The European Union (EU) risks “undermining its core values” unless it treats refugees and asylum-seekers more humanely, according to a senior Protestant expert.
“Two decades ago, most Europeans would never have believed people would be dying on Europe’s borders simply trying to get in,” said Torsten Moritz, executive secretary of the ecumenical Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe (CCME). “Yet thousands have died doing just that, especially in the Mediterranean, this year alone. This is really undermining our core values and having a de-humanizing effect on European society.”
Good grief. Another case of well-meaning hand-wringing liberalism. It is true enough that people are leaving Africa in large numbers in rickety boats, paying huge sums to do so. The people in Mediterranean islands like Lampedusa and Malta are in despair over the tidal wave of people arriving. It is true, also that overloaded boats sink and there are horrible tragedies as people drown. But might a better critique be to (a) support European government pressure to stop the boats setting off in the first place (b) pressurise the African governments concerned to confiscate the profits of these people traffickers who callously ply their trade and (c) ask for more and better intervention by naval forces to return them safely to their own shores? The World Council of Churches, of which this is, I suspect, a body, has sunk almost into irrelevance. We hear so little of it now because it has little useful to say.