Digging In Their Heels: Point of Return
"[The EU hereby commits to] increase search and rescue possibilities [and] undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers."
"[The draft statement calls for] a first voluntary pilot project on resettlement, offering at least five thousand places to persons qualifying for protection."
European Union summit draft statement
"First and foremost now, we have to save lives and take the right measures to do so."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
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| Refugees and immigrants take part in a demonstration against the policies of the European Union for migrants in Athens, on April 22, 2015 (AFP Photo/Angelos Tzortzinis) |
Saving lives under the agreement between the 28-member EU will principally be achieved by stopping the mass migration at its source. Well, not quite at its source, since the source is multiple in nature, ranging from Ethiopia to Eritrea, Syria to the Palestinian Territories and beyond. The 'source' in this new interpretation is meant to highlight lawless Libya's shoreline and the 450-kilometre Mediterranean crossing that brings hundreds of thousands of migrants to the shores of Italy, Greece and Malta.
Europe has long prided itself on its openness to accepting refugees and immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. And now, it finds itself with a multitude of problems on its hands. Those problems stem from the generous embrace of Muslims into the prevailing communities so prepared to prove their liberal attitudes that they have allowed themselves to be flooded with members of a religious demographic threatening the indigenous heritage, culture and laws.
And now teeming throngs of even greater numbers of those same ethnic and religious sects are threatening the stability of Europe, straitening its financial resources and upending the balance of welcome, tipping it into the firm realm of citizen-rejection of any additional interference in a continent's traditions, heritage, religious belief and rule of law. Humanitarian concern for other members of humanity living in misery has been put to the test, and compassion is wavering.
Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged Britain to contribute its navy's flagship, HMS Bulwark as well as three helicopters and two border patrol ships. "As the country in Europe with the biggest defence budget, we can make a real contribution", said the prime minister of a country whose civil stability has been burdened with the unending problems revealed with an influx of aggressive religious intolerance from immigrants.
Berlin is set to offer its troop supply ship Berlin and frigates Karlsruhe and Hessen toward Italy to be deflected from their mission at the Horn of Africa. Tiny Belgium has committed a navy ship. The issue is the more than ten thousand migrants salvaged from seas between Italy and Libya in one week alone. "Europe is declaring war on smugglers", the EU's top immigration official, Dimitris Avramopoulos declared.
The resettlement plan focusing on a total of five thousand, would absorb less than half the number of migrants arriving in just one week; a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands anticipated to continue arriving. Germany, Sweden, France and Italy have absorbed a disproportionate number of asylum requests. Other Eastern member states are refusing to absorb any. Leaving five of the 28 member states to handle 70 percent of the migrants.
Now it is less salvation than interdiction that is being contemplated as a solution to the influx of migrants risking life and limb to a watery grave in the hopes of leaving their war-torn and economically friable lives behind for one of aspirational plenty and limitless opportunities. Except for the fact that the target countries are closing the gates, and who can blame them?
Helicopters will bomb the unseaworthy ships loading migrants into their holds on the Libyan coast, before the migrants are shepherded aboard, to ensure they never make the trip and return from whence they came. The dissolving civility and dangers they have left behind are the problems of the countries that have fallen into grave dysfunction. And it is their citizens who must make the effort to heal their own pathological ailments.
Any who manage to make the gruelling overland journeys and from there board those vessels will be herded back by the European Union countries who plan to gently return them to their countries of origin, because Europe is bursting at its seams -- and despite the United Nation's refugee agency's dunning of the EU's insufficient efforts at rescue of the human flotsam and jetsam -- and will no longer tolerate its own peace and stability shattered.
Labels: Conflict, European Union, Human Relations, Human Rights, Islamism, Libya, Migrants, Violence
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, April 25, 2015
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