ships still tend to stay far from Libya. (The official requested anonymity because he is unauthorized to speak to the press. Frontex did not respond to requests for comment on why it pulled back patrols.)
The official told The Intercept that, by his reading of the situation, Mare Nostrum created a pull factor for migration in 2013 and nonprofits have continued to act as a pull factor since the Italian operation was phased out. The border official is also critical of the practice of Frontex and European coast guards taking refugees from NGO ships, saying it turns them into a “ferry service” for migrants. He defends Frontex’s decision to keep its patrol zone farther north, even if it means more drownings. Roesler’s 2014 letter, he says, “was the correct policy.”
“In order to not create a pull factor, we are patrolling up to the SAR area of Malta. We don’t cover Libya,” said the border official, arguing that if the journey seems longer and more dangerous, refugees won’t “put their lives in risk, especially in winter, to travel all this distance to the south of Malta.”
But that argument is belied by recent statistics. According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 16,000 people have attempted this route since the beginning of this year, and there have been 477 recorded drownings. Beyond that, according to the nonprofit crews, it’s common knowledge that many refugee boats still go without rescue, floating off into the darkness. Their deaths are not always noticed.
Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
There is one European operation that does patrol near Libya, where the nonprofits work: a joint European military force known by the hefty acronym EUNAVFOR Med. Its work, a spokesperson told The Intercept, is to “disrupt the business models of the smugglers” by identifying potential human traffickers and, after refugees are rescued, destroying their boats so they can’t be reused. In a leaked status report on the force from last year, EUNAVFOR Med says that its relatively small number of rescues — some 30,000 people since the operation began in 2015, according to the spokesperson — “has not contributed to increasing the flow of migrants” and “cannot be regarded as decisive in terms of a ‘pull factor.’” Implied is that the operation saves some lives at sea, but not too many.
The force does not appear to be coordinating actively with nonprofits, even though it maintains extensive surveillance capacity over the area between the Libyan cities of Zuwara and Misrata, where many refugee boats depart from, and its own reports bluntly state the lethal reality for refugees leaving Libya.
According to a similar December 2015 status report, originally published by WikiLeaks, the operation uses a combination of war ships, submarines, and air assets, including a drone, to maintain a “near persistent presence” over the departure points. The report from late 2016, originally leaked to the British privacy organization Statewatch, said that this surveillance provides “real time queuing for the surface elements that were tactically deployed to spot escorts or jackals, particularly during dawn hours when most launches from Libya take place.” (Escorts or jackals can refer to boats that load and tow the rafts of migrants at launch or serve as lookouts.)
The strategy of destroying wooden boats has worked, EUNAVFOR Med says in its 2016 report. But it adds that the use of less safe rubber boats has gone up, at least partially as a result. (The senior border official attributed the rise in rubber boats to rescue operations, saying that smugglers know the boats don’t need to go far before they’ll be picked up.)
The 2015 report acknowledges that these rubber boats have little if any chance of making it to Europe on their own. “Reaching European mainland, Malta or even Lampedusa [an island off of Italy] is very difficult for these boats,” it states. “Effectively, with the limited supply and degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch.”
“The majority of migrants,” concludes the 2016 report, “still die inside or very close to Libyan territorial waters.”
Both reports explain that EUNAVFOR Med has close information-sharing relationships with Frontex and Italian authorities. The agency even “provides early maritime situational awareness to NGOs,” according to the 2016 report, though none of the four NGOs interviewed for this article said they have received such information.
European agencies know where and when refugee boats depart from, and acknowledge that the boats are incapable of making it to Europe. But with a calculated decision to withdraw the EU’s rescue resources from the Libyan coast, Italian authorities and nonprofits seemingly aren’t getting access to that information, and are left reliant on phone calls from distress cases to search for refugees at sea.
The results, I saw, can be deadly.
Photo: Emilio Morenatti/AP
When the Italian coast guard finally arrived to assist the Gulfo Azzurro, the transfer of refugees between the boats went on late into the night. As the work proceeded, the coast guard ship lit up the last rubber dinghy with a single spotlight — over 100 people sat for hours, waiting, with their fluorescent orange life vests glowing against the dark. After the last of them were brought on board, I watched the Italian crew collect the two empty rubber boats, douse them in flammable fluid, and light them on fire. As the coast guard ship steamed off into the horizon, the two boats were left burning, and a thick black smoke floated off into the starry night sky.
