Refugee crises are not going away......

 

A few years back, when I was working in Amsterdam and Britain was unaccountably trying to leave the EU, the entire continent was engulfed in a wave of migrants trying to find a better life.  Cue much hand wringing and panic stories of "terrorists" being in the vanguard.  Boatload after boatload of refugees and economic migrants from across the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa braved the Med in flimsy inflatables provided at extortionate cost by so-called people smugglers, aiming at Greece and Italy, the EU's southern outposts, from the North African coast.  Thousands died but thousands more made it to islands like Lesbos and Lampadusa.  There were no welcoming committees, only police and troops escorting them to transit camps, tent cities on the edge of dusty towns, where they relied on charities to provide them with food and water and medical aid.  Many remain there still.  

The nationalists like LePen and Salvini, Johnson and Farage, Kaczynski and Orban raged long and loud at this outrage: how dare these people "invade our lands", they are "not wanted" here, they are vagrants, they are terrorists, Islamic extremists, workshy good-for-nothings, unChristian heathens......and they are among the more polite epithets being bandied around.  More moderate politicians, such as Tusk and Cameron and Macron and notably Merkel, while not exactly fulsome with praise, at least struck a more conciliatory tone and recognised the people needed support and, under international law, were entitled to assistance and asylum from the first "friendly" nation they arrived at and claimed asylum in.  The EU cobbled together a plan that obliged member states to "take in" varying numbers of migrants to ease the crushing burden on Italy and Greece, neither among the wealthiest countries, and maintain some kind of balance across the continent.  Germany pledged to take in more than a million (Merkel taking that decision unilaterally, much to the horror of some of her own cabinet, never mind public), Britain agreed to take in something like 10,000 (of which over a year later only a couple of hundred had actually arrived, despite Britain being being listed as the "favoured destination" of many migrants).  Orban built a wall along the Hungarian border and sent in the troops to stop anyone arriving, and Kaczynski insisted that, with in excess of a million refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine Poland had "no room" for any more foreigners.

But things quietened down a bit over the next few years and the flood became a trickle. Boats still arrived every summer, following the same routes, and more braved the Channel to carry migrants from France to Britain.  People, including little kids, continued to die untimely and lonely deaths. They still do.

While all this was going on in Europe, there were similar issues in other parts of the world.  Stories were aired of flotillas of boat people braving the Pacific and the waters between Malaysia, the Phillipines and IndoChina and Australia, with the same pressing needs: abandoning their homes amid conflict and religious and ethnic persecution in search of safety and a better life (where have we heard that before?).  Australia intercepted those that didn't drown and gathered them in a transit camp on a dusty insect and rat ridden tropical island. Many are still there.  Across the Atlantic, columns of refugees walked through much of Central America, from as far away as corrupt and penniless Ecuador, through Honduras and Costa Rica and Mexico, aiming at the Land of the Free, the USA, all searching desperately for precisely the same thing.  The welcoming committee in Mexico introduced people smugglers to the equation there, too, and the US response, especially under Trump, was as brutal.  Trump was elected on a promise to build "a big beautiful wall" the length of the 2000 odd mile border, paid for by Mexico.  By the time he was voted out he'd completed about 50 miles of it and received not a buck from his southern neighbour.  But his Homeland Security Border Force had managed to deport thousands of "illegals" back the way they had come, separating thousands of children from their parents, locking them in cages and later detention centres. The chances of families being reunited after this was described as "highly unlikely". 

I commented on all this nonsense in some posts on my old blog, "Around The World In 80 Expense Claims" (http://travellin-bob.blogspot.com): I don't maintain it now but they are still there in the Archive if you want to look. 

But the problem never went away.  It's still going on.  Only the victims and the route have changed, for Europe at least.

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For the last couple of months, I've watched on Polish tv, the situation unfolding on the country's eastern border with Belarus, home of Europe's Last Dictator Lukashenko, who lost an election a couple of years back, arrested or exiled all opposition and remains in control, propped up by his best bud Putin. Belarus is at the front of the new migrant route, and it seems the dictator is at the forefront.

There is compelling evidence that migrants, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan and Iraq (especially Iraqi Kurds) are making their way through Turkey and onto flights from Istanbul to Minsk.  Others allegedly follow a route through Abu Dhabi.  The travel agency that is said to organise these flights in owned and run by Lukashenko's son.......  From Minsk, they are put on fleets of buses to the borders of Poland (and Lithuania and Latvia, all of whom are full EU and NATO member states) and forced to hike through forests, often at gunpoint, by Belarus forces, and forced to cross.  In Poland (and possibly Lithuania and Latvia) they are met by army and border guards, once again armed, and forced to go back to Belarus.  

