An emergency in the Mediterranean

[Abu Juwairiya]

There is an emergency in the Mediterranean and all of Europe needs to respond to it

Since the Mare Nostrum search and rescue mission ended the number drowning in the Mediterranean has dramatically increased. © EPA

"European governments must prioritise setting up an immediate search and rescue plan to prevent the escalating death toll of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea, Amnesty International said ahead of a European Union (EU) foreign and interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg today.

Hundreds of people are feared drowned after their boat capsized off the coast of Libya this weekend. Up to 1,600 people are now believed to have drowned this year alone, more than 1,100 of them in the past week. There have been reports of a further two boats which have made distress calls today with more lives feared lost.

Kate Allen, Amnesty UK Director - who will be flying into Lampedusa on Wednesday - said:

“There is an emergency in the Mediterranean and all of Europe needs to respond to it. History will judge us for turning our backs, while desperate people drowned.

“The equivalent of five passenger planes full of people have drowned last week alone, and this is only the start of the summer. If they had been holiday makers, instead of migrants, imagine the response.

“The floating bodies of these desperate fathers, mothers and children are Europe’s shame.
“We need to reinstate the search-and-rescue programme immediately, and it needs proper, pan-European funding. That includes the UK playing its part.”

Amnesty spokespeople are available for interview. Kate Allen will be travelling to Italy on Wednesday to visit Lampedusa and Sicily.

Talking points

· European governments’ ongoing failure to address the humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean has contributed to a more than 50-fold increase in migrant and refugee deaths since the beginning of 2015.
· Two recent high-profile tragedies, in which more than 1,000 migrants are feared drowned, have belatedly brought this crisis onto the agenda of European foreign and interior ministers today.
· The Mare Nostrum rescue mission, which saved the lives of thousands of migrants, ended last year. It has still not been adequately replaced.
· A new multi-country search and rescue operation could be put in place within days if there was the political will to do this.
· All indications point to a continued rise in the number of migrants and refugees making this trip as the weather improves, violence and persecution continue in countries like Syria and Eritrea, and instability persists in Libya."

(Source:http://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-rel...20150420183200&utm_campaign=Refugees_migrants)

 

[zaman-gm]

Crazy things going on.
Are their life's value go in vain. Events are just keep going. What will be the next number?? How many that will be????

Is there something else??? why people choose their fate one ocean???
!!!

 

[Abu Juwairiya]

Crazy things going on.
Are their life's value go in vain. Events are just keep going. What will be the next number?? How many that will be????

Is there something else??? why people choose their fate one ocean???
!!!

They are trying to escape poverty, persecution, social deprivation, unemployment, corruption, rising inflation and the growth of oligarchical crime in their own countries. Since many of them have heard of better opportunities abroad, especially in the West, they take their chances in the seas for the possibility of a 'life' elsewhere.

You have to understand they are not like us, they have hard impoverished lives, little or no education, few possessions, little to eat every day and nothing to look forward too. Their families have rising costs but practically no salary or income, there are no benefits and there is no such thing as 'equality'.

Wouldn't you want to have a better existence than this?

 

[zaman-gm]

This is absurd!! May Allah save them and guide them to overcome this extreme exam. Mass people, specially poor peoples have no right in this word which i have been seen.

I would like to say something different. bro Abu Juwairiya your saying about (poverty, persecution, social deprivation, unemployment, corruption, rising inflation and the growth of oligarchical crime).... i know this is problem. But this is not occur in a single day or a month. It could be prevent before.....though this people are suffering now and the future is (??). Eventually we count this as their fate!!!

Astagfirullah.

 

[Abu Juwairiya]

This is absurd!! May Allah save them and guide them to overcome this extreme exam. Mass people, specially poor peoples have no right in this word which i have been seen.

I would like to say something different. bro Abu Juwairiya your saying about (poverty, persecution, social deprivation, unemployment, corruption, rising inflation and the growth of oligarchical crime).... i know this is problem. But this is not occur in a single day or a month. It could be prevent before.....though this people are suffering now and the future is (??). Eventually we count this as their fate!!!

Astagfirullah.

