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Gnration Identitaire, Identitre Bewegung or the Identitarian Movement/Generation is a pan-European activist youth movement, struggling "to preserve and maintain [European] culture and identity," according to Martin Sellner, one of the founders of the movement's Austrian branch.

The Identitarian Movement has long been accused by various media outlets namely, online publications - that it actually wants to start sea battles with NGO ships and sink boats with immigrants still on them.In 2016, members of the Identitarian Movement in Austria and Germany were responsible for a number of public political stunts in the countries' respective capitals.

In Vienna, the movement's members scaled the city's famous Burgtheater while a pro-immigrant play was being performed inside, hanging a banner which read, "Heuchler" ("Hypocrites") before throwing leaflets from the roof a few days after a 21-year-old Austrian woman was gang-raped by three immigrant men from Afghanistan.

In another instance, activists covered the statue of the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, the last empress of the Habsburg Monarchy, with an Islamic niqab in an act of protest against the "Islamization of Europe."

In Berlin, activists scaled the Brandenburg Gate and hung a banner which read, "Sichere Grenze - Sichere Zukunft" ("Secure borders - Secure future") in full view of the crowd below.

Members of the Identitarian Movement consider the policies of European leaders in nations like France and Germany as indirectly damaging to the integrity of European culture, the direct result of the spike in terrorist attacks over the past two years, putting these activists in direct opposition to any and all proponents of non-European immigration.

The flag which represents the Identitarian Movement features yellow and black colors and the Greek letter Lambda, the symbol of King Leonidas who fought against the Persians in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Now, the activists have managed to secure monetary support in the form of 100,000 euros, despite the fact that banks shut down their accounts across the continent. The money was subsequently raised via an American website in order to launch a search and rescue vessel into the Mediterranean Sea as part of the Defend Europe mission that aims to end human trafficking across the sea.

The vessel C-Star is expected to be deployed off the Libyan coast, like numerous other ships sponsored by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have not only rescued immigrants from the turbulent waters of the Mediterranean but have also landed along Libyan shores and picked up immigrants, primarily from sub-Saharan Africa, transporting them to Italy, a highly illegal action.

Members of the movement have several objectives for their mission.

Their first aim is to rescue anyone who is at peril at sea, returning them to their country of origin in accordance with maritime law. They also aim to oversee the movement of NGO ships in the Mediterranean and report their activity to the Libyan and Italian coast guards.

Another important part of their objective is to sink abandoned dinghies left behind by immigrants in the Mediterranean, to prevent these dinghies from potentially drifting back to the North African coastlines where they would likely be reused by human traffickers to smuggle people to Europe again.

According to Sellner, the C-Star vessel is equipped with powerful radars that will be used to track NGO ships violating Libyan national waters and smuggling immigrants directly from the coast.

"Nobody talks about this. The trafficking rings are making millions because of the NGO ships. The presence of NGO ships and fairing the migrants from the Libyan shore to Italy. [] We want to drain their resources by sinking the [abandoned] boats, which is also something that you're obliged to do according to maritime law."

Sellner says that "sea battles" is a laughable scenario.

"Of course we will not attack these [NGO] vessels. We will only be there to oversee the activities of these vessels and to contact the Libyan coast guard if we get an SOS signal, for example. We are obliged to go there and save people by handing out rescuing rings and insuring that they are not in danger. [] We will not engage in any sea battles or things of that nature. We only aim to see that NGO-sponsored vessels do not breach any maritime laws."

Link:
Pan-European youth movement takes migrant crisis into its own hands - Daily Sabah

Refugees and migrants look out at Italy as they arrive on a Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) vessel to Reggio Calabria, Italy, on June 12, 2017.Chris McGrathGetty Images

Val Camonica is a sleepy valley in northern Italy home to medieval villages, Roman sites and, now, a hundred refugees from Africa.

The new arrivals are being hosted in old cottages scattered in 30 villages, as part of a national program aimed at integrating refugees. Theyve been given new homes and jobs by local authorities; they are learning Italian, running hotels and restaurants and bringing tourists on guided tours of the region. Too bad Val Camonica is an exception. Between 2014 and 2016 the program involved only one eighth of Italian towns, accommodating barely 25,000 of the 156,000 refugees currently in camps across Italy.

But programs like this will be needed more than ever as Italy's migrant crisis has worsened this year. Since the beginning of June , 15,000 migrants reached Italian shores. Roughly 85,000 have landed so far this year, according to the U.N , a 19% increase from this point last year, and versus only 9,395 total arrivals in Greece. Italian officials fear the final toll of incoming migrants will be higher than last year's total of 181,436 .

