Hello, and welcome to another live discussion with the M25's coordinating team featuring radical ideas you won't hear anywhere else. This one saw one of the worst shipwrecks in Europe in a decade. Up to 700 people drowned, including at least 100 children, when a refugee boat sank off the coast of Greece on June 14. It's another tragic milestone resulting from the anti-migrant policies of governments like Greece and of the European Union itself. Inhumane policies that were given voice last year by the EU's foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell. Europe is a beautiful garden, he said, that must be protected from the surrounding jungle that's ready to invade it. Similar tragedies have failed to bring enough public attention to the plight of migrants in the Mediterranean. This time, though, could be different. Survivors and NGOs have accused Greek authorities of playing a role in the deaths. The Greek coast guards, they say, watched the boats drift for hours without making any attempt to rescue people and may have then contributed to its capsizing. Tonight, we talk about the latest developments in this crisis and ask who should be held accountable and what needs to change to make sure the senseless loss of innocent lives in the Mediterranean stops once and for all. Joining us for this vital conversation, we have our coordinating team from all over Europe, including Greece, and for our guest, Miguel Duarte, a tireless migrant rights activist who has already aided in the rescue of 14,000 people.  And you, watching us live, if you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the YouTube chat and we'll tackle some of them as we go. Miguel, welcome, and I'd like to give you the floor to kick us off. Tell us a bit more about your background as an activist and how you see this latest tragedy. Hello, everyone, and thank you for the opportunity to speak about this most recent tragedy. So I've been involved in the so-called refugee crisis since 2016 when I first joined a sea rescue mission on board the ship Juventa. For that work, less than a year later, some of the crew of that ship, myself included, had to face four years of investigation for aiding and abetting illegal immigration, which, according to Italian law, could lead each of us to 20 years in prison. And after an enormous investigation about this, in 2021, four of us had to go to trial, and myself and five others were arbitrarily acquitted. So many of us have decided to return to the sea with other ships because the Juventa is still seized, unfortunately, and proceed with the life-saving work that all of these NGOs in the Central Mediterranean do. So it's been two weeks since this enormous tragedy took place off the coast of Greece. It's possibly the biggest in recent history in the Mediterranean. And significantly, just yesterday, the newspaper Le Monde published parts of a Frontex board meeting in which it stated that twice the Greek coast guards asked Frontex not to report on the siding of the boat many, many hours before the shipwreck took place. And when Frontex actually did that, the Greek authorities adulterated the given coordinates to a more convenient position from a Greek perspective, so they said. So much ink has been spilled in the international press about the details of this event, which actually get more horrific and cruel the more we learn. But it is also our responsibility as civil society to see beyond the narrow gaze of the mainstream media that is necessarily both limited in space and in time. We must see the events that took place two weeks ago as only the most recent loud manifestation of the violence of the European border regime and actually only its inevitable consequence. Just last year, we saw two major reports come out that put the spotlights on the illegal and immoral pushback pushbacks done by by Frontex and the Greek coast guard. One was done by the European anti fraud agency and resulted in the. In Fabrice Legeri, the executive executive director of Frontex, leaving the agency. And another one was put out by the independent investigation agency, forensic architecture, which documents 27000 cases of people that have been kidnapped by either Frontex or the Greek authorities and put adrift in engine boats off the coast of Turkey, many of them necessarily to their deaths. This was largely ignored by the media in many countries. I'm from Portugal and in Portugal, it was barely talked about, but also in the international media. It was it was very silent, which, which, you know, even years, even after years of looking at the consequences of the violent border regime that we have in Europe. It still surprises me how little attention we pay to such stark consequences of this. So I'd like to, you know, put this forth for discussion and try to understand, you know, to see if all of us together can get a more accurate perspective of the of what should be done on on a Greek level, but but necessarily mostly on a European level, because this is not a Greek phenomenon. This is this has been happening in Greece, but significantly in Italy. In Spain and many other parts of this continent. Thank you, Miguel. By the way, last year we interviewed Miguel for our YouTube channel and it was a great, you know, wide range of discussions. So if you'd want to watch that, which I highly recommends the link will be in the in the YouTube chat. Let's go to Greece now with Yanis. Hello, Lucas. Hello, Miguel. Thanks for your introduction. We're coming out of a general election, a second one in quick succession. We have had the I wouldn't call it tragedy. It's worse than that. It's it's a crime against humanity. What happened off the coast of the Peloponnese of Pilos? And I'm afraid that I'm going to fail to contain my depression and pessimism. Because in response to Miguel's question, what can we do? You will permit me to say, at least under the terrible influence of the verdict of the electorate here, that the answer is