Speaking at Sunday’s United Against Racism ‘Refugees are welcome here’ rally in Derry People Before Profit Cllr Shaun Harkin said,
“It’s fitting we are gathered by the Great Hunger statues. One million people died across Ireland through starvation and disease. They didn’t need to die but did because the British government decided profits for a tiny handful of very wealthy people was more important than saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
“More than one million people fled Ireland in a short number of years. They traveled by whatever means they could in complete desperation and were not welcomed with open arms wherever they arrived. They were described as ‘famine Irish’ who were ‘swarming’ across seas bringing backwardness, disease and poverty.
“Today, we see millions of people fleeing starvation, war, crushing poverty and climate change. It’s no different from what Ireland’s Great Hunger refugees faced.
“People from Iraq and Afghanistan are almost always included among those fleeing and among those drowning. Both countries were brought to ruin by US and British government disastrous wars and occupations that succeeded in killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people and stuffing billions in blood profits into the bank account of arms manufacturers.
“In 2015 the toddler Alan Kurdi washed up on Greek beach. The world responded with grief, with outrage and demanded action. Nothing has changed.
“Boris Johnson and Priti Patel should be going to the International Criminal Court for their racist immigration policies, for their efforts to demonise migrants and asylum seekers, for their role in the death of innocent people at sea, in trucks, in freezing camps.
“But so too should the EU architects of racist ‘fortress Europe’. We’re told over and over how progressive EU bureaucrats are. It’s a myth.
“27 people died in the English channel last week but nearly 2000 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea this year already. Nearly 40,000 have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since 2014. This is the direct result of racist EU immigration policies.
“EU bosses are spending tens of billions to strengthen Fortress Europe with surveillance, patrols and 1000 kilometres of border walls.
“Nothing has changed because the British government and EU bureaucrats prioritise upholding racist borders and the wealth of a handful of billionaires over taking real humanitarian action.
“The British government and EU elites will never put humanity before billionaires, powerful corporations and war profiteers.
James Connolly, a migrant himself, opposed a border in Ireland but also opposed borders across Europe. He continues to speak for a vision directly opposed to that of elites and billionaires:
“The day will come, and perhaps like a bolt from the blue, when the frontiers will not be sufficient to prevent the handclasp of friendship between the peoples. But that day will come only when the kings and kaisers, queens and czars, financiers and capitalists who now oppress humanity will be hurled from their place and power, and the emancipated workers of the earth, no longer the blind instruments of rich men’s greed will found a new society, a new civilisation, whose corner stone will be labour, whose inspiring principle will be justice, whose limits humanity alone can bound.”
“If we want to end English channel and Mediterranean Sea drowning tragedies this is what we need to aspire to do.”