Migrant deaths on land and at sea strengthen calls for change in Europe

The deaths en masse of scores of migrants on land and at sea prompted fresh calls on Friday for Europe to overhaul the way it responds to a never-before-seen influx of men, women and children that shows no sign of abating despite risks that seem to rise by the day.

The latest incidents in a year marked by tragic ends to desperate flights shocked the consciences of many across the continent, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The deaths added to a toll of at least 2,500 people who have lost their lives this year while seeking sanctuary in Europe. As the grisly details of the recent incidents emerged, officials and rights advocates demanded that the continent’s leaders create safe passages that would allow refugees to bypass treacherous journeys in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers.

“The solution is not to increase border controls but to open more legal ways to Europe,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said at a news conference in the town of Eisenstadt, near the highway where authorities on Thursday discovered the truck’s gruesome cargo.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose government has in recent days called for unified ­European asylum policies, said there were “intense efforts on a European level so this issue can be dealt with better than we are able to do now.”

But there was also deep skepticism that European leaders would reach agreement after months of indecision and bitter recrimination over who should bear the burdens of the war-, poverty- and oppression-driven exodus from the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

Earlier tragedies have come and gone with little coherent action as well as an ever-growing disparity between the countries that have welcomed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers and those that have spurned efforts to settle hundreds. Several Eastern European nations, as well as Spain and Britain, have proved resistant to any attempt to impose Europe-wide quotas for accepting refugees.

The refugee crisis that has roiled Europe this year has myriad causes, and rights advocates acknowledge that there are no easy solutions. But migration experts say the crisis could be mitigated by policies that expand access to visas for those from ­conflict-ridden countries and allow ­asylum-seekers to apply from their home regions, rather than waiting until they have risked their lives on treks across thousands of miles of land and sea.

Source: MENA