The #FreedomCommission! in defence of the unjust case of three young men under trial in Malta, who resisted push back in Libya, a place of well documented tortures and abuse of human rights against migrants.
As an African woman in Europe, subjected to all sorts of discriminations because of my colour and my gender, I can relate to the hardship through which these unfortunate three young men are going through. They are Africans, they are dark skinned people and they are "migrants". Achille Mbembe, also part of the commission, wrote that in terms of migration, "the skin color has become a border".
Regardless of their good reasons to migrate, dark skinned migrants are wanted nowhere in Europe. And so a heavy handed (in)justice is being used as a deterrent strategy. European courts of justice tend to “forget” that migration is a human right and people have the right to go wherever their quest for freedom and salvation takes them. Criminalising migration isn't the solution. The European courts of justice should look closer into the reasons of African migration and bring to trial European-African economic deals imposed during the colonisation period and still in effect nowadays.
One example of such a deal is the one signed in 1968 between the French Orano ( Ex Areva, a state-owned company ) and the Government of Niger for the mining of Uranium over a period of 75 years. The company exploits Uranium that supplies Electricity in France, while the majority of Niger live without any light. Niger, rich in Uranium exploited by others, is the 189th out of 189 countries in the Human Development index...
The case against the 3 young men, saved at sea with other 108 people by a merchant vessel and who resisted a pushback to a notorious unsafe and dangerous Libya, should simply be dropped.
The full statement of the Freedom Commission can be found in the PDF doc below:
