NOTICE: “refugeeLESBOS” is the english version of “fluechtlingeLESBOS”. Subsequent use or reproduction (text, photos) are permitted, provided the following source reference is given: “refugeelesbos.wordpress.com, Thom Held©2016” (Translation: Iain Campbell)
[Photo to article: An abandoned boat lies in the small and remote harbour of Tsonja in the north east of Lesbos. It brought, one dark night, over 300 refugees to Europe. Now it is there, a useless wreck broken into pieces: Is this what is going to happen with the migration concept of the Schengen Agreement?]
After four and a half weeks on Lesbos the moment has come to risk a first interim evaluation – CONCLUSION 1.
I invite you as reader to reconsider on a general level exactly what the essentials are:
MIGRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF LAW, HUMANITY AND POLITICS
- Since the origin of homo sapiens migration has been a shaping force, again and again bringing forth new developments, and it cannot be stopped. To a limited extent it can be guided in desired directions, but only when the guiding is thought through and implemented in far seeing ways.
- One of the major achievements of civilisation is the concept of SAFETY FIRST. Human dignity and its protection from threats against life and limb are the cornerstone of democratic societies. Nations and transnational organisations are there to serve people – to protect every single individual, independently of origin, gender, race, ethnic group and religion, and to ensure the right to live in dignity and freedom. On the other hand, the individual has duties as well as rights: the duty to obey the law, to pay taxes and the duty to contribute to mutual support systems, without which a civil society is not possible. It is a continual give and take which must repeatedly be questioned and tested, and then, as necessary, modified.
- Among the rights is the unlimited right to seek asylum, and the right that this claim will be investigated humanely and with respect. It is a question of the RULE OF LAW and HUMANITY, both of which are central concepts of national and international organisations and their governance. To refuse people the possibility of petitioning asylum, as is happening when they are treated like cattle in Turkey, is unjust and wrong.
- We know that there are not only social aims but also laws which mutually contradict, and this is the reason for subordinate, parallel and superordinate law. Constitutional and supreme courts often have to judge which provision takes priority. Therefore we have to face the questions, “By what right does Schengen Europe refuse refugees the right to legal entry and the right to claim asylum according to the rule of law? On what basis does Schengen Europe flout human rights when there is a European Convention on Human Rights?” Is it not just that, the NON-NEGOTIABLE LAWS ON HUMAN RIGHTS, which differentiate us from Putin, Assad, Wahabites, Islamic State, al-Qaeda and many more?
THE PRACTICE ON LESBOS – “BE HUMAN” IS THE COMPASS OF THE VOLUNTARY WORK, WHEREAS, AT THE SAME TIME, THE LEGAL RIGHT TO HELP IN SURVIVING IS DESIGNATED AS ILLEGAL.
At this time those on Lesbos are having amazing or, expressed more clearly, amazingly unreal experiences as part of the tangible daily reality. To those who have spent long enough on Lesbos the following question is simply rhetorical in nature:
Is it not so that the European, perhaps the global, migration crisis and the paths chosen to deal with it, show all too clearly that the principles of humanity – the quality of being human – are losing continually, in the armchair lounges of politics, economy and society, their value and power of assertion, whereas on the “front”, as here on Lesbos, the hundreds of volunteers observe primarily this principle? Please see the articles “Merry Christmas – Part II” (> Coming soon in English) and “Those demonstrating responsibility – Private volunteers and NGO’s”s.
The national parliaments and governments of Europe, including Switzerland as non-EU land, have for months been quarrelling, placating and appeasing, twisting and – so seen from here – wailing and whining to an unbearable degree. Those who are here and have experienced the real effects of all this verbiage, with which they have to deal, have long since lost all understanding for those at home. Looking from Lesbos, Europe is the picture of a CONTINENT OF WHINGING WET RAGS AND SISSIES. For months the same old blather and claptrap. Europe thinks only of “securing the outer borders” – whatever and wherever these might be; no one wants to know exactly what they might mean. CSU Seehofer demands an upper limit on immigrants – as the Swiss voters with a 50.3% majority have already decided. CDU Merkel placates. Every other day the same sad story starts anew. GREAT Britain has bowed out and refused any responsibility; the Eurotunnel portal is a fortress in front of which the refugees vegetate under catastrophic conditions. The GRAND nation pays no attention; the country is concerned only with itself, is in poor condition and is now so xenophobic that its fundamental principles of “liberté, égalité et fraternité” are simply an echo from the past. The East Europeans make the bulkheads watertight (borders people-tight), as if there had never been a flow of refugees from east to west.
The national and international “.orgs” on the spot on Lesbos have never really got going because they are hanging on the strings of the whiners and have to act accordingly. The result is that the “organised irresponsibility” (“Irresponsibility.org”) of the national and transnational entities confronts a “transatlantic union of volunteers” (“Transatlantische Union von Freiwilligen” > Coming soon in English) of private groups and NGOs. Having never waited for a mandate or instructions it is they which shoulder the main responsibility on the refugee front (“Those demonstrating responsibility”).
