Bt Rubén Tzanoff
The shipwreck of a barge once again spread death at sea. This is not an exception as the European imperialist bloc builds itself as an anti-immigrant fortress. The mobilized solidarity of the peoples is the only way to face the inhuman actions of the governments and to achieve a world without borders.
The issue of the Italian coasts
On Sunday, February 26, a barge sank 150 meters from the shore. It is estimated that there were about 200 people on board, of whom more than 62 died, including 20 children, a baby and more than 30 women. The bodies were found floating in the sea and on different beaches. Those who survived were rescued by Salvage or swam ashore. The barge made the sea route linking Turkey with the coasts of Calabria and Apulia (1,200 kilometers in four days). Most of the people on board came mainly from war zones such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, but also from Iran, Pakistan or Nigeria.
The ultra-right, a disgusting expression we must defeat
Italian governments are carrying out a crusade against migrants that the ultra-right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is deepening. She does this through decrees and measures that impose heavy sanctions, do not allow multiple rescues and assign ports far away from the place of shipwreck. In other words, making rescue efforts as difficult as possible and using tragedies to discourage further attempts.
Desperate to save their lives
What happened in Italy is not an exception. In ten years, the number of deaths in the Mediterranean is close to 26,000 people. Desperate cases are regularly repeated, as happened with the Ocean Viking. It happened in December 2022 as well. On that occasion, three young men climbed onto the rudder blade of the tanker Alitihini II in Nigeria, not knowing what their fate would be. They were found when the ship arrived in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. They were dehydrated and so numb that they could not stand up. They survived a suicidal voyage squatting, taking turns to sleep, with barely a few cookies to eat. “It was a matter of life or death,” they said.
The young men were fleeing violence in southeastern Nigeria, close to the border with Biafra. “I had to run away because, although the country is not at war, the ethnic group that controls everything was after me and was going to kill me.” When they were lucky, they made a living in the port, fishing or with “whatever came out.” One of them said “I just want to live in freedom,” “live in peace, work, have money and help my family.”
Nos so progressive “progressives”
The treatment of migrants has not changed with the “progressive coalition” government of Pedro Sanchez and Podemos. On the contrary, the Spanish government strives to be the EU’s border guarantor on the southern border, together with Morocco, an allied extra-border gendarme. The massacre in Melilla is a stark illustration of this.
“Fortress Europe” is an inhuman construction.
Whatever the inclination of the governments, with greater or lesser intensity, they respond to the dictates of the EU and the project of building a “Fortress Europe”, now even allowing border walls to be erected. The EU is increasingly shielding itself from migrants. It murders them by repressing them at the borders, as in Melilla. They are abandoned to their fate at sea. They are deported or admitted as cheap labor, discriminated against and stripped out of democratic and social rights.
This is what the governments of European imperialist capitalism do, whose history is plagued by plundering, exploitation and oppression of entire countries and continents, to the point of leaving them in the most absolute poverty and involved in wars. Those who are powerful “forget” that there were decades and decades in which millions of poor and hungry Europeans were welcome migrants in all countries of the world.
Solidarity with migrants, for a world without borders
We repudiate the EU authorities and governments that armor the borders and play into the hands of xenophobic, racist, anti-immigrant and anti-human expressions. Instead of saving entrepreneurs and banks, pouring millions of euros to maintain the profits of the capitalists who caused the economic crisis, instead of adjusting the workers and the people excused in the Russian invasion war in Ukraine, what they should actually invest in is the needs of the great majorities, in saving lives of migrants and welcoming them without discrimination, with democratic and social rights. This is what is demanded by those who are not complicit in the actions of governments. The struggle for a world without borders is not a utopia, it is a necessity to avoid the barbarism to which capitalism leads, something that can only be achieved with a socialist system.