The immigration crisis in Europe has taken proportions a true humanitarian tragedy to the point of being considered the largest migratory wave since the Second World War on the continent. In this year alone, more than 300,000 refugees from wars and misery reached the European countries in search of a thread of hope to make a living.
In crossing the Mediterranean, more than three thousand people have lost their lives this year. The scenes of bodies hitting the beaches of Greece and Italy show in a shocking way the drama of the situation. It can’t be forget the refrigerator truck abandoned in Austria with more than 70 bodies of Syrian immigrants killed by asphyxiation. Nor can we forget the little Aylan found dead after drowning at a beach in Turkey, or the other 188,000 rescued by the Coast Guard and deported.
What we see today are not immigrants looking for work in a “better life”, as happened at other times in history. They are men, women and children – many children- who deliver their fate to smugglers who carry out the crossing to Europe. They squeeze the modern “slave” ships, in train stations and travel long distances to reach the border to escape death.
What we see is a drama that reveals how far capitalism and the imperialist plunder of the peoples of the world can take us. They are refugees, victims of civil wars, terrorism, persecution and misery, whose responsibility lay on the very European Union and the United States.
Of all refugees, one third (or 122,800 people) is made up of men, women and children fleeing the civil war in Syria and the horror spread by the Islamic state. In the case of African refugees, most come from countries such as Senegal, Mali, Guinea and Gambia, fleeing civil wars and misery left as a legacy of years of European colonization.
Little is said about those responsible for this tragedy: the European and North American imperialisms that promote wars such as in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, create terrorist groups to massacre the popular revolutions that they fail to win, as the Islamic State, and plunder the African continent and its people as much as they can.
While Angela Merkel, François Hollande, David Cameron and other European leaders gather in castles to discuss “solutions” to the crisis, thousands die.
But, beyond the sadness and tragedy scenes, the solidarity of the workers and peoples of Europe moves us as well. We see workers taking food to refugees at stations, the marches that have led thousands to the streets against their own governments, as in Vienna (Austria) and Dresden (Germany), football stadiums with messages of “refugees are welcome,” European families offering shelter in their homes to immigrants. All of this fills us with hope and shows the way: the international solidarity of workers and peoples.
The solution is not building more walls and fences to leave out the problems that European governments have created. We can’t accept the absurd rules, such as derisory quotas for the entry of immigrants.
Everyone must be given the status of refugees, granting them asylum, expropriating empty buildings to house the immigrants, ending the repression at the borders and ensuring basic rights for the families to end with this humanitarian catastrophe.
Above all, we must be clear: this barbarity we are witnessing is the symptom of a decadent capitalist system. Capitalism kills. Therefore, death to capitalism. Our horizon is the struggle for a new society, a socialist society.
No to xenophobia! No human is illegal! All solidarity with the refugees!