After the closure of the Balkan route last summer thanks to an agreement between the E.U. and Turkey, the bulk of migrant flows, mainly from Sub-Saharan Africa, has shifted to Italy and the country is struggling to cope. Amid non-stop arrivals and overflowing migrant camps, Italy is pleading with its European neighbors to help.

The Italian government has requested that more economic migrants be repatriated, more refugees be relocated across Europe, and more financial resources and stronger border agreements between Libya and Niger to limit outflows. Most pressingly i t has also asked for a revision of a relief scheme led by Frontex, the E.U's Border and Coast Guard Agency, which makes Italy the headquarters of all sea operations, and consequently a magnet for all rescued refugee boats.

Italy wants other European southern countries (mainly Spain, France, Malta and Greece) to be forced to open their ports to incoming migrants saved at sea by their boats and NGOs, instead of picking them up and dropping them off in Italian harbors as is currently happening. The Mediterranean crisis must be regionalised, meaning Europe cant go on using just Italian ports. NGOs relief operations, and relevant costs, should be a burden on the shoulders of the nations involved in the rescues, Undersecretary of State for E.U. Affairs Sandro Gozi told TIME.

A recent deal with Germany and France to support patrols by the Libyan coastguard, boost refugee relocation across Europe and regulate international NGOs who operate rescue ships in the Mediterranean initially lifted Italys hopes that peer countries were waking from their slumber.

But Italys expectations were not met at the E.U. Interior Ministries summit in Tallinn last week focused on immigration. All Rome got was the official green light to define a new code of conduct and rules for NGOs to be forwarded to the European Commission for approval.

The NGOs are the subject of huge scrutiny in Italy . Several probes are underway in the country over possible links between NGOs and human smugglers though NGOs including Save The Children and Medicins Sans Frontiers have denied allegations of collusion with smugglers, stressing that their rescue operations respected sea codes of conduct and were being carried-out in cooperation with the Italian coast guard.

Frontex told TIME it will meet on Tuesday to discuss Rome's request to revise the relief scheme, but Germany and France have so far declined to help Italy by opening their ports to migrants. Austria, meanwhile, has threatened to deploy its army at the border with Italy. The G20 summit in Hamburg over the weekend produced no results for Italy: World leaders stressed that each nation has the right to protect its own sovereignty and borders

In past weeks Rome warned it could shut its ports to non-Italian NGOs. Its the only weapon it has if other members turn a deaf ear to its repeated calls for help. But its not easy, nor doable at the moment under Frontex rules. But if Rome were to find a way to close access it would lead to chaos, forcing other southern nations to open their ports to incoming refugees.

The European Commission has unveiled plans to relocate of thousands of refugees to Greece to ease pressure on Italy and to set-up a coordination centre in Libya, but unless other member states open up their ports or agree to higher migrant quotas then little can be done.

The Italians want Brussels to be tougher on member states who are taking a smaller share of the burden. We insist that the European Commission moves along the path of sanctioning and cutting E.U. funds to all member states that fail to cooperate in the quota relocation scheme or take in just a tiny, ridiculous stake of refugees, said Gozi.

The crisis has also impacted politics internally, as parties of every stripe react to the increase in migrants. In particular, populists and far-right groups are capitalizing on the increase to push an anti-immigration platform. Were witnessing what we have always predicted: a biblical invasion of African migrants, of whom just 5% are real asylum-seekers fleeing from wars while the rest are economic migrants who must be pushed back, Nicola Molteni, a party deputy from the far-right Northern League, told TIME. His figure is inaccurate, but not by much according to Italy government data, economic migrants make up 85% of the intake this year.

But more mainstream politicians are also taking a hard line on migration. In a Facebook post, Matteo Renzi, former premier and Democrat runner at next years elections, called for a closed, set number of migrants and to boost partnerships with asylum-seekers origin countries. Italian officials are holding summits with Tunisian and Libyan authorities and businessmen in a bid to strengthen political-economic ties.

Authorities in Italy are calling in vain for more cooperation from mayors and local bodies to host migrants by taking part in the refugee integration scheme. As Italy considers itself dealing with the influx of migrants from across the Mediterranean single-handedly, it's hard to see more projects like Val Camonica getting off the ground.