nothing, but please don't believe me and carry on fighting with a good fight. But at least for a few minutes, let's be honest with one another. We are facing a European. Policy that is complicit and absolutely guilty of sustaining the policies that are killing people that are performing mass murder in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. The outrage over the drowning of hundreds of children and even more hundreds of adults off the coast of the Peloponnese, that outrage and sadness amongst the Greek population lasted no more than 10 seconds. No more than 10 seconds. There was a very feeble, very low key, very badly attended rally. An anti-racist rally in support of the right of refugees to life and limb. The right wing parties that are actively pursuing in the social media a line of they deserved it, they shouldn't have gotten on that boat. Why did they invade our space, our European space?  Excuse the French. They were out in strength and they won. They increased their vote. We have four ultra right wing parties with fascistic tendencies. And, you know, parties that are making no bones about it. They support the pushbacks. They support the fences. They support the prison camps in Libya for people who's only crime is the wish to escape a home that has become like the mouth of a shark. And I'm very much afraid that this is universal across Europe. I don't think there are many places around Europe which could not be described thus. Since we found the DIM 25 in February of 2016, when we were in the Fox Pune, during our speeches back then, warning Europeans that if Europe is not democratized, that if we don't move away from policies of austerity that are turning the majority of our peoples into victims of plunder on behalf of oligarchy capital, that the people will be desensitized. And this desensitization is going to lead to a postmodern version of the 1920s and 1930s when we know very well that the deepening economic crisis and the deepening unease regarding the capacity of the average family or person to make ends meet is going to very easily turn into an ultra-right-wing racist onslaught. We were warning about that in 2016 and we were saying that the reason why we created the DIM 25 was because of that prospect and we failed. We put all our efforts into changing Europe by 2019, the European Parliament elections, we didn't elect the single MEP, the left collapsed, the greens turned brown or black, look at the German greens in government today, not a peep, not a word about any of this, not a word about any of this. And the whole of the continent is shifting to the right and the parties that are winking at the population saying, you know, okay, well, terrible thing that these people drown but there's no alternative to allowing them to drown or no alternative to creating the circumstances for them drowning because unless they drown, there are millions back in Africa or Asia, hundreds of millions who are watching to see whether these people will make it to Europe or not. If they see that they make it to Europe safe and sound, then they will come too. So the message of our establishment of both the liberal center or if you want the radical center, yeah, people like Borrell, if you mentioned Lucas and the fascists is the same. These people need to be sacrificed. We are going to put on a show of fake crocodile tears when they die. That's what distinguishes the liberal center from the fascists. The liberal center pretends to cry over, you know, the deaths and the drowning of these kids and adults. The fascists don't even shed crocodile tears. That's the only difference. They both think that deaths in the watery grave that is the Mediterranean are the only policy to stop migrants from coming. And they say so. I mean, they tell me, they were telling me in Palomins behind closed doors that has to be death in the Mediterranean to stop them from overrunning us. You know, the white replacement theory is alive and well.  We need people. We need millions of people coming because of our demographics. And you can see that they know that because when white Christians flock in their millions like the Ukrainians did as a result of that other inhuman tragedy, the, you know, the war in Ukraine, they open the doors and do a problem. So it's pure racism. It's white replacement theory. And there is an explicit attempt to use mass deaths, to weaponize mass deaths in the Mediterranean to build taller fences that maximize the number of people who drown in the Mediterranean because when you build tall fences between Greece and Turkey, then of course they will bypass them with boats and then they will drown. Especially if you push back those boats, we have at least 864 incidents in Greece of pushbacks. They've been well documented. Pushbacks are not only a violation of international law, but it is a direct attempt to get people to drown. If not to drown, to get particularly wet and end up back on the coast of Asia Minor in a terrible state so that they can tell, send an SMS back home to Kenya, to Pakistan, to Afghanistan, saying, I didn't make it in order to deter others from coming. And if they can drown, that's even better because then the message becomes stronger, don't come to Europe. Now that's the reality. We have a duty not to window dress it, not to pretify it.  It's not even in the interest of Europeans to do this, not only because of the lack of people in this continent and the desertification of the continent and the fact that we don't have enough labor.  