Libya to unleash wave of migrants on Europe
Libya is unleashing a wave of migrants against Europe as retaliation for the coalition's military strikes against the country.
Tunisian immigrants in Lampedusa Photo: AFP/GETTY
The opening of immigration floodgates came as Italy announced that it would grant travel permits to more than 20,000 Tunisian refugees who have reached its southernmost islands in recent weeks.
The Italian government said the temporary permits would grant the refugees freedom of movement within the visa-free Schengen area, but in reality most want to head to France.
Paris reacted angrily to the move, with Claude Gueant, the interior minister, saying the country would not tolerate "a wave of immigration" and warning that migrants without appropriate identity documents and sufficient funds would be prevented from entering.
The Schengen zone excludes Britain and Ireland, but migrants could attempt to enter the UK illegally from the Continent.
The Tunisians are among nearly 26,000 migrants who have managed to reach the tiny island of Lampedusa, Italy's southernmost territory, since January, when president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled by a popular revolt.
RELATED ARTICLES
- WikiLeaks: British officials toured Libyan chemical weapons lab 08 Apr 2011
- Two British businessmen held in brutal Libyan prison 08 Apr 2011
- Libya: expelled Libyan diplomat refuses to leave Britain 07 Apr 2011
- Libya: civil war close to stalemate, says US general 08 Apr 2011
- More rebels killed in fresh Nato air strikes 07 Apr 2011
In neighbouring Libya, Col. Muammar Gadaffi's regime is alleged to have been actively encouraging boatloads of migrants to leave the country's shores since March 22, when the first vessel sailed from Tajoura, a suburb of Tripoli.
Libyan armed forces and militias are reportedly turning a blind eye to the thousands of people, many of them sub-Saharan migrant workers who have lost their jobs, who assemble on beaches willing to pay several hundred pounds to be transported to Lampedusa.
The UN estimates that almost 450,000 foreigners have been uprooted by the fighting in Libya but only 218,000 have been able to return home.
Libya appears to be making good on threats issued at the start of the coalition's bombing campaign, when Moussa Ibrahim, the government spokesman, said the regime would no longer stop sub-Saharan and other refugees from trying to enter Europe by boat.
"There will be illegal immigration. It is a very lucrative business and the government had taken action against it, but it cannot any more. Libyans are involved, we are not stopping it."
Col. Gaddafi warned two years ago that he had the ability to turn Europe "black" unless the European Union agreed to pay his regime at least £4 billion a year to block the arrival of illegal immigrants.
Speaking during a three-day visit to Italy in Aug 2010, he warned: "Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European and even black as there are millions who want to come in." He was accused by Italian MPs of holding Europe to ransom but repeated the threat at a summit last year.
At the time Libyan naval vessels were patrolling the coastline and blocking the departure of migrants, in collaboration with the Italians, but that accord has now collapsed as a result of the Libyan civil war.
Nearly 400 boats loaded with illegal immigrants have reached Italy since January.
Some do not make it – Italian authorities scoured the Mediterranean on Thursday in the hope of finding survivors from a boat that sank in rough seas and high winds on Wednesday, having left the Libyan coast two days earlier.
Around 50 people were recovered but another 250 were missing, feared drowned, amid reports that many bodies could be seen floating in the sea.
--
"...when you have laws against questioning the Holocaust narrative, you are screaming at the other person to stop thinking!!!" ---Michael Santomauro, March 23, 2011
Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro
Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box." --Michael Santomauro
Thank you and remember:
Peace is patriotic!
Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com
__._,_.___
.
__,_._,___
