On the occasion of the World Refugee Day, June 20, we, the European Communist Action (ECA) member Parties, denounce the anti-people policies of bourgeois governments, which force millions of people to flee their countries.
The reason for war, poverty, worsened environmental disasters are to be found in the capitalist system. People that to flee their homeland, be this from impoverishment, to escape imperialist wars or environmental catastrophes – worsened by capitalism’s war on Earth’s ecosystems – should not be met with barbed wire fences, battons, by sinking their boats, push-backs and deportations but by helping hands that enable refugees and migrants to start a new life in their countries of destination.
Instead the capitalist system that creates migration, treats these people as cheap workforce, to be taken in or pushed back in line with the needs of capital for labor-power. Migration is thus to be understood as a phenomenon inherent in capitalism and which necessarily leads to the inhumane treatment of people, who are seen as nothing else but the source of value and profit. The ECA strongly rejects this treatment of our class brothers and sisters and stands for a socialist future in which society is organized around the principle of satisfying human needs, which puts people and their well-being at the center of social organization. Only under socialism-communism can people be treated with dignity and flourish.
Both imperialist war and imperialist “peace” with a gun held to the people’s heads force millions of people to flee their homeland.
Migration is also driven by persecution on ethnic or gender basis, religious obscurantism, and political oppression imposed by the local bourgeoisie to perpetuate its rule as well as the interests of its allied imperialist powers.
The growing inter-imperialist competition for supremacy in the capitalist world multiplies armed conflicts. A clash is going on between declining imperialist powers and emerging ones vying for a new division of the world, with the participation of local powers that tend to polarize themselves into conflicting imperialist alliances. In addition to the very real risk of direct confrontation between nuclear powers, the arm race will everywhere worsen living conditions for the peoples.
Bourgeois governments and the EU promote laws that legitimize exploitation with sweatshop working conditions and marginalization of immigrant workers and refugees, using the threat of deportation to intimidate them and to create confusion among local workers, channeling popular anger over deteriorating living standards—caused by the capitalist exploitation—against immigrants in the attempt to stoke a “war among the poor”.
The EU, the liberal and social democratic governments as well as the bourgeois left bears serious responsibility for paving the way for such repressive and oppressive measures, and for striking deals with human traffickers and the so-called safe third countries.
The ECA denounces the Dublin Regulation and the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum—not to demand their reform, but their abolition and replacement with a solidarity-based system of reception that guarantees refugees and migrants—and everyone—rights, work, and a decent income, encouraging integration without assimilation.
The ECA strongly condemns the closure of ports and disembarkation bans, criminal and illegal under both human rights standards and the Maritime Code. The duty of rescuing people at sea cannot be left to NGOs, but must be the responsibility of states.
The ECA fights for the closure of the so-called temporary detention centers for deportation—true concentration camps where human rights and health safety are gravely violated. The ECA also firmly denounces forced deportation policies or the confinement of refugees in the so-called first reception countries, implemented in both Europe and the United States. In particular, the expansion of the “safe countries” list, based on a judgment by the European Court of Justice, will allow rejected asylum seekers to be deported even when there are clear risks to their lives.
We therefore reaffirm our commitment to fighting the barbarous policies that generate the forced emigration of thousands of people while simultaneously denying fundamental rights to immigrants and refugees.
We declare full class solidarity with immigrants and refugees and demand:
- Respect for international law based on the Geneva Convention on Refugees and human rights;
- An end to forced deportations and arbitrary detention of migrants and refugees, with the closure of “temporary detention centers”;
- The adoption of reception and integration policies based on solidarity and the right to work;
- The annulment of all international repatriation agreements and agreements establishing detention centers abroad;
- The abolition of national laws that strengthen exploitation and oppression of immigrants and refugees, or restrict their access to basic rights and public services;
- The abolition of the Migration Pact, the Dublin Regulation, the Schengen Agreement, and all other EU regulations on this matter.
Capitalism prevents vast masses of people from living with dignity, in peace and safety in their own country. In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the ECA-member Parties commit to strengthening the revolutionary struggle against the EU, NATO, and their wars, to overthrow the power of capital and to build socialism-communism: a world where no one is forced to flee their homeland, and where all can live in dignity, without exploitation of man by man!
