Over the past decade, the United States, European Union, and Australia have all been prime destinations for war refugees and economic migrants seeking to flee conflict and poverty from the global south. From the Central Americans who arrive at the Mexican-US border, to the Africans, Western, and Southern Asians who seek Italian and Greek shores to the South Asians who end up on Christmas Island, the preferred modes of travel have often been by boat or on foot. As we’ve seen, the responses from these powerful, neo-colonial entities have generally included blunt violations of their human rights and in many cases, indefinite detainment.
Though in the case of the European Union, there are often NGO ships that will rescue hundreds from overcrowded boats who have organizations that provide basic necessities to those living in informal camps. The rights of refugees and migrants is non-negotiable, though so should the rights of third world countries. The media never presents this as the consequence of European foreign policy, and imperial terrorists sitting in their air-conditioned mansions in Brussels are never vilified as much as their victims. With the initiation of imperial terror campaigns against non-aggressive, non-puppet states and the de-facto governance of puppet states in the Global South, refugees and migrants will continue to seek asylum. And that influx symbolizes the human consequences of imperialism and neo-colonialism.
As the story goes, war refugees and economic migrants from South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, West Africa, and parts of East Africa have been illegally migrating to the shores of Italy and/or Greece by overcrowded boats or by foot. When it comes to the overcrowded boats, they mostly consist of those from Northern, Western, and parts of Eastern Africa, in addition smaller populations of Syrians, Pakistanis, and Bengalis. With the help of human smugglers, they make it to the shores of Libya, a failed state (thanks to a 2011 NATO-initiated campaign of imperial terror), before heading onto overcrowded boats, en route to the shores of Italy. When it comes to journeys on foot, they mostly consist of those from the Middle East and South Asia who make it to the shores of Greece before taking the Balkan route which takes them through the European Union and non-EU member states.
Though both journeys are executed differently, the refugees and migrants have always clearly stated their intended destination. And that intended destination is Western Europe, the wealthier, the developed, and the region that consists of most of the Global South’s former colonial powers.
As usual, the imperial terrorists in Brussels don’t know how to respond. Given that these imperial terrorists govern an entity that merges 28 states under one sovereign institution, the divide between wealthier former Western colonial powers & poorer former Eastern Nazi puppet states and communist countries is evident. With the former colonial powers, you’ll generally have a more open-minded approach. Though with the former Nazi puppet states and communist countries, tend to breed right-wing figures spewing out the fascist venom that incites resistance to refugees and migrants. With all the symbolic meetings between the leaders of the member states with African and Arab leaders, the imperial terrorists ‘struggle’ to find a solution. It’s as if it’s not their wars of aggression that they need to end and that it’s not their neo-colonial chokehold of Africa that must come to a halt which’ll allow these refugees and migrants to live in their homelands with dignity.
For example, if France didn’t maintain neo-colonial contracts where their impoverished colonies’ resources, budgets, and defense policies were under their control, maybe there wouldn’t be so many migrants from Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast? If NATO wasn’t maliciously interfering in other countries’ affairs and supporting terrorists to destabilize Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, maybe security in the Middle East wouldn’t be threatened and we would see fewer refugees from these countries?
What if the European people knew how soaked the hands of their elites are in the blood of the victims of the imperial terror campaigns and puppet regimes? This happens to be the root of the influx of migrants & refugees who are easily vilified by right-wing elites like Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini. The reputations of Africa as an impoverished continent and of the Middle East as an unstable region isn’t because Africans and Arabs are inherently uncivilized, it’s because of the coups that occurred against any government who dared to commit the crime of serving the interests of their people (ex. Gaddafi in Libya and Sankara in Burkina Faso) and the wars that were committed to toppling any government who was a barrier to US-EU hegemony.
The fact that the United States, France, and the United Kingdom (along with their fellow imperial terrorists in NATO) continue to commit these imperial terror campaigns with blind support from their state media is astonishing. It’s terrifying to realize how much impunity they enjoy, irrespective of the destruction they’ve caused, especially as they violate international law at the expense of another country’s sovereignty, stability, and peace. Wouldn’t the colonial contracts and these previous wars of aggression would be important for a journalist to acknowledge in linking it to the migrant and refugee crisis? Wouldn’t the human rights violations and the perilous migrant journeys stop if the Europeans became more aware of this? Well given the history of Western state media, they are everything that they accuse the Russian and Chinese state media of being. There’s nothing worse than the population believing the ‘free’ Western state media’s propaganda.