And so the result is that Europe now has won without any doubt the historic prize of uncivilized idiocy. And I've very much failed, there's nothing we can do about it. We will keep fighting but we will lose. There's nothing we can do when the population of a country like Greece, which was very sympathetic to migrants, about a few years ago, after 750 people die of the Constant Polar Punis, within 10 days vote for the parties that celebrate those drownings. At that point, comrades, I throw my arms up in the air and I surrender. I don't really, but for a few minutes I feel like doing it. And then we keep struggling and we will keep struggling until we're dead. But let's not be stupid and think that we're going to win. There's zero probability of victory. Mass death and uncivilized behavior has triumphed once and for all. I've never been so negative in my life. I had to be 62 to reach that point. Apologies for their bleakness. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Giannis. Let me bring in Juliana now from Germany. Juliana. Yeah, hi. Thank you, Lucas. Yeah, unfortunately, I'm also very pessimistic because I think the development in general in Europe right now is really devastating. I mean, in Germany yesterday, the IFD, the Fascist Party, won their first election in a region in Germany. And I saw an interview with people of that region today. They interviewed the people on the street and many of them really argued about the foreigners, that there is a problem with foreigners and that the IFD is promising to get that under control. And they talked about they are getting apartments and we have to work. So you can really see that the right wing and fascists, they got into the mind of the social week of those who are in existential crisis. It's the pensioners who are not making ends meet. It's the people who are really struggling and yeah, they tell them the problem are the migrants. And I mean, this is an old story. It was always kind of the huge topic of fascists to argue about migrants. But now with the refugees, and I agree on that point, you can see that there is such a relief for many people that they haven't reached anywhere in Europe.  But I think that the main problem is why we see the IFD in Germany getting so much stronger. They're in Poland, they're the second strongest party right now. They come just after the CDU, which is the conservative. So if there were now elections in Germany, the government would be it would be a government where I would say, I don't know if I would stay in Germany to be honest, that kind of of right wing government. And I think the problem is that there are no social policies. The last 10 years politics has been really cruel to the people, poverty spread more and more. There are over 50% of people who are not getting by. And so it's really easy to play them out against refugees and against other people who are also suffering. So it's like they're suffering against the other suffering. And this is, I think, where the parties like the IFD and the right wingers are really spreading the misinformation on the Internet through social media. As Miguel said, the press isn't saying anything about what's happening. Many people don't even know that there are pushbacks. For sure. I had just an argument with someone from my family about that, about that, about what happened. And the person said to me, well, it was like 700 criminal young men. And I was like, what are you talking about? I saw it on social media. I was like, there were children on that boat. And even if it were 700 young men, but to think that there are only criminals, and I don't know what picture gets painted about these people and what their motivation is to come here. But there are so many lies that get spread through the Internet about those people. And for us, it's really difficult to fight against that. Then you have on top the media who's not helping out very much. And you have the government like right now who's really fueling the problem because they are not taking care of the social issues of the social weak people. So they get pulled away from the right wing and fascist parties. Because right now, the fascists are gaining more interest in Germany exactly because of those things. Exactly because nobody does anything to take care of all the crisis that are unfolding for many years now. And so yeah, people are sitting at home and they're like, yeah, I'm sorry that they drowned, but you know, my life's hard too. So yeah, it makes me look at the future also very pessimistic, because right now I cannot see how we can break this cycle. And it's just a handful of empathetic people who are really caring about the refugees. And I feel like we are in the minority right now. And I hope it's just a feeling to be honest. But yeah, it remains to be seen in the future. Thanks Juliana. You did also in Germany, although you did spend quite some time in Greece recently. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to add a quick point that might be interesting to some people about this election that Juliana mentioned in Zonneberg, where the IFD was a strongest party for the first time in a German election. And that is this place, even though it's in Eastern Germany, it's not your classic case of an abandoned neglected left behind community with large unemployment and so on. They actually have very low unemployment, just 5%, which is very low for Eastern Germany, usually have more than 10%, sometimes more than 20%. So I think that we should not, well obviously the CDU's analysis of what went wrong in that area is that there was too much LGBT ideology and climate protection and so on. That's what the CDU tells you. And the leftist party is of course saying that it's because of the lack of protection, because of high unemployment and so on. But I think it's a bit too easy to say that it is because of high unemployment, because in this particular city that elected this IFD, they don't have particularly high unemployment and it's comparatively wealthy compared to the rest of Eastern Germany. And I think this is a part where also the politicians have to take some of their responsibility in manufacturing, this kind of this kind of conviction among people that there is something deeply wrong with the other, obviously, with the politics, bringing in people into the mainstream parties that are openly xenophobic, giving them a platform. And then it's like Janne