Deaths in Belarus, drownings in the Channel and the Mediterranean: the European bourgeois are responsible for the tragic fate of migrants!
(«Proletarian»; Nr. 18; Winter 2021-2022)
The drowning, in the English Channel on november 24th, of 27 migrants, men, women and children who wanted to reach Great Britain, moved public opinion and made headlines in the media. French Government authorities immediately accused “criminal networks” of “smugglers” of being responsible for this tragedy: Interior Minister Darmanin called for “very tough measures” against smugglers, while Macron spoke of the immediate reinforcement of Frontex, the European border guard agency responsible for blocking the arrival of migrants; this agency has been repeatedly accused of “human rights violations” as well as various malpractices, to the point that the European Parliament refused to vote on its budget last April.
But in reality, it is the very tough European and French policy towards migrants that is the cause of this tragedy as well as those that preceded it, forcing refugees to take all the risks to cross the borders and reach their destination country. There have been 336 deaths in the English Channel since 1999. It is in the Mediterranean that the number of deaths is the highest, even if it is less talked about: the UN agency IOM (International Organization for Migration), estimates a minimum of 1,146 deaths for the first half of 2021 alone (a number of boats having probably sunk without leaving any trace).
These migrants are driven out by misery and wars for which European imperialism is at least partly responsible: they have all participated in the destruction caused by the conflicts in the countries of origin and in the exploitation that prevails there. These migrants flee from living conditions that have become unbearable, hoping to find better conditions in Europe.
In Belarus, several thousand people, men, women and children, found themselves blocked in the cold by Polish border guards; the Warsaw government, which had sent more than 8,000 soldiers to arrest the migrants, also prevented humanitarian organizations from rescuing them and journalists from seeing what was happening at the border. According to the Polish media, there were a dozen deaths. In the meantime, European politicians and the media have not stopped denouncing the Belarusian regime, accusing it of wanting to destabilize Europe; the Danish social-democratic government has even offered Poland 15 km of barbed wire with sharp blades. As if a Community of countries among the richest in the world, with nearly 450 million inhabitants, could be destabilized by the entry of a few thousand migrants on its territory! Let’s remember that for political reasons, France welcomed more than 120,000 Vietnamese refugees (“boat people”) in 1979 and for economic reasons, Germany welcomed more than one million refugees, mostly Syrians, in 2015.
The hypocrisy of European bourgeois leaders and politicians is even more disgusting when one knows that a good part of these migrants stuck between Belarus and Poland are Iraqi Kurds. When they are repressed in their country, their fate arouses general indignation in Europe; but when they try to reach Europe, they are treated like dogs, just good to die in the forest...
All the anti-migrant policies that exist in Europe are fundamentally aimed at designating foreigners, or those of foreign origin, as their enemies against whom the bourgeois state is the only one capable of defending them. This nationalism is absolutely anti-proletarian because it weakens the workers by opposing them according to their nationality, and because it makes them adhere to bourgeois national interests.
To the anti-migrant policies, to the closing of the borders and to xenophobia, to discrimination and to all measures against immigrants, the proletarians must oppose the unity of all the workers in the struggle against capitalism and the murderous bourgeois states.
No to capitalist fortress Europe, no to anti-immigrant policies!
Regularization of undocumented workers!
Openig of borders, freedom of movement for proletarians!
Proletarians have no country!
November, 27th 2021
International Communist Party
www.pcint.org