The recognition of this contradistinction is both frightening and fascinating: The aid system on Lesbos is kept going mainly by the efforts of volunteers – for months, seven days a week, night and day. These volunteers from Europe, America, Australasia and Asia are largely aged between 20 and 35, perhaps 40; middle aged up to 55 or 60 are seldom, which may have to do with family responsibilities; pensioners, again independent, make a formidable contribution. When the helpers are asked what motivates them to work here without pay, one dominant aspect crystallises out: All are driven essentially by the PRINCIPLE OF HUMANITY. “Be human” is the unpretentious but not so simple answer.
As someone present on Lesbos, who himself works, observes, photographs and writes, I find myself, probably like many others, in a dilemma:
- Should I rejoice because here a younger generation is training itself towards an empathic and humane world perspective, where solidarity is written large.
- Is the frustration, sometimes the naked anger at the inhumane rules and laws and their executive institutions (police, army, Frontex, authorities …), so great and daily that it threatens to consume me?
The following description may help the reader to understand this frustration and anger:
The Greek harbour authorities have made it clear that any help for the boat refugees while they are still on the water will be considered as assisting illegal entry. This means that anyone on the shore who gives a light signal to the refugees showing where they may safely land, is LIABLE TO PROSECUTION. Anyone who stands in the water and helps refugees from the boat to the shore is acting ILLEGALLY. The Spanish and Greek lifesavers (swimmers) – “Proactiva Open Arms” and “Lifeguard Hellas” – with their speedboats and water skis as well as “Sea Watch” with their speedboats are acting ILLEGALLY when they try to pilot overloaded refugee boats to a safe shore in order not to endanger lives. Volunteers and locals on shore act ILLEGALLY when they transport the refugees – wet, frightened, bodily injured and/or emotionally damaged, even when this transport is to a transit camp. All these actions are considered to be HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Refugees are not allowed to book a hotel room, but have to hold out in the cold and wet in completely unsuitable tents in Camp Moria.
How absurd can a legislative process be, whether national or international, which not only conceives but even, as law in force, codifies that survival help is illegal? What flawed idea of humanity can be the foundation of such policies and jurisprudence? How glad all the helpers are that the police, although they regularly check passports, otherwise look the other way. Civil disobedience, because in the real situation the application of the existing laws simply cannot be justified? Even Frontex on the water now acts the same way. However, what will happen when the EU Commission and the European heads of state (complete with the Swiss Federal Council knowing that it has the Swiss parliament breathing down its neck) carry out their threat to tighten up the border checks on the so-called outer borders? We are just waiting for an example to be made, and some rescuer, who has just saved a life, to be charged with human trafficking.
Will such a tightening up lead to even more boats being slashed (see “Mhd “ZIKOS” story” > Coming soon in English.)? Should one watch as young people, young families with their babies and small children drown before one’s very eyes – simply let them go down – or at best increase dramatically the dangers to which they are already exposed, simply because they are denied the possibility of applying for asylum at the Schengen Area border? Is this the 21st Century we want? What kind of world can it be when primordial human actions are illegal?
Who is interested in such questions? In a world globalised to a high degree, Europe’s assembly of egomaniacal national states is concentrating its energies on safeguarding a constructed paradise from the world outside. This Schengen Area construct is intended to provide security for those within; because the construct has shown itself to be porous, the outer borders are, like city walls, to be strengthened and made impervious.
THE EUROPEAN POISON AND ITS EFFECT
Outside the outer borders hundreds of thousands of refugees are stranded in Turkey; they can go neither forwards nor back. Neither can they work nor have they democratic rights. Europe has wilfully caused them to be stuck in an “interim camp” in Turkish territory, in which there can be only one option: OUT and over the sea to reach Europa ILLEGALLY, even at the risk of their lives. See the article “Irresponsibility.org – Organised irresponsibility”.
One member of our current “Swisscross.help” team is in regular contact with friends, a Yazidish family from Syria, which, confronted with the choice between IS ideology and death, fled and is now stranded in Turkey. Their message is clear: nothing but away from Turkey. Their drive is so strong that they pay hardly any attention to warnings of the danger of a crossing in the weather conditions of the last few days, with high wind and waves. Being stuck in a hotel run by the traffickers is demeaning and expensive. They want to free themselves from this shoddy treatment, from the bondage, from the uncertainty. This drive to escape is so great that they, a three-generation family with sick members, do not want to hear any more warnings against the dangers of the crossing. In what level of despair must one be to act in this way?