The captain of the Italian ship had decided that Proactiva should take the majority of the refugees to Sicily aboard the Golfo — a trip that would take us 30 hours. En route, we hit a storm, with waves some 20 feet high that rocked the large fishing ship back and forth like a skateboard with loose trucks. Over 200 refugees crowded into a makeshift shelter in the center of the boat, shielding themselves against the crashing waves under thermal blankets and tarps.
But the weather on the Libyan coast was still calm, and that night another refugee boat left Misrata, Libya. The ships belonging to Proactiva and Médecins Sans Frontières were halfway to Sicily. The Italian coast guard vessel was already in port there. When the distress call came in, the rescue coordination center alerted Frontex, which sent a ship toward the endangered refugees. But the Frontex ship was far away, near the island of Lampedusa. By the time it arrived the following morning, the refugee boat had sunk, and there were only four survivors. Over 100 people were presumed drowned.
Top photo: Refugees and migrants sleep on the deck of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms rescue vessel Golfo Azzurro after being rescued off Libyan coast north of Sabratha, Libya on February 18, 2017 at Sea.
Here is another “message in the bottle”, I mean “people in the waters”, story from when one kind of people were hoping to find favorable hospitality by another kind of people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
// __ Voyage of the St. Louis
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
~
// __ How America’s rejection of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany haunts our refugee policy today.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s important to remember why America welcomes refugees. Updated by Dara Lind Jan 27, 2017, 8:12am EST
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/27/14412082/refugees-history-holocaust
~
// __ SS St Louis: The ship of Jewish refugees nobody wanted, by Mike Lanchin BBC World Service
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27373131
~
By the way when they tell you as part of that story that:
“They hoped to reach Cuba and then travel to the US – but were turned away in Havana and forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 were killed by the Nazis.”
they are just partially saying some truth to cover a larger lie.
1) Cuba in those times was the LA country with the largest amount of Jewish immigrants
2) Cuba was just a temporary station on their way to the U.S.
3) Cuba as pretty much of all LA countries in those times were ruled from their respective U.S. embassies and USG wasn’t happy at all about Cuba serving as trampoline to the U.S.
4) Cuba was the only country who took some of the refugees. Some jumped over the board, swam over the bay and stayed there. Nothing happened to him (something I find very weird about that story is that they could have disembark quietly on one of the many surrounding islands and then sneak into the main island, but for some reason they were “official” and “correct” to the point of risking their lives by having to return to Europe, where no one wanted them and more than 250 were killed by the Nazis).
5) Neither the U.S. nor Canada let them get even close to their mainland, let alone dock in any of their ports. Kind of similar what European countries are doing now even if the circumstances are not the same. “Out of sight, out of mind. Let them get lost in the waters!” …
~
RCL
North Africa including Libya is a large and mostly unpopulated region that could be transformed into a somewhat self-sustaining land if the small Arab and domestic Muslim populations that control the region permitted it which, of course, they won’t for a variety of inhuman but mostly short-term economic reasons; sort of like Europeans assaulting North and South America for gold and silver and to get ride of poor populations that became colonizers rather than change the way they were governed by oligarchs and royals who counted personal wealth more important than people, yet called themselves God-fearing Christians who got away with anything as long as they tithed the church handsomely and, in their minds, avoided going to hell after death particularly since the inhabitants of the Americas were ungodly subhumans that would never be accepted in heaven, a belief that appears to carry on today to include African and Middle East refugees who many consider quasi-sub human and not worthy of any kind of “salvation” , meaning rescue from death at sea.
Those issues:
// __ Melissa Fleming: A boat carrying 500 refugees sunk at sea. The story of two survivors
https://www.ted.com/talks/melissa_fleming_a_boat_carrying_500_refugees_sunk_at_sea_the_story_of_two_survivors
shouldn’t be that foreign to gringos. This has been going on for a long time right in “their waters”. People from the Caribbean (Cuban, Haitian, Dominican) have been braving the 100-900 coast-to-coast miles in fragile boats and rafts for more than half a century.
