EXODUS

ONE OF HISTORY’S GREATEST MASS MIGRATIONS OF PEOPLES

By Gaither Stewart, European Correspondent
Dateline: Rome, Sept. 6, 2015 | Click on images.

Migrants in the Mediterranean

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]urope, the small tail end peninsula of the great Euro-Asian land mass, gears up to receive the brunt of a mass migration of peoples from the South and East fleeing from the wars raging in their worlds. The United Nations Refugee Agency predicts some 800,000 arrivals of “seekers of asylum” in the remaining months of 2015. Estimates of the numbers of people from war-torn sub-Saharan countries like Somalia, South Sudan, Nigeria, Central African Republic and Congo packing their meager belongings for departure stand at five million. It is already underway. And it is a veritable biblical mass movement of peoples … for the most part headed for Europe.

Countless others are streaming out of the war-ravaged Middle East, primarily from Syria, Libya, and Iraq—the trail of failed states spawned by Washington’s meddling, and more—like Yemen—are in the offing.

From the very start the reader of such statistics must make tremendous mental efforts to keep in mind that these hundreds of thousands, these millions of fleeing masses are made up of individuals. Each person has his own hopes (vague) and dreams (shattered). Each has his own horrors of an unliveable past and fears of an uncertain present. But each imagines what the future may offer him elsewhere. Those thousands of escapees now at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy had their dreams too, dreams that vanished with them when their flimsy boat—run by the some 35,000 (according to Europol and reported by Rome’s La Repubblica) traffickers in human beings—sank in nocturnal stormy waters, making a graveyard of dreams at the bottom of that fabled sea.

For some years Europe has known what was happening in the South and East. But then who prepares a Noah’s ark well in advance to face such human tragedies? Who could imagine what is happening before our eyes? But I find it easy to think that the instigators of the wars executing their imperialistic plans of total, world-wide destabilization knew what they were about.

Let’s be clear: the direct, primary, basic, fundamental cause of the migration of peoples of Africa and Middle East is imperialist USA- sponsored, instigated, backed, prompted when not directly conducted wars in Iraq, Syria AND Libya and throughout most of Africa.

Europe for the most part is already in a state of vassalage to the world’s number one capitalist-imperialistic power, the USA. But there are still unruly people and even countries like Serbia who resist. The “invasion” by millions of non-Europeans is the perfect arm for total subjugation of “Old Europe”. That too is happening while America remains quiet except to say it will accept a few thousand Syrian refugees for whom the USA is responsible in the first place. As one Syrian “migrant” said: “Stop the wars and we will stay at home.” The reluctant countries are loyal US followers, Great Britain, and East Europe which wants no truck with such ragged displaced refugees.

Migrants rescued by Greek locals and police after their boat capsized. The Mediterranean is a lot crueler than many expected.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he UK is the outsider. Guided by no values whatsoever and by its parasitic vassalage to the USA, the still imperialistic United Kingdom abandons step by step Europe and moves closer to its master while agreeing to accept 15,000 refugees. At the same time Cameron has announced that in October Britain will begin bombing the same ISIS created by its master, USA. Where the bombs will really fall is anyones guess, but if the past is any guide, it will not be primarily atop ISIL’s militants heads. Damascus army better be prepared. Much obliged!

Now, as continental Europe opens its arms and hastily prepares for the millions to pour in across its borders, Germany has stepped forward to head a movement for reception of this year’s predicted 800,000 asylum seekers. Meanwhile, abandoned structures across West Europe—former hospitals, military barracks, schools, etc.—are being readied. The goal is an equal distribution of refugees among European Union member states. As of today this reception is opposed only by the usual extreme right-wing, nationalistic forces such as Le Pen in France and the Northern League in Italy.

This boat is so crowded that it’s hardly visible.

