http://www.thenation.com/blog/179776/blood-dark-sea#
The Mediterranean Has Become the Grave of Migrants
Maria Margaronis <
http://www.thenation.com/authors/maria-margaronis> on May
9, 2014 - 3:02 PM ET
*The wrecked hulk of a boat in which six illegal immigrants died lies on
the beach near the Calabrian town of Roccella Jonica (Reuters)*
*Sea, you've drowned the girl's husbandAnd she's young, and black doesn't
suit herSea and salt water, I can't forget youSea, little sea, you are my
only joy. --*Song from the Dodecanese Islands.
For those who lived by it, the sea was once everything: provider and
destroyer, the link to the rest of the world and the force that fenced them
in. Even now, for Mediterranean people, it quenches a deep thirst. Many
Greeks surviving the interminable crisis (don't think it's over because
it's fallen off the world's front page) have clung to that reliable
delight: the summer days counted in swims, the ride in the sweaty bus to
feel the sun on your back and the coolness at your feet, the return
half-sleepy and caked with salt, the slow hush of the waves and the body's
oblivion. Because nobody is allowed to own the shoreline; though everything
else might have a price, the water and light are free.
But even the sea--the ultimate commons--is now darkening. The Mediterranean
has become the grave of countless migrants fleeing war and poverty: last
week yet another small vessel capsized in the North Aegean, carrying people
from Syria, Somalia and Eritrea. At least twenty-two were drowned, most of
them women and children; some of them died trapped underwater in the cabin.
These catastrophic shipwrecks are a regular occurrence, in the
Aegean<
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/greek-boat-tragedy-migrant-survivors-mourn-lost-relatives>
and
in theMediterranean<
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/10/lampedusas-migrant-tragedy-and-ours.html>
south
of Italy. Last month an Amnesty International report published yet more
evidence of the horrifying treatment of migrants by Greek state agents:
routine illegal pushbacks across the border, sometimes by hooded men; live
rounds fired at boats; beatings, threats and extreme humiliation by the
coast guard and police. Amnesty calls on the EU to sanction Greece for its
violations of international law, but also acknowledges the EU's
responsibility. Between 2011 and 2013 the European Commission gave Greece
EURO 227,576,503 to keep the migrants out, but only EURO 19,950,00 to help with
their reception. The EU uses its border states as a barrier and prison camp
for the frightened, impoverished people it would rather drown than save.
The Mediterranean is now the moat surrounding Fortress Europe.
Meanwhile, a disastrous new bill before the Greek parliament would allow
privatisation of the seashore and remove restrictions on development, in a
myopic attempt to monetize Greece's greatest environmental and imaginative
treasure. The outcry against the bill from across the political spectrum
and the frenzy of Internet organizing
<
https://www.facebook.com/aigialoi> suggests
that for many people this feels like the last straw. Beyond the
well-founded rational objections--that building concrete high-rises on
hitherto empty beaches is environmentally catastrophic, economically
shortsighted and politically suspect, cementing as it does the
long-established back-room bonds between politicians and the construction
industry, now with added foreign investment--there's a deep resistance to
what feels like the plundering of the country's soul. Jobs and pensions and
health and homes and dignity have gone, but until now there's been a place
that the hand of the market can't reach, that everyone can go to and nobody
can own.
The migrants who risk and lose their lives to cross the water couldn't care
less, of course, if the longed-for shore is lined with hotels or turtle
eggs. But these two realities are part of the same thing, promoted under
the sign of Europe's economic crisis: the protection of privilege, the
subordination of human life to profit, the loss of everything that we once
called the commons.
Received on Sat May 10 2014 - 10:03:31 EDT