In a world where "image is everything," it was rather surprising for Europeans to try to establish themselves as bad. However, the reality of the matter is not what you think it is; Europeans are trying, by drawing a negative image of themselves, to take measures against a threat they think is directed toward them. Briefly, the target of the campaign is to deter Africans keen to migrate to Europe.The campaign is carried out with the help of a short film. It has started airing on Cameroonian and Nigerian TV stations and will soon hit Congolese stations as well. The film, which shows Europe as a bad an unlivable place for black people, was televised during a recent Switzerland-Nigeria national football game during halftime. The video was produced upon a request by the Swiss Immigration Office that came only a few months ago. It runs for 48 seconds and reportedly cost 250 million euros. A telephone rings somewhere in Africa in a well-furnished house and an old black person answers it. The other young black person calling from a telephone box is the son of this man. The father asks, "Have you found a place to stay there?" And the son says, "Yep, I have found a place with my friends." The place turns out to be a pigsty-like dirty spot under a bridge where homeless people try to live. (Zaman, Nov. 29, 2007)
The message is clear: Africans should do away with their desire to go to Europe. As a matter of fact, Europe will not provide them with the happy life, welfare or the freedom they have been desperately seeking. What indeed awaits them is misery and the status of a social outcast, as this extremely short film tries to explain clearly that the best place an African person is most likely to find in Europe can only be a cold and dirty place "under a bridge." The response given by Europe -- which is very sensitive about fundamental rights and liberties and which rightly puts pressure on countries like Turkey in regard to human rights issues -- to people who live in poverty, misery and hunger when they try to set foot on European soil runs totally counter to humanism, which Europe claims to feed on, when fundamental rights and liberties are in question.
Greece is shown a limitless amount of tolerance by EU-member countries on this issue. It sternly rejects the tens and hundreds of easterners and Africans who try to enter Greece from Turkey by sea. It sometimes quietly lets boats filled to the brim with immigrants sink, and if we consider some claims to be true, some Greek coast guard officials deliberately sink them. Is there anybody who knows the exact number of such helpless people who drown while trying to cross over to Greek soil on their way to Europe?
Europe is a rich continent. A major part of the most prosperous people on the face of our planet lives on this continent. And apparently, Europeans desire to multiply their wealth but don't ever want to share it with anyone. It is often recalled by humanitarian aid organizations that about two billion people strive to get by on $2 a day. And according to figures disclosed by the UN, about 1 billion people fight a war of survival on $1 a day while the income per capita in Europe is an average of over $20,000 a year, which comes out to $54 a day. The gap between the two is stark.
Today, the world has a certain order, but it is impossible for this order to continue like this. As the inequality between countries, classes and regions spreads and deepens, the world will never cease to see migration, conflict and war. An average of 100 million people try to migrate to European countries every year. Europe may one day have to protect its borders with machine guns and cannons. Of course, some people will never want to live together with certain people, however if one part of the world enjoys extreme prosperity and a luxurious life while the other parts are in utmost poverty and misery, rich people should be prepared to share. Putting aside European colonization and exploitation of African lands which played a major role in this current level of poverty and misery, the only way of keeping these poor black people in their home countries is to put an end to exploitation, help them reach a welfare level that will allow them to live like humans and improve their material and social lives. These are exactly the things the West is never willing to do.
