The unhindered flow of migrants to the EU has been leading to the further polarization of the European society that can be spotted all across the continent. Clashes between the supporters of refugee acceptance policies and opponents have been a regular occurrence in virtually all of the European states recently. In Austria, Germany, Sweden, France, those centers that are intended for the accommodation of migrants are being set on fire most every day. Additionally, there’s an increasing number of clashes between the indigenous population of EU states and those who “come in large numbers” from far away. What will be the outcome of this rivalry is pretty much impossible to predict.
Self-organized detachments of “people’s militia” are now can be found in the absolute majority of European border settlements. They are hunting for those illegally crossing the EU border to detain them. In spite of the fact that the migration flows from the Middle Eastern countries has started to dwindle, those militia detachments are only getting more numerous and active, motivated by an ever ending stream of media reports about the role that certain illegal migrants are playing in various criminal schemes across the EU.
For instance, the Rinkeby district in Stockholm, that has become a home to a large number of migrant, has been plagued by massive civil unrest cases lately, with their participants setting fire to cars and robbing local stores. However, Swedish police officers have found themselves unable to address the situation since they are being attacked every time they enter the so-called “no-go” areas of the city.
Recently, German authorities reported more that 10 attacks on refugees were reported on just one day. Some 560 people were injured as a result of more than 3,500 attacks that were committed against refugees in Germany last year, with 43 of victims being minors, reports Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
At the same time, almost 6 million refugees in the Mediterranean states are waiting for the opportunity to continue their “journey” to Europe – this was an assessment contained in a secret report that was drafted by the German intelligence services, Bild reports. In Turkey alone, according to the document, there’s some 2.9 million people living in refugee reception centers, some 700 thousand are to be found in Jordan, and up to 1.2 million in Libya. Another 80 thousand migrants got stuck along the so-called Balkan route, while another 63 thousand migrants are currently living in Greece, the newspaper notes. German intelligence services are convinced that the absolute majority of these refugees are the natives of Central African states that are trying to get to Europe through Mali, Niger, Algeria and Libya.
However, the UK has a different position on the potential number of refugees that may arrive to Europe in the nearest future. For instance, Daily Mail notes that there’s some 20 million African migrants heading for Europe.
Against this background, Dutch Professor Ruud Koopmans urged the EU to block the entry of anybody who could not be categorically confirmed. According to this scholar, there’s some 1 billion adult Muslims to be found across the world, while only a half of them is conservative. Thus, probably more than 50 million of them are willing to sanction violence. Although the researcher is convinced that it’s unlikely that out of the stated number every single person is capable of committing violent acts, most of them, he argues, are willing to accept violence and support those who carry out religiously-motivated attacks.
The Mediterranean migrant crisis gave birth to massive human trafficking business that provides billions of dollars in profit to those behind it. The UNICEF report notes that the current situation is out of control, as criminal gangs are sending a record number of migrants along a dangerous route off the coast of Libya.
What is even more disturbing, the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger would note that there’s been an increasing number of cases when Syrian refugees were selling their kidnies and liver lobes in Turkish camps in order to somehow alleviate the dire financial need they have found themselves in. Reportedly, those who paid for these operations are the wealthy patients from Western countries and Saudi Arabia. Many refugees say that they sell their organs in order to “try their luck in the West or just return home.”
At the recent informal EU summit in Malta, participants agreed on a set of measure that are to be taken to put a halt to the flow of refugees heading to Europe through the Mediterranean. However, the steps that the EU has already taken is yet to produce any positive results. This resulted in the European Commission threatening last year other states of the union to introduce sanctions against them for their reluctance to receive refugees from Greece and Italy.
Last February, major European players approved a new declaration on the measures that are to be taken to combat illegal migration across the Mediterranean, including, in particular, the “humanitarian repatriation” of migrants back to Africa and the strengthening of the southern Mediterranean border agencies.
As the EU fails to do anything that works, it decided to exploit the interest that a number of former Soviet republics has in strengthening their ties with the EU. Brussels has developed a very peculiar way of getting out of the migration crisis at their expense, by building massive refugee camps in Ukraine and Georgia in exchange for Brussels’ good attitude. However, if the criminalized and corrupt Kiev is willing to sell anything, the Georgian Foreign Ministry has swiftly replied that “the implementation of such a project is impossible given the challenges that Georgia is facing.”
Against this background, one could only expect further polarization of the public opinion in Europe, which, among other things, will be exploited by a number of local political forces, especially during the upcoming elections in France, the Netherlands, Italy and a number of other EU states. However, none of this is going to help those trying to escape the countries that were destroyed by the irresponsible armed aggression of the US and its EU allies.
Grete Mautner is an indepenent researcher and journalist from Germany, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”