Vocabulary used by the press in various major European countries reflects nuances of attitude toward the challenge of the century. Luciana Bohne was right to call the wide use of the word “migrants” as a euphemism for “refugees”. However, I might add that also the word “refugee” as applied to a mass exodus of biblical proportions is misleading. According to country and/or political stance, the European press varies in the use of the words migrants or refugees,. “Political refugees” have the right of asylum. But this widely predicted mass movement of peoples is not made up of only political refugees. Many are fortunate to have close relatives already in Europe and thus hope for the reunification of their families. Others are clearly economic refugees and as such are welcomed in some of Europe’s ageing countries. The leftist GUARDIAN in the UK uses the word “refugee” as do the left-leaning El PAIS in Spain and LIBERATION in France, while France’s center or center-right LE MONDE seems to prefer “migrants”. The liberal LA REPUBBLICA in Italy uses both: “migrants” when applied to members of the mass and “refugees” (profughi) for asylum seekers. Interestingly, the precise German language press uses for all the word Flüchtling (derived from the word for flight and the verb to flee). And German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced “there are no limits” to the number Germany will accept.

Merkel: A belated welcome for the refugees, and atonement for Germany’s complicity in America’s crimes? German public sentiment—echoed in other EU member states—has begun to force the hand of many politicians at a moment when Europe is traversing one of its most delicate postwar crises.

While practical preparations are underway, other voices are reminding Europeans of the moral question involved, and at the same time public figures and average citizens underline that migration is also big business: from the cost of their flight to their hoped for asylum and for their care while getting there. Also, stamping numbers on the arms of refugees to distinguish one from the other in Hungary calls up bad memories in Europe’s past. Nightmares of the past that for extreme rightists and neo-fascists and neo-nazis have a place also in the present.

The famous Exodus ship, laden with Jewish refugees, and the subject of legend and inevitable comparisons with the current tragedy.

But I think it out of place to speak of Europe’s lack of preparation as “depravity”. European peoples across the peninsula are well aware of the moral side of this historical moment. Many people are helping on an individual basis.

Europe as a construct is NOT indifferent to this great migration of peoples. Nor are Europeans. This apparent conviction by some writers is simply untrue because they are uninformed. Some Europeans have had enough, true. For example, the university city of Leiden in Holland has become to a great extent Moroccan (like many other Dutch cities) with 3 mosques and people dressed Moslem style crowding the streets. Still, Italy is now housing migrants in abandoned hospitals, army barracks, former schools like the one around the corner from my house in Rome. Today, Sunday, 250 private automobiles of Viennese citizens drove to Budapest to carry refugees back to Vienna, while over in Munich people applauded. Strict Germany is in fact willing to take all the Syrians, hampered chiefly by the extreme rightist, if not neo-fascist President of Hungary, Viktor Orban; Hungary (glad to get the refugees out of the main train station in Budapest) is the only country to attempt building a wall to keep migrants out (along with Serbian workers), while the EU has concluded accords to take on the first 200,000 migrants.

In comparison, the USD, a big country, builds walls to keep others out…and maybe in the future to keep people in, considering the millions of Americans now living abroad. Europe is small and crowded. The task of accepting and placing migrants is arduous. But talk of “European indifference” is off base.

The map is now largely obsolete, given the fast-changing circumstances, but still indicative of how these nations have seen the refugee problem.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s be clear: the direct, primary, basic, fundamental cause of the migration of peoples of Africa and Middle East is imperialist USA- sponsored, instigated, backed, prompted when not directly conducted wars in Iraq, Syria AND Libya and throughout most of Africa. Europeans are doing an enormous job in trying to deal with the not unexpected situation. But this mass exodus from war and misery is exceptional, something like millions of Mexicans suddenly forcing their way into the USA in one huge wave. Refugees are now camped all over Italy, nearly in my backyard, in the backyards of many. Holier- than- thou talk of European “depravity” is not enlightening and, I fear, based on a lack of cold information.

Yet not long ago imperialist Europe was the very personification of depravity in two world wars that cost the lives of some 100 million persons and untold misery. I still remember when refugee camps dotted Germany in the 1960s. Europe—nationalistic, capitalistic, greedy—is however not yet again imperialist. Europe that still boasts of the last 70 years free of war, forgets or hardly noticed at the time that it supported a war against another European country, Serbia, the year 2000. In my opinion, the European Union, bureaucratic, rich, staffed largely by unelected, self-named officials, is a failure; it has never come even close to living up to the dream of its original founders.

One might hazard that Europe today stands before a last chance test: how it handles the misery described here will be the measure of its vaunted morality.

Senior Editor GAITHER STEWART, based in Rome, serves—inter alia—as our European correspondent. A veteran journalist and essayist on a broad palette of topics from culture to history and politics, he is also the author of the Europe Trilogy, celebrated spy thrillers whose latest volume, Time of Exile, was just published by Punto Press.

