France, Organisation Communiste Libertarie ocl-lyon - Mediterranean: The murderer Wall Mediterranean by Saïd Bouamama

3419 migrants died in 2014 while trying to cross the Mediterranean according to the UN 
agency for refugees.[1] This gruesome figure makes the Mediterranean the deadliest border, 
the total number of deaths for the whole world being 4272. Over a longer term there are 
more than 20,000 migrants who have lost their lives since 2000. The trend is in addition 
to a permanent increase, 2014 who broke all records by leaving behind the previous peak 
was 1,500 deaths in 2011. The political and media discourses construct each NEW drama as 
unpredictable disasters on which governments Europe would have no control and no 
responsibility. The speech of the disaster lies a mass murder process of the European Union.

The first blind spot of political and media discourse is the economic causes pushing tens 
of thousands of Africans to risk their lives in crossing they know loopholes. Since the 
political independence of the decade 60, mechanisms other than direct military occupation 
came to take over to ensure the reproduction of the "colonial pact" that is to say, the 
construction of African economies according to the needs of Europe and not to the needs of 
the African people. Without being exhaustive recall some of these mechanisms.

Blind spots on the structural causes

The agreements on economic, financial and monetary that European countries impose on 
African countries involve a sale of raw materials at lower costs than the world market and 
prohibit taxation of imported products in Europe. Consider the recent agreement signed 
between the European Union and the 15 countries of the West Africa called "Economic 
Partnership Agreement" (EPA). The agreement prohibits taxation of 11, 9 billion of 
products imported by the European Union in 2013. It puts the local food and agriculture 
compete with European industrial agriculture pushing the misery of hundreds of thousands 
of peasants . The consequences flow from source.

This agreement will strengthen a massive migration of people deprived of the future in 
their country, in a situation where the West African population will more than double by 
2050, reaching 807 million people (against 526 million for EU at the same time), and a 
warming climate particularly acute in this region."[2]

The exploitative nature of these agreements is as Professor Chukwuma Charles Soludo says 
March 19, 2012 that West Africa is an EPA (AO) "second slavery". [3] But the EPA is that 
the large-scale systematic logic of previous addiction starts as "tied aid" imposing the 
use of French companies in exchange for financing development projects, Adjustment 
Programmes structural imposing liberal reforms in exchange for a credit or a deferral of 
repayment of a debt, or worse the institution of the CFA that allows control of the 
monetary policies of the franc zone. These direct causes of African poverty and migration 
pressures are killed by the political and media discourse dominant. They belie the idea of 
an unpredictable disaster over which man would have no control. Media discourse of 
catastrophe is only a masking process of structural economic causes.

Of course such mechanisms are possible only by the direct or indirect use of force from 
the assassination of opponents of these policies through the coups or open wars. This is 
the reason the frequency of direct or indirect European military interventions in Africa. 
If France is most present in these military adventures in Africa is based on a European 
delegation. Faced with the rise of emerging powers, facing economic competition unienne 
states and China, Europe mandate and France for the defense of the interests of 
"Eurafrique" that is to say, for the consolidation of a neocolonialism socialized across 
the European Union. This "Eurafrique" economic and military is an old project of certain 
fractions of European financial capital. It was held back by the competition between the 
different European countries, which tend to be put into the background because of the 
increased competition linked to capitalist globalization. Here is how Aimé Césaire already 
alerted in January 1954 Eurafrica in deceiving solely on the nationality of the soldier:

"I repeat: colonialism is not dead. He excels, to survive, to renew its forms; after the 
brutal time of the domination of politics, we saw the most hypocritical time, but no less 
damaging, of the said Association or Union policy. Now we are seeing the so-called 
integration policy, one that's goal is the creation of the Euro-Africa. But some dons mask 
colonialism, it remains harmful. To speak only of his latest find, Eurafrica, it is clear 
that this would be the replacement to the old national colonialism of a new more virulent 
colonialism still an international colonialism, the German soldier would be vigilant 
policeman. "[4]

These direct and indirect wars [5] are the second cause of migration pressure. This is not 
only economically survive thousands of Africans risk their lives in the Mediterranean but 
to escape European wars and their consequences in terms of installation of dictatorial 
regimes or worse chaos as in Libya or the Congo with Installation of "warlords" with which 
trade can continue. Media discourse of the disaster also masks the European responsibility 
vis-à-vis the cause of contemporary migration.

Frontex and the creation of conditions for mass murder

If the causes mentioned above are enough to understand the increase in migratory pressure, 
they do not explain the increase in deaths during the migration. To this we must direct 
our gaze to the responses of the European Union at that migratory pressure. These 
responses are realized since 2005 by the action of the European Agency for the Management 
of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European 
Union (FRONTEX). Agency status provides significant autonomy was further strengthened 10 
October 2011 by authorizing it to now have its own military equipment. The financial 
resources available to FRONTEX are constantly increasing: EUR 19 million in 2006 and EUR 
88 million in 2011 [6].

Specifically the agency organizes military patrols to stem migrants to neighboring one 
hand, and signs agreements with third States countries to make upstream dam on the 
candidates for the second migration. To carry out its primary mission, the agency has 
steadily increasing military means made available by Member States or own possession: over 
forty helicopters and airplanes, a hundred boats 400 units of equipment such as radars, 
sensors, cameras, etc. [7]. We are in the presence of a logic of war against migrants. 
Such military capabilities allow the agency to ensure particularly frequent patrols in the 
territorial waters of the Member States but also in international waters. The Belgian 
League for Human Rights rightly described the agency as a "real army in the service of 
migration policy of a fortress Europe, leading to unequal war weapons to migrants who have 
no soldiers" [ 8]. This logic of war led potential migrants to risk taking more and more 
important to escape surveillance Frontex patrols. The increase in deaths is not the result 
of an unpredictable disaster, but the result of decisions taken in full awareness of the 
deadly consequences.

