On the Occasion of World Refugee Day - An Opinion Piece
Over the last decades, Europeans have been confronted more and more with the issue of asylum seekers coming to Europe. Even in Austria, where politicians usually recognise problems 10 years after everyone else, immigration has been a focal point of most parties' political programmes for a long period of time. The so-called "asylum-stop" is favoured not only by the far right but gets supported vigorously by our realtively moderate conservative party. Our social democratic party, on the other hand, hypocritically criticises this stance while agreeing to a coalition with the starkly xenophic right-wing party in the state of Burgenland.
Now, one of the MP's of the far-right "freedom party" (pretty ironic), demanded in a public speech that asylum-seekers should be handcuffed and deported in a plane. She pursued by arguing that when following this measure, "they can scream as loud as they want" but they won't escape deportation. Considering Austria's history of faschism I find it very hard to understand how people seem to have learned nothing. I know for a fact that a relatively large number of people who would never openly confess to sympathise with named party, do so in secrecy. Numerous times I was reminded by fellow Viennese that asylum-seekers are "social leeches" who only come to Europe to live an easy life in one of the EU's detention centres.
Now let me use this oppotunity to clarify something: it is not a secret that a lot of asylum-seekers drown on their way to Europe. In case they manage to survive a days-long boat ride without food or water and arrive in Europe, there is no "easy life on our cost" awaiting them here. These people are minors, victims of torture, and often chronically ill, escaping war and chaos.
Interviews with detainees of detention centres in reports by doctors without borders state that "even prison is better than here (detention centres)". Detainees state dirt everywhere, non-working toilets and piping systems, excrements everywhere, and only one hour of fresh air in the yard per day; "it is not a detention centre - it is a stable for animals." Before the downfall of Gaddafi, the EU financed detention centres in Libya in which torture of detainees was not unusual.
I wonder how people sympathising with our "freedom party" would react if they had to spend a single day as "social leech" in one of the EU's detention centres. I wonder how loud Ms. Belakowitsch would scream, the MP asking for swift deportation, if she knew the treatment awaiting her in Europe's detention centres.
Photo Credit: Delegation of the European to the Pacific
