On Thursday, corresponding to 04.02.2021, Democracy Centre for Transparency hosted a webinar on Migration to Europe. The webinar was attended by MEP Laura Ferrara, member of five stars movement and member of committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, MEP Jan- Christoph Oetjen, member of Renew Europe Group and member of committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs, and Ms. Vera Goeminne, human rights activist in refugees and migrants issues.
The webinar tackled different aspects including Relation between Home Security and migration, terrorist attacks and its implications on migration, migration and islamophobia, and inclusion of migrants.
MEP Laura Ferrara kicked the webinar off asserting that fear of terrorist attacks and massive flow of refugees have brought two ideas to public debate: Asylum seekers are potentially subject to recruitment in terrorist radicalization; and migration is a back door for terrorists to Europe. Mrs. Ferrara further clarified that the increasing focus of migration as a security issue is problematic as it jeopardizes the rights of asylum seekers and hinders the inclusion of migrants and refugees in the European society due to islamophobia.
MEP Laura referred to that fighting terrorism is a key priority of the of the European Union since terrorism is a major threat that exploits the power against our civilians. In addition to the devastating consequences against individual rights and fireroom, terrorism destabilizes governments; undermines the civil society, jeopardizes peace, threatens social and economic development; and destroys the social fabric. For these reasons, the EU commission has renewed the counter-terrorism agenda looking for better anticipation and prevention of terrorism attacks and combat crime. MEP Ferrara added
MEP Jan- Christoph Oetjen started his speech confirming that figures can easily show that link between migration and home security is not that strong. Reviewing some figures in Germany , there are 13000 people belonging sympathising with Islamic terrorist organisations. In the same time, we can count 3200 identifying the extreme right wing and 33000 for the extreme left groups.
Mr. Oetjen explained that If you compare the number of people identify extremists, they are much less than people who represent extreme right or left wings. Concerning crimes committed by extremism motivation, we can count 1500 crimes committed by the people from foreign nationalities, 6000 crimes by extreme left people, and 21 000 crimes by people identifying the extreme right wing.
MEP Oeten that Let me emphasize that racism and xenophobia are the most important challenges easily because the extreme rights people are there they are growing. Extreme parties mix between terrorism and migration, claiming they are fighting both and this claim is a quickly linked mindset.
Ms. Vera Geominne started her contribution confirming that most people do not know what terrorism is that why they always connect it to migration; we can not say every migrant is a terrorist. So many people immigrate striving towards security, protection, food and a better life.
Terrorists mainly aim at demolishing the society and demoralise the population who tend to describe immigrants as terrorists simply because crimes are committed by some of them. We cannot overgeneralize it because immigrants have some bad seats in the society.
Referring to children of fighters in Syria, MS. Goeminne said they cannot be left behind in miserable situations in camps in Turkey as they would become terrorist if we do not support their rights and needs.
In the ends, she emphasized that refugees should be properly integrated in the society to achieve balance between their own culture and our culture. Unfortunately, some Muslims, who fail to integrate in our culture, are call called terrorists by the the extreme right groups in our society.
