Her name is Siham, and she is a young mother (37 years old), one of the passengers of the last legs that came to our islands. She has two children, 11-year-old Malak and a 16-year-old boy, Nassim. She was separated from her children form the moment she stepped on Mallorcan soil. Both are in a juvenile centre, crying every night without information or communication with the mother while she lives on the Palma streets thanks to the charity of her compatriots.
This September, two fires wiped out 80% of the Moira refugee camp. More than 13,000 people based in the Camp of Shame have had to spend nights on the roads in the area while Greece’s “ultra-conservative” government ordered night raids before refugees began an exodus to Lesbos.
In the meantime, the European Union, immersed in its internal divisions, has put forward a proposal on asylum and immigration that included quotas and compulsory distribution of refugees as a solution to the humanitarian crisis. The European Commission proposes to use development policy as impetus to convince third countries to accept back irregular immigrants who are not eligible to remain in Europe, proposes speeding up asylum and expulsion procedures and decisions, and creating a flexible solidarity mechanism to prevent the plan from crashing into resistance from countries such as Hungary.
The hypocrisy of the European continent with the issue of immigration has no limits or borders. Europe looks elsewhere as the Mediterranean becomes a sea of corpses. On the subject of immigration no one is alien, the tent of the port of Palma hides the same reality as that of the Moira countryside. We must take a view and work on intercultural integration based on accepting people’s universal rights.
