Aufruf europäischer Intellektueller, 10.03.2016 (engl. Originalfassung)
We citizens of the Member States of the European Union, of the Schengen Area, the Balkans, of the Mediterranean, and of the Middle East as well as citizens of other countries in the world, who share our concerns, are launching an emergency appeal.
The refugees must be rescued and welcomed! The xenophobic tendencies must be reversed immediately!
Even though the numbers of refugees fleeing to Europe have increased dramatically since the wars of the Middle East and especially in Syria broke out, European states and societies still have to welcome the refugees who are escaping mass slaughter. The incapacity of the governments of all our countries to put an end to the causes of this exodus (if they are not indeed contributing to their exacerbation) does not exonerate them of the obligation to save and welcome the refugees, while respecting their fundamental rights, which, with the right to asylum, are enshrined in the foundational declarations and conventions of international law.
However, with few exceptions, Europe’s governments have refused to face the overall situation. On the contrary, from east to west and north to south, they have rejected the minimal plan for distributing the refugees worked out by the European Commission or are involved in sabotaging it. Worse, they are engaging in repression, stigmatisation, and the brutalisation of refugees and immigrants in general. By contrast, it is the citizens of Europe and elsewhere who have saved our honour and pointed the way to a solution. Two completely incompatible Europes are facing each other, and from now on we have to choose between them.
Not only do the European countries, taken as a whole, have the means to welcome the refugees and treat them with dignity but they must do so in order to continue to lay claim to human rights as the foundation of their polities. And this is what has to be done to remove from our horizon, once and for all, the spectre of a new epoch of organised institutional discrimination and of the elimination of ‘undesirable’ human beings. Nobody has the right to declare the problem unresolvable in order to evade it more easily.
Very large-scale emergency measures are needed immediately.
Assistance to the refugees has to be given by the governing bodies of the EU and carried by all the Member States. It has to be upheld by the United Nations and be the object of a permanent consultation with democratic states of the whole region.
Coastal guerrilla action against the ‘smugglers’ has to be stopped. Rather, Europe has to bring aid to the immigrants and to put an end to the scandal of the drownings at sea.
The burden of the frontline receiving countries, in particular Greece, must immediately be relieved.
The Schengen free-circulation area must be preserved, but the Dublin Regulation that provides for pushing immigrants back to the entry country must be suspended and renegotiated.
Air and sea transport has to be operated to transfer all the registered refugees to the northern European countries instead of letting them accumulate in a small country in danger of becoming a ‘dumping ground’ for humanity.
In the longer term, Europe – facing one of the great challenges that is changing the course of the history of peoples – has to develop a democratically controlled aid plan for the survivors of this huge slaughter and for those who are helping them. It has to establish not only receiving quotas but also social and educational aid, proper housing, and therefore a special budget and legal provisions guaranteeing new rights that embed the displaced populations in the receiving societies in a dignified and peaceful way.
There is no other alternative. It is either hospitality and the right to asylum or barbarism!
Die Petition unterzeichnet haben unter anderen: Étienne Balibar, Judith Butler und Antonio Negri.
Die vollständige Petition und eine Liste der Unterzeichner*innen finden Sie hier.