IAWM protest for refugees at EU Offices, Dawson Street, Dublin this Thursday, 5pm.

IAWM BULLETIN 24 August 2015

END THE WESTERN-LED WARS AND PLUNDER THAT CAUSE THE REFUGEE CRISIS

Come along to our protest this Thursday at 5pm at the EU Offices on Dawson St., Dublin 2.

Speakers include:

Ruth Coppinger TD, Socialist Party
Cllr. Brid Smith, People before Profit
Cllr. Sarah Holland, Sinn Féin, Mayor of South Dublin County Council
Rev. Patrick Comerford, President Irish CND
Caoimhe Butterly, Anti Racist Network
Representative from Kinsale Road Accommodation Centre KRAC
Memet Uludag, IAWM (audio link from island of Kos, Greece)
A Syrian refugee in Ireland

2. IAWM STATEMENT ON THE REFUGEE CRISIS

IAWM BULLETIN 24 August 2015

END THE WESTERN-LED WARS AND PLUNDER THAT CAUSE THE REFUGEE CRISIS

Come along to our protest this Thursday at 5pm at the EU Offices on Dawson St., Dublin 2.

Speakers include:

Ruth Coppinger TD, Socialist Party
Cllr. Brid Smith, People before Profit
Cllr. Sarah Holland, Sinn Féin, Mayor of South Dublin County Council
Rev. Patrick Comerford, President Irish CND
Caoimhe Butterly, Anti Racist Network
Representative from Kinsale Road Accommodation Centre KRAC
Memet Uludag, IAWM (audio link from island of Kos, Greece)
A Syrian refugee in Ireland

2. IAWM STATEMENT ON THE REFUGEE CRISIS
British Home Secretary, Theresa May, claimed recently that the vast majority of migrants to Europe are Africans travelling for economic reasons. This blatant lie is intended to hide the fact that the overwhelming majority of people are refugees fleeing from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and beyond. All of these countries have been devastated by wars in which western imperial countries have played a central role. Iraq and Afghanistan were destabilized and impoverished by the US-led occupations and installations of proxy sectarian governments. The NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, led directly to the civil war and social breakdown that has allowed it to become the main centre for refugees fleeing across the Mediterranean. The rise of Islamic State is a direct result of post occupation US policies and actions in Iraq and is fueled further by ongoing western funding, arming and training of opposition groups in Syria where the majority of the refugees come from.

The response of EU governments to the refugee crisis is shameful.

They are spending a fortune on more police, barbed wire, walls, fences, detention centres and other militaristic paraphenalia but yet cannot give refugees basic facilities to wash, have clean food and get safe passage. The French, British and Hungarian Prime Ministers have refused outright to accept the EU’s measly quota system for refugee settlement. The language and distorted facts used by senior EU politicians is stirring up xenophobia in Europe. British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, repeated May’s claims while also portraying refugees as marauders who would soon hasten the collapse of European civilization. This was capped by the recent scaremongering language of Prime Minister David Cameron who referred to a ‘swarm’ of refugees trying to enter Britain through Calais. This misleading information couched in hate-inciting language, though criticised by some EU officials, has been repeated ad nauseum by much of the uncritical media. Political leaders and media pundits should get their facts right and also follow Al Jazeera’s lead by referring to ‘refugees’ and not ‘migrants’.

The actual numbers of refugees entering the EU are a tiny percentage of EU populations. So far this year 340,000 refugees have crossed Europe’s borders which is only 0.045 percent of Europe’s total population of 740 million. And it is Middle Eastern countries and Turkey that have taken the greatest burden with the latter hosting 1.8 million refugees from Syria alone, and Lebanon, a country of 4.5 million, hosting 1.2 million.

What should be done?

The huge investment in war and the arms industry by the US and EU should be diverted to assist a formal programme of organised settlement of refugees throughout Europe. The US and EU governments should be forced to invest in peacemaking instead of war and plunder that has caused the refugee crisis in the first place. The US, Britain and NATO should apologise for destabilising Iraq and Afghanistan and financially compensate these countries. In the case of Syria, an estimated apocalyptic figure of 11.6 million people have been displaced, 4 million of these externally. Refugees are fleeing Syria because between 150,000 and 330,000 of their fellow Syrians have died at the hands of Assad’s regime, rebel groups and latterly Islamic State, in a brutal civil war stoked by the US, the EU and Russia. The western imperial powers should immediately cease prolonging the civil war by covertly arming rebel groups through its proxies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, call for an immediate ceasefire and the establishment of a major peace conference to include all the parties involved in the conflict.

The Irish Government should stop supporting these wars by ending its facilitation of the US Military at Shannon.

3. IAWM letter to Irish Times on Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings – unpublished.

https://irishantiwar.org/node/2298

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