Read this article:
Italy Is Pleading With Europe to Help Deal with a Record Influx of Refugees - TIME

July 12 2017, 12:01am,The Times

Roger Boyes

Europeans are embracing the idea that nation states, not the EU, must deal with immigration

Theres a German word for it: Weltschmerz, the thud of anxiety that comes from living through, or alongside global upheaval. Brexit, Trump, serial terror attacks, the Grenfell Tower fire, we have all been touched by it, the galloping migraine-inducing pace of events.

Imagine, then, what it feels like to live on the Italian island of Lampedusa, to have welcomed with aching hearts the thousands of refugees who washed up on its shores after the 2011 Arab uprisings, and to have shared the meagre infrastructure, so poor that pregnant locals have to take the long ferry ride to Sicily for a check-up. Then to be abandoned by the European Union and the Italian government, as the Mediterranean route became the chief entry path into the Continent

Read this article:
Hungary was right about the migrant crisis - The Times

But in reality, the role of the NGOs and EU border agencies in the migrant crisis is much darker and morally ambiguous. They are not simply responding to the problem of people smuggling; theyve become part of the problem. Last year, for instance, their vessels started sitting just over 12 miles off the North African coast, on the edge of Libyas territorial limit. Because it was there that they were ideally placed to pick up the rubber dinghies of people chugging out to them. It was almost as if it was a tacit arrangement between the traffickers and the EU/NGO agencies which in some cases it was, complete with greased palms and mutual pay-offs. To say the EU and NGOs were colluding with the gangs of people smugglers, as some Italian politicians and prosecutors have alleged, is perhaps too strong an accusation to be levelled at the NGOs as a whole. But they have certainly become unwittingly complicit in the people-smuggling business, so much so that the gangs dont even bother with the pretence of seaworthy craft, because they know their desperate clients will be picked up a few miles offshore. The NGOs and EU agencies are effectively encouraging people-smuggling, and dressing it up as an ethical gesture. Theyre now fully contributing to and exacerbating the problem to which they pose as the answer. If there ever was any virtue to be signalled here, it is now almost certainly lost in a fog of exploitation, opportunism and cynicism.

But the miserable, hypocritical and inhumane reality of the EUs pro-migration pose is truly exposed by the lack of responsibility the EU and its supporting cast of NGOs actually takes for the migrants. As it stands, the vast majority taking the Mediterranean route are taken to Italy and, in particular, Lampedusa, a small island 200 kilometres south of Sicily. Because of the EUs Dublin Regulation, which states that the country in which an asylum-seeker first enters the EU must process his or her case, the responsibility for dealing with the hundreds of thousands of migrants asylum-seekers or otherwise has effectively been dumped on Italy.

Now, if those Italians whose towns have been turned into migrant holding stations had been allowed to debate the migration issue; if those living in Lampedusa and the other migrant destinations in Italy had been part of a process of democratic deliberation; and if they had been allowed to voice their concerns, and influence the decisions which have led to the influx of migrants, then perhaps the seething resentment, the sense of being imposed upon, of having their lives turned upside down with the stroke of a pen in Brussels, might have been absent. Perhaps a more workable solution could even have been found. And perhaps the migrants themselves wouldnt be treated as a problem, but as people just like us, sometimes fleeing wretched lives, always seeking better ones.

But none of that has happened. Instead, the EU has effectively told the Italian people to shut up. To add insult to injury, the EU Commission, in order for Italy to cover the costs of processing and dealing with the migrants, even allowed Italy to borrow more than the EUs deficit rules would otherwise permit, storing up further problems for a nation already in financial and political hock to the EUs wealthier nations.

The result is a mess. In Italy, the anger among those on whom the pro-migration drive has been imposed is rising. Not because the people of Lampedusa or Brescia or even Rome are racist. But because they are having their lives upturned and their wills effaced at the behest of the EU and the NGOs advertising their virtue in the Med. The chasm that divides the pro-migration moraliser of the pro-EU class and actual citizens of the EU is captured in the fate of Giusi Nicolini, the former mayor of Lampedusa and pro-migration stalwart, who was feted by the worlds elite, winning a UNESCO peace prize and dining with then US president Barack Obama, but roundly rejected by her actual constituents, who turfed her out of office in last years mayoral election. It wasnt a surprise to us that she lost, said Salvatore Martello, the hotel owner, fisherman and independent who won the election. In the years she was mayor, she curated an image abroad of [Lampedusa] and the migrant situation, forgetting its people. And make no mistake: the EU, like the ex-mayor of Lampedusa who embraced its ethos, does forget its people. Not by accident, but wilfully, determinedly. If they raise their hands, if they voice their concerns, if they attempt to exert some control over their lives, they are dismissed as racist, intolerant, xenophobic people to be left behind, to be cast out of acceptable society, to be forgotten.

