Europe must assume its responsibility for refugees

Europe's governments are not willing to recognise their own responsibility in creating the migrant crisis or take meaningful steps to deal with it, writes Jesse Rosenfeld

Migrants cross the border between Serbia and Hungary. According to the Hungarian authorities, a record number of migrants from many parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia crossed the border from Serbia earlier this week. Matt Cardy / Getty Images
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All summer, citizens of the European Union have been either enraged or wringing their hands with grief as refugees from some of the world’s worst conflicts have arrived in their countries on a scale not seen since the Second World War.

People fleeing the destruction in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq continue to land on European Union shores by boat. They line the shoulders of highways on their long march towards northern and western Europe, crowd public transport and fill public parks.

It’s a desperate bid to find somewhere safe for them and their families while European governments are turning their plight into a political football, doing very little to address the core problems or alleviate the situation.

Some anti-immigration and nationalist politicians are trying to create a “fortress Europe” that makes the journey for refugees as difficult as possible. More liberal-minded politicians have focused on how to distribute people across the EU, as if they were cargo, in a bid to stem rising panic from their citizens who are now coming face-to-face with a global political reality.

But Europe’s governments are not willing to recognise their own responsibility in creating this crisis or take meaningful steps to deal with it.

For the past few weeks, I have been travelling a main route that people forcibly displaced from the Middle East and Central Asia are taking – from the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos towards Germany, France, the UK and Scandinavia.

I have watched families with infants narrowly escape death in overcrowded rafts on dangerous crossings from Turkey to Greece, only to have to march dozens of kilometres in baking heat to reach transit centres that are drastically underfunded and overcrowded. Many can be found sleeping on the shoulder of the road because local laws forbid them from taking public transport until they register their arrival.

The decrepit and unmanaged Greek camps have few toilets and the closest thing to showers are taps hanging from fences out in the open, where everyone can see you bathe. There are a few donated army tents, but many asylum seekers are forced to buy camping equipment at inflated prices from local profiteers who sit outside the camp gates.

Other people just sleep in the dirt with no privacy from the thousands crammed into the small space. It is unnecessary squalor and makes the harsh conditions in refugees camps I have seen on the Syrian-Turkish border and in northern Iraq look plush by comparison.

Having reached these so-called resting places, people use their smartphones to plan routes to circumvent the borders of Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, because they are forced to travel illegally out of the EU only to have to sneak back into it to get to their intended destination. They also call relatives, asking them to send thousands of euros to pay people smugglers to help them get from the Balkans back into the EU via Hungary.

Every government knows that the horrors these people are fleeing places them among the clearest cases for refugee status, yet asylum seekers are still forced to continue a clandestine journey once in Europe, exposed to violence while funding criminal enterprises.

There is no political will to allow people to claim refugee status at an EU member embassy in Athens and then book a flight, train or bus to their intended destination. It would be a fraction of the cost for people pouring millions of euros in Europe on their journey, but this is not a logical, security-minded or economic decision.

Anti-immigrant politicians continue to argue that tough restrictions, forcing people to take unnecessary risks, and sealed borders will slow the tide of people coming to Europe. That is simply not true.

Politicians in Macedonia learnt this the hard way recently. After they lined their Greek border with riot police, they were shown that firing tear gas and rubber bullets at thousands of people camped out on train tracks wouldn’t stop those who were determined to cross.

Pregnant mothers in transit camps who have fled the wreckage of Kobane have told me that they would do whatever it takes to raise their children in safety.

Afghan couples standing in line in an Athens park, waiting for food handouts by Greek volunteers, describe how being caught between a resurgent Taliban and government forces has finally forced them to give up on a future in their homeland. Young Iraqi men fleeing ISIL’s bloody rule of Mosul after their relatives were executed describe multiple near-death experiences while escaping. They scoff at the notion of fences or border guards getting in the way of their desire to live in freedom.

As European xenophobia continues to exacerbate these disturbing scenes of destitution, governments and citizens alike are so consumed with whether to crackdown, futilely, on their borders or accept the status quo that they have ignored their role in bringing all this about. Most of these refugees are fleeing conflicts that EU members and the US are responsible for creating or exacerbating.

The situation in Syria may have been instigated by Bashar Al Assad’s brutal crack down but the entrenched civil war is also the product of foreign weapons and interference that has turned the conflict into a regional proxy war. The devastation in Afghanistan is the product of America and Europe’s war, while the implosion in Iraq is the result of the country’s invasion and occupation by the US and the European allies that joined it.

I have spent many years reporting from the Middle East on the conflicts that are ripping the region apart. Now as I travel through Europe with those whose lives have been uprooted by these wars, I watch as they arrive on the doorsteps of those who dispossessed them only to be left out in the cold again.

Jesse Rosenfeld is a Canadian journalist who has been in the Middle East since 2007

On Twitter: @jrosyfield