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Mrs May said that sent the wrong message to the people smugglers who took advantage of those seeking to better themselves.
“What we see is that a lot of people coming are economic migrants, but they are paying criminal gangs to transport them across Africa.
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EDITORIAL / PÚBLICO
Obstáculos
a caminho e no regresso da Líbia
DIRECÇÃO EDITORIAL
13/05/2015 -
O plano de Juncker e
de Mogherini para conter as redes de imigração terá de passar por
três obstáculos
São duas formas de
atacar o problema; uma na origem e outra à chegada. É assim que o
plano de Juncker pretende travar a tragédia dos milhares de
migrantes que todos os dias se aventuram em embarcações frágeis no
Mediterrâneo para tentar chegar à Europa, na maioria usando a Líbia
como porto de embarque. Este ano estima-se que já tenham morrido já
mais de 1600 pessoas, quase tantos como os 1750 que perderam a vida
no ano passado.
A Comissão Juncker
está a ensaiar ideias válidas, mas infelizmente há obstáculos que
parecem quase intransponíveis. Federica Mogherini, a
alta-representante para a política externa, está por estes dias a
bater à porta de todos os países do Conselho de Segurança da ONU,
mas já se percebeu que a Rússia poderá ser um obstáculo difícil
de transpor. Sobretudo depois de o The Guardian ter noticiado que as
missões aéreas e marítimas na Líbia para desmantelar as redes de
tráfico humano poderão também envolver tropas no terreno.
E aqui avista-se o
segundo grande obstáculo que são as próprias milícias e governos
(a Líbia tem dois) locais que já vieram dizer que vão ripostar
contra qualquer acção militar externa. Isto apesar de Mogherini ter
dito que a União quer agir “em parceria” com as autoridades de
Trípoli. O problema é que hoje não existe uma autoridade na Líbia.
O terceiro grande
obstáculo do plano de Juncker é composto por uma frente de países
como a Irlanda, a Hungria, a Eslováquia, a Estónia e com o Reino
Unido à cabeça, que já se mostraram desconfortáveis com o sistema
de quotas que está em estudo e que prevê a atribuição a cada
Estado-membro de um determinado número de pedidos de asilo. São
muitos obstáculos que vão testar o nível de coesão do projecto
europeu e a capacidade diplomática do bloco para colocar países
como a China e Rússia no mesmo barco humanitário.
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Theresa
May: economic migrants fleeing across Mediterranean should be
returned to Africa
Home Secretary
vows to crack down on ‘terrible callous trade in human beings’
By Rosa Prince,
Online Political Editor, video source ITN9:19AM BST 13 May 2015
Theresa May has said
economic migrants crossing the Mediterranean to seek better lives in
Europe should be returned to Africa to thwart the “terrible callous
trade in human beings”.
The Home Secretary
suggested she wanted to remove the incentive for desperate Africans,
and the people smugglers who take advantage of them, to put their
lives at risk by boarding unseaworthy crafts.
Her words put her at
odds with European Union officials, who have suggested that all of
the thousands of people who have fled across the Mediterranean in
recent weeks, often after hazardous journeys during which fellow
travellers lost their lives, should be allowed to remain.
Economic migrants
Mrs May said that
sent the wrong message to the people smugglers who took advantage of
those seeking to better themselves.
She told Sky: “What
we see is that a lot of people coming are economic migrants, but they
are paying criminal gangs to transport them across Africa.
“These criminals
are then putting them into vessels which they know very often are not
seaworthy, where people’s lives are being put at risk.
Mrs May denied that
her suggestion was hard-hearted, saying that Britain was taking
action to help those who got into difficulties while crossing the
Mediterranean.
She added that those
who were fleeing violence in places like Syria would be treated
differently to “the majority” of those arriving, who she said
were often from nations such as Nigeria and Eritrea, where their
lives were not at immediate risk
Mrs May went on: “Of
course we as the United Kingdom are participating in search and
rescue operations, to make sure people are not dying at seat, but we
need to deal with these criminal gangs, we need to deal with this
terrible callous trade in human beings.
“What we’re
seeing lying behind a lot of these people coming to Europe is this
terrible trade in human beings.
“There are
criminals who are making money, making a profit, out of people’s
aspirations and doing so in a way where they know they know these
people’s lives will be put at risk.
“I think that is a
terrible trade and I think we need to ensure that criminals are not
able to ply this business any longer.”
Anna Musgrave, of
the Refugee Council, said: “Sadly, the British Government appears
oblivious to the fact that the world is in the grip of the greatest
refugee crisis in recent memory.
“The Home
Secretary’s sweeping judgement that people arriving on Europe’s
shores from some of the world’s biggest refugee producing countries
are economic migrants is utterly startling.
“The Government’s
choice is simple, yet historic. Will we turn our back on the world’s
refugees, or will we live up to our proud tradition of offering some
of the most vulnerable people in the world safety in Britain?”
How many asylum
seekers does the UK accept?
Data compiled by
Eurostat, the European Commission’s own statistics agency, showed
Britain gave asylum protection to 14,065 people in 2014, while other
large European states accepted just a few hundred each.
Britain’s intake
was the fifth largest in the EU. Germany took the most at more than
47,500, followed by Sweden with 33,000, while France and Italy
granted protection to about 20,600 each.
Spain, one of the
more populous countries in the EU with 46 million people, gave asylum
to just 1,600 asylum applicants last year and Poland – with a
population of 38 million – took just 740.
Ireland took 495
while Portugal’s figure was 40, down from 135 the previous year.
Britain’s intake
comprised 2,275 Eritreans, 1,650 Iranians and 1,455 Syrians. Syrians
made up 37 per cent of all European asylum beneficiaries.
How many EU workers
now live here?
Data from the Office
for National Statistics revealed 1.95 million people born in the 27
other EU member states were working here in the first quarter of this
year.
In the same period
just four years ago the figure was almost half a million fewer.
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