VP/HR — The new imperialist spheres of influence drawn in blood

3.1.2013

Question for written answer E-000003-13
to the Commission (Vice-President/High Representative)
Rule 117
Charalampos Angourakis (GUE/NGL)

On Saturday 15.12.2012, 21 immigrants met a tragic end when they drowned and were later washed ashore in an attempt to enter Greece to reach ‘paradise’, as the EU is presented in their country of origin. According to the testimony of a survivor, the boarding craft on which 28 persons had embarked had set off from the Turkish coast in the direction of Mytilini, Lesbos. Among the missing persons are 4 children aged from 3 to 10.

But is not only the traffickers who are responsible for this and other similar crimes. A share of responsibility lies also with the European Union, the US, imperialist organisations, governments and bourgeois parties which, both by imperialist wars and by imperialist peace, condemn peoples to poverty and misery. In the name of the very human rights that they themselves trample underfoot, they have launched imperialist interventions in Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and now in Syria, uprooting the people and turning them into refugees.

Cooperation between French, British and American armed forces and the guerrilla forces on Syrian territory and all kinds of economic and military assistance for the rebels are intensifying, while the EU has recently recognised the organisation of a ‘National Alliance.’ The French Foreign Minister has issued statements stressing that he would provide weapons to the ‘National Alliance’ for defensive purposes, and the NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has said that the Assad regime is collapsing.

What is the Commission’s position vis-à-vis the openly imperialist intervention of the EU and its Member States and the US and NATO in Syria and in the broader region and the assistance granted to the actions of the ‘Free Syrian Army’ and the ‘National Alliance’ which are leading to the slaughter of the Syrian people and an increase in migrant flows?

OJ C 340 E, 21/11/2013