Some of those rafts have run ashore as far up as Ireland:
// __ Cuban refugee boat washes up on County Sligo beach, by Julian Fowler BBC News NI
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-38795032
~
Whenever such rafts and boats are found. You can count up many more people who have drowned, since coast guards routinely drown those boats after rescue. However, what gringos get a kick out of is finding a little boy strapped to a tire on Thanksgiving day (Elián González, whose mother died to safe him, as did many other) and going all the way to Haiti in order to safely and lazily -steal- ‘black’ babies “as a way to do good”, “a ‘white’ man burden”, “good Christian” thing …
My dad, someone who was on Batista;s kill list and then was imprisoned by Castro for protesting his dictatorial rule, repeatedly told me how crazy it would have sounded prior to the Revolution just saying that people would be escaping Cuba for Southern Florida in rafts. That, sure!, people have always had all kinds of problems in Cuba, but that sounded just too, out-of-it-all crazy, even if people learned in school that natives had always paddled their way though the Caribbean from South Florida to Venezuela.
Recently, Obama stopped preferentially treating Cuban people upon arrival. Fine! What I find “morally questionable” (to say the least) is that USG still keeps an embargo on Cuba (after more than 58 effing years!) that has actually caused deaths of hospitalized children. USG made sure that Cuba, even with the expertise, can’t even get medicaments produced in full and in part by U.S. companies, even if they are sold by third parties (they fine those companies). Those restrictions were “partially amended”. Gringos say and apparently whole heartedly believe, that “they are making sure that there is freedom and democracy in the Universe” . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_Cuba
We all know that the Castro’s are dictators, but imposing and embargo on a people/country in order to motivate a regime change is a form of “Good blessed”, (as they have themselves admitted) counterproductive terrorism, as part of other not that “Good blessed” forms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n_Flight_455
// __ ZNET: April 30, 2005. Terrorist Network Operating Openly In The United States, by Jane Franklin
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/TerroristNetwork.html
~
// __ Twilight of the Assassins: Why the U.S. Refuses to Prosecute the Cuban Exiles Luis Posada Carriles & Orlando Bosch For the 1976 Bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455
https://www.democracynow.org/2006/10/10/twilight_of_the_assassins_why_the
~
RCL
decades back i was doing some research and came across an interesting war weapon – call the neutron bomb. Upon “exploding” it would emit a zillion neutrons that would penetrate all structures without blasting them apart. All life forms in the range were killed, all structures remained in tact.
INTERESTINGLY – this weapon was tested by the ISRAELIS. Havent heard a darn thing about it since. Perhaps the 700 nukes in DIMONA are NEUTRON NUKES.
ever studied cockroaches?
very interesting creatures.
When you trap a colony of roaches the pregnant females dont just stay in place, nor take off all at once. nope. They make a run for it one at a time in lengthy intervals. And their run is not a straight run, it’s squigly. The males and young stay in place until dark.
POPULATE AND BREAK.
COCKROACH BEHAVIOR.
If you really want to save a refugee, and your country, and protect your religious dogma – buy some LED bulbs, and turn off the monster flat panel TV when you leave the room.
Good. Let em drown. Last thing we need is a never ending flood of wage-destroyers from the four corners of the globe packing into western countries and reducing the working class to slavery, no matter how much progressive extremists salivate at the thought.
There is logic to this position, but not nearly enough logic.
One problem: what’s the use of keeping out the ‘wage-destroyers’ when the company run government in your own country encourages foreign production and import from those same wage destroyers under even more unjust and unecological conditions? You and they are two chickens in two cages and one or the other of you will produce fewer eggs and be assigned to get eaten. At least if they were here the two of you could squawk together about it before the Owners make their pick.
Another problem: if they stay poor, stay in conflicts, stay under-invested, then they remain a threat day in and day out for generations.
