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Mass grave in the Mediterranean

23 April 2015

Mass grave in the Mediterranean

A massive human tragedy is playing itself out on the Mediterranean Sea, a tragedy which has already been going on for years and which is growing ever worse. The total number of refugees who have drowned runs now to many thousands, all of them of Middle Eastern, North African or sub-Saharan African origin.


By Jan Marijnissen

Just as water always flows to the lowest point, it also appears to be a law of nature that people in desperate straits will look for a better life for their children and themselves. And desperate straits are certainly being suffered, a great deal of such: war, hunger, disease. The hopelessness is the worst of it, when no possibility of improvement brightens the horizon. This is a form of hopelessness which can drive people mad. The realisation that you live only once makes you distraught and irrational. Anything is better than submitting without any kind of resistance. You have to get away, at all costs; if necessary, in a small boat, and in return for a great deal of money, brave Mediterranean waves the size of houses, in the hope of immediately finding yourself in a better world. In the hope of benediction.

Allegedly to neutralise weapons of mass destruction, but in reality to put an end to Saddam Hussein’s regime and gain control of oil supplies, the United States and Britain took the decision in 2003 to invade Iraq. In doing so they were applying a match to the powder keg that is the Middle East. The invasion became the signal that set off a chain reaction which has burdened us, but above all the people of the region, with an Iraq which had been torn to pieces and a Syria falling apart. Hundreds of thousands have died and many times more have been put to flight. In Libya too the West’s politics of intervention have proved disastrous. The country has been chopped into pieces and violence is everywhere the order of the day. There too, ISIS now has a presence on the ground

You can see in all of this the two major reasons why the Mediterranean Sea has become a killing field.

Jan Marinissen was leader of the SP from 1988 to 2008 and is currently its Chairperson.

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