Jazakallah Khayrun Brother Zaman for your reply. I agree poverty is not a new phenomenon and things like this are just as old as anything else. Everyone, anywhere in the world, would like to have some comfort in their lives and perhaps most may find it within their own countries. For every number of satisfied or socially content person who choose to remain in their own country who we would class as poor, there are an undisclosed percentage who are not. As someone who has travelled overseas often, I can attest to the large proportion who are able to move abroad through employment [albeit for thousands, if not millions, through the payment of more capital than they could afford]. They are still the lucky ones, since most people with no salary have no opportunity or hope to escape the hopelessness of the situation in their own countries.

Now if you will allow me, I have to digress slightly to show you how costs have risen significantly and are still continuing to increase above normalcy. This concerns organisations you will have heard of. They are known as the IMF, the World Bank (WB) and its sister firms.

In the 1940s they were created by the US for the sole reason to help European economies recover from the destruction of WWII. In the 1950s and 6os however, with the growth of decolonisation, the new nations requested the same organisations to give them aid as well; and thus began Neo Colonialism as the IMF and World Bank would only give with 'conditionalities' and with interest. At first the new 'poorest nations of the world' could pay but had great difficulties in doing so although they still had the ability to pursue development programmes to fight poverty.

In 1974-5, this dramatically changed with the OPEC policy of Saudi Arabia and Gulf nations to deny oil to western nations due to their support for Israel. Western nations suffered a decrease in GDP, but not did not drown. The poorest nations lost the ability to repay within the allocated periods given to each nation and pleaded with the WB and IMF for further loans. The were turned down, but American billionaires and American wealthy families stepped in and freely gave out the additional capital as well as guaranteeing the IMF and WB future payments on time.

The next phase of economic exploitation began. Taxes were great in poor nations before, but now they were higher, much higher as normal people had to pay for the IMF and WB as well as American billionaires and their companies. Prior to 1974 native industries of each nation could compete to some degree with smaller international equivalents and traded with concessions but with tariffs and quotas to allow native governments to collect taxation from all who operated on their soil. This continued briefly in the 1970s but was slowly becoming less and less as governments could no longer afford to pay and the proliferation of western companies now demanded 'no taxation', 'no quotas', 'no tariffs' and no adherence to local legislation.

The result was now

-excess taxation
-an enormous rise in unemployment
-food riots [basic food was in short supply and at extortionate prices]
-health sectors being drastically reduced
-education deficits
-a rise in the return of diseases previously controlled

In the 1980s, 'land confiscation' was fast becoming a key choice to multinational companies. This meant they could legally take over as much and any land they wanted without government consultation and remove native populations with the support of the specific western nation the multinational company represented and if that was not enough, the IMF and WB would put pressure on the local government to protect the interests of the companies or lose out with the 'conditionalities'.

The result was now a proliferation in mass unemployment and economic stagnation on a national scale not seen before. At first in the 1970s it affected African and Asian countries, in the 1980s it moved on the Latin American nations where their economies which had been somewhat successful now almost collapsed overnight.

As of the 21st Century, the situation is that most developing world nations do not own at least 30% of their own countries, multi national companies do or I should say the wealthiest American (and some non American) families do. As the rate of interest in addition to the loans is 100% (compared to no more than 7% for western nations) and there is still a time limit for loan collection (or defaulting of future investment), no country in the world has hope for economic recovery without increasing taxation on their already impoverished populations. The problems are further made worse by multinational companies insistence on not employing native workers and bringing in their own workers. Those 'lucky' enough to work in western companies have however no legal benefits to 'holiday pay', 'insurance', 'medical costs', 'overtime' and international safeguards to 'employment hazards'.

As so many impoverished nations in Africa and Asia are agricultural, the economic woes did not at first affect the rural areas, but by the 1980s it had caught up with them with the arrival of farm destruction for land accumulation by western companies. In the 2000s, rural and industrial areas are being the target of 'water supply' needs, that is western companies want to have the authority in the authority of water distribution (and as such ownership), you can just guess what that is going to mean.

The above is just a wider snapshot of what we in the West will never have to face inshallah, but it should give you an idea of what is happening by those whom we in the West would call our countrymen.