Europe has solidarity crisis rather than migrant crisis – human rights activist

The EU countries have no migrant crisis, but they have solidarity crisis.

Mitre Georgiev, the representative of the Croatian “Welcome” initiative, expressed such an opinion during the Docudays documentary film festival in Kyiv.

“The so-called ‘migrant crisis’ demonstrates the problem and says it is not really the migrant crisis, it is rather the crisis of solidarity. The things we experience now are the litmus test, which shows that the whole political system, which should actually solve problems, is in crisis,” the Human Rights Information Centre correspondent quotes the human rights defender as saying.

The expert regrets that the “Balkan route” is now closed for refugees. According to him, for example, about 200 people now stay in the camp of the Slovenian town of Grodno and do not know what their fate will be.

“It is often asked why the refugees do not seek asylum and assistance in Croatia, Turkey, Serbia and other countries located along this Balkan route. The answer is simple: these countries simply do not provide any help. There are now two million people in Turkey, who cannot get basic assistance and protection. They cannot apply for the refugee status as Turkey has not signed the relevant international conventions,” Mitre Georgiev said.

He noted that the public now should advocate for establishment of the safe routes for the asylum seekers. According to him, the Croatian activists now demand to adopt the temporary refugee protection directive.

“The European refugee protection system is not designed for the times of crisis. It has never worked in the crisis. Those directives of temporary protection were adopted after the breakup of Yugoslavia, but have never been implemented,” Mitre Georgiev stressed.

“Migration will never end. This is a fact. I personally invite you to come and watch the documentaries from the Travellers special program at the Docudays. They perfectly well show the different reasons why people resort to migration, what are the ways and the consequences of these processes. Since the migration will never end, it is very important to create narratives and stories that will help to better understand this phenomenon,” the activist summed up.

As a reminder, more than one million asylum seekers got to the EU through Turkey in 2015. Since the beginning of 2016, more than 130,000 people passed the sea route between Turkey and Greece.