After their arrival on Lesbos refugees describe how badly they were treated, yes degraded, by police and by traffickers. Abraham “ABE” Teran (USA) reports, “One of the women told me the Turks were evil. They had charged them twice to send them in a dinghy because the first time was a failure. For 23 refugees the Turks had charged 65,000 euros. One of them was a Turkish policeman in uniform. She said that the police had put three men from Iraq in jail for trying to get on a boat without paying. She reported many more things, but confirming them is nearly impossible.” The Syrien Mhd “Ziko” related how his refugee group as well as many others who told him their stories were treated “like animals”, locked in waiting rooms unsuitable for human use, and thereafter were driven like cattle onto the boats, as many as were possible, without any consideration of the even further increased risks. (see “Mhd “ZIKO’s” Story – Sergeant, Refugee, Volunteer and Friend” > Coming soon in English.)
This is all happening since or because the EU has struck a deal with Erdogan’s pseudo‑democracy. This deal includes an action plan, which is like a poisonous injection for the refugees. A question posed in an earlier article was and is, “Is it simply a coincidence that reports of deadly dramas are piling up?” The question does not relate only to individual deaths in Turkish waters. Is it really a coincidence? From the European point of view these seem like simple “collateral damage”, which is accepted in order to secure the outer border, however inadequate this securing has proven to be. Yes, we can hold the Turks responsible, but, in that we support untrustworthy systems by doing “political business” with them, really we ourselves are responsible.
MICHAEL Räber writes: “The tighter the borders the happier the human traffickers are. Europe has made itself into an Eldorado for dealers in human lives.” Thanks to its firewall Europe is creating and promoting criminal organisations right on its border, and is doing this in huge style. Police action against the dealers is a drop in the ocean, almost negligible, and results simply in the individual transit being more expensive. As long as the basis of this business (the illegal entry) continues to exist, the trade will not only continue but, in spite of Turkish repression, will flourish. This is simple economic logic, which the European political leaders refuse to understand. Perhaps many do understand but nonetheless KEEP THEIR MOUTHS SHUT. Have they tasted the venenum europeaum – the EUROPEAN POISON – which allows them in so many things and in cowardly self-centredness to be careful NOT TO LOOK TOO CLOSELY, because it could mean work and responsibility; because one would have to stand up and fight for Europe’s core values? Where are the active European citizens – the “Easy Rider der Demokratie” (Held und Minsch (2011), “Die Denk-Allmend”) – who defend the values the benefits of which they themselves enjoy? Where? Where are those ready to answer for all this and not be afraid of political infighting against the European poison?
Let us look again at the data status of UNHCR on 31.12.2015: In 2015 1,008,616 refugees crossed the sea into Schengen Europe, of these 851,319 through Greece, 500,018 via Lesbos: Half a million people came over the sea strait to Lesbos, illegally because they had no other choice – and there still is no other choice. A consequence of the “European poison” is that they are forced out onto the water. They flee in darkness, at dawn and sometimes in broad daylight. The European poison results in Lesbos, an island of 60,000 inhabitants, being left to fend for itself when receiving this half a million refugees. Without the volunteers and NGOs they would have been effectively abandoned. Many come at their own expense and may be helped by contributions from donors. They take part in an “act of political beauty” as the artistic group “Center for political beauty” might express it.
It seems strange, actually completely crazy that the major part of the clearing up after the failed European migration policies falls now to volunteers; previously it was the local inhabitants who had to do it. However this task sharing will not be found in any governmental balance sheet. Why should it? With pointed words aimed at causing reflection, the philosopher and action artist Philipp Ruch expressed himself as follows, “Nowadays it rains prizes for human rights, especially when one does simply nothing like Angela Merkel, who was nominated by “Time” magazine as Person of the Year.
Such fraternisation, politics with media, may well be the saddest and gravest part of the political balance of this migration madness. Let us not whitewash anything: According to the UNHCR 3,771 people died in 2015 on the Mediterranean Sea or are missing. Numbers, numbers, numbers. They can never make the suffering palpable. For at least 3,771 families this is appalling. In our group we suffer along with these 3,771 families, because we have met many of them and have seen them in their hour of need. One such family lost their baby on 16th December 2015 and we, as helpers, crossed our own red line. (See “STOP IT – SAFE PASSAGE!”)
Another look at this distressing photo, the vivid look of despair, the anger caused by the Euorpean poison, this is huge.
3,771. What a collective failure! We are speechless. All Europeans should be speechless; the continent should be as still as the graveyards on Lesbos, broken perhaps only by the cries for help of the refugees sinking in the sea. Yet Europe is deaf; all we hear is the hooting and wrangling of the wet blankets, continuously and disgustingly.
This continent, which is close to my heart and which is my home, appears just now as selfcentred, primitive and ugly. Not willing (yet anyway) to hear and see what is essential and important. Unable (still) to find the way to a more humane future. It is a Europe that lacks purpose and orientation, and is helpless. It is a Europe which is not equipped with the knowledge and capabilities required in the 21st Century.
