APPEAL FOR THE OPENING OF A HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR

FOR THE AFFIRMATION OF THE EUROPEAN RIGHT OF ASYLUM

 

To the Ministries of the Italian Republic, the Presidents of the Italian Senate and of the Italian Chambers of Deputies, to all EU institutions representatives, and to all the members and representatives of international organizations.

Almost every day the news provide us with more stories of the tragedy that is taking place in the middle of that blue border that is the Mediterranean Sea.

In the past few hours we have been reached out by the dreadful news of hundreds of corpses, belonging to young men, women and children, being collected from the sea. They were scattered in the water after that a fire broke out on board of the boat on which they were heading to Europe.

They were asylum seekers, women and men who fled from war and persecutions. As asylum seekers were the estimate 20,000 others who had been swallowed up by the sea during the past decades.

The spectacle offered by our Southern border has got us accustomed to look at those recurring tragedies through the eyes of those whom, utterly helpless, can only hope that every shipwreck will be the last one. We stare at those tragedies as if the only possible way to look at whom is fleeing from war is from the point of view of those who awaits the landing of a boat: sometimes as part of a mission of rescue, others as part of an act of refoulement, and some others again just as part of the recover of am empty wreck.

It is for all these reasons that the tears and the words of condolences that Europe is spending over these last deaths sound empty to us.

Indeed, we feel that the EU, which is capable to extend its sovereignty inside of the African continent by outsourcing the management of its borders, funding detention centers, patrols and refoulement, has instead the duty to face this request for help, and to ensure that those who try to escape from death won’t find it while attempting to reach the European soil.

The time has come to “externalise” the rights. The time has come to open a humanitarian corridor at European level so that those who are fleeing from war could apply for asylum directly to the European institutions in Libya, Egypt, Syria, or wherever it is considered necessary (trough Consulates or other offices), without having to embark on desperate journeys that only serve to fuel human trafficking and the daily bulletin of the shipwrecks.

It should be clear by now that rights cannot be subcontracted, and that the European governments need to face their responsibilities for the current state of things. It is time for Europe to do whatever it is in its power to avoid other deaths by building a direct presence inside of Africa in order to collect the claims of those who ask for protection, and accommodate them into European soil while reviewing their applications.

We therefore ask:

– To the Italian institutions, to the Presidents of the two houses of the Italian parliament, to the Ministries of the Italian Republic to do whatever it is in their power to pledge our appeal.

– To all the European Institution to get to work to make the humanitarian corridor towards Europe operational without any further delay

– To all the Associations, humanitarian Organizations, as well as to all Civil Society to undertake actions, in the next few hours as well as in the future, to affirm the European Right of Asylum.

Progetto Melting Pot Europa / Arci Immigrazione / Cgil /Comune-info / Campagna LasciateCIEntrare
Medici per i Diritti Umani / Consiglio Italiano per i Rifugiati (Cir) / Rifondazione Comunista
Sel (Sinistra Ecologia e Libertà) / Rete Antirazzista Catanese / Associazione Lunaria
Associazione Articolo21 / ZaLab / Terre des Hommes / Associazione Antigone
Aps Garibaldi 101 / Movimento migranti e rifugiati / Terra del fuoco / Prime Italia
Ambasciata dei Diritti Marche / Osservatorio Carcere Ucpi / Class Action Procedimentale

Sign here: APPEAL

Original version

(Traduzione di Chiara Gius per Comune-info)