said, people are more likely to vote for the original, rather than voting for a CDU politician who's xenophobic, they vote for directly for the xenophobic parties. But I think that this particular example, Zanneberg should occupy us a bit longer outside of this Zoom, obviously, to just look at how exactly people there got radicalized, because it's not straightforward. Thank you. Yeah, that's an extremely good point. And in Germany, on the whole, like Juliana was also saying, it's very concerning development, so it's definitely not confined to Greece that we're seeing this. Amir, from the Hague, our policy coordinator. Thank you, Lukas. The sentiments that we just talked about in Germany, etc., are also really felt here in the Netherlands. The situation is not necessarily any better. It's a bit further out, if you like, from the front line of what's happening in the Mediterranean. But general public support is waning, unfortunately. Even though Europe is not really necessarily the largest host of refugees at the moment, or in the past few decades, I mean, 76% of the world's refugee population, other people in the protection, as the UN defines it, are hosted in low and middle income countries. So Europe is really, whatever Europe is hosting is still quite small. Turkey, 3.6 million, Iran, 3.4 million, Colombia, 2.5 million. Then you get to Germany, 2.1 million, and then Pakistan, and so on and so on. So, and of course, we know that the numbers in Europe increase rapidly, even the war in Ukraine. The second issue here, of course, is somebody mentioned on the chat about the UN. The UN is still being a bit more on the toothless side of things, and a lot of the support that the UN is giving is actually on the refugee, other at the host community level, in terms of cash support, if you like, or refugee camps, and so on and so forth. But it has had no real action on any initiative, for example, on the pushbacks or on the role that Frontex, which we sometimes think of it as a front for executioners, really, in a sense, what Frontex is doing, allowing just murder to take place. From a policy point of view, and we're going to also share the link now in the chat as well, we're going to both what can be done in terms of policy proposals in the short, medium, and long term, not just for the refugee population, but also for host communities who also, in some places, do need support, as well as the root causes of the refugee crisis, if you will, be it climate change, unfair trade relations, colonialism, and post-colonialism, Western support for dictators, and of course, support for wars, and more warmongering. And this is also crucial for us, because we see as the war drags on in Ukraine, and further militarization of the European Union, this is just going to keep on escalating as we go. So it's important that wherever we are, our activists, like we had now yesterday in Ireland, who were protesting outside the Irish government's consultative forum, which is basically aiming to reduce and remove Irish neutrality. So there's very few bastions left against militarism, and we have to do everything we can to protect it. Thanks, Amir. Miguel, I'd like to bring you back in, and I'm sure you have a lot to respond to from the things that were said here, central introduction. But I'd like to throw another question at you as well, if you don't mind. It seems to me, and I've had this thought before, but the beginning of the discussion only deepens it, that one of the issues that we have here is, by and large, society has lost the capacity, forever had it in the first place, which I think we did, but we've lost the capacity to see humanity in those people, those people getting in boats and risking their lives to reach Europe. It seems that quite literally, most people, and that's not a conscious process, but most people, they don't really see these people as human beings at the end of the day. A few weeks ago, before this tragedy, this latest tragedy happened, there was this New York Times investigation that proved with video evidence that pushbacks were happening in Greece, I'm sure you saw that, and you followed that very closely. And on DM25 social media, we helped publicize that because it was so important. And some of the reactions that we got were stuff that I can't really bear to repeat, and it's hard to be shocked by people's reactions on social media these days, but that really did it for me personally, and I'm sure for anyone who had a misfortune seeing them. Also, I'm sure it wasn't, as you know, as well, it wasn't lost on anyone, the sad irony of how different the reactions were to this tragedy in the Mediterranean compared to the other tragedy that happened with the submersible on that expedition to the Titanic. Obviously, five people versus hundreds of people, but five rich people, the story was much more appealing for newspapers. So that was also, you know, it's helped drive on the point that we've lost the capacity to really connect with these people on a human level. Now, you're someone who you have helped rescue these people, you have looked into their eyes over and over again. How do we help society recover that sense? Do you have any insights on this? Maybe allow me to be, let's say the optimistic part of this conversation. I do understand the pessimism that I really do, and I've seen a lot of these, a lot of this tragedy, a lot of this European catastrophe unfold before my eyes. So I really do understand pessimism, believe me, when we talk about migration in Europe. However, having been or having had the privilege of being part of the of the movement for migrants rights for quite a few years now, let me tell you that the movement has never been stronger in terms of numbers and will to change things. I joined back in 2016 when the crews were completely amateur, like we didn't, to be 100% honest with you, we didn't know what we were doing there. And between then and now so much changed, of course, there was