I love the awesome badassery of this woman. Pia Klemp has been rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean, and on one side she faces a trial and possibly 20 years in prison for her gallant work, and on the other side people are praising her courage. Paris wants to award her a medal for her work. She turned it down!
THE CITY OF PARIS IS AWARDING PIA KLEMP THE MEDAILLE GRAND VERMEIL
Paris, I love you. I love you for all the free and solidarian people that live in you. Fighting for their freedom everyday, standing shoulder to shoulder, distributing blankets, friendship and solidarity. I love you for those who are sharing their homes, love and struggles everyday – regardless of their nationality, regardless if they have papers or not.
Madame Hidalgo, you want to award me a medal for my solidarian action in the Mediterranean Sea, because our crews ‘work to rescue migrants from difficult conditions on a daily basis’. At the same time your police is stealing blankets from people that you force to live on the streets, while you raid protests and criminalize people that are standing up for rights of migrants and asylum seekers. You want to give me a medal for actions that you fight in your own ramparts. I am sure you won’t be surprised that I decline the medaille Grand Vermeil.
Paris, I’m not a humanitarian. I am not there to ‘aid’. I stand with you in solidarity. We do not need medals. We do not need authorities deciding about who is a ‘hero’ and who is ‘illegal’. In fact they are in no position to make this call, because we are all equal.
What we need are freedom and rights. It is time we call out hypocrite honorings and fill the void with social justice. It is time we cast all medals into spearheads of revolution!
Documents and housing for all!
Freedom of movement and residence!
Wow. Now that is living up to your principles, and is something we all need to do. More spearheads for social justice!
“solidarian”
I LIKE that term.
Oooooo, I like her
According to Wikipedia, she’s also an animal rights activist and a novelist. Remarkable person.
Powerful talk by Klemp
She believes what she does, while law enforcement claims she breaks the law. If you save someone on the sea you should transport them to the nearest port and it may be true 3 years ago, now most actions of rescuers takes place right outside Libyan territorial waters. And smugglers are often informing the rescuers beforehand about their plans, which is the reason to call the whole procedure human trafficking not shipwreck survivors rescue.
Unintended consequence of her sjw mission is that smugglers’ job got easier and cheaper, they just send any floating device 25 nautical miles instead of 200, so the number of people trying to cross mediterranean sea grows.
Like feeding stray animals helps them in the short run but soon there is even more stray animals, all of them suffering.
Countries from where refugees are coming have already population similar to EU and their population is growing much faster. It is not easy to provide a distinction between refugee and economic migrant (some countries use it to their advantage both ways, sometimes counting economic migrants that came as refugees when they want to show they accepted enough already). And EU cannot realistically take every one.
The issue will get more and more difficult with time, even without further US “help” like destabilizing Libya.
Her character is admirable but the whole situation is seriously tragic no matter what side you are there
@Gorzki: I hope you have some solid sources for your statements.
It wouldn’t be the first time I hear bullshit from anti-immigrants.
And BTW, yes the Europe can take ALL the immigrants.
If we can afford hedge-fund managers, we can afford immigrants.
It’s ridiculous how all the problems of our society are loaded on immigrants, while those with actual power, those actually exploiting the workers are untouched and unquestioned.
So yes, even if the Europe had no responsibility in the situation, people are to be saved, full stop.
But Europe IS responsible: its countries exploited and destroyed Africa and other places, made money selling weapons and supporting tyrants, leaving a horrible mess of poverty, destruction and depleted human capital, and now we pretend colonialism never existed.
@6 F.O.: yes, he does. I’m from Italy, maybe you heard about our nasty fascist government (which, luckily, just collapsed). The fact that Matteo Salvini is a fascist and doesn’t give a s*t about immigtrants’ lives does not invalidate what Gorzki wrote. Immigration in the Mediterranean cannot be solved by letting people drown or raising walls, but neither by ignoring the issue and simply letting Italy alone to deal with it. Italy and Malta are the “nearest safe port” from Lybia: Malta is a tiny island, so 99.9% of the immigrants come to Italy.
A serious solution would be:
1) change EU agreements so that it doesn’t matter which country an immigrant first lands, they get redistributed among EU members
2) Work with North Africa governments (or without them, boycotting, if required) to support peace and human rights there, so that less immigrants need to leave their countries
3) Reactivate the “Sophia” EU mission (EU military ships patrolling the Mediterranean, rescuing people but arresting traffickers and sinking their boats.
Holyshit, that was the most awesome thing I’ve ever read in a long time.
Gorzki at number 5:
So what’s your solution? Just let them drown?
@Brain #7
Sono Italiano quindi vedi tu.
Mi riferivo a quello che Gorzki ha detto:
Sono d’accordo con i tuoi punti 1, 2 e 3, ma non invalidano nulla di quello che ho scritto.
Le persone si salvano.
Punto.
Senza se e senza ma.