Now that is not to say that globalism is a great solution. Its proponents claim it works for the global poor but its proponents also can’t be trusted even a little. Stupid measures like who makes more money than a dollar a day without asking whether they have the right to land, farm produce and other benefits via non-monetary traditional tribal networks are not going to be exceptionally informative. Someone knows exactly what’s going on, they’re just not telling you.
I would think in the case of refugees though it should be obvious: you need to put refugees where they can be part of productive communities that are largely self-sufficient and generate their own value – that’s money from nothing. A spot of desert plus refugees = prime commercial real estate. You shouldn’t have to separate every country and city into its own North Korea to make a world that is self-sufficient but poor and insular; you just need to keep the capitalist fanatic raiders from running everywhere they want and ruining everything they touch. And you can pay countries that somehow find the gumption to host refugees and create self-sufficient communities.
There is only one answer to this worldwide crisis.
What each and every government, in a United effort, needs to do is, set up a United Nations Refugee Program, specifically not affiliated in any way with the existing entirely corrupt United Nations, and not controlled by corporate or military interests, set up in each and every country that has a problem, major education facilities, major housing facilities, major medical facilities, set up infrastructure, set up production facilities, in other words begin construction, maintenance, and management of entire communities emulating organized successful self-sufficient communities which are the bedrock of the developed world.
And whomever wants to argue that such is impossible, idealistic, or a pipe dream, think for a moment, and realize that this is precisely how humanity reached its current level of civilization, although I truly question whether any of us can claim to be civilized.
While we engage in this massive humane non-profit undertaking, we set up proper temporary camps, along the lines of the current United Nations program, minus the corruption, to handle the influx of refugees, and train the refugees in every way for life in a thriving community, and as facilities develop in their home nations, we take them home to be the vanguard for eventual return of all of their people, and we stay with them, as a kind of Peace Corps, insuring success.
The incredible waste of billions of dollars, currently, on programs that accomplish little, and are rife with corruption, would end, albeit slowly, and eventually the world community would come to know and understand that if we are ever to unite as a worthwhile species, we need to accept and help each other.
Somewhat idealistic, yes, but look at us now, just look at us, not individually, but at the national level, it’s shocking, and those of us who could do something, we stand aside and let the end come rushing to destroy us; And those in power, driven by avarice, hate, resentment, jealousy, etc., willfully and with full knowledge, are destroying our planet, and ensuring their own, and our extinction.
Wrong. A better way to solve the problem is to let them die. We don’t owe them a living or a home. They can fix their own nations and economies or they can hang themselves, but those parasites shouldn’t be allowed here.
Wrong. The right way is for the US government to stop its interventions and its drone program. People are fleeing places like Lybia, Yemen,Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. Do those names sound familiar to you?
you are both correct.
Brett, Charlie E, Barabbas,
So your way of thinking is, every man/woman for him or herself.
Was that how America was built ??
Didn’t all of our far-seeing immigrant settlers come here, decimate the native population, and with uniform purpose begin the work of laying the foundation for who we are today.
Every ethnicity was involved, and committed, to that effort.
If we can’t learn from our history, then we are simply stupid.
Mankind, in order to survive, must work together, or die off.
Yes, Charlie E, that’s how we begin …
And yet, so many of the war victims only feel safe when they reach Germany with the most generous social system in Europe. Not in any of the peaceful countries along the way. Coincidence?
Here in Czech Republic, they got about 100 Iraqi christians refugees because they were persecuted in Iraq for their faith. I supported that decision. I have no problem helping some folks in need. However, weeks after they arrived, most of them moved to Germany the minute they were issued proper documents. Was it because of the war-torn Prague? I think not… This group pretty much cemented the anti-refugee stance of majority of Czech population. I hear similar stories from friends from other countries – Spain, Italy, Greece etc.
Also, refugees are coming from pretty much most of Africa at this point. Not everything is caused by US foreing policy blunders.
Calling them “parasites” because they are fleeing lunatics who would chop their heads off seems like a stretch. You put enough pressure on people, maybe they WILL turn back and fight – but as a rule of thumb, the gangs and terrorist organizations they build, ever more violent, also worry you.
My only quibble with the original posting, otherwise much like mine below, is that it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the destination countries being POOR. The wicked miracle of exchange rates could actually do some good here — people in the U.S. can pay a little, but to countries like Nicaragua that might look like a lot of money to host refugees in new communities.