criminalization. I myself was under investigation for four years. A lot of us, our case was just the first, it was not the only one, right? So every single NGO that was active in the Central Mediterranean at some point, got in trouble with the law, with, you know, preposterous claims of human trafficking and aiding illegal immigration. Every single crew got got accusations of this sort. And despite all of that, despite all of those efforts, we've never had as many ships in the Central Mediterranean as we do now. So you see, there is a lot to be pessimistic about for sure, the government in Italy at the moment. Although let's not put all of the blame in the far right, because the center left in Europe has a lot to, well, there's a lot to be said about them. I think they've done a lot more to erode human rights in Italy than the far right ever could, although they certainly would, if they could. I find hope there because, you know, it costs a lot of money and it costs a lot of efforts to put one of these ships on the Mediterranean.  There's so many hours of work put into this that, you know, it's not only the people you see, you know, stretching their arms to get somebody out of the water, it's the thousands and thousands of Europeans and not only that stand behind those people. And to be honest, my perspective from the front line is that, of course, criminalization has never been stronger. And, you know, the fascism hasn't been as strong as it is now in Europe for many, many years, decades even. However, the response is also very strong. And it's, from my perspective, it's also never been stronger. So I'd say let's have hope in that as a way to change things, because it's only through social movements and the strength of social movements that we've ever been able to have any change. Now, just to add something to Yanis' perspective, which was very interesting, on the reasons and the consequences for the construction of this European border regime, I would also like to add that it's not just deterrence, I think, that is the cause or the main goal of all of the deaths in the Mediterranean and in other borders in Europe. It's also the fact that the more we criminalize migration, the more we create laws that make these people appear as illegal human beings, if there ever was such a thing, the more we justify taking away their rights. And I think this really plays into the erosion of labor rights in the whole wide Europe, in Portugal, which is a very small country comparatively to the rest of Europe. We have 10 million inhabitants and 300,000 people that are working, there are migrants, and they are working in paying taxes and social security, but have no access to citizenship, because they are not living regularly in Portugal. And this is the case in so many countries in Europe. And I think very significantly, it was also pretty much ignored by most of the international media, but very significantly in the beginning of the global pandemic, lots of countries in Europe closed their borders. And at some point in the beginning of the first summer of pandemic, the Italian government, or at first the Italian agriculture, started saying that they had entire fields that would never be picked of fruit and vegetables that would never be picked, and would just go to waste, because they didn't have the seasonal workers that would usually come from Eastern Europe. So what does the government immediately do? They emit regularity, so regular status, temporary, for 200,000 migrants in one go. They just sign it off, just like that, right? So I do think that the establishments and even the far rights know that we need these people, but they prefer them without rights. Yeah. Let me bring in Johannes now, also from Germany. Thank you. I wanted to add one point about what Lukas, what you just asked Miguel before about how is that even possible? All the hate that you can see on social media, but also in some of the interviews that Jojana mentioned, and also in the voting of people that Janus referred to recently in Greece, but as we see in the polls and voting in all over Europe, and that is the, I think one main reason for this, and I will follow up with an example from Germany, is the dehumanization of these people. If you, I think most people wouldn't really be able to hate migrants or anyone so much if you see them as an equal human being. So one thing that is very important for the political actors that want a profit from that is to dehumanize those people, criminalize them, as Miguel also said. And how does this work? I think we also know, of course, there's a lot of going on on social media, a lot of fake news going around, a lot of the stories being twisted, as we also heard before in this call, and one, but I think also that one main reason for this is mainstream media in Europe playing a really important role in this and transferring this kind of right-wing frame of the criminal migrants to everyone, and to every house, to every TV station, TV in people's homes. And you can, for example, look at it in Germany, where the migrants coming in 2015 after the Syria war were always portrayed as a big wave, and there was a big fuss about some, you know, there were some problems with, of course, taking so many people in, you know, that you should rightfully talk about, but then also, you know, every case of one of those many people actually having a criminal act or something else getting blown completely out of proportion in media. And this 2015 wave, as the main frame also was, is still looked back in a lot of also the mainstream media as this, you know, really, you know, but there were problems in 2015, and, you know, this kind of stays in the collective, yeah, writing and saying in all TV stations. And now we had the war in Ukraine, and we also had a lot of refugees, especially last year, and we were rightfully taking everyone. And when you actually look at the numbers, the numbers were higher last year, but there was almost