AYS Digest 01/09/21 — “European Values” are exclusion and cruelty, meeting of ministers on Afghanistan shows
By: Ellen Elias-Bursac
Tags: Digest, Afghanistan, Migrants, Eu, Refugees

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Little Amal, a puppet representing displaced children as part of the moving art installation “The Walk.” The puppet reached Larissa in Greece, where some people threw stones at citizens who gathered to watch the art installation. Photo credit: Andre Liohn/via Walk With Amal

FEATURE

Shameful statement from extraordinary council meeting on Afghanistan

After an extraordinary meeting of European Ministers, the European Council published its statement on the situation in Afghanistan. The statement begins by mentioning the evacuation of Afghans that collaborated with EU forces (even though several European embassies abandoned their colleagues) and humanitarian aid, then goes on to mention the need for preventing so-called “illegal migration” four times.

Part six of the statement reads, “Based on lessons learned, the EU and its Member States stand determined to act jointly to prevent the recurrence of uncontrolled large-scale illegal migration movements faced in the past, by preparing a coordinated and orderly response. Incentives to illegal migration should be avoided.”

Clearly the lesson Europe has learned from the past six years has not been that locking people up in crowded camps and treating them with violence at the border is wrong. Instead, the powers that be are looking to ramp up these operations even further, almost before the last formal evacuation flights even left.

The statement reveals the power that xenophobic politicians have over dictating European policy. More moderate voices, such as Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn who dared to suggest that the EU welcome Afghan people in need, were shouted down during the meeting by hardline leaders such as Horst Seehofer (Asselborn went on to publicly criticize Austria’s Sebastian Kurz and Slovenia’s Janez Janša for their refusal to grant any protection to Afghan people). His Austrian and Danish counterparts said that the priority was to tell people to “stay there” in the region, as if neighboring Iran and Pakistan have not hosted large Afghan communities for decades.

The statement is being supported by the words and deeds of some of Europe’s loudest xenophobic voices. Hungary has already said that it will refuse to provide a home for Afghan people seeking asylum. At the Bled Strategic Forum 2021, Kyriakos Mitsotakis defended the Council decision and repeated that his country was a “victim” of 2015 (while Greece was abandoned by the rest of Europe, this still ignores the countless people victimized by his government’s policies) and that Europe should make sure the problem gets solved “closer to Afghanistan.”

The EU’s anemic plan is to offer more humanitarian aid to neighboring countries, which has not been proven to be effective at helping people on the ground or preventing people from wanting to leave in the past. It would also lead to an awkward situation as Iran, home to one of the largest Afghan populations, is under international sanctions.

Granted, nobody really expected the EU to be a moral paragon in this situation, but the brazen, cruel nature of the statement is something to behold. Even modest proposals, such as Ireland’s request to change “illegal” to “irregular” in the statement to avoid stigmatizing people on the move, were rejected. The statement should be interpreted as a signal of Europe’s upcoming plans. Attempting to predict the future is unwise, but we should probably anticipate the same levels of violence at the border, if not an escalation of it.