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The Mediterranean is turning into a “deadfall” for refugees.

Recently a UN spokesman said that more than 32 700 refugees lost their lives up to now from 2014, while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. This year alone, over 160 African refugees were drowned and some 230 others went missing as they tried to go over to Europe via the Mediterranean.

Even now, many African refugees are flooding into Libya and Tunisia on the Mediterranean coast to cross over to Europe and escape from the political turmoil and military conflicts in their countries.

The refugee disaster continues to take place in the Mediterranean because criminal groups and brokers who organize the smuggling of refugees take them on board scrapped ships or old fishing boats far beyond their capacities and so they capsize or sink.

Then why do the refugees risk taking such ships through the Mediterranean?

It is because Western countries overthrew the legitimate state systems of African and Middle Eastern countries and destroyed their political stability, thus aggravating disputes and civil wars.

In particular, the majority of African countries suffered from the tribal, national, border and other disputes more than any countries in other continents due to the harmful consequences of the imperialists’ past colonial rule. However, Western countries used it as a lever to interfere in the internal affairs of the African continent and realize their dominationist ambition.

Political riots and military coups broke out in over a dozen countries in less than one and a half years from the end of 2007, which was also a result of the Western forces’ interference in their internal affairs and dominationist moves.

Reportedly, Africa has now 35 million refugees who try to find shelter from conflicts. In the Sudan alone many civilians have been killed and over 15 million reduced to refugees since the conflict began in 2023.

But many European countries turn their face away from the refugees by adopting it as their main programme to exclude immigrants. They are rejecting them, arguing that there are refugees among those involved in the serial terror attacks taking place in their countries. Even though they put their feet on Europe, refugees suffer all manner of maltreatment and contempt at makeshift shelters without basic living conditions and are finally deported to their countries.

Whereas the Mediterranean is the “sea of death” for refugees, Europe has become a “land that they can never tread on”.

The refugee disaster in the Mediterranean teaches a serious lesson: If a country is weak and is not firm in its independent stand, it will be unable to repel foreign interference and domination and its people will be displaced and forced to suffer a miserable fate.