“Throughout history, people have migrated from one place to another. People try to reach European shores for different reasons and through different channels. They look for legal pathways, but they also risk their lives, to escape from political oppression, war and poverty, as well as to find family reunification, entrepreneurship, knowledge and education. Every person’s migration tells its own story.”

“an agenda which reflects our common values and provides an answer to our citizens’ worries about unacceptable human suffering.”

Today, it seems the ‘values’ of the European Union refer precisely to this ‘unacceptable human suffering’. A very modest proposal from the European Commission (quotes) is rejected by the meeting of our national governments. Whereas thousands of refugees have drowned in the Mediterranean and thousands are harassed in Libya or on their way through Macedonia. Are these people able to sleep at night? ‘Wir haben es nicht gewusst’?

In South-East Asia a similar drama is taking place. Hundreds of refugees are starving on their boats, because no country will let them in.

The human rights situation Europe and in the rest of the world is bad. This is certainly not new, but what is new is that many governments and many people in general do not care anymore. David Cameron, prime minister of the UK, at least is honest enough to say his country should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Union, who stated in its Treaty of Lisbon that the EU as such would adhere to this European Convention, still did not do so.

Rights of people are violated in the countries suffering from the inhuman ‘austerity’ policies imposed by European governments.

Thirty years ago, when these same policies were causing havoc in Latin America and elsewhere, there were protests and these, ten years later, gave rise to the alter-globalization movement. And this in turn gave rise to the World Social Forum and other networks of networks. Who listens to them? Are they toothless tigers?

In the meantime, our governments are not only criminalizing social protest, but also militarizing the oppression. Terrorism – which is a real threat indeed – is also used to oppress whatever movement dares contest the neoliberal order. And in one election after the other, with very few exceptions, rightwing parties are growing and winning.

More and more, social and economic rights are replaced by a right to more police, more militarization, more ‘protection’ against the inevitable violence caused by poverty, inequality, discrimination and oppression.

Till recently, no government would have dared to say it does not care about human rights and democracy. These ‘values’ were highly rated and repeated constantly. To-day, they are violated without any meaningful protest.  Solidarity, a leftwing friend recently told me, is a notion of the past.

Maybe, I am too pessimistic. We have many arguments to criticize human rights and liberal democracy, but they certainly are far better than the chaos, the conflicts and the violence that are now condoned. Indeed, ‘another world is possible’.