MLPD protests against proto-fascist tightening of EU refugee policy

Press release

The Central Committee of the MLPD has published an up-to-date statement under the headline

"MLPD protests against proto-fascist tightening of EU refugee policy".

Saturday, 10 June 2023, 08:44 am

1. The MLPD protests against a proto-fascist and new quality in the tightening of refugee policy,

which the EU interior ministers decided yesterday. "A historic moment" for the "protection of human rights" – celebrates the German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. For the "protection of human rights", camps are now to be set up at the EU's external borders. Refugees coming from "safe countries of origin" are to be detained there. In future even families with children will be thrown into prison. Asylum applications are to be rejected there in fast-track procedures without examination of the individual case. In the sense of capitalist exploitability, only those refugees will be selected who can be exploited on the labor market and have basic convictions that are acceptable to monopolies and state. Many refugees have experiences with such camps as in Libya, which are of a character similar to concentration camps. This, although the Geneva Refugee Convention in Article 31 prohibits the criminalization of flight.

2. In its coalition agreement, the German government promised to "expand protection rights for refugees". Now the federal government of SPD, Greens and FDP completely agreed to all this. With the blessings of the "coalition for progress", what the hated former CSU Interior Minister Seehofer, the fascist president of Italy, Meloni, or the proto-fascist AfD in Germany have long been demanding is to become reality in Europe. The AfD cheers: "#AfD has effect".

3. The list of so-called "safe countries of origin" is to be drastically expanded. In the future, refugees can also be deported to "safe regions" even if war and misery prevail in the country. Refugees who come from a "safe third country" will be deported immediately without any examination. Such countries include, for example, Tunisia, which has a brutal and racist refugee policy.

4. Similar procedures are already being applied in Greece. There, dozens of refugees are repeatedly put into unseaworthy boats and returned to the Mediterranean because no one will take them after their applications have been rejected. In the Kara Tepe camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, refugees whose asylum applications have been rejected have recently been given neither water nor food – this affects 500 people, 250 of them children. This is inhuman!

5. What is behind the alleged success of "solidarity mechanisms"? These consist of EU states buying their way out of the obligation to take up refugees and instead paying money to non-European third countries to ward off refugees. EU regulations have been initiated to legitimize this as "preventive border protection." "Pushbacks" at the borders will increase drastically.

6. After Scholz announced the "watershed" to an open war course and numerous red lines of war support were crossed, there are now hardly any stopping lines in refugee policy or in the dismantling of democratic rights and freedoms. The government's rightward development is intensifying. War, external aggression – internal reaction – this is the imperialists' "way out" of their growing crises.

7. There is entirely justified widespread opposition, even at the base of the Greens and the SPD. The organization "Pro Asyl" denounces the "undermining of refugee protection". In Germany, the "Friendship Circle for Refugee Solidarity" organizes refugees and supporters of refugee solidarity. 700 progressive lawyers had started an urgent letter protesting against the de facto abolition of the refugee law, which was "born from the lessons of national socialism". Spokespersons for the Green Youth said they were "shocked" by the "inhumane" resolutions. Baerbock, Habeck and Co., on the other hand, agreed to them single-handedly as members of the government, in opposition to their base. Now is the hour of a broad unity of action based on struggle and real non-party affiliation, without anti-communist exclusion! Long live international solidarity!

8. The EU's decisions had been prepared in the bourgeois media for months with a vicious smear campaign against refugees. The AfD and CDU demanded draconian measures against "illegal migration". Yet most of the people who make it to Germany have an official right to flee. In the last two years, the protection rate was at a record level of 72 percent.

9. Imperialism is destroying the foundations of human life. With the beginning of the global environmental catastrophe, it is already inevitable that billions of people will no longer be able to live in their native countries. The EU decisions are the open admission that the imperialists cannot or do not want to change anything about the causes of flight, but declare war on the people affected. Part of the problems are shifted to the external borders of Europe and other countries. Nobody seriously believes that these measures have a deterrent effect. Those who have to live so catastrophically that they leave their home and embark on a life-threatening journey will also put up with these measures.

10. The MLPD advocates the joint struggle of refugees and working people from Germany. Only the joint struggle can be effective against the shifting of the burdens of the crisis to the masses, against inflation and social hardship. Instead of being incited against refugees, the militant opposition against monopolies and government must be strengthened.

11. The MLPD advocates genuine socialism, a society that abolishes the exploitation and oppression of human beings by human beings and the exploitation of nature. For the MLPD there are no first, second or third class human beings. But it is part of the DNA of capitalism that there are first, second and third class human beings. That's why we need a society that abolishes this and holds down the previous oppressors, destroyers of the environment and warmongers. Only a revolutionary overcoming of capitalism and the united socialist states of the world open the way to a classless society, communism. A society that is, for the first time, truly humane and truly human.

The MLPD calls for protest and active resistance:

• Immediate reversal of the EU decisions!

• For the right to flee!

• Unrestricted right of asylum for all oppressed on an anti-fascist basis!

• Support the building of the Internationalist Alliance against rightward development, fascism and war!

• For the building of an international anti-imperialist united front against fascism and war!

• Fight against the manipulation of public opinion with racism and anti-communism!

• Now we speak! Free access to the mass media for progressive refugees, activists of international solidarity and Marxist-Leninists!

The nationwide Monday demonstration movement is calling for protests in over 50 cities in the coming weeks. More information at www.bundesweite-montagsdemo.com