3,771! That is more than died on “nine eleven” 2001, and that was an event which, so it was said, changed the world. What about these people drowned in the Mediterranean? Do they not change our perceptions, the priorities of our hearts and minds? Do they not cause us to put aside useless, poisonous (because inhuman) and deadly concepts and policies?
WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT? WHAT DO WE WANT?
Do we want to continue the way we are going and continue supporting traffickers, corrupt policemen, military and politicians in Turkey with billions of euros? Do we want to accept, even encourage, the current inhumanity by providing the foundations of a business worth billions? For the crossing a million refugees have paid a thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand or even two thousand five hundred euro each plus extras for accommodation and local transport. That is the simple calculation – and then the Greek coasts are contaminated and the tourist industry destroyed or, at best, very badly damaged. This last in a Greece that is supposed to be being helped back onto its feet.
Is that what we wanted? More important: Is that what we want now, now that we know what is happening and have had time to think about it? Have we the strength to admit our mistakes, to change course and to steer freshly aligned into a 21st Century where humane values are worth something?
The legal – and safe – entry of a million people, which is now happening illegally, would save huge sums of public money currently being spent on “securing the borders”. This money could be used to provide a better asylum and integration infrastructure. Instead of sticking cash into criminal pockets, we could invest it in the integration and the future contribution of predominantly young people. This includes young people like Mhd “ZIKO” (> Coming soon in English): People with ideals, qualities of leadership and enterprise, which Europe could use and for which obviously has a dire need. There are also persons who would take skills and knowledge acquired in Europe back to their homeland to start with the rebuilding. A rebuilding which would not compel them to leave will be possible when we finally are ready to stop thoughtlessly doing business with criminals in Syria, Iran, Irak, Saudi Arabia, Katar, Russia and elsewhere.
THESE ARE LARGE, COMPLEX AND DIFFICULT INTERRELATIONSHIPS, BUT IT IS EXACTLY THESE WHICH ARE INVOLVED. WE ARE DAMNED TO ADDRESS THEM: TO THINK IN SMALL DIMENSIONS IN ORDER TO MASTER AN EPIC CRISIS IS LUNACY – BUT, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT WE HAVE BEEN DOING UP UNTIL NOW. THIS IS THE EUROPE OF THE WET RAGS AND SMALL MINDS.
The knowledge and the ability to take in the “big picture” and to work humanely, viably and “politically beautifully” towards the future is to hand, or can, when sufficient is not available, be learned. It all depends on our will to rethink and to change current concepts – first in our heads, then in our national and, as necessary, in our interntional structures.
What is required is enterprise, in the sense of being willing to do things.
Many years ago I learnt a simple and universal question. I repeat it here because it does not allow any escape from an answer:
UNTERNEHMEN ODER UNTERLASSEN? – TO DO OR NOT TO DO?
Humanity for the future is not a divine gift, nor is it a by-product of our actions. It is conditional upon the right answers to questions vital for civilisation. Are we ready TO DO what is necessary to achieve these answers?
Life without living humanity is bleak and desolate. National states and supranational alliances which are unable to set and enforce clear “red lines” for the protection of human beings, are enemic, poisoned and ugly constructs.
HUMANITY is and remains the key to a civilised future for Europe. This is the most important point on the European compass and cannot simply be deleted from Europe’s fundamentals.
If this is the case, then there is only one pragmatic way ahead for Mare Nostrum: SAFE PASSAGE – and this not just sometime sooner or later, but NOW! One night recently three boats with 21, 22 and 56 persons on board were not able to land. Why not? Because they sank in the stormy sea. Two simply disappeared; from the third the Turkish coastguards saved only seven survivors.
See also “STOPP IT – SAFE PASSAGE!” and “THE END OF A REFUGEE BOAT” (Coming soon in English.)
The dying and suffering continues now in 2016.
Stop it.
SAFE PASSAGE – NOW!
Europe is shrinking every year by several million. Every year anew it needs new blood, replenishment for these several million. Otherwise Europe’s living standard cannot be maintained, nor can it resist the competition from America and Asia. Instead of acting, our thinking in Europe orientates itself (still) on “toxic ideas”. The only good thing about all that is that so much stupidity cannot survive longterm.
In places like Lesbos, on the Balkan Route and in the integration centres in many countries, cities and communities people, especially young people, are working on preparing themselves for a future in a detoxified Europe. Then those who yell about a “refugee tsunami” will be washed away by millions of small waves of “political beauty”.
***
On 25th December, Christmas Day, near the remote harbour of Tsonja in the Northeast of Lesbos we found in the early morning happily no refugees on the Agean Sea, but we did see two delphines. That is how it should be; they belong there.
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