The oracle of Delphi would tell you that walls of metal and surveillance devices will fail, but a wall of food and shelter and jobs will hold.
I have to agree with Charlie E below. Powerful western nations especially the US must stop this never ending campaign of trying to find terrorism across the planet. US influence in these regions are a big part of why they are seeking help in western nations. Basically, what you are saying sounds hypocritical due to the fact that the US CANNOT stop meddling in foreign affairs constantly. US Exceptionalism: any the US does is RIGHT by definition, including bombing regions, and causing all types of destruction worldwide, because we are the good guys right?? So to sum it up, if the US military and the private defense industry can STOP playing grab-ass, then we can start fixing this refugee inconvenience you describe.
Truly these refugees are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Too much of humanity is in the same boat, or just live in great want due to scarcity or greed. WE have created a over populated, inequitable and increasingly automated World were a human life has little value. It is way past time for a change in course. If not there will be no sanctuary. There will be enough despair, danger and depravity to drowned the World. Only when we all have refuge at home will any be truly safe. It will take generations and if we fail perhaps billions dead for change hopefully for the better. WE must change or the four horsemen will change us for good or ill. The core of National security is a stable decent life for ALL in every Nation.
the dumb&dumbers that run run govs and especially the US abide by the BRICK WALL PLAN – dont fix it if it aint broke & it aint broke if it aint killin ya.
This is what we face, a bunch of morons running and ruining the show. I dont suppose science is on the verge of a GET SMART pill are they?
You do not have to be real smart to see the hopes of many are crushed by the greed and will of the few. We must control our population numbers and reduce consumption of resources. This could all be done, the rich make money on it and quality of life increased. If not the four horsemen are experts on population control and reducing over consumption. There are degrees but only two paths and the Worlds leaders are not choosing wisely. The smart pill is learning and wisdom, the dumb pill is blind greed and fear, choose wisely.
Yes, science is working on medicines to boost intelligence, think of the movie “Limitless.” Sadly raw intelligence without wisdom is as dangerous as ignorance, stupidity in another form.
A clue as to who these refugees may be. Libya had hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan African migrant workers under Qaddafi.
Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans Remain Stranded in Libya
http://www.voanews.com/a/decapua-libya-migrants-7jun11-123360848/158256.html
With Qaddafi gone, the rebels turned on the migrants.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/02/201122865814378541.html
They should re-purpose a couple of cruise liners for refugee processing and hospital ships. After initial processing refugees could be sent to a refugee camp in North Africa somewhere.
They should seize bank accounts and hang a few of the smugglers.
This is a horrible situation. The readers here are fully aware that US foreign policies, influenced by world banking interests, are the core of its cause. Any nation that does not allow it to be placed at the mercy of the money changers and privatization pirates are destroyed. The resulting civil wars that follow are an endless source of profit for the war profiteers that supply weapons to both sides of the conflict and any other faction that want to join in the slaughter.
Many of us often wonder if it were not for the combined efforts of Britain and the US role in the 1953 overthrow of the Iranian elected government headed by Mohammed Mossadegh and the subsequent installation of the Shah into power what would Iran’s overthrown democracy look like today?
It may have very well developed into something far more spectacular than the mere thin thread of what the existing US democracy really is today. How many more nations could have developed democracies throughout the world that would have served the interests of the masses rather than the lords of greed if capitalistic powers did not impede the development of democracies throughout the globe in order to insert their puppets?
No need to go back to 1953. All this started after Gaddafi was popped, under the instructions and with the great joy of Hillary Clinton
Agree entirely.
Europe is justly renowned as a world leader in humanitarian assistance.
At the same time, rescues at sea are a lot of work and the end result is a boatload of refugees, and it takes time and paperwork before they can be sent back to their country of origin.
So Europe has adopted a classic compromise solution. Deploy an impressive rescue effort (to well deserved acclaim), but not actually rescue anyone (less admirable, but understandable). This is the same philosophy that led to the creation of the EU itself: reams of fine sounding principles and paper work, but no concrete action. So the Europeans, at a minimum, should be complimented on their consistency.