no, you know, talk about this being a problem, you know, problems with some of those coming maybe, you know, doing criminal acts or something like that, which is completely normal that a small portion of every society or every group of people doesn't always act in the right way. There are many reasons for that. But if you look at the how the media portrays these two migrant years where a lot of people came to Germany, it's just, you know, black and white. And of course, one needs also the thing that that has to do with it, with the color of the skin of those people coming. And I think this is one of the main reasons and also one thing that is of course very, you know, it's very hard to work against that. But I think we should try and try to tell a different story, you know, about those people coming, because I think also one of the, I remember also one of the leading right-wing people in the right-wing party, AfD in Germany, has once in an interview that I saw of him really said that he thinks it's very important that the, you know, their voters, their members, most people in Germany don't even get in touch with, you know, the migrants coming, because, you know, they would be the fear of them actually being seen as human beings, which they are. And then I think also the hate would fast go away. Thanks. Thanks, Johannes. Daphne, Daphne, based in France, originally from Turkey. Hello, hello. I have to admit, I'm also very pessimistic and like very legitimately like terrified of the situation in general. Because the way failure to address not only the issue of safe passage for migrants, but the wider issue of not only regional or national inequalities, but global inequality that is driving this migration flows, this emptying out almost of the of the third world of the resources of everything and geopolitical instability, threat of war, ongoing conflicts and not only is there, let's say, some attempts to address these conflicts and remedy them is exactly the opposite. It's kind of like almost kind of like the climate crisis in a way, which will of course is another source of refugees is just like this denial and the markets will fix it or like the aid models that have clearly failed will fix it. And this is like just the complete continuation of the global race to the bottom. And this is one of the consequences. And I think the worst thing is I think that people, that's, I mean, as Janice said, like there is no alternative, like nothing can ever be better, nothing can ever be fixed. What can only, what we can only hope and accept, expect from politicians is to protect us from these for protect us from these people who are even more desperate and they're coming to get us and it made us or whatever. And I don't think there's ever been like a time for me where the famous Russell Luxemburgs socialism or barbarism quote has meant like more. When I was a younger person, I didn't quite understand. I thought it was just like a moralistic metaphor. I didn't really understand at the time that she was referring to like this escalation, this acceleration towards, towards this very violent kind of politics. And it's very terrifying. And, you know, and like, I can't remember who said it, but somebody said like when people are afraid they like monsters, thinking that the monsters would protect them, but the monsters, they thrive on fear, they feed on fear, they get bigger, the more fear there is, it's really terrifying. And it's terrifying the real level of racism and anti migrant sentiment in Turkey as well, for where I am. And the politics that is developing around it, not only the conditions, so like now there's lots of, I mean, people who have already, migrants that have already safely reached Turkey, they're being exploited. And they, like, there's a really terrible rise in illegal, no, in deaths in workplaces of Syrians, for example, and child labor, which has always been a problem in Turkey is now, like, there's constantly more and more news of Syrian children illegally working in construction sites and falling and dying. This is really terrible. And like no sympathy, you know, they shouldn't have come. And of course, I don't want to now, under the political pressure, he wants to send back the migrants on to the empty Kurdish territories, which is messed up in a number of ways that I can't even get into now. But I want to also say, like, how, to just point out how global this phenomenon is, and it really does kind of, I think, exceed some of the easy stereotypes we have about it. So, France's poorest department is a department called, it's an island, it's the next colony, lots of poverty, a 95% Muslim population, lots of privacy, lots of crime related to private poverty. But Mayot is still part of French, it's French territory. And it is not far from another island, which is not a French territory, which is, I think, called Camaras. And so lots of people, which is an even poorer island than Mayot, lots of people from Camaras are coming illegally by sea to Mayot. And Marine Le Pen, in this very, very ex colony, 95% Muslim colony, department in France got 42% of the votes. So, I'm just putting that out there. So, another thing I want to say is that like migrants, next to migrants fleeing, there's another issue of a brain drain, which is like more desired immigration by the West, right? Oh, we want the qualified, we don't want like the, you're tired and you're poor, as, as Americans would say. And this has also a very big effect on now like 32% of college educated engineers and medical personnel are saying they want to leave Turkey. And I recently saw, and this is also, I think, so linked the austerity. So, I will say how I recently saw a deconstruction of the NHS staff staff and how much of it is made, how much of NHS staff is foreign born. And and it's really, I can't remember the numbers now, but it's really striking. And meanwhile, like Tunisia and Romania are their hospitals are in crisis because they don't have enough doctors. And at the same time, the British Interior Minister is saying that they won't remove the caps because they cap the schools for medical school students and nursing school. So, they won't remove the caps because it's too expensive to form nurses and doctors.  