On 14th April 1912, in the North Atlantic, RMS Titanic was carrying over two thousand people from Southampton to New York on her maiden voyage. Some of the passengers were being transported in the highest level of luxury possible, others were being treated like livestock. Just before midnight she hit a large iceberg and sank. One thousand five hundred and twelve people lost their lives in the icy waters of the North Atlantic in a few short hours after the collision. The following morning RMS Carpathia picked up 705 survivors.
Meanwhile in 2015, more people have died in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas, trying to surreptitiously sneak under the radar and enter Europe in a rag tag armada of over crowded fishing boats and inflatables. Refugees are drowning locked in the holds of leaky fishing boats, reminiscent of the stories of third class passengers kept below the Titanic’s decks.
These unending streams of misery and hope are shipping themselves through extreme danger to flee the real and unending dangers of their homes in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria and countless others. The list of derelict countries is endless too .
The response of the British Government has been unsurprising. Home Office Ministers have claimed that rescuing migrants from the sea acts as a pull to encourage others to make the crossing. This is a wicked argument. It argues that the Government wants the refugees to be more frightened by the risks of crossing the sea than by remaining where they are. That people undergoing civil war should be more frightened about the difficulties of a journey to Europe than the war itself.
The British Government is refusing to take more refugees, even in the face of Germany offering to take hundreds of thousands. Instead David Cameron insists that the solution to the crisis in the Mediterranean does not lie in the sea, or in Europe, but in the home countries of the refugees.
To a certain degree he is right. The reason why we are witnessing so many Syrians trying to enter Europe is because of the civil war raging in Syria. A civil war that flowed from the Arab Spring revolutions. The Arab Spring which David Cameron sought to encourage. Whilst there can be no denial that a democratic state is preferable to a dictatorship, the support of the Western Democracies for rebels seeking to overthrow dictators seems to be stronger than the support those same democracies seem to show to moves to implement democracy itself. Witness the British involvement in the toppling of Colonel Gadaffi but the complete lack of any involvement to provide democratic support to the country once he was deposed. Witness William Hague when Foreign Secretary in 2013 suggesting that the Western Democracies should consider providing armaments to the rebels fighting President Assad in Syria – those self same rebels who we are now bombing ourselves. Witness the shambles that the Western Democracies have created in Iraq. All these have been done in the name of democracy.
So it is no surprise that David Cameron’s preference for the West trying to solve the problems for which it is in part responsible rings hollow. His preference for trying to resolve problems in part of our own making rather than dealing with the human misery that these problems have caused appears heartless and callous.
The refugees are giving their own answer. The risks of the sea are tremendous, but they are prepared to take those risks to escape from their misery.
The family of three year old Aylan Kurdi had left Damascus to escape the civil war and moved to Homs. But the war came to Homs and they moved again to Aleppo. But the war came to Aleppo and they moved again to Kobane. But ISIS came to Kobane and they tried to move to Canada via Turkey and the European Union. In travelling in an inadequate boat from Turkey to Greece Aylan, his brother and mother were all drowned. The distressing picture of Aylan’s limp and lifeless body lying on the sand of a Turkish beach, with the salt water waves caressing the cheeks of the child whose life they had taken is heart wrenching. No human can fail to be moved and outraged by the picture.
To simply state that the cause of this tragedy lies in Syria and the West has no responsibility is a total dereliction of humanity. This small innocent child did not choose to be born a Syrian. He did not choose to be born in a country in civil war. But having been born under those circumstances, it is not surprising that his parents sought to get him and his brother to the safety of the West. It is a truly shocking indictment of the West, that the only way they could have any hope of achieving that goal was to pay criminals to smuggle them to Greece at great cost and with no consideration other than to the amount of money that could be made from their misery. Europe has the blood of Aylan on its hands.
In 1912, following the sinking of the Titanic a Board of Trade Inquiry established that there were only sufficient lifeboats on the Titanic to allow for the evacuation of half of the passengers on the ship. It also concluded that the ship sank because of the presence of only partial bulkheads separating compartments in the hold.
It was fortunate for those seven hundred and five people rescued from the sea by the Carpathia, that the captain of the ship was one Arthur Rostron and not David Cameron. Had the captain been David Cameron, he would probably have stated that disasters like the sinking of the Titanic will not be prevented until the recommendations of the Board of Trade Enquiry are implemented and it would simply encourage other passengers to travel in unsafe vessels if he were to pick up the survivors.
A mumbler's musings 