I’m pleased their work has finally been recognized by an article in The Intercept. Hopefully, this is the start of a campaign that will result in a Nobel prize for Europe’s rescue effort.
They really do their best to show they merited the one they got in 2012.
Anybody interested in this subject should watch the excellent 2016 documentary film ‘fuocoammare’ by Gianfranco Rosi.
As for a coherent European immigration/refugee and outer borders policy, you can count on Brussels that they have no idea what that means. They are only interested in statistics and budgets, not real people !
Welcome the refugees hell, put those ships near the Libyan coast and save those people then drop them right back off on the beaches they left from.
That is the proper solution.
I completely agree.
The NGO’s have the best intentions but they are being used by the smugglers.
Well, I am glad to see a media outlet both listening to the WikiLeaks report and criticizing the EU. Libya used to welcome refugees, at least until NATO decided to switch sides in the War on Terror.
Good – I don’t want these people polluting Europe.
I think the situation is so surreal that words like “true” or “false” just don’t have any meaning any more, let alone any others. The only conceivable answer I can see is that “you’re not supposed to have ended up in this situation in the first place”.
If countries accept they have a duty to provide for refugees, they should accept they have a duty to plan to do so in a coordinated, rational manner. When you don’t plan, you are “rescuing” deliberately unseaworthy boats in the middle of the ocean to destroy them but to give the people on them residency in your country, then lamenting how many more will die to do the same crazy thing.
The plan should be like this:
a) At border checkpoints at amenable countries all around Libya, refugees can show up at the border and request asylum. If they make it to the bare limit of Libyan territorial waters (or closer if a semi-recognized government allows) they can call ships for pickup themselves, no “distress” required.
b) Wealthy countries pay to have the Libyans settled… somewhere.
c) They pay whatever country is the lowest bidder who promises to give a given refugee residency, let them work, not discriminate against them, and shows it can and does uphold certain minimal standards of human rights. The resettlement countries get to pick who they want, but they have to accept some degree of family reunification standards. (In the extreme case where a known militant turns up the destination country doesn’t want, if the family refuses to accept a split-up, they can put the whole group back on the block for rebid) Refugees should be given the chance to make a case for their suitability for one or more countries — showing compatibility with the destination logically should induce that government to offer a lower bid more likely to win the auction. Shipping is FOB asylum location, so nearby countries effectively get more money than those further away.
d) When all countries absolutely positively no matter what will not take money to resettle a group of refugees, then you can explore whether they can somehow be disqualified/sent back or charged with something, but meanwhile they get assigned evenly according to the population and/or area (as pre-agreed) of the countries in the agreement. It’s a big shit sandwich and everybody has to take a bite. But a small one, and they know it’s coming, and each has a sovereign right to figure out what to do about it.
By putting this stuff into a more or less ordinary capitalist market you can ensure that the people get processed and put somewhere, and you get rid of the nonsense. Yes, it recalls some very ugly ancient practices, but it’s not the same thing.
You are quite right, Europeans are the most vicious types of people on earth. During the last world war we had to go and stop them from exterminating all the good Jews. I am very sorry that we nuked the Japs when we should have nuked all the Hitlers. There is a huge fraction of them that still abide by Nazi philosophy, and most of them want to enslave the Syrian refugees for their own factories and farms. I am glad the Brits have decided to part ways from the most reviled company that they could have found.
Truth be known… those were slave ships full of slaves linked to associates of the Clinton Foundation.
Those slaves went to the bottom of the sea like a Liberian Slave did when British Frigates approached them in the 1800s.
Well, they say: “Freedom is not free”. What part of the substantive “Freedom” or the verb “to be” don’t you understand?
First we exploit and bomb their countries to the point of keeping them living in subhuman conditions and 8xing the genocide of Nazi Germany during WWII.
Second, of course, we must let them reach out to freedom by themselves.
To me that is the only ethically valid, soundly rational way, we, “morally superior”, “white-man burden” Westerners can deal with it! Only lowlife terrorists killing people with knifes and vehicles instead of high tech would not understand those very basic concepts
RCL
The refugee thing is a conjob.