On Polish tv and the few remaining independent news providers (most have been taken under government control in a throwback to communist times) there is video evidence of all this going on. The government has responded by sealing off the border area and erecting a double coiled razor wire fence along its entire length.  A bill was passed last week approving the construction of a high "impenetrable" brick wall, complete with infrared cameras and motion sensors, to replace it. The migrants, trapped in a forest with night time temperatures dropping below zero now, and with little in the way of clothes, food, water, medical supplies and money, driven by desperation and Belarusian arms, have been filmed trying to cut through the razor wire with new wire and bolt cutters (now, just where did those tools come from, I wonder....?) with armed troops egging them on and Poles with pepper spray forcing them back.

There have been fatalities. Many of the refugees are women (some heavily pregnant) and kids.  Aid agencies are being kept away by the border forces, so it seems likely that more atrocities are being carried out that have as yet not come to light.  Even the Church, in an unusual move given the close cooperation between the government and the clergy in Poland, has been refused permission to interfere and assist the migrants.  A debate in the Polish parliament yesterday warned that the situation will get worse and Poles should expect "an armed invasion".... whether by refugees (where do they get their weapons from? How??) or the Belarus forces (could Lukashenko and/or Putin be THAT stupid? I doubt it....).  And the weather is worsening.

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This sort of thing simply should not be happening in a civilized world in the 21st century, and any government that is complicit should be deeply ashamed and brought to account.  Let's start with the Western Allies.  America and its closest partners led by Britain, France, Germany, Poland and others, invaded and carried out military operations - let's use the correct term: wars - in Afghanistan and Iraq for 20 years until this summer, leaving devastated and ungovernable countries behind with their pull-out  They made little real attempt to limit the domestic conflicts, civil wars, in Libya, Syria and, again, Iraq after the Arab Spring - another 10 years of government sanctioned murder.  They continue by their support of Israel to stoke the hotbed that is the old conflict (perhaps genocide) on Palestine by Israel.  Many of these refugees stuck in the cold Polish forest and the camps in Lesbos and Lampedusa are from Syria, from Afghanistan, from Libya......  

Let's call out the nationalist politicians across these same Western allies who have ramped up the racist anti Islamist rhetoric that has infected the politics of this world and inflamed passions (including mine, but in a different way) and turned anyone with a different coloured skin, a different religion and a different way of life into a collection of demons.  Here's to you messrs Trump, Salvini, Orban, Kaczynski, Netanyahu, Putin, Lukashenko, Farage, Johnson and Raab (oh, and Miz Patel and Mme LePen) - to name but a few: feel free to add to the list as you see fit.

Let me be clear here.  The migrants are not sub-humans - and anyone who terms them so is simply following on from those other monsters from years ago Hitler and Stalin, who used similar rhetoric against the Jews and the Poles and the Gypsies and the Slavs and unleashed the horrors of World War 2 that continue to haunt this world all these years later.  Nor are they terrorists, of any stripe, whether  al-Qaeda, ISIS or some splinter group we've never heard of.  They're not even all Muslim, not even all young men (a very lazy and ignorant euphemism used for "terrorist" when used in connection with migrants).  There are Christians among them, many women and kids - 5, 10 years old, starving, in need of help, who have known nothing but war and suffering throughout their short lives (and may not live long enough to know anything else). They may simply come from the wrong part of town, speak with the wrong accent, been forced from bombed-out apartment blocks and demolished neighbourhoods because there is no other thing to do.

They want safety.  Security.  Somewhere to lay down in the warm and sleep without nightmares.  A job. Money to feed and clothe themselves and their families (those that are left).  In that, they're much the same as the rest of us.  But they are damaged already by what they have been through - what gives us - gives anybody! - the right to damage them further?

This is the shame of the West.  Of America.  Of Britain.  Of Europe.

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And consider this.  The migrant crisis that is polluting this world because of man's inhumanity to man, right now, is mostly down to wars of one kind or another.

What will happen if countries fail to live up to their COP26 pledges?  What if we, as a supposedly intelligent species, fail for break our addiction to fossil fuels, fails to reduce emissions and keep temperature rises below this mythical 1.5 degrees?  What if climate change fails to slow down but continues to accelerate and sea levels rise, ice caps melt faster, temperatures continue to rise, island nations drown, deserts expand, arable land disappears?  Entire nations start to move, seeking sanctuary.....  Instead of hundreds of thousands of migrants there are hundreds of millions?

What then?