The tragic death of hundreds of refugees last week in the Mediterranean Sea has once again brought to light the deadly hypocrisy of Western leaders and their mainstream press. Omissions and distortions are disconnecting the catastrophic event from its roots, preventing the real culprits from being publicly exposed. Were the victims Libyan \u201cmigrants seeking a better life in Europe,\u201d or rather refugees fleeing a war zone created and fueled by Western powers?<\/p>\n
The way the story is told and the wording are deceptive. Swedish scholar Jan Oberg explains: In various media reports and political statements the word \u201drefugee\u201d is increasingly being replaced by \u201dmigrant\u201d\u2026 A\u00a0migrant, according to the UN, is a person who is engaged in (seeking) a remunerative activity in a state of which he or she is not a national. A\u00a0refugee\u00a0is an entirely different person who is outside his or her home country because of having suffered (or feared) persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, or political opinion; because he or she is a member of a persecuted social category of persons; or because they are fleeing a war\u2026 Using \u201dmigrants\u201d instead of \u201drefugees\u201d takes away our attention from why they flee, from our own complicity in all this and it reduces our responsibility to protect refugees \u2026. Because\u00a0most of these refugees come from zones where Western military interventions and arms exports have failed miserably their officially stated purposes and caused only more problems.<\/p>\n
Like with so many other problems these years,\u00a0there is a psycho-political denial of the fact that Western militarism is the single most important cause of the problems we are facing . (Jan Oberg, Behind Every Refugee Stands an Arms Trader , TFF Associates & Themes Blog, April 28, 2015) Johannes Stern\u00a0and\u00a0Bill Van Auken add: The American press, led by the\u00a0New York Times, writes of refugees fleeing poverty and violence in the Middle East and North Africa without so much as mentioning the actions of the United States and its European allies that have caused the humanitarian catastrophe. What is unfolding in the Mediterranean is not a tragedy; it is an imperialist war crime .<\/p>\n