BUY IT TODAY! PUNTO PRESS IS PART OF THE GREANVILLE POST FAMILY OF ORGS DEVOTED TO COUNTER-PROPAGANDA.

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Migrant Crisis Tests EU’s Foundations

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | STRATEGIC CULTURE

The image of baby coffins has become all too common.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he influx of migrants into the European Union could be dealt with humanely and practicably – if EU members worked together in solidarity. But the haphazard influx is inciting tensions between member states precisely because of the lack of EU solidarity. Germany – the biggest destination for refugees – is showing its exasperation with other states, which is in turn eroding the very foundations of the 28-member bloc.

The freedom of movement for European citizens between European Union member states is one of the foundational rights of the bloc since it declared itself a Single Market back in 1987. So, the latest warning from Germany that it may withdraw from treaty provisions that afford this right is a blow to the heart of the EU and its outward image of «unity».

Germany’s interior minister Thomas De Maiziere was speaking after latest figures show that his country was projected to receive a record 800,000 migrants seeking asylum this year. That is four times the number that Germany processed last year, according to Eurostat figures cited by the BBC.

«Germany’s interior minister says he cannot rule out suspending participation in the agreement allowing passport-free travel between most European states», reported the BBC.

De Maiziere was referring to the Schengen Agreement which enshrines the right to unrestricted travel within much of the EU for its citizens.

He made a swipe at other EU members whom he inferred were passing the burden of migrant numbers on to Germany. He also called on Britain and other European countries to share the responsibility for accommodating the influx of migrants from outside the EU region.

«If nobody sticks to the law, then Schengen is in danger. That’s why we urgently need European solutions», De Maiziere said.

Germany’s De Maiziere

The seamless travel arrangement known as the Schengen Agreement came into operation in 1995. Of the current 28 EU member states, 22 are signatories to the Schengen Treaty, which permits travel of citizens from one «Schengen country» to another without the requirement of border controls or presenting of passports.

Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and Greece, for example, are part of the system, as are Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

Four countries that have free-trade association with the EU – Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Switzerland – are also in the Schengen Area, making 26 participating states in total.

EU members Britain and Ireland are not signatories to Schengen, while four other EU states – Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia – are being assessed for eventual participation in the arrangement.

Under the EU’s asylum application rules, the country where a migrant enters the bloc is obligated to process the asylum claim.

But, clearly, the surge in the European migration crisis over the past two years has placed an extraordinary burden on so-called frontline states like Italy and Greece. Numbers of migrants reaching the shores of those two countries have escalated to the point where local authorities say that they are overwhelmed and cannot cope with accommodating hundreds of thousands of would-be asylum seekers. Greece’s own economic collapse over its national debt crisis has exacerbated the problem for the Athens government.

Both Italy and Greece have warned the rest of the EU that if special financial assistance is not forthcoming from Brussels, or if other EU states do not step up to the plate to help with domiciling migrants, then they – the frontline states – would effectively loosen travel restrictions across their borders.

That means that migrants are able to board trains and buses in Italy and head north, while from Greece the refugees can cross into Macedonia, and from there into Serbia, Hungary and beyond.

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ost migrants that arrive in Italy or Greece appear to view northern Europe as a better prospect. Germany and the Scandinavian countries are commonly invoked as favoured destinations, owing in part to the perception of strong economies and employment opportunities. Britain, too, appears to have a strong draw for migrants, probably because English language is more accessible for many of them, thus increasing their prospects of assimilation.

Last year, Italy was forced into cancelling its national maritime rescue program, Mare Nostrum, for the thousands of migrants who venture across the Mediterranean on rickety boats from Libya. That program was costing the Italian government about €120 million a year to run, but other EU members, Britain in particular, were reluctant to contribute to the facility, and so Rome was obliged to terminate it.

Syrian migrants in a makeshift boat, rescued by the Italian Coast Guard. Bravo Italia!

Meanwhile, Greece has been railroaded with draconian economic austerity policies by an increasingly high-handed Berlin.

On both scores, European «solidarity» – another one of the bloc’s supposed founding principles – has not been much in evidence, as far as Italy and Greece are concerned.

No wonder then that those two countries are less than meticulous when vetting migrants passing through their borders and on to their preferred destinations in northern Europe.

