WHO IS TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE “GREEK LAMPEDUSA(S)”?
RIGHTS AND RACISM
Painting by Nikos Houliaras, 1979 Painting by Nikos
Houliaras, 1979
Immigration: Things done wrong in the name of security
Dimitris Christopoulos
This article was written only a few days before the tragedy
in Lampedusa. A tragedy that was not caused only due to the strong winds and
the boats. This tragedy was an immediate result of the EU’s dominant logic of
deterrence, as far as the immigration issue is concerned, according to which it
is believed that the more difficult we make the journey the fewer will be doing
it. Cynically, this is true. However, the claim of New Democracy (the main
right wing party, which was in government until the elections of January 2015)
and some Greek TV channels that the refugee and immigration flows have
increased due to the “open borders” policy of the Greek government, causes
amusement.
***
It is a normal practice (especially lately) for the Left to
be charged with “irresponsibility” and “imprudence” as far as issues related to
the management of the immigration and the refugee issue is concerned, due to
the “naive humanitarianism” that is constantly charged with. But times are
changing… It is more obvious than ever that folly does not belong to the Left,
but on the other side. That is what we are paying: if there was so far a
fundamental administrative and operational structure that could receive the
volume of the refugee flow that we are facing in Greece things would have been
better.
One must be very naive to believe that at some point in the
visible future the refugee or immigration flows will stop. This issue in Greece
and the whole Europe is –and will remain– a timely one, having moments of
recession and escalation.
At one moment the immigrants will be more and the other the
refugees. In this sense, on the overall we are now talking about mixed flows.
Today, Greece has to face the intensification of a refugee
flow that is related to the prolonged dislocation of the state in Syria and
Libya. Especially, as far as Syria is concerned, the hopeless situation drives
the people who had already temporarily settled in Turkey to start realizing
that they there are no viable expectations of returning to their country. Thus
they also abandon Turkey: first stop within the EU is Greece. The intensity of
this flow has already been diagnosed since 2014, the year in which the then
Greek government was bragging about the fence in Evros river which was standing
as “the deterrent barrier that prevented the influx of thousands of illegal
immigrants that were uncontrollably entering Greece”. This is what the then
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras was saying just before the elections of January
taking “selfies” in front of the fence.
A solution to the so far impasse immigration policy
It seems as if Antonis Samaras did not know that this fence,
as every other fence, cannot intercept the immigration and refugee flows. It
can only change their direction. And that’s what it did. And the numbers
augmented in 2014 and the journey became more dangerous for those people. The
difference was that now they did not travel through Thrace but through the
Aegean.
So today we are experiencing for good the deadlocks that are
being dragged for the past 25 years under the carpet of the worthless decency
of our state: an inhumane, ineffective and ultimately silly prosecution,
prevention and detention policy in which the previous governments have
indulged, simply inherits the absolute deadlock. At a time when the refugee
flows are even more acute –and without a predictable date of recession– only
one seems to be the appropriate solution for the Greek democracy. The one that
under difficult circumstances the Greek government is processing and strives to
put in place. The classification and registering of the population in the
points of entrance, where this is feasible, and its coordinated transition in
places in the hinterland as part of a proportional distribution within the
territory. It is not possible neither to stack them in the islands nor to have
them all in the center of Athens. You simply cannot ask from the EU
proportionate distribution of the refugee population or the immigration
population with no papers while at the same time in Greece is applied the
syndrome “not in my own backyard”. Just imagine how it sounds in the ears of a
country, for example Germany, which hosts the largest number of refugees in
Europe, to hear that Greece calls for solidarity, but the mayor of one city
says that he “cannot support any others”.
That is what I understand as a joint responsibility of the
entire Greek state: the central government, the first and second level
self-government, in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for
the Refugees and the European Union with the support of any other institution
that can respond to this appeal for solidarity.
One may wonder: “Is this easy?”. Obviously not, especially
today where this emergency situation accumulates in the numerous other problems
of the Greek public administration. Is there another solution? “Yes” they are
shouting irresponsibly the criers of the xenophobic rhetoric: “we should open
the detention centers, so that we can detain the 1%, preventing at the same
time all the others from going out” or “refoul them to their country” making
ourselves accomplishes to their eventual extermination. The most courageous of
those criers are even willing to talk about other, more “active” solutions.
Those “solutions” that –fortunately– the Greek Constitution and the
international law have left to the legal prehistory.
The dilemma today is: an overwhelming, difficult settlement
and the other “solution” that looks more and more with the erstwhile “final
solution”. Those who are with the first side, are sitting together
–disagreeing– fighting over the dose of humanitarianism or concern about the
safety of the population and in the end they find something that they can
deliver to society. Probably below expectations, but it is an important step.
Those who support the other “solution” shall also confront the moral burden of
the identification with the most totalitarian political experiments we got to
know in the European 20th century.
Translated by:Thomi Gaki
The original text was first published on:Newspaper “I Epochi”,
19.4.2015
Link to greek version:H μεταναστευτική αφροσύνη που πληρώνουμε σήμερα