Europe turns its back on principles
For just a moment in September 2015, it seemed that the wave of compassion generated by the photograph of a three-year-old boy lying dead on a Turkish beach might lead to meaningful change. Alan Kurdi, along with his 35-year-old mother, Rehan, and five-year-old brother, Galip, drowned in a desperate attempt to cross the 5-kilometer stretch of water between Turkey and the Greek island of Kos in a dangerously unsuitable boat. “We want the world’s attention on us,” the boys’ grief-stricken father told media. “This has to be a wake-up call to the whole world.”
Three years on, it’s clear that it wasn’t. The deaths of thousands of others since 2015 have been largely ignored. Europe, it seems, has become utterly desensitized to the tragedy on its southern border.
Though Europe has taken in some Syrian refugees, the EU has preferred to keep the problem at arm’s length, paying millions to countries along the North African coastline to intercept and detain migrants.
This callous subcontracting by Europe of its dirty work is bad enough but, during the past year, several European governments have sunk to new lows. Countries including France, Malta and Italy have turned away ships carrying rescued migrants. But, even worse, in recent months rescue ships operated by three European NGOs have been held in various European ports on spurious technical grounds. It is difficult to contest the assertion of NGOs that, for reasons of internal politics, European governments have been sabotaging their efforts to save the lives of refugees.
The refugee crisis is not of Europe’s making, but some of the richest countries on the planet appear to have lost sight of their responsibility to extend a helping hand to the victims of circumstances so desperate that they see no choice but to risk it all.
Driven by fear of a rising tide of ugly populism, whipped up across Europe by political groups peddling unfounded fears about threats posed by migrants in general and Muslims in particular, mainstream politicians have forsaken liberal principles to avoid being swept from power by right-wing landslides.
The Brexit crisis currently engulfing Britain typifies this craven abandonment of morality. As the 2016 referendum campaign began, the UK Independence
Party accused Muslims of “coming here to take us over” and misleadingly used images of Syrian refugees on posters, claiming that Britain was at “breaking point.”
Last month, Britain witnessed one consequence of this relentless propaganda, when a video emerged on social media showing a 15-year-old Syrian boy being attacked in a school playground in the north of England. His attacker, spewing racist bile, was a 16-year-old British boy, but the ultimate blame does not lie with him — no child, after all, is born hating. His views will have been formed by his elders, who in turn will have fallen prey to the poisonous propaganda of rightwing politicians.
It is they who bear the burden of responsibility for this attack, as they must also answer for the shameful inhumanity that has seen Europe turn its back on drowning children.