• Europe’s quiet offensive against people helping refugees – EURACTIV.com
    https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/opinion/europes-quiet-offensive-against-people-helping-refugees

    Three years ago today (31 October), EU pressure on Italy forced the end of one of the EU’s most successful humanitarian missions, ‘Mare Nostrum’, a search-and-rescue operation that in just one year brought 130,000 refugees safely to Europe’s shores. Ben Hayes and Frank Barat look back on three years since the end of Operation Mare Nostrum.

    Frank Barat is coordinator of the War and Pacification program at the Transnational Institute. He has edited several books, the latest being Freedom is a Constant Struggle with Angela Davis. Ben Hayes is a fellow of the Transnational Institute and an independent researcher.

    As the death toll mounted in the wake of this decision, including 1,200 victims at sea five months later, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) stepped into the breach, launching their own rescue missions in a desperate attempt to save lives. Their efforts were part of a wave of compassion across Europe that year, as people organised convoys to refugee reception centers, warmly greeted arrivals at German train stations and lined highways to provide food and water to those making the arduous trek from war-torn regions of Syria and elsewhere.

    As European politicians retreated from their humanitarian obligations, its citizens demonstrated Europe’s tradition of compassion, solidarity and commitment to the Geneva Conventions.

    In his first State of the Union address, EU Commission President Juncker had even praised the volunteers as representative of the kind of “Europe I want to live in”. Yet just a few short years later, the Union looks very different, and Juncker is silent as those very same activists are now being treated as criminals rather than heroes.