And then who cares what happens to those countries that they use their taxpayers to form these personnel and doctors. And now they are in dire need of those doctors. And the problem continues. I mean, middle class educated professionals, engineers or doctors, they're also like a big part of a tax base of a country, isn't it? Especially countries like Tunisia and Romania. So, the way we reproduce and really reproduce these inequalities and hollowing out and like stealing of every kind of resource instead of like investing in people everywhere is just so disgusting. And it really makes me like I'm a bit emotional. I almost want to cry now. So, I stop now. Thanks. Thanks, Daphne. Ivana, Ivana from Serbia. Thanks, Lukas. And thanks to everybody who spoke before because basically everything that I wanted to say is covered from so many aspects. And what concerns me the most is exactly this lack of humanity and empathy that everybody mentioned. If you remember in 2015, when the influx of Syrian refugees started, there was this photo of a Syrian boy drowned on a shore of Bodrum in Turkey, which is a Turkish resort. And that was the point that that photo was on every cover of every newspaper, I think, in the world. And that was the peak of empathy at that point afterwards. And also, I think it's important to take this into consideration psychologically that people do build mechanisms of defense. And that if something is all the time in front of your eyes and you can also see it with war and gamification of the war and the people thinking it's a game and you have joysticks and no real people and so on. So, it attaches people from human aspect of refugees or anybody who is suffering greatly. And also, we are using different terms a lot here for migration. There are migrants and we already know who are the migrants, they need to swim to the shore and if they survive and so on and so on, they will make it. There is this Eastern European migration, which is a cheap labor force and half of Europe would collapse economically, as Miguel said, if there is nobody to pick the crops and so on. So on one side, it's reinforced. On the other side, there is a strong message that is sent if people are being drowned in the sea every day. And unfortunately, I believe that this is just the biggest number that was caught and that it's happening every day. And it reminds me a lot. We have a poem from the end of the First World War, while the Serbian army was recovering in Korfu and when they didn't have anywhere to bury them anymore, they would throw them in the sea and it's called Lucy Tomb. And I remember when I went to Korfu, it was very spooky to me and I saw people on the beaches swimming in that sea and because we have deep historical connection with this poem and historically with this period of time, it was unimaginable for me to swim there. So also, I would like to call the conscious of people that are going to their summer vacations, enjoying the agency, to think about what is the cost of that. And also, what the left or we as DM need to consider is the real concerns of people and that our policies should not just quote unquote, just address freedom of the movement, but also the real problems in the society that are piling up because nobody's doing anything to integrate migrants into society. It appears like the left is sitting there saying let them in and then when they are in, they're sleeping on the streets of Athens or Brussels or Berlin and so on and so on. So I think that these policies or, for example, something that our Meta center for post-capitalism did, workshops with children, refugees, teaching them the craft. It was photography concretely in this case, but anything that can connect people to people because yes, fear is the biggest tool of manipulation and if we don't get to know each other, if we don't hear each other's music, if we don't taste each other's food and so on, we won't understand that we are all human beings. So on one hand, it gives me hope because human race was never very kind to one another. On the other hand, there is a lot of work to do in integrating refugees, migrants, expats, call them as you wish into society. Thank you. Thank you, Ivana. Let's go back to Juliana. Yes, thank you. Just two little things I want to add and one fits to a comment, I guess, in the chat about capitalism, which I think this is also the point that people believe that there is only so much cake and that people can take away something from that cake that I'm fighting over all the time. And I think what Miguel also said, and I think it's very important that we also should criticize the left and the center left because I think there were really big mistakes and how we approached the topic, also Ivana mentioned it, to think just naively that it's about saving people and everybody would be on board and be like, yeah, I see the disaster, so let's save them. And to not take account that many might reject such a thing and that not everyone is having the same feelings toward the same disaster, in any case. I think it was a bit a beacon of hope to see how many people also in the mainstream media in Germany called out this hypocrisy of having news for over one week over the submarine in the Titanic and what happened. There was some mainstream articles which said, is this okay? Is this actually not wrong to have this unbalanced coverage of news where I had to laugh because the same newspaper that wrote the article was the same newspaper that had no coverage over what happened to the Mediterranean Sea. So yeah, but I think we have to evaluate as left how we're approaching the topic and how we can how we can act on many levels. One is to go by