by Roberto Massari*
ROME (IDN) – I start from the
premise that I am in favour of the maximum welcoming of migrant flows provided
these take place in a human and legally planned way according to the traditions
and values of Western secular (that is, illuminist) civilisation.
Here I am not concerned with
the phenomenon of immigration or "landings" as such, but rather the
international trafficking of human beings and therefore of the crime against
every principle of humanity represented by "embarkations", the
terminal point of an international criminal network.
This has always existed, but
has strengthened in recent years for reasons that are not always clear but with
complicity in the state apparatus of Italy and Libya, in the first place, but
also of Turkey, Spain and so on, in addition to the countries of origin.
For these reasons I would like
to give maximum visibility to the article entitled 'The Trafficking of Human
Beings' by Fred Kuwornu, an Italian film director of Ghanaian origin, who says
frankly what I have been thinking for a long time and which the figures show
conclusively: that is, this entire humanitarian story of embarkations/landings
is being run by national and international mafias as a real 21st century
"trafficking" in human beings.
This began by exploiting the
psychological emotionality provoked by the first shipwrecks of dinghies (and it
is strongly suspected that they were provoked on purpose) and continued as an
incentive for a mass exodus from Africa and Asia, violating all the rules of
civilisation, respect for the human person and the safeguarding of life,
creating trafficking in prostitution and new slavery, and also damaging the
economic conditions of the countries of origin.
The "vessels of
death" were soon replaced by NGO ships (super-paid to carry out the
transport to destination) and human trafficking could be carried out more or
less undisturbed for some years.
The truth is that the NGOs (as
long as they were allowed), the humanitarian associations engaged in favouring
the landings (actually, the embarkations), sectors of the navy involved,
various "fixers" and local companies particularly interested in the
landings were perpetrating or providing cover to one of the greatest crimes of
the current era.
If there is the drama of
landings and if there are thousands of people dead in the waters of the
Mediterranean it is because there exists the traffic of embarkations, run by
criminal associations that until today have been able to carry out their dirty
work undisturbed. Indeed, at the beginning, when they were forced to use their
own boats, they were courteously returned to them so they could continue the
trafficking.
I know I am guilty of having
dragged my feet, because the time had long come for the moral obligation of
crying out loud that all those who favour the trade in embarkations are in one
way or another more or less unintentional accomplices of this criminal network.
This trade starts in distant
countries such as Bangladesh, which houses the second largest ethnic group in
terms of number of refugees in this area disguised as requests for political
asylum (and it is precisely Bangladesh that proves that political asylum has
nothing to do with it, it is only a pretext), passes through Central Africa and
reaches the shores of the Mediterranean.
That these things should come
from the mouth of an intellectual of Ghanaian (and therefore African) origin
may perhaps open breaches in the minds of those in the alleged
"progressive" sector which, with their humanitarian campaigns on
landings do not realise they are actually encouraging embarkations, with
their sad following of deaths or dinghies sunk on purpose to arouse the
humanitarian reaction of the media.
This does not mean that we
should not welcome all those who manage to arrive on the Italian coast: this is
out of the question. But it means that if you do not want to be morally
co-responsible for deaths by drowning and the criminal traffic that takes place
before and after the landings, embarkations must be prevented from taking
place; that means that we must intervene harshly and immediately beforehand in
the places where trafficking originates. To do this there is no alternative to
the physical destruction of the criminal enterprises that manage the traffic.
Timid and partial measures can
for now buffer some situations, as Massud Abdel Samat (head of the Libyan
coastguard and under the orders of Tripoli) is reported as having said by
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on July 15:
"The new
Italian government did well to stop the NGOs, which in fact were functional to
trafficking. The traffickers and criminal organisations that thrive on the sale
of human beings are in crisis. A crisis so serious that they are moving their
activities to Tunisia and Morocco".
Obviously this Libyan
coastguard is not held to know that the current Italian government – run by the
Northern League and the 5 Star Movement – is driven by a racist and xenophobic
spirit in its opposition to landings, but it is also true that for the first
time we are hearing in the media, from Italian government circles, words like
"traffickers" and the like that were previously (under Democratic
Party governments) taboo (while they had been a common currency in other
European countries for some time).
It should be added that the
current Italian government is say nothing about the policy of repatriations. This is not only cynical
barbarism (given, beyond other considerations, even the financial sacrifices and risks of life that these poor
victims of trafficking in human beings have run), but the taxpayer is not told
that the average unit cost for each repatriation is around ten thousand euros
(including first class return by plane of the two escort agents expected for
every poor person repatriated).
Regarding the NGOs, it must be
noted that they have collaborated and want to continue collaborating with the
criminals of human trafficking. Their task was to go and collect migrants on
rubber dinghies just outside Libyan territorial waters, get them on ships
(super-funded), take them to Italian ports and look good with the rubbish of
"having saved them".
Without them, the trafficking
would have had problems continuing, both because of the risk that not all dinghies
would reach the Italian coast (we are talking about tens of thousands of human
beings), and because other countries did not want them (except Turkey where
migrants arrived and arrive by land in order to replenish the coffers of the
dictatorial government of Erdogan which receives billions from the European
Union), and because the Italian navy still had rules to be respected.
The recently sunken dinghies –
strangely enough as soon as Matteo Salvini (Italian Deputy Prime Minister and
Minister of the Interior - ed.) closed Italian ports to the NGOs – were
in a certain sense "foreseen" by the slavers-traffickers who used
obsolete dinghies at risk of sinking. (The news, given for certain, comes from
between the lines of Corriere della Sera).
These criminals know very well
the psychological effect that the death of migrants at sea has on public
opinion: after all, this shameful trafficking – perhaps the greatest shame
under way at this time in the world – began with the more or less programmed
sinking of some dinghies.
