OPEN BORDERS FOR ALL REFUGEES!
Fires have destroyed Greece’s largest migrant camp, an overcrowded facility on the island of Lesbos, leaving 13,000 people abandoned and without shelter.
The European Union’s response to this disaster has been completely inadequate, only agreeing to assist in transferring 400 unaccompanied teenagers to another camp on Greece’s mainland. Yet it is the racist immigration policy of the EU, with its border rules designed to stop refugees reaching mainland Europe, that has condemned thousands of people to squalor and overcrowding.
Some 13,000 people were last reported to be living in and around the Lesbos camp—originally built to house just 2,800. These inhumane conditions have long been causing the physical and mental wellbeing of thousands of asylum seekers to deteriorate. The EU takes no responsibility for this disgraceful state of affairs. Its negligence, and that of the Greek government, was an invitation to the current disaster.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said their announcement on Monday would ensure refugee children “enjoy a safe future”. This is an insulting lie. The EU can offer every refugee a safe future— by opening its borders and letting them in.
Thousands of residents have been forced to flee, and are now stuck in the hills and roads surrounding the island’s main city of Mytilene. Greek police have lined the road and refused them entrance to the city.
Now tens of thousands of desperate people are left homeless on Lesbos, a horrific but inevitable outcome of the EU’s border regime. The only solution is to open Europe’s borders and find safe accommodation for all, but EU governments have instead sought to trap them at the borders and deport as many as they can.
This is part of the wider policy of the EU against refugees and migrants fleeing from warzones – among the most vulnerable people in our society. Immigrants and refugees are scapegoated as the main reason for all social ills, which are in fact caused by the global imperialist-capitalist system. Fringe-fascist groups and state powers are feeding into each other, opening the door for racist attacks and arsons on homes, workplaces, and camps.
While providing thousands of police officers for fascist groups to organise demonstrations, the state powers ban anti-fascist rallies and barbarically attack them.
The right-wing politicians who are failing to deal with housing and unemployment crises tell us we must first “look after our own”. Those on the side of humanity say that refugees are our own – they are working class and oppressed people fleeing the horrors of war. We need to build a movement that will fight for them.
There are enough resources in our society to ensure that there is no need for anyone to live in a refugee camp, but this requires a challenge to the billionaire hoarders and to the capitalist system itself – a system based on poverty, racism and war.
As the European Confederation of Oppressed Immigrants (AvEG-KON), we demand:
- that EU-member states open their borders to asylum seekers:
- that EU-member states take on their responsibility to establish humane and liveable conditions for all refugees;
- an end to the scapegoating of asylum seekers, refugees and migrants.
EUROPEAN CONFEDERATION OF OPPRESSED IMMIGRANTS (AvEG-KON)