The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said Monday that he was “shocked by the indifference” surrounding the more than 2,300 deaths this year in the Mediterranean, believing that the “politics of deception” dulls compassion.
Volker Türk, speaking at the opening session of the 54th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, taking place between now and October 13 in Geneva, Switzerland, highlighted the migration crisis during his traditional “global update” of the state of human rights in the world, highlighting the successive tragedies that have occurred in the Mediterranean, “including the loss of more than 600 lives in a single shipwreck off Greece in June.”
The high commissioner stressed, however, that the drama is not limited to the Mediterranean, stating that “it is clear that a much larger number of migrants and refugees are dying, unnoticed, in the seas surrounding Europe, including the English Channel, the Bay of Bengal and the Caribbean, where people seeking protection are constantly turned away and deported to situations of grave danger.”
Türk also alluded to problems “along the US-Mexico border, where deportations and expedited removal processes raise serious questions, or at the border of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” where, he noted, his office “is urgently seeking clarification on allegations of murder and ill-treatment.”
The United Nations official was also alarmed by the news that “in both Libya and Tunisia, authorities have been carrying out mass detentions and collective expulsions of migrants and asylum seekers from the sub-Sahara.”
“By August 31, at least 28 migrants will have died of heat and thirst in the desert areas of the Libya-Tunisia border, after the Tunisian authorities left some 2,000 migrants and asylum seekers there, including women and children, without access to them. , or with limited access, to food, water and shelter.
“We are witnessing a policy of deception, of deceiving people. With the help of new technologies, lies and misinformation are mass produced to sow chaos, confuse and ultimately deny reality and ensure that no measures are taken, measures that could endanger entrenched elites,” he said.
“We are also witnessing a policy of indifference, a numbing of our minds and our souls, an attempt to divert our most intimate characteristic, compassion, simply denying the humanity of victims and people vulnerable to harm,” he reinforced. the high commissioner.
Source: TSF
