The Mediterranean remains for yet another year the deadliest passage on the planet, and for the past seven years, it is estimated that over 23,000 refugees have lost their lives trying to cross it searching for a better future, said rescuer and activist Jason Apostolopoulos speaking at an event held at the Cyprus University of Technology. The well-known Greek activist was speaking at an event titled “Migration and Solidarity: Building Resistance Against Xenophobia and Racism,” held on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, with the participation of the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Cyprus, Emilia Strovolidou. During the event, the results of the opinion poll conducted by the Fieldwork Research Centre of the University of Cyprus on the attitudes of Cypriots towards refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants were presented, which were published earlier Monday by the UNHCR. In the presence of high school students from Limassol, Apostolopoulos spoke about his actions all these years, trying to rescue refugees with groups of volunteer rescuers, while criticizing the stance that the EU maintains through its policies. “Over the past seven years, more than 23,000 people have lost their lives due to a conscious political choice by European countries not to rescue refugees, ignore distress signals, criminalize rescue operations, force refugees to take increasingly dangerous routes, and not provide safe passages,” he said, adding that the number of deaths cannot be accurately calculated. “It’s terrible,” he continued, “how many people are lost every day and we will never know, the so-called ‘invisible shipwrecks,’ as in many cases torn inflatable boats are found without any signs of life.” “At the same time,” he added, “there are ‘floating coffins,’ wooden boats, where people are piled up and some die of suffocation’. “Rescue in the Mediterranean is a race against time. If we don’t detect the boats in time, people fall into the water and drown,” he said, noting that the majority of refugees are individuals exhausted from torture in Libya, who do not know how to swim but prefer to risk their lives to escape. Many of them, he explained, begin their journey from sub-Saharan Africa and attempt to escape through Libya, crossing the Sahara Desert where thousands of armed forces are fighting for control of the country. Studies, he continued, show more deaths in the Sahara than in the Mediterranean, as many are located by armed forces and left to die in the desert, while those who manage to reach Libya are usually arrested and end up in makeshift prisons where they are tortured until ransom is paid for their release. In cases where they do not have the means to pay, they are sold as slaves or executed. The EU, according to Apostolopoulos not only does not talk about these detention centers, “but instead has included them in its so-called anti-immigration plan, funds them, and wants to build more, as it is an official position of the Commission that it wants detention centers in North Africa to stop migration to Europe.” According to Apostolopoulos ‘with the Malta Declaration, signed in 2017 by all member states, the EU committed to funding the Libyan coast guard, which is actually a paramilitary group in Tripoli that receives a bundle of money with the sole goal of stopping refugee boats and returning them to the detention centers in Libya. The EU has basically signed an agreement with Libyan groups to return refugees to slave markets,” he added. Apostolopoulos also said the international community should pay more attention to this EU agreement, which he said “is disastrous for human rights.” On her part, UNHCR representative in Cyprus, Emilia Strovolidou said racism, xenophobia, and discrimination are key causes of refugees of millions of people worldwide, and it is estimated that more than 3 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes, worldwide, due to conflicts, violence and human rights violations. “One in 77 people in the world has been forcibly displaced, a number that has more than doubled since a decade ago, with the numbers shocking and unacceptable,” she said, adding that, unfortunately, many refugees continue to face intolerance and rejection in asylum countries where they take refuge to seek safety. “The international community must focus on finding political solutions to stop wars and human rights violations, but at the same time, until this becomes feasible, we must reaffirm our commitment to the universal principle of providing asylum to people whose lives are in danger due to wars and persecutions,” she added. Referring to the case of Cyprus, Strovolidou noted that there are currently around 36,500 asylum seekers and 16,400 recognized refugees, while “newly arrived asylum seekers face many challenges, both in terms of their initial reception in Pournara and their subsequent transition to the community.” Their living conditions, she continued, remain extremely difficult and they face many problems mainly arising from the time-consuming delays in examining asylum applications, their limited access to the job market, the lack of housing infrastructure, the very low public assistance and the limited access to social inclusion programmes. Underlining the need for a comprehensive integration plan, Strovolidou expressed the hope that the relevant plan, which has been pending for two years, will soon be adopted by the new government, while also emphasizing that “the fundamental step towards integration is the creation of an inclusive society without discrimination, xenophobia, and racism.” Regarding the public opinion survey presented at the event by Professor Charis Psaltis of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cyprus, the UNHCR representative in Cyprus said that the negative attitude of Cypriots, especially towards asylum seekers, has increased since the last public opinion survey, and that “it is worrying that the majority of respondents reported that neither asylum seekers nor refugees are beneficial to the local community or to the country’s culture.”
Source: Cyprus News Agency