September 18, 2020

Germany must continue to set a positive example to the world

topic:	Human Rights
located:	Germany, Poland, Belarus, Burundi
editor:	Gurmeet Singh

Human rights are under attack. Belarus, Burundi and Poland were just three of the countries to have their rights records denounced this week. The deterioration in the global consensus to uphold rights is truly astonishing. With American and British support for human rights publicly waning, governments the world over feel emboldened in ignoring human rights or violating them.

Last week, the migrant camp in Moria, Greece, was ablaze. This left roughly 13,000 people even more destitute than before. It hardly registered on international radars, and European nations made minimal commitments to help those affected.

However, after public pressure and protests, reports have now emerged that the German government will take in an additional 1,500 migrants from the camp.

Euronews writes:

“This represents a sharp increase from the initial pledge to host some of the 400 unaccompanied children evacuated from Lesbos to mainland Greece following the September 8 blaze.

More than 12,000 people lived in cramped conditions in the Moria camp, which was built to accommodate fewer than 3,000. The vast majority of the 12,000 are now sleeping rough around the island.

Germany and France have both urged other European Union countries to show more solidarity and said the incident demonstrated the bloc needs to find a common answer to the migratory question.

The German plan to welcome 1,553 migrants - families with children - from five Greek islands was first approved by Angela Merkel, from the Christian Democratic Union, and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, from the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, sources said.

It was then backed by the third coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD) whose leader had previously called for the country to take up thousands of migrants from Greece.

Some 400 families with children have already been granted asylum.”

This is a vast improvement on the initial offer to take in less than 3 per cent of the total number of migrants, and Germany has more than enough capacity and resources to take in 13,000 people, let alone, 1,500. There is, of course, a question of what will happen to the 1,500 people once in Germany, and the remaining migrants not given access to the country. But the bigger question is, why did Germany and France make such a low offer in the first place? Is it because the German population is so against helping migrants? That doesn’t seem to be the case. Is it because the country is afraid of provoking any kind of response from the far-right AfD and its supporters? That’s very plausible, especially at a time when the far-right is gaining traction with a wider group of conspiracy theorists.

Whatever the reasons for making such a low offer, it adds weight to the growing feeling that human rights are not important. Human rights are designed to protect us all, and especially the most vulnerable. Who is more vulnerable than a refugee?

Writing in Der Spiegel just before Germany made the increased offer, Katrin Elger highlighted the importance of the campfire to human rights:

“How is the EU now supposed to appear as an authority on the international stage? How is a German or French foreign minister going to be able to criticize the Chinese government for its disregard for human rights? Or, for that matter, the Russians, Saudis or Iranians?

Any despot could rightly respond: Perhaps you should worry more about the fact that you have children living in barracks without running water or electricity.”

This is not the time to abandon our commitments to the highest ideals. In fact, now is the time to reaffirm them.

Image by Yildiray Yücel Kamanmaz 

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