Friday, June 20, is World Refugee Day. In the year 2000, the United Nations General Assembly decided that, on the 50th anniversary of the “1951 Geneva Convention on the Rights of Refugees,” this day would be declared as “World Refugee Day” starting from 2001.
The Geneva Convention, which oversees the rights of refugees, is a legal document signed by 144 governments. This document defines a refugee and outlines the rights of refugees as well as the obligations of states to care for them. According to this definition, a refugee is someone who has been driven from home and shelter due to fear of physical harm, religious or political persecution, racial discrimination, war, or natural disasters. The foundation of this convention is based on the principle that a refugee must not be returned to their country of origin in a manner that threatens their life or freedom.
However, despite such a resolution, the leaders of developed Western countries constantly and hypocritically complain about the number of displaced people seeking asylum in their countries and enact anti-refugee laws. They are the ones responsible for launching destructive wars and the catastrophe of displacement in various parts of the world. They fuel the arms race and, under this policy, sell billions of dollars worth of weapons to regimes imposed on the people of the region. In the United States, the most inhumane laws concerning refugees are being implemented. The Australian government keeps refugees in prisons on remote islands and under the most inhumane conditions.
In addition to industrial and developed countries, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the rulers of the Gulf countries have admitted the fewest refugees into their territories. The gates of these countries are only open to the wealthy and capital owners, and to cheap migrant labor from Asia, who work under near-slavery conditions. In Iran, Afghan refugees enjoy the fewest human rights and, in addition to the brutal exploitation of their labor, are subjected to the most inhumane discrimination and insults.
The European Union, in order to prevent the entry of asylum seekers, has adopted “solutions” that are each more inhumane than the last.
First, the return of asylum seekers to the countries from which they came. More than 90 percent of asylum seekers come from war-torn areas in the Middle East and Africa. They have already become displaced and homeless in their own countries. Returning them means sending them back to death. Can the advanced capitalist countries including European governments deny their responsibility in starting direct or proxy wars in any region of the world, including the Middle East and Africa, which have caused these displacements? European colonizers looted Africa’s natural wealth to the maximum, and when they left, they left behind numerous painful social wounds and ethnic, tribal, and religious conflicts. They exploited cheap labor from these populations in European countries to accumulate capital, but today’s governments which stand on the wealth and power of past colonialists refuse to accept any responsibility for the dire conditions they have imposed on these people’s lives. Meanwhile, the flow of this continent’s wealth to Europe still continues. Even if we accept that African asylum seekers are fleeing poverty and economic misery in search of work and a better life, the question remains: who looted Africa and kept it underdeveloped, leaving it trapped in hunger and deadly diseases? Are they not continuing to plunder and exploit this eternally hungry continent today?
Second, the intensification of anti-refugee policies in European countries. The truth is that the continuous passage of anti-refugee laws in Europe will not only harm the refugees. These laws and policies will morally drag these countries backward. This direction will also pave the way for the rise of even more right-wing parties. The rise of these parties means that, in subsequent steps, all the progressive and humane gains in social, economic, and political fields achieved through years of working-class struggle and imposed on governments will be attacked. This attack has already begun. The majority of people in European countries, and above all the working class of these countries, will be the next victims of these policies. If European governments succeed in implementing these policies, they will have sacrificed humanity within their own countries as well.
Third, closing borders and limiting sea rescue operations under the pretext that such services will encourage more migrants. The European Union, under a formal agreement, has decided to limit rescue operations for asylum seekers. There is no doubt about the inhumane and criminal nature of this reasoning and policy. Europe’s naval and aerial fleets, equipped with the most advanced technology of our era, are capable of monitoring every inch of the Mediterranean Sea. They can track any boat from its point of departure to its destination and intervene to save lives before these boats face the danger of sinking. But they deliberately do not use this ability to save the lives of asylum seekers. Even if we accept their severely flawed motivation of limiting rescue operations to prevent asylum seekers from entering Europe, the truth is that such measures cannot stop the wave of people fleeing death and poverty. Limiting rescue operations has not reduced migration it has only dramatically increased the death toll among migrants and refugees.
We must rely on progressive and humanitarian public opinion and on fighting forces within the developed capitalist countries to compel Western governments to respect the rights of displaced people and asylum seekers. It is necessary to expand the struggle for the recognition of the right to residence and the provision of a humane life for every person, as a human being with universal rights, and as a global citizen, including the right to live wherever in the world they choose.