empathy, but it's only also to present really solutions that people understand and to take fear away. And the last thing I want to say is that I just remembered this one explanation of Zizek, which points to the fact that Europe itself has a hierarchy of looking down at each other. Like he said, like for the Great Britain, the Balkan starts at France and for France the Balkan starts at Germany and so on. That we still also within Europe, we have a lot of resentment towards each other and we're like we have second class, not just the Balkan and Western Europe, but it's also amongst France and Germany. Every nation has some issues with some other nation and I think that we are still in that state of mind in Europe towards each other makes it no not easier to open on the minds of the people for people from other continents. So I think there is still a big racism problem within Europe that needs to get pointed out. I think that was it for me. Thanks Juliana. Let's go to the nine now, also in Greece to close. Thank you Lukas. So while I was also very depressed and I didn't feel like talking so much and everyone has covered many aspects and that has been great, but even a reminder of something that happened in Greece and I just wanted to close with a beautiful phrase that I heard. It was in 2015 when it was this boy I lands picture that was all over the press and I had at the moment been studying to create an art installation in LFCs, which is a place, a very poor industrial area, which had mostly been empowered in the industry. I mean by refugees having come from Turkey at that time, the early 20s, 1922 around then, and I had blocked that image and all that wave of refugees coming from Syria back then had just blocked me completely and I then watched a documentary that had been filmed in that area in LFCs for 15 years and it was this character who was a homeless man, Moonstruck as they say, and the film director had been following him for 15 years and this man was always running hiding under his coat from the camera and he was collecting ancient stones and leaving them outside the museum, but at some point at the middle of the film that obviously he had become accustomed with the director. The director asks him, Panagioti, that was his name Panagioti Spermakis, where do you live? Where's your home? And he turns around astounded and he looks at the camera and he says upon this earth under the cloud and this phrase sort of unblocked me and I felt that's true, we all have this, we are all the same and it unblocked me and then I managed to work on this project and I called it upon the earth under the cloud. So I just wanted to finish with this phrase, I found it so moving and thank you for giving me the space to say that. Thank you then I for the hopeful closing to this discussion. We're going to stop here. I think stopping this large-scale extermination frankly of migrants in the Mediterranean is as we've heard for so many speakers a very tough fight, but it is the only fight and that's true for many other or pretty much all the other big issues that we that we face today. If you would like to join an organization that doesn't shy away from those big fights, no matter the odds, then please join the M25, the link will be in the chat, is dm25.org slash join. Please also donate. We're completely powered by small donations by common people like you watching us and if you're not already, please subscribe to our channel and turn on your notifications to make sure that you don't miss any of our upcoming videos. See you for another live discussion with this coordinating team. I want to thank also our guests, Miguel Duache here for joining us and giving his very powerful perspective and also thank him for the amazing work that is that is done over the years and we'll see you two weeks from now.


Welcome to ITU's headquarters here in Geneva for the 2019 edition of the World Summit on the Information Society Forum, the world's largest gathering of the ICT for Good community. This year marks the 10th anniversary of WISIS Forum, and more than ever, the stakeholders are determined to use ICTs for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which is the theme of this year's forum. Thousands of participants from governments, civil society, the private sector, academia, the tech community and intergovernmental organisations are attending this year's forum. Hosted by ITU, co-organised by UNESCO, UNDP and UNTAD in collaboration with other major organisations, WISIS Forum's 2019 programme is completely crowdsourced to give voice to the widest range of priorities. WISIS aims to provide a platform to create a just and equal information society for all, and accessibility is a key topic this year. Technology is being used. There is digital health, mobile health initiatives. It's being used to raise awareness amongst people about different health issues. So in this case, in this standard, we use it to raise awareness about hearing loss prevention, about how people can change their listening style, their listening behaviour in order to protect their ears. So for sure, ICT has opened a whole world of possibilities from us. Using new technologies to advance the UN's sustainable development goals is at the heart of WISIS Forum. In the world of sport, for instance, ICTs are being used to provide a level playing field for all members of society. We had the UN here. We had UNESCO, ILO. We had the International Olympic Committee. We had some grassroots levels, NGOs like Peace and Sport, Right to Play. We had one federation, the Ticondo Federation, and they all were using examples of how to use ICTs for them to do their work for sport, for development and peace. Ten years on, WISIS Forum continues to be the leading global collaborative platform for the creation of an equitable information society, providing an unparalleled opportunity for exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices for today and for future generations.