When refugees from the Indian subcontinent, sub-Saharan Africa, Central and South America and other places risk their lives for a chance at low-wage precarious labor in Europe or the US, it's because of decisions taken at the center of global economic and political power, places like Washington D, London, Brussels and New York.
All over the world people risk and sometimes lose their lives escaping
poverty or war fare in their native lands. Throughout human history
migrants have sought out places that are safer or more prosperous but
they are seldom greeted with open arms. Xenophobia, racism, and fears of
scarcity prevent desperate people from being integrated into societies
that might accept them. However, the urge to escape violence or hunger
never abates.
The most visible of the world’s refugee crises today is taking place in
the Mediterranean sea. Thus far in 2015, it is estimated that 1,724
people have died on unseaworthy vessels as they try to reach southern
Europe from Libya. These refugees come from many African nations, from
Syria and from countries as far away as Bangladesh. On April 18, 2015 a
vessel holding an estimated 850 people capsized with only 28 survivors.
This humanitarian crisis is the direct result of the United States and
NATO decision to effect regime change in Libya in 2011. Presumptive
democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton infamously said of
Libyan president Gaddafi, “We came, we saw, he died.” Not only was
Gaddafi killed by the conspiracy between NATO and jihadists in his
country, but Libya never recovered from the intervention.
The most well known individual victim was the American ambassador,
killed in Benghazi by the same forces which the United States supported.
Very few people in this country are aware of their government’s
complicity and those who do know don’t want to discuss it. The
republicans who were as eager to intervene as the Obama administration
want to make embarrassing political hay but don’t want to talk about the
ongoing humanitarian crisis which the United States created.
Citizens of many African nations routinely went to work in Libya, an oil
rich nation which had jobs for migrants. Libya was an example of the
prosperity all Africa nations might be able to experience before it was
turned to rubble by NATO’s machinations. Internecine warfare has turned
it into a failed state. There is no legitimate government and it is so
dangerous that there are no international flights going into that
country. Libya can’t even effectively extract or sell the oil resources
that it has.
This chaos
makes it a perfect place for human traffickers to do business. Africans
make a dangerous journey across the Sahara desert from Senegal, Gambia,
Nigeria, Niger and Mali. Further east from the horn of Africa come the
Ethiopians, Somalians and Eritreans, all of whom suffer from American
instigated destruction in their lands. So many Syrians have fled the
NATO attack on their nation that neighboring countries Lebanon and
Jordan prevent them from entering. Now Syrians fly first to the Sudan
and wait to be smuggled into Europe through Libya, whose long coast is a
magnet for smugglers and would-be migrants hoping to enter European
nations as refugees.
The hand wringing among the Americans and the European Union countries
is entirely hypocritical and ought to be pointed out as such. Thousands
of Libyans were killed or displaced by the NATO intervention and a
brutal race war was directed at black Libyans and African migrants.
Libya would not be the point embarkation point for so much misery had it
been left alone.
The world’s corporate media
have a seemingly infinite capacity to produce hours of footage and
thousands of words without ever getting to the inconvenient truth. In
this case the truth is that the United States and its allies lied to the
world when they claimed a dubious responsibility to protect Libyans.
They were interested in nothing of the sort. The only goal was to attack
yet another country too weak to thwart their plans for imperial
expansion. They succeeded in getting rid of Gaddafi and in creating
another crisis for humanity.
Then again Libya isn’t much different from Central Americancountries
like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. US backed coups,
interventions, and drug policing have created violence and chaos in
those countries. When unaccompanied children began arriving in the
United States there was little discussion of our government’s
culpability. Political discourse, such as it was, was focused on
political battles in congress about immigration policy and not about how
this particular crisis was American made.
We now see another sorry spectacle of suffering people and powerful
nations who could help but refuse to do so. It is all the more
disgraceful because those countries created the problem in the first
place. Let the NATO nations take in every refugee fleeing on a leaky
boat. It is the least they could do to make restitution for the
suffering they created.
* Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Agenda Report.