A highly poignant article by Seumas Milne, and an excellent illustration by Matt Kenyon. (Thanks for sharing, Daniela DeBono) By any reckoning, this is a humanitarian disaster on Europe’s borders: the direct result of a system that favours the free movement of cheap European labour over providing refuge for victims of conflagration and destitution on our periphery. These are the Syrians, Palestinians, Eritreans and Libyans, many of them children, driven into the hands of people traffickers to be drowned in overcrowded fishing boats, or sold to corrupt officials as European coastguards patrol off the sun-soaked beaches. Since the beginning of the century, more than 22,000 are estimated to have lost their lives trying to reach Europe. The annual cull reached a climax last month when a boat carrying refugees and migrants from Egypt to Malta was rammed and sunk by traffickers after those on board refused to transfer to a smaller vessel. Five hundred people died. One of them was an Egyptian 14-year-old who wanted to earn money to pay for his sick father’s treatment. Others had survived Israel’s summer onslaught on Gaza and used money given to rebuild their homes to escape the siege for good. Imagine the resources that would have been poured into the investigation if 500 white Europeans had been deliberately killed in the Mediterranean — far more, clearly, than the 298 who died in the Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine two months earlier.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:33:57 +0000
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