04 February 2016

Europe Rewards The Greek Islands

with the threat of prosecution.

by Neil Tidmarsh

Europe has a plan.

Immigration across the Aegean Sea will not be allowed (any migrant who does cross will be returned) and instead 250,000 asylum seekers a year will be accepted from refugee camps in Turkey.

Attitudes across the continent are hardening.  Last week, the Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann announced a cap on asylum seekers this year; no more than 37,500 will be allowed entry.  The Danish parliament passed a law allowing the confiscation of cash and valuables over a threshold of £1015 from migrants, to pay towards their costs; at the same time, the southern German states of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg announced that they are confiscating asylum-seeking migrants’ assets above a certain limit (€750 and €350 respectively) to pay towards their costs; Switzerland has a limit of €900.

This week, Austria declared that it would deport at least 50,000 migrants and cap asylum claims at 127,500 over the next four years, and it added Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to its list of ‘safe countries of origin’ from which it will not consider asylum applications.  The Swedish interior minister Anders Ygeman announced that Sweden will repatriate half of the 163,000 migrants who came to the country last year.  In Germany, a hand-grenade was thrown over a fence into a refugee hostel in Villingen-Schwennigen, but failed to explode – one of half a dozen attacks on migrant centres in that country.

Frontiers are being closed, border controls are being reinstated, walls are being built, vigilantes are taking to the streets.  Even Angela Merkel is saying that Germany expects the recent immigrants to return to their homelands once peace has been restored there, and to say ‘danke sehr’ as they leave.

But at least Europe now has a plan.

Is it the right plan? And will it work?

It’s the right plan if it works, i.e. if it achieves what Europe’s leaders hope it will achieve: the fulfilment of Europe’s moral duties; the control of immigration at a level which European societies can cope with; the destruction of people-traffickers’ criminal businesses; the closing down of dangerous sea-crossings with their tragic loss of lives.

Those are the aims.  The strategy, as mentioned above, is to reject any migrant who makes the unofficial crossing over the Aegean Sea, and to take refugees from camps in Turkey instead.  Its success depends upon the planned tactics, which include:

1)Buying Turkey’s help.  €3 billion euros and the right to visa-free travel in Europe for its citizens has already been given to Turkey; in return Turkey is to stop migrant boats leaving its shores for Greece, and to set up more refugee camps.

2)Any migrant who does make it to the Greek islands is to be put on a ferry and returned to Turkey.

3)It will become a criminal offence for anyone in the Aegean – locals, charities, volunteers, tourists – to rescue or help migrants arriving on Greek islands.

Many objections can be made and flaws identified: so far there has been little sign that Turkey has done much for its billions of Euros; surely some sort of European naval intervention will be needed; won’t it just see people-traffickers opening up sea routes to Italy, either from north Africa or across the Adriatic from the Balkans?

But such objections fade into insignificance when that point (3) above is considered.  Isn’t it grotesque?  Whatever one might think about the migrant crisis, about its tangle of conflicting ethics and morals and responsibilities, of political realities and social practicalities and global duties, surely the one thing which no one can condemn and of which everyone must approve is the humanity shown by ordinary people in the Greek islands towards fellow human beings in need?  In the front line of the whole nightmare, here are people reacting simply and correctly to a dreadful situation: a fellow human being is in dire immediate need; another human being gives him or her whatever help they can.

Fishermen see someone drowning; they rescue him.  A granny sees homeless children suffering from the cold; she knits woolly hats and gloves and jumpers for them.  Villagers find hungry strangers in their midst; they feed them.  Members of sailing clubs know boats are sinking and people are drowning in the waters where they take their recreation; they react with the Dunkirk spirit and do what they can to save lives.  And all this in spite of the region’s own dire economic situation, made worse by the migrants themselves compromising the tourist industry on which the islanders are so dependent.

And such people are now to be prosecuted as criminals?  What do our leaders think of us, their citizens, if for pragmatic and tactical purposes they are willing to criminalise us for doing the right thing?

A petition nominating the Greek islands for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their humanitarian response to the migrant crisis has been launched.  Although nominations closed on 01 February, the petition is still open.  If you want to sign it, go to the Avaaz.org website or search for Avaaz Greek Islands Nobel Peace Prize.  Other nominations received by the Nobel panel include Pope Francis (worthy, but one somehow feels that it is after all just his job to be worthy) and Donald Trump (yes, indeed).  Go on, do the right thing. You can’t be prosecuted for signing a petition. Can you?