News:

Media outlets have reported that more than 1000 people are feared to have died in migrant shipwrecks over the weekend. Refugees seeking sanctuary in Europe are trying to escape “conflict, repression, and poverty” from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, namely Eritrea, Niger, Syria, Iraq and Somalia, according to the Associated Press. Reuters notes that critics describe Europe’s strategy as “letting people drown to deter others in desperate need.

Comment:

Fortress European Union is prepared to allow hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim men, women and children who take to rickety, overcrowded boats with faulty engines to drown in the Mediterranean Sea. In reaction to the last tragic shipwreck near the Lampedusa coast which occurred on 3rd October 2013, “Mare Nostrum” was launched by Italian authorities as a “military and humanitarian” operation in the Channel of Sicily. This operation began officially on 18 October 2013 and ended on 31 October 2014. A replacement plan with 19 participating EU countries and less than three million euros per month was dubbed Operation Triton, with smaller and fewer patrol vessels, not going out as far, hugging the Italian coast. Anyone abandoned by traffickers on the open sea, therefore, is beyond Triton’s scope.

European countries like the UK, France and Germany are staunchly not willing to process refugees in accordance with Dublin Two Regulation that requires them to assist refugees who flee to Europe. The British government clearly stated their position at the end of the “Mare Nostrum” when British policy was quietly spelled out in a House of Lords written answer by the new Foreign Office Minister, Lady Anelay, “We do not support planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean,” she said, adding that the government believed there was “an unintended ‘pull factor’, encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths”.

What is clearly the push factor that has driven millions of Muslim families to flee from wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia is European Capitalist nations like British, French and German foreign policies. Supporting direct occupation of Muslim lands militarily in Iraq or Afghanistan or backing brutal dictators like Assad has led directly and consequently to the massive refugee and humanitarian crisis in these countries that has landed on Europe’s own doorstep.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Tsuroyya Amal Yasna