Commentary
As we know, the reaction of many Western leaders to the victory of the new Italian (and first female) Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, in recent national elections has ranged from downright confused to cold and aloof. was.
French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has promised to keep a close eye on Meloni to make sure he respects Italy’s human rights.
Given Lampedusa’s proximity to the African continent, Italy is at the forefront of a wave of illegal immigration that began in 2015 and has never quite stopped.
Since the beginning of the year, 70,000 migrants have arrived by boat on the country’s shores, according to a report. BBC newsOf course, neither the EU nor its member states are trying to help.
According to the 2019 agreement, each member state is to redistribute 3,500 illegal immigrants if they dock in Italian ports.
I have a cousin who lives in the town of Ventimiglia near the French border on the Riviera. They told me that any illegal immigrants who managed to cross the border would be taken back to Ventimiglia by the French police and left Italy to deal with them.
French hypocrisy on this issue knows no bounds. Recently, Meloni decided that he had had enough and banned the ship Ocean Viking carrying 230 illegal African immigrants (including 57 children) from docking in Italian ports. So she had to anchor in the port of Toulouse, France.
French President Emmanuel Macron and Interior Minister Gerard Dalmanin described Meloni’s decision as, among other things, “selfish”, “unacceptable”, “violating trust” and “violating international norms”. They also added that there would be “serious consequences” for bilateral relations.
However, Giorgio Muhle, Member of Parliament for the Italian government, Alleged In total, France has accepted 37 illegal immigrants out of the 3,500 agreed upon this year. The French may therefore be violating some norm and abdicating responsibility for issues involving Europe as a whole.
the hypocrisy doesn’t end there
After all, the Ocean Viking is a ship leased by French NGOs Sos Mediterrannée and Medicins Sans Frontiers and used to carry migrants making the perilous crossing from Africa across the Mediterranean.
But France’s contribution to the illegal immigration crisis is even more serious. As Meloni pointed out herself in a recent TV interviewFrance’s financial interests in poor African countries (and former French colonies) like Burkina Faso, with so many exploited and desperately destitute, decided to make the perilous journey to Europe. and means to exacerbate Europe’s illegal immigration crisis. .
During a TV interview, Meloni held up a picture of a young child working in a gold mine in Burkina Faso. Of course, child labor is illegal, but that doesn’t mean child labor will go away. Children of miners in Burkina Faso, according to a 2016 report UN report They make up one-third of all miners in the country, and they hope to squat down on the ground and scratch through mud and bowled rocks to extract gold for little money.
Meloni explains: Burkina Faso is he one of the poorest countries in the world. France prints colonial currency for Burkina Faso, which has gold. ”
“In return, they demand that 50% of everything Burkina Faso exports end up in the French treasury. It comes down to the coffers,” she continued.
Meloni then concluded: The solution is to free Africans from certain Europeans who exploit it and allow these people to live with what they have. ”
Once again Meloni speaks candidly, pointing out so vividly and frankly the hypocrisy of those who pretend to care about the poor and the flood of illegal economic immigration to Europe, while instead making people smugglers rich, It paints those who oppose illegal immigration as racist.
Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Epoch Times.
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Rocco Loiacono is a senior lecturer and Italian to English translator at Curtin University Law School in Perth, Australia. His research in translation, linguistics and law has been widely published in peer-reviewed journals.