Europe has become the first continent in arrival of immigrants. Faced with a movement unprecedented since the second world war.
The human tragedies occur in the Mediterranean. The successive single immigrants do call into question European countries politically and legally. Contrary winds create a climate of hostility to immigration.
Political instability and wars in Africa and the Middle East released the inhabitants of these States to the roads of exile. Let us look at what has come to occur in Syria and Libya!
The gist of this South-North exodus through the Mediterranean through mafia traffickers.
These traffickers headed to Europe to tens of thousands of immigrants in dramatic conditions, after having extorted with sums of money that borrow families whole.
These slavers of modern times do not have the minimum scruple. They build up men, women and children on unfit vessels, causing sometimes themselves the shipwreck.
These tragedies are a huge challenge to human dignity and the values of the founders of the European Union.
The walls of shame:
Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, it was believed that it was not going to see that raise more walls in Europe. But the lack of security and the strategy of fear make to decide walls anti immigrant, the barbed wire, walls of shame. Does not protect immigrants, protect the borders.
Strengthening wanted by the European Union for the means of control does not prevent that waves of immigrants continue coming to Europe. But at what price! Those risks is enlarge, the networks of traffickers is reinforce, the situation human is degrades…
Countries like Hungary and Poland invoked “national sovereignty”, but national sovereignty cannot face the problems concerning Europe as immigration or the climate of the planet. The recession is a dead end. It is an illusion to think that national sovereignty can be “alone”. In the European Union need a “solidarity” sovereignty where each State assumes its share of the European and global interests
The future is in solidarity and brotherhood.
Despite this difficult context and so little opening, the initiatives put humanity above all.
Thus, humanitarian ONG’s commit themselves to the rescue of refugees in the Mediterranean.
Small countries that pass through political and economic difficulties are shown solidarity. The impulse of the solidarity of the Greek people is exemplary. The huge influx of refugees hosted by Jordan and the Lebanon should question the policy of closure of the European Union.
I have returned from Albania, where in the capital, Tirana, have hosted some 3,000 Iranians who were in danger of death in Iraq, in a camp near Baghdad. Thanks to an intense diplomatic activity, they could be released to reach Europe, but most of the European countries did not want to run the risk of receiving them. To not bother to the Tehran Government, Albania has received them worthily, placing at their disposal necessary for easy insertion.
Germany has been generous to accommodate immigrants.
Francis Pope has launched a call to Christians to open their hearts and their homes to welcome refugees. This call has been received. In the community where I am, we have received to start an Afghan from Kabul and a Kurd from Mossul. The two, Muslims. His humanity, his grace, his sense of others, have marked the community. The refugees are a blessing for those that host them.
On the ground there is an important civic responsibility. Numerous municipalities are committed to a policy of welcome and hospitality in the face of the refugees. Many networks of solidarity show that fraternity is possible.
The future is not in denial or exclusion of the other. We are all called brothers to build a world where everyone lives on the other.
Jacques GAILLOT,
bishop of Partenia.
Iesus Caritas Fraternity for Priests