Libya Pact, Border Deaths And The Moral Failure Of “Fortress Europe”

-OpEd-

ROME — Dozens of people are missing, among them several children, and dozens more are dead, including a pregnant woman who drowned. That is the tally from the past two weeks in the central Mediterranean, a grim parade of horrors that barely even makes headlines anymore.

Perhaps we have grown used to more than a decade of shipwrecks in which people vanish into the sea. Or perhaps these lost lives are meant to remain unspoken, so they do not trouble the consciences of governments on this side of the Sea. These border deaths are denied space and public mourning by deliberate political choice.

What we are seeing is the ethical and moral slide of a political order that allows and even fuels this systematic destruction of life, explaining it all away through the dehumanization of those who do not fit the Western template of a so-called Fortress Europe, despite the right to life and the duty to rescue at sea that is embedded in international law.

As the philosopher mystic Simone Weil wrote, evil can turn people into things. Things can be destroyed, things can claim no rights, they feel no pain, they have no stories, identities, or memories.

Political convenience

It is increasingly alarming to watch how the dehumanization of migrants is hardening inside the policy choices of the European Union and of Italy. These are policies that openly deny the humanity of others, inflict suffering for political convenience, and spin propaganda that feeds on discrimination while trampling the right to asylum, the Geneva Convention, and the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

People who hoped to reach Europe end up ensnared in a criminal web of traffickers who kidnap, humiliate, exploit, rape, torture and kill.

For eight years, Italian governments, supported by the EU, have renewed an arrangement with Libya that funds and legitimizes a marketplace in human beings. People who hoped to reach Europe end up ensnared in a criminal web of traffickers who kidnap, humiliate, exploit, rape, torture and kill. The Libyan Coast Guard is trained and financed, and repeatedly endangers lives at sea, both migrants and rescuers, through violent and unlawful maneuvers and operations.

Silent deaths

At the same time, Italy’s reception system is being stripped of services, and the right to asylum is being sharply weakened. Centers are overcrowded, qualified staff are lacking, and essential supports such as legal counseling, psychological care, and Italian language classes are dwindling, condemning asylum seekers to isolation and marginalization.

On November 2, the agreement between Italy and Libya was renewed for another three years, almost silently. By coincidence, that date is also All Souls’ Day when Christians pay tribute to those who died. In this case, it is the day of countless nameless dead claimed by the sea.

These deaths were avoidable and should weigh on the consciences of Italian governments and European institutions, which prefer to strike dubious deals with countries like Libya rather than rescue people in distress and provide safe, legal routes to Europe.