One could call it a form of natural justice. If southern EU countries are not being given adequate support for what is described as the worst migration crisis in Europe since the Second World War, then why should they scrupulously enforce rules over asylum applications?

The Schengen Agreement is strictly speaking a right only for European citizens. But the seamless travel arrangement between member states under Schengen makes it easier for non-EU nationals to likewise journey without interruption.

[dropcap]G[/dropcap]ermany appears to be bearing the brunt. Last year, according to Eurostat figures, Germany processed some 200,000 asylum applicants – which was by far the biggest in the whole EU. Second highest was Sweden, dealing with about 80,000 applicants. Next most accommodating was Italy, France and Hungary. Britain was ranked sixth, taking in about 35,000 asylum applicants – or only about 17 per cent of Germany’s intake.

The evident rancour now being felt by Germany is understandable, especially with regard to Britain, as De Maiziere alluded to.

United Nations’ figures show that most of the migrants coming into the European Union are from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, where war and violence are the main driving forces pushing refugees toward Europe. In all three cases, Britain, along with the United States, has turned those same countries upside down with illegal wars, both overt and covert.

David Cameron: corrupt, hypocritical, and a willing and witting war criminal, along with the scoundrels in Washington and Paris.

Britain’s Conservative premier David Cameron is responsible too for ransacking Libya militarily with the NATO-assisted coup against Muammar Gadaffi at the end of 2011. France – another key member of the NATO regime-change operation in Libya – also bears culpability for the ongoing turmoil in that north African country which consequently transformed into a gateway for desperate migrants to Europe.

Yet when it comes to taking responsibility for the humanitarian repercussions of those wars – in the form of massive refugee flows to Europe – Britain has especially shown a supercilious»fortress mentality « in keeping migrants out of its territory, leaving it up to others like Germany to shoulder the burden.

Germany, however, is not blameless in the migrant conundrum. Berlin’s heavy-handed treatment of Greece over the Euro debt wrangle has fuelled deep enmity in Athens, where allowing passage of refugees to northern Europe can be seen as a response to EU-imposed financial woes.

The migration problem facing the EU is in a very real way a problem of its own making, or at least by certain members of the EU – Britain and France in particular, owing to their reckless and lawless military interventions in the Middle East and Africa.

But what it is adding to the EU’s strain in coping with the challenge posed by the surge in refugees into the bloc is the all-too apparent lack of solidarity between members, illustrated by the way Greece has been financially hung out to dry, while Italy’s appeals for help have been largely shunned.

The tension being stoked between EU members is in turn rebounding to undermine core principles of the bloc. Germany’s questioning of a fundamental treaty on the free movement of people shows that the EU’s constitutional fabric is being eroded.

Angry street protests over the weekend in Dresden by extremist anti-immigrant groups, in which some 30 German police officers were injured in violent scuffles, will serve to heighten annoyance in Berlin that Germany is being left to carry the can by other EU member states, most notably Britain.

Interior minister De Maiziere’s pleading for «European solutions «betrays the contempt that Berlin is harbouring toward Britain and other EU members who are perceived as leaving Germany in the lurch to deal with the migrant problem.

Britain, not being a member of the Schengen Agreement, may argue that is has a legal defence to block the flow of refugees across it borders. But from a moral standpoint, Britain’s hard-nosed attitude seems indefensible.

The European Union has a combined population of over 500 million citizens. While the influx of non-EU migrants over the past two years is certainly a dramatic escalation in numbers, those numbers are minuscule compared with the total size of the bloc. Therefore a rational, fair distribution of asylum seekers across the EU would seem to be a practicable and humane solution.

But the thorny challenge is exposing nationalistic rivalries between EU members, making a European solution elusive. If the right to free movement is abandoned then that further exposes the shaky foundations of the EU.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Many of his recent articles appear on the renowned Canadian-based news website Globalresearch.

He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He specializes in Middle East and East Africa issues and has also given several American radio interviews as well as TV interviews on Press TV and Russia Today.

His interests include capitalism, imperialism and war, socialism, justice and peace, agriculture and trade policy, ecological impact, science and technology, and human rights. He is also a musician and songwriter. Previously, he was based in Bahrain and witnessed the political upheavals in the Persian Gulf kingdom during 2011 as well as the subsequent Saudi-led brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protests.

For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream media, including ,The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Originally from Belfast, Ireland, he is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring

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