Another shipwreck, another catastrophe, another set of devastated lives. After at least 78 people drowned this week after a fishing boat carrying hundreds sank off the coast of southern Greece and words like “refugees” and “migrants” appear again in the headlines, it may seem possible to disconnect from the fact that those referred to are people, the same as us.
They are people with families who will mourn them; with hopes and dreams which will now come to nothing. How many times must we repeat that before the horror of the deaths taking place on Europe’s borders are fully realised?
This weekend, in the Passionskirche church in Kreuzberg, Berlin, names or numbers representing thousands of the roughly 51,000 people said to have died trying to reach Europe since 1993 will be read out. The action is taking place ahead of World Refugee Day next Tuesday, and it is expected to take about 32 hours to complete, running through the night.
The dead are victims of the world’s inequality. They are victims of the fact that the privileged of this planet have freedom of movement simply due to the luck of where they were born, while much of the rest must risk their lives in the hope of accessing a secure, dignified life.
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More than 27,000 people have died or gone missing on the Mediterranean since 2014, though activists and analysts say those numbers may be a great underestimate.
Those who survive that journey live with huge trauma – many have told me how they are haunted by memories of watching family members or friends drown; how they appealed for help, but their distress calls were ignored; how, when the boat engines failed or fuel ran out and they drifted, they were certain they would die of thirst one by one.
As many 84 per cent of those who perish trying to cross the Mediterranean are officially unidentified, according to the International Organisation for Migration. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tens of thousands of families mourning their disappearance.
When we talk about refugees let us always be reminded that “refugee” is a legal status: it is not an excuse to disregard the humanity of anyone. Refugees are people, like you and I. How have we reached the stage where the right to life is up for debate?
This week a donor-pledging conference is happening in Brussels, related to the ongoing Syrian war, so the EU Commission tweeted saying “the Syrian people and refugees, and their host countries, can count on the support of the European Union”.
But this potential generosity does not seem to extend to those who approach Europe’s borders. Large numbers of the likely hundreds of people on board the boat that capsized and sank on Wednesday are said to have come from Syria, as well as Egypt and Pakistan, according to the Greek shipping ministry. Survivors say there could have been 100 children on board.
Ylva Johansson, the EU’s commissioner for migration and home affairs, tweeted saying she was “deeply affected” by the tragedy. “We have a collective moral duty to dismantle the criminal networks,” she wrote.
But this type of rhetoric ignores the fact that human smuggling networks only exist – and will likely always exist – because there are no safe and legal routes to safety for a large proportion of the world’s population. There are no visas available for them; there is no “queue”; there is no chance for assessment; there is no way to claim their right to protection, which is guaranteed under international law, without reaching the territory of the safe country first. This is not a meritocracy, even when it comes to suffering.
Europe’s role in all of this is often painted as one of inaction. But there has been prolonged and decisive action.
After centuries spent exploiting and extracting resources from a lot of the rest of the world to bolster its own wealth, Europe has spent decades erecting borders to keep those affected out. It is now pumping out huge sums of money to stop migration in ways that are demonstratively emboldening warlords, militias, dictatorships, and other systems that oppress people further.
How many tens of thousands more people need to die for there to be a reckoning? How has this mass death become normalised? Will there ever be accountability?