The second mission of FRONTEX consisting of signing agreements with African countries 
bordering the Mediterranean is nothing but an outsourced "dirty work" to borrow an 
expression of the lawyer Claire Rodier. [9] The implications of this outsourcing are 
logical: "This outsourcing that is for European states to outsource the management of 
irregular migration to neighboring countries (North Africa, Eastern Europe) has several 
advantages: first, it transfers the "dirty work" (mass deportations, arbitrary detention, 
torture) in countries whose standards are lower than in Europe, to avoid the obligations 
that European laws impose on respect for human rights. On the other hand, it participates 
in the dependency ratio that the EU with its eastern neighbors. For the countries 
concerned, it promises in exchange for their cooperation, financing cooperation projects 
or counterparties of political or diplomatic in nature. "[10]

The dead of my Mediterranean, it is appropriate to add the abuse, beatings and deaths of 
subcontracting. This role installation conditions of the institutional mass murder, of 
course, absent from the reports that our media broadcast every deadly shipwreck.

The media discourse on smugglers

Having obscured the structural causes of the increase in migratory pressure and causes of 
his death in translation in the Mediterranean, it remains to media discourse that will 
focus on "people smugglers". These would be the ones responsible for the situation and the 
fight against smuggling networks is presented as the solution. Centering the political and 
media discourse only smugglers contributes again to hide the real reasons regular dramas 
of the Mediterranean.

We have, of course, no sympathy for these smugglers. However, we must remember that as 
long as there is a demand for migrants, there will be an offer of illegal crossings. It is 
characteristic of policies that do not want to tackle the causes of a social problem that 
only address the supply and demand to hide. Tackling only dealers without questioning the 
demand for "artificial paradise" of a growing number of citizens, adopt on alcohol 
prohibitionist policy without tackling the causes of alcohol, etc. There are many examples 
of these political hypocrites claiming to act on the consequences while the causes remain 
hidden. Face higher risks of control, the smugglers are encouraged to get rid of their 
bulky cargo as soon as possible and by any means. "New evidence collected, Tuesday, Sept. 
16, by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have confirmed the thesis that 
those are the smugglers who deliberately rammed the boat of hundreds of migrants before it 
sank "said Elise Vincent in the World edition of 16 September 2014. If these criminals 
must be prosecuted and punished, the fact remains that such practices are only possible 
because the European policy creates conditions. These same political orientations create a 
profit opportunity for the Mafia through the exploitation of those who escaped death. The 
reporter from Reuters described as follows this new "goose that lays golden eggs" of the 
Mafia in Lampedusa:

"Here, eight hours by boat from Sicily, the Mafia already done his business by welcoming 
migrants in centers operated by private companies delegated by the state. It's always the 
same who win tenders for years. A migrant relates grant thirty euros per day. With tens of 
thousands of migrants, it is a golden business more profitable as drug trafficking, by the 
admission of a gangster, trapped by wiretaps in a corruption investigation in Rome. What 
is true in the capital will be true throughout Italy. An illustration of this 
organization, this is the scenario, always the same, the above relief. Aboard rotten tubs 
Libyan parties, there is nothing to eat or drink, no gasoline, but a satellite phone to 
call for help. Far too expensive equipment to smugglers. On land, migrants provide labor 
cheap. In agriculture for men in prostitution for women. A real slave trade, and slavery 
are Africans and Italians."[11]

Discrimination on the research consider that the forms of these is systemic 
discrimination, that is to say, being the consequence of a system and not a voluntary 
decision to discriminate. We can take the same concept regarding the deaths of the 
Mediterranean. Certainly the murder of these migrants is not direct. However, it is the 
inevitable result of the policies of the European Union both in its Africa policy in its 
migration policy, both in the increase in migratory pressure in its translation into 
large-scale death.

PS This text was originally published March 15, 2015 on the Blog Said Bouamama ( 
https://bouamamas.wordpress.com ) and April 21 on the website "free words" ( http: 
//www.paroleslibres.lautre. net ... ).

Notes

[1] http://www.unhcr.fr/54871a45c.html

[2] Press Release, No to the signing of the Economic Partnership Agreement EU-West Africa 
by the Council of the European Union! 11 December 2014http://www.solidarite.asso.fr / IMG 
/ p ...

[3] Jacques Berthelot, is urgently stop imposing EPA, January 16, 2013, 
http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/po ...

[4] Aimé Césaire, "Colonialism is not dead," The new criticism, No. 51, January 1954, p. 28.

[5] To confer to go further, Raphael Granvaud, What does the French army in Africa?, 
Agone, Marseille, 2009.

[6] Frontex, "The arm of the Fortress Europe," The World Tomorrow, No. 18, March-April 2013.

[7] Ibid.

[8] "Frontex: war against migrants" - the audio document 
http://www.liguedh.be/les-fichiers- ...

[9] Claire Rodier, Xenophobia Business. What are the migration controls, La Découverte, 
Paris, 2012.

[10] Interview with Claire Rodier in Libération, 01/10/2012.

[11] Antonio Parrinello, Reuters January 17, 2015.

http://oclibertaire.free.fr/spip.php?article1673