Workers at the Warsaw headquarters of Frontex, the European border protection agency, track every single irregular boat crossing and every vessel filled with refugees.
Since December 2013, the authority has spent hundreds of millions of euros deploying drones and satellites to surveil the borders.
The EU registers everything that happens near its borders. In contrast to the claims that are often made, they do not look away when refugees die. They are watching very closely.
And what is happening here is not negligent behaviour. They are deliberately killing refugees.People have been perishing as they sought to flee to Europe for years now. They drown in the Mediterranean, bleed to death on the border fences of the Spanish North African conclaves of Ceuta and Melilla or freeze to death in the mountains between Hungary and Ukraine.
But the European public still doesn’t appear to be entirely aware of the dimensions of this humanitarian catastrophe. We have become accomplices to one of the biggest crimes to take place in European postwar history.
Barbarism in the Name of Europe
It’s possible that 20 years from now, courts or historians will be addressing this dark chapter. When that happens, it won’t just be politicians in Brussels, Berlin and Paris who come under pressure.
We the people will also have to answer uncomfortable questions about what we did to try to stop this barbarism that was committed in all our names.
The mass deaths of refugees at Europe’s external borders are no accidents — they are the direct result of European Union policies. The German constitution and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights promise protection for people seeking flight from war or political persecution. But the EU member states have long been torpedoing this right.
Those wishing to seek asylum in Europe must first reach European territory. But Europe’s policy of shielding itself off from refugees is making that next to impossible. The EU has erected meters-high fences at its periphery, soldiers have been ordered to the borders and war ships are dispatched in order to keep refugees from reaching Europe. Continue reading
- Maximilian Popp writes mainly on migration, racism and Turkey
- See also While Europe argues, thousands perish in the Mediterranean in MercatorNet