Italy is desperate, though. The Italian government is threatening to close Italian ports to the NGO vessels carrying their cargo of pro-migration sentiment. But it is only threatening to do so because it has been left with no choice. It has repeatedly asked the EU, and its member states, if they would relieve it of at least part of the burden for dealing with the migrants. But the answer has been a firm Nein. Well not back the so-called regionalisation of rescue operations, retorted German interior minister Thomas de Maizire ahead of an informal meeting of EU ministers in Tallinn last month. The EU commissioner for immigration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, has been more placatory. Italy is right that the situation is untenable, he said, adding: In everything we do, we all have a humanitarian obligation to save lives we cannot leave a handful of EU countries on their own to deal with this. Yet, in practice, Avramopouloss solution is to give Italy a little more cash, which will no doubt be added to the pile it already owes the EU, and to urge North African nations to do their bit, too.

Avramopoulos and de Maizire were merely saying what other EU nations are already doing: they were advertising their pro-migration sentiment while insulating themselves from the consequences. France and Switzerland imposed strict, heavily militarised border controls last year. And Austria is also now arming its border with Italy to make sure Italy deals with the migrant crisis alone.

So not only does the reality of the migration crisis in the EU expose the myth of a borderless, open, welcoming territory it also exposes the absence of one of the main reasons given for supporting the EU: solidarity between nations. Instead, the propagation of migration as an ethical good by the pro-EU class, and its NGO crusaders, is dividing nations, turning them against one another, and demonising some as racist and lionising others as leaders in virtue. Europe is dying, said Luigi Di Maio, a Five Star Movement MP earlier this year. France and Spain threaten to close their ports, and Austria will deploy the army at the Brenner border crossing. Walls emerge and Europe reveals its true face: at the time of need, every man for himself. In Italy, are we alone.

In this, the controversial Di Maio was, for once, not being melodramatic. In the migration crisis, the EU is revealing its true face. Or, better still, its two faces, the one smugly proclaiming its pro-migration virtue, while the other damns migrants to camps and processing centres, and dismisses citizens concerns as the ramblings of the backward and bigoted.

The EU is not only not Europe; it is also against Europe.

Tim Black is a spiked columnist.

For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.

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The EU: pitting migrants against citizens - Spiked

Summer makes it easier for migrants to cross the Mediterranean, so Italy is struggling to cope with another influx of refugees. And like before, its European partners are doing too little to help. The Italiangovernment is asking for a new approach, and it's right: The EU should see this as a pan-European issue, requiring a pan-European response.

More than 84,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea in the first six months of this year, nearly 20 percent more than in the first half of 2016. In future, the pressure on Italy's southern shores will only increase, as the demographic boom in Africa and Asia leads more young people to risk their lives for a brighter future in Europe.

The EU's Dublin Regulation says the country in which an asylum-seeker first enters the union must process his or her case. This shouldn't mean leaving that country to bear nearly all of the costs. In practice, it's meant something close to that.

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Granted, the EU has taken some steps to share the expense. Frontex, the agency patrolling the common border, has seen its budget increase from less than 20 million euros in 2006 to 300 million euros this year. Last week the European Commission approved a financial package with another 35 million euros for Italy to deal with the new surge of migrants, and 46 million euros to help the authorities in Libya, a main point of departure.

Still, this is only a fraction of what Italy is spending and will continue to spend each year. The Commission has graciously allowed Italy to cover this cost by borrowing more than the EU's deficit rules would otherwise permit -- adding more debt to a pile that's already one of Europe's biggest. Italy's taxpayers might reasonably see that as adding insult to injury.

The EU should set up a sizable common fund which member states can use to cover costs relating to the migrant crisis. Permitted spending could range from rescuing ships at sea to helping refugees into the labor market. The fund should be able to borrow, with a joint EU guarantee, and with the European Commission overseeing how the money is used.

Many of Italy's EU partners still see the migrant crisis as not their problem. That's grossly unfair -- and from Italy's point of view, unaffordable. If European solidarity means anything, the EU will finally, belatedly, put this right.

--Editors: Ferdinando Giugliano, Clive Crook

To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg Views editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net .

Read more from the original source:
Italy's Migrant Crisis Is Europe's Problem - Bloomberg