[D66] A REFUGEE CRISIS – AND A CRISIS OF RESPONSE

[J.N.]

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/a-refugee-crisis-and-a-crisis-of-response/


Pandaemonium
A REFUGEE CRISIS – AND A CRISIS OF RESPONSE


In October 2013, a ship carrying migrants sank off the Italian island of
Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. Some 300 people drowned. European
leaders expressed anger and outrage. The Italian government declared a
national day of mourning. ‘I hope that this will be the last time we see
a tragedy of this kind’, said Jean-Claude Mignon, head of the Council of
Europe’s parliamentary assembly, ‘and I make a fervent appeal for
specific, urgent action by member states to end this shame’. The
disaster, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon promised, would be ‘a spur to
action’.

In the wake of the tragedy, I wrote that such leaders may well be
‘sincere in their expressions of anger and grief’. And yet, I observed,
‘one cannot but be cynical about all the lamentation. The horror of
Lampedusa did not come out of the blue. Much of the responsibility lies
with the policies pursued by European nations.’

And I concluded:

    The next time there is another tragedy as at Lampudesa – and there
will be a next time, and a next time after that – and politicians across
Europe express shock and grief and anger, remember this: they could have
helped prevent it, and chose not to. That is the real disgrace.

There has indeed been a next time. And a next time after that. In fact,
over the past two years Europe has been witness to a constant parade of
disasters and tragedies and crises. And after every one, politicians
have wrung their hands, and expressed their anger and promised that it
will never happen again. And after every one they have refused to do the
one thing that might have prevented such a tragedy: liberalize border
controls, dismantle ‘Fortress Europe’, open up legal routes for
migrants. Instead, they have continued to reinforce Europe as a citadel
against immigration, shielded by laws that cut off most legal points of
entry, and protected by walls and fences, by sea, air and land patrols,
by a high-tech surveillance system of satellites and drones. When a
journalist from Germany’s Der Speigel magazine visited the control room
of Frontex, the EU’s border agency, he observed that the language used
was that of ‘defending Europe against an enemy’.

Germany’s decision on Sunday to reintroduce border controls and
temporarily to exit the Schengen group, a week after it opened its doors
to all unregistered migrants coming through Hungary and Austria, might
suggest that the liberalization of border controls is untenable.
Germany’s actions were not, however, a serious policy decision, but more
like reflex strikes in a bitter internal struggle within the EU over how
to deal with the question of refugees and migrants. Germany’s initial
reaction, effectively suspending EU rules encapsulated in the Dublin
Convention, was an attempt to assert its moral authority over the issue.
Its subsequent decision to reintroduce border controls was again to send
a message to other EU nation, to try to force them to come to some
agreement about refugee quotas. The German government has taken a far
more generous view of asylum seekers than most other EU countries. The
willingness of many ordinary Germans (and, indeed, of many ordinary
people throughout the EU) to welcome more refugees, and to take to the
streets to make their voices heard, has been heartwarming. Nevertheless,
there is something objectionable about the German government’s use of
migrants as fodder in a political battle within the EU. Germany’s
actions tell us little about the consequences of properly organized
liberalization of border controls. In any case, those who argue that
liberalized controls would mean a ‘flood’ on migrants to Europe forget
that the current policy is not preventing people from attempting to
reach Europe. It is simply killing them, by the boatload.

It is worth adding that while numbers of refugees coming to Europe are
large, they are not ‘unprecedented’ as many claim, either comparatively
or historically. The UNHCR estimates that some 400,000 have arrived by
sea at Europe’s borders this year, almost double the 2014 total. But
that represents less than 0.1 per cent of the EU population. There are
already 1.1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon – 20 per cent of the
population. There are nearly 2 million refugees in Turkey, and more than
600,000 in Jordan. Compared to elsewhere in the world, refugees are
hardly ‘flooding’ into Europe. The poorer countries bear the greatest
burden. And even if every single Syrian refugee were to come to the EU,
that would represent less than 1 per cent of the continent’s population.

And while there are more refugees than ever before in the world, the
numbers coming to Europe are historically not unprecedented. In 1914, at
the start of the First World War, a million Belgians fled their country.
Britain, alone, played host to a quarter of a million Belgian refugees –
and without any great strain. Some three million people fled Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. 2.5 million
were resettled, mainly in North America and Europe. The USA – with a
population smaller than that of the EU – alone took in more than a
million. The numbers entering Europe today only seem frightening because
we have lost perspective.


When the image of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year old Syrian boy who drowned
near Bodrum in Turkey, was flashed around the world, it generated shock
and horror. The little boy’s body seemed like so much debris washed up
on the beach. Yet that is exactly how the Fortress Europe approach has
come to view migrants – not so much as human beings as flotsam and
jetsam to be swept away from Europe’s shoreline.

Aylan Kurdi will not have been the first child migrant to have died on
Europe’s beaches. Nor will he be the last. Since 1993, it is estimated,
some 25,000 people have died trying to cross Europe’s borders. The true
figure is probably much higher. There will have been thousands, perhaps
tens of thousands, who have perished in silence, their deaths never
recorded. But only now have we begun to notice, to talk of a ‘crisis’.

The crisis, however, is not simply one of refugees. It is also a crisis
of Europe’s response. Until Europe’s politicians recognize that walls
and warships, and the language of war, are not useful responses to the
issue of migration, then there will continue to be more crises, more
tragedies, more politicians wringing hands. And we will be forced to
repeat again, ‘Remember this: they could have helped prevent it, and
chose not to.’

A shorter version of the essay appeared as part of a collection of
responses to the refugee crisis on 3 Quarks Daily.