MIA SWART: Fortress Europe should open to migrants

Last week a letter writer took umbrage at my recent attack on far-right anti-immigration parties. He suggested I pay a visit to Milan’s central train station, where a “huge concentration” of migrants, lacking adequate housing, has apparently caused the area to degenerate so much that he fears for the safety of Italians.

He invited me to “witness the ... squalor and effect on the personal security of the indigenous population” (“Mass immigration leads to subjugation of indigenous culture”, March 10).

I have to thank the letter writer for reminding me of my first visit to Milan station in the summer of 2009. It was a different time. While on a research fellowship at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2009 my late mother visited me. As a surprise for her, I planned a short trip to Italy, a country she lived in during the late 1960s.

Milan’s huge and imposing central station was busy and noisy, the atmosphere slightly chaotic. The ticket seller took his time to issue the tickets. Noticing my impatience, he said: “This is not the police, this is a train station.” I smiled and waited more patiently. We had time for a walk to the magnificent cathedral and sat outside in the sun waiting for the train to depart.

At that time, the Brexit referendum was not even a glint in David Cameron’s eye. Back home, Jacob Zuma had just become president. Barack Obama had just been sworn in as US president, and no-one dreamed of a future Trump presidency. In Italy Silvio Berlusconi was firmly in power.

The Mediterranean had already become a graveyard for thousands of migrants. Then, as now, boats departing from Libya capsized regularly, turning the Med into the site of endless tragedy.

The Berlin-based organisation Civil Liberties Union for Europe, along with 37 other rights groups, recently issued its annual Rule of Law report, which found that democracies in which far-right parties were in power risked deterioration of the rule of law.

Civil Liberties identified the disregard for the rights of migrants and refugees as a “dire issue” among EU member states. The report mentions Croatia, Lithuania and Greece as countries where refugees experience illegal pushbacks at borders. Special concern was raised for the rights of child migrants.

But exclusionary anti-immigrant policies are not confined to the West. Anti-immigrant rhetoric typically surges before elections, including in “the world’s most populous democracy”. Facing a general election in April, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently announced plans to implement a divisive 2019 citizenship law.

The Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to naturalisation for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and other groups that fled to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan before December 31 2014. The law excludes Muslims. After deadly protests in 2019, Modi’s government held off its implementation.

The law is but one recent attempt to marginalise Muslims and forms part of a broader “citizen verification” programme aimed at weeding out people who came to India illegally. Modi called the law a “humanitarian gesture” aimed at helping religious minorities. But, according to Amnesty International, the law is exclusionary and “legitimises discrimination based on religion”. 

The letter writer fears for the survival of indigenous Italians. A point made during the debates preceding Brexit, now considered a largely failed project, was that security and survival have become matters of common interest, and that in a globalised world our fates are tied together. As the Brexit fallout shows, exclusionary polices do not make economic sense.

Italy has always hosted crowds. This was the case in medieval Naples, a city so bustling that fugitives fled there to attain anonymity. The painter Caravaggio famously fled to the city to escape execution. Today, selfie-taking, gelato-licking tourists flee to Florence, Venice and Rome to escape the perceived drudgery of middle-class life.

And then there are those who survive the treacherous journey on small boats across the Med. May fortress Europe open up and take them in.

• Swart is a visiting professor at Wits Law School specialising in human rights, international relations and international law. She writes in her personal capacity.