The fact understandably moved
public opinion (with newspapers, other media and Democratic Party as
accomplices); it aroused emotional reactions that were far from rational and so
began this unprecedented trafficking which capitalism will have to be ashamed
one day of having allowed and encouraged. And with it the whole humanitarian
procession.
For hundreds of millions of
people, the dream of abandoning Asia and Africa to reach Europe is as old as
the colonialism that impoverished these continents. What is not old – indeed it
is very recent – is the construction of an international network which, behind
the payment of high figures for the poor people who pay them, and at the risk
of life on the boats, manages to bring in masses of migrants to Europe, without
going through customs or airports and without documentation.
At the beginning, these poor
people were asked by the trafficking mafias to pay at least 1,000 euro per
person (a monstrous figure for the poor of Asia and Africa), but now these figures
are increasing (for the traffic from Greece it is almost 3,000 euro) in
addition to the extortion before embarkation of which Fred Kuwornu also speaks.
Furthermore, after arriving in
Libya (after weeks or months of suffering), these people found themselves
unable to pay or unable to pay the supplements demanded, unable to turn back
and reduced to the state of slavery in Libyan refugee camps and in other camps
run by criminal gangs and corrupt state officials.
Female prostitution has often
been the last chance that remains to pay the figures requested by the slavers.
In any case, it is still prostitution that awaits many of these women once
"disembarked" on the Italian coast, when they are taken hostage by
other criminal networks linked to the same networks that brought them.
At a certain point, the
difference with the dream of the past of emigrating to Europe and the
possibility of realising it concretely came from the practice of accepting
immigrants as long as they arrived by sea, on boats and other makeshift means
and not through consular permits, charter aircraft, and so on.
It was a move (I cannot say to
what extent desired by the previous Italian government of Matteo Renzi) that
made hundreds of millions believe that sea landing (disguised as a request for
political asylum) was finally the door wide open to anyone for entering Europe.
It was therefore an artificially rekindled hope, almost an invitation to set
off (from Bangladesh, from the Middle East, from Central Africa, and so on),
somehow obtaining the 1,000 euro to pay to criminal gangs and willing to face
the risks of sea voyages.
With the intervention of the
NGOs, those risks have been reduced to a minimum and therefore the influx has
also grown excessively. In this sense the NGOs have been "technical"
accomplices of the new trafficking. And, in any case, they were paid handsomely
for every trip (it is said about at least 240,000 euro per trip, but obviously
it is difficult to have certainty on the figures, accessory costs, bribes,
etc.).
I hope no one believes any
longer in the good faith of these "transport agencies" that have
nothing to do with the original spirit of the NGOs which, in some cases and in
some countries, still remain.
Criminal gangs and the chain
involved in sea transport have speculated on the illusions of many poor people.
All this because our Italian and European "civilisation" does not
allow anyone wanting to migrate to Europe to do so with a charter flight
costing less than 100 euro each, landing legally and civilly at, for example,
Rome's Fiumicino airport.
No, the brutal pursuit of
money, of workers being over-exploited under illegal employment, and of new
unskilled workers to be recruited to traffickings of all kinds means that entry
can only take place by paying criminal gangs, only by risking lives, only by
surrendering to other criminal gangs active in Italy and Europe.
Right-thinking people seem not
to understand this difference, but I repeat: why not enter free and legally
from Fiumicino, instead of paying the mafias and illegally from the sea?
Instead of complaining
indignantly whenever a landing attempt ends tragically, instead of
hypocritically thinking only of the drama of the landings, start thinking about
the traffic in embarkations and answer my question (which, among others,
ordinary people have been asking for some time, obviously without receiving
answers from the political nomenklatura).
By asking that question, one will begin to
understand the monstrous nature of the crime represented by the trafficking of
human beings and the network of embarkations.
The former pseudo-left which,
in the meantime, has become a simple mass of progressive opinion, is totally in
bad faith with its whining about who dies during the trips organised by human
traffickers.
No longer having the ideals of
social emancipation in which to believe, it relies on humanitarian optimism
which, as has often happened in the history of humanity (from the reserves with
smallpox vaccinations for native Americans to today's assisted traffic of human
beings) only serves to hide the sense of individual and collective guilt
towards countries that have been ruined first by the colonialist then
imperialist policies of those same states of which immigrants would now like to
become subjects.
My position, if I was Minister
of the Interior in an anti-capitalist government, would be to organise task
forces which, with or without permission from the Libyans, wait for the
traffickers just outside territorial waters and kill them one by one, saving
and bringing to Italy the immigrants who are on the boats.
The extermination of
traffickers is essential for preventing them from rebuilding the network or
moving the trafficking elsewhere. And their elimination, carried out in
international waters, would not create major legal problems.
In any case, desperate
circumstances call for desperate remedies: killing a few hundred traffickers
would save tens of thousands of human lives and would end the artificially
induced dream of being able to reach Europe "clandestinely" by sea
and paying bribes to the mafias of various kinds.
I would spare the lives only of
those traffickers willing to indicate the names of the individuals that make up
the trafficking chain, from the bottom ranks to the top (those who organise it
and have already earned billions of euro over the years).
The trafficking would end
within a few hours and would show itself for what it is: a trafficking of human
beings organised internationally with complicity in the state apparatus of
various African and Asian countries as well as Italy, and with the
"moral" support of useful idiots.
· Roberto Massari, an Italian publisher, graduated in Philosophy in
Rome, Sociology in Trento and Piano Studies at the Conservatory of Perugia. He
has been President of the Che Guevara International Foundation since 1998 and
is moderator of the "Utopia Rossa" (Red Utopia) blog
(translation by
Phil Harris)