The world is way way overpopulated.
Any self-respecting dictator knows this and can rid his country of opposite voters by chasing them out and letting their gobbling hungry unemployed selves be somoeone else’s problem.
Meanwhile that country will have lots more land, a new economy, comfort, milk and honey.
As usual, the thieving western economies, who probably put in said dictator at one time or another after their meddling, are having to make up for their transgressions a century past, and impose those refugees onto an already underemployed overtaxed populace.
Wallstreet loves this kind of “growth” opportunity – as any thief would who prints paper then threatens repossession and interest.
[[[ Any self-respecting dictator knows this and can rid his country of opposite voters by chasing them out and letting their gobbling hungry unemployed selves be somoeone else’s problem. ]]]
As Hillary’s best friend, Henry Kissinger, said: “Useless eaters.”
Kissinger, one useless human being.
He is a psychotic sociopath, a truly dangerous creature; fortunately age is creeping inexorably on him, and sooner than later, nature will remove him from the planet.
The place where his remains will be buried, should be subjected to some type of irradiation, something that will insure his dna can never be recovered.
Simply look at those pictures. Who really wants to have those guys, underqualified, just men and shaped by failed cultures in Europe?
They can contribute basically nothing as automation keeps on progressing and are driven by egoism and economic motives. The reason Africa keeps on failing (unlike former European colonies in Asia) is exactly this mentality. Why building something up on your own, when you can simply blame somebody else for your misery and try to sneak inside something neither you nor your forefathers built up.
What a shame!!
The “pull factor” has statistics to back up the “claim” of the higher refugee death rate, if anyone cares to actually learn from history.
The “pull factor” has statistics to back up the “claim” of the higher refugee death rate, if anyone cares to actually learn from history.
I don’t understand why an agreement isn’t made with departure countries, be it Syria or other countries. They could patrol at the limit of those countries’ waters and international waters, and in case a boat was spotted then go in, get everyone on board and sink the rickety boat. Finally, instead of bringing them to Europe, take them back from where they left. They don’t drown, but don’t reach Europe either; isn’t that the objective here?
Wouldn’t be long before people realized that risking their lives for being brought back to the starting point wasn’t worth it. Also, for many of those that risked the trip and were taken back to the departure point there would probably be enough money for a second, third, fourth attempt.
I know it sounds inhumane treatment to other people, but what other the other options? (1) Let them drown, or (2) just try and save them all and bring them to Europe in which case a lot more would be coming?
Pragmatically speaking, Europe can only absorb so many refugees. Is Europe even getting any kind of help from their “friends” across the Atlantic that started this catastrophe in the first place with their thirst for war?
[[[ I don’t understand why an agreement isn’t made with departure countries,… ]]]
How do you know there ISN’T an agreement?
Have you looked at the amount of money the Clinton Foundation has accumulated?
The new oligarchy of the 21st century slave traders hang out at the CF.
No. we aren’t. Our “special” friend the US only wants us to pay more to their weapons corporations so they can intimidate our close neighbour Russia and possibly start another European war so that they can come out on top again after Russia has flattened us and spent itself.
Friends like that, hell, just nuke me and get it over with.
But to your original premise that they be dropped back where they came from within an hour of leaving it is exactly what I’ve been saying the whole time.
Don’t need to know where they originally came from, we know where they launched from and legally that is more than enough to put them right back there again.
Europe is not the coast guard of the Med. NGO’s act as a ferry service and aid smugglers by bringing migrants to Italy instead of back to North Africa.
Thank the neocons for the blood that is clearly on their hands. Never mind, they Love blood on their hands
Those are slave ships.
Wanna know why Clinton Foundation shutdown their “Clinton Global Initiative” right after Trump announced “Extreme Vetting” of “immigrants”???
Someone has you snowed, bro.
By neocons, you mean Obama and Hillary? If Bush and Cheney indeed got the ball rolling by “toppling dictator” Saddam Hussein to “install democracy” in Iraq, Obama and Hillary did the exact same thing in Libya, leaving behind them the same blood, chaos, banditry, refugees, fanaticism and ISIS.