Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This motion is a piece in a jigsaw. It does not really do anything on its own. It is part of a wider jigsaw and relates to the EU migration pact that probably will be voted through later today. We have quite a few problems with it. When the rhetoric is stripped away, what is going on here is the strengthening of fortress Europe and increasing the power of Frontex and others to keep migrants out of Europe. That is basically what it is about in giving power to agencies and claiming we are dealing with criminal gangs. We are giving huge power to agencies, where we exchange information and work with other agencies on passing files on, etc. One of the big problems we have with this is that this feeds into and leads into the vile growth of lies coming from the far right about black and brown people and the dangers they present to our society. This does not deliberately lean into that but ultimately it does. The European Union is leaning into this as well in the lead-up to the elections. It is pretty sick, and more so when we look at what we are talking about.

When we exchange information with other countries and Frontex and Europol exchange it onwards, they often exchange it with the countries of the Middle East and north Africa to which the European Union has given huge amounts of money, equipment, training and support, such as Libya, Egypt and Morocco, and where there is absolutely clear evidence of human rights abuses such as torture, rape, illegal detention, repeated killings and beatings and even slavery taking place, particularly in Libya. Sally Hayden, the author who won many prizes for her book My Fourth Time, We Drowned, has done serious research into this area and I do not think anybody would dispute her evidence and the stories she tells about the detention centres in Libya the EU funds and we inadvertently fund. We are agreeing to pass on information to these organisations that do not have just one serious security or police force. Libya is a state without a state. It is three states functioning within one country. It is extremely corrupt and much of the corruption is about facilitating the traffickers. It is about taking money from traffickers and facilitating them to proceed on their way, but more often it is about sending unfortunate migrants back into detention centres where that litany of rape, cruelty, killing and slavery continues. It is hugely important we get that right in our heads, and if we increase this to other so-called safe countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, etc., we are only repeating the same exercise.

This matters not because it is a kind way of dealing with people but because the litany of how migration has affected the globe is a truth that is with us and will stay with us. The truth is that 62.5 million of the people who are displaced across the globe are internally displaced within their own countries, such as in Sudan and South Sudan, 36 million people are refugees, and 43.3 million of the total number of migrants displaced both internally and externally are children.

If we are to deal with this issue by saying we will batten down the hatches and do like Trump did, we build an effective wall around Europe. This is what this piece in the jigsaw is. A fortress Europe is about doing a Trump on it and building a wall around Europe to make sure migrants do not get in. They will either drown in the Mediterranean Sea, as 29,000 have done, or they will be transported back into these so-called safe countries where we give information about them or where we facilitate torture, rape and slavery.

I will finish with a quote from Sally Hayden where she talks about what it is like to be a migrant because these issues are about humanity and human beings:

They arrived on the back of impossible choices of why they are about to go and who to bring with them. Sometimes bearing neither luggage nor documents. They are teachers, they are medics, engineers, factory workers and students. They are witnesses to unspeakable horror, rape, executions, bombings, humiliation and they know hunger. They have left occasionally and sometimes multiple times they have left everything in search of a life.

If we are to co-operate with pushing people back into that misery, then shame on us. That is why I say this is a piece of a jigsaw. It is not the whole nine yards but it is a piece in a very fundamentally cruel jigsaw.

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