Police and Heathrow airport security were on high alert after Just Stop Oil protesters were arrested at the airport’s perimeter fence. Photograph: Kristian Buus/In Pictures/Getty Images
Ten activists arrested at Heathrow, over 30 flights cancelled at Cologne-Bonn, and planes delayed or diverted
Climate activists acting under the banner “oil kills” have glued themselves to the tarmac and grounded flights across Europe as holidaymakers attempt to make summer getaways.
In a wave of protests at airports from Oslo to Barcelona, activists disrupted flights and demanded that rich and polluting countries phase out fossil fuels by 2030. The protests, which the activists said had led to several arrests, came a day after climate scientists logged the world’s hottest day on record.
An activist taking part in the protest at Cologne-Bonn airport holds her hand glued to the runway. Photograph: Letzte Generation Handout/EPA
“Ordinary people are taking matters into their own hands today to do what our criminal governments have failed to do,” the campaign said in a statement. “We are putting our bodies on the wheels of the machine of the global fossil economy and saying ‘oil kills’.”
In Germany, protesters from the climate group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) briefly stopped flights on Wednesday morning after they cut a chain-linked fence and glued themselves to the tarmac at Cologne-Bonn airport. The airport said that 31 flights had been cancelled and six diverted.
In Austria, activists delayed a flight by refusing to sit down before takeoff while others spilled orange paint in the terminal at Vienna airport. In Switzerland, they blocked roads leading to Zürich and Geneva airports.
The Doctors Without Borders vessel Geo Barents intercepted two small boats full of migrants navigating toward Europe in the Central Mediterranean on March 16, 2024. (Photo by Simone Boccaccio/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“As this legislative cycle starts, the E.U. can and must do better than abandon its commitment to the global refugee protection regime,” said an Amnesty campaigner.
Nearly 100 human rights organizations came together Tuesday to emphasize that members of the European Union “must guarantee the right to seek and enjoy asylum and uphold their commitments to the international refugee protection system.”
The joint statement from groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam came as members of the European Parliament prepare for the July 16 plenary sitting, the first meeting scheduled since the bloc’s June elections, which resulted in the far-right “Patriots for Europe” becoming the third-largest alliance in the legislative body.
The human rights coalition underscored obligations under Article 18 of the E.U. Charter of Fundamental Rights and expressed concern about “the recent and increasing attempts by the E.U. and its member states to evade their asylum responsibilities by outsourcing asylum processing and refugee protection risk undermining the international protection system.”
As the groups detailed:
Italy, for instance, is currently seeking to process asylum applications of certain groups of asylum-seekers outside of its territory, from detention in Albania—which risks leading to prolonged, automatic detention, a denial of access to fair asylum procedures with necessary procedural guarantees, and delayed disembarkation for people rescued or intercepted at sea. Others, such as Denmark and Germany, are assessing the feasibility of this type of arrangement. Fifteen E.U. member states and some political groups have endorsed similar shortsighted measures to shift asylum processing outside E.U. territory and encouraged the European Commission to explore ways to facilitate this through further legislative reform, including through a watered-down ‘safe third country’ concept.
These attempts must be seen in the context of parallel containment efforts that seek to stem departures and prevent the arrival of asylum-seekers to E.U. territory through partnership agreements with third countries, with little to no attention to the human rights records of those authorities.
The coalition stressed that “as the extensive track record of human rights violations in partner countries such as Libya demonstrates, the E.U. and Member States have no adequate tools and competencies to effectively monitor or enforce human rights standards outside of E.U. territory.”
A report published in November by Doctors Without Borders features stories of violence that migrants endured in nations including Libya and Tunisia while trying to get to the E.U. That publication also points out that 2023 was the deadliest year for migration in the Central Mediterranean since 2017, due in part to E.U. countries failing to assist those at risk of drowning.
On Friday, our aircrew witnessed 1 of 3 rescues by @soshumanity_de that day. While 111 people were evacuated to Lampedusa, the other ~180 survivors had to stay on board the Humanity 1, assigned the port of Bari, over 1100km & a 4-day crossing away—pure political harassment by 🇮🇹. pic.twitter.com/DXwVFzNq0X
— Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) July 8, 2024
In addition to sounding the alarm about current E.U. policies and practices, the coalition on Tuesday cited examples including Australia’s offshore detention scheme, which “demonstrates how these models have created prolonged confinement and restricted freedom of movement, deeply harming both the mental and physical health of people seeking protection.”
The organizations also pointed to an asylum scheme attempted by the United Kingdom—which left the E.U. in 2020 following the 2016 Brexit vote—and Rwanda, which the statement notes “is not yet in effect following the U.K. Supreme Court declaring it unlawful and in any event is unlikely to be operationalized at any significant scale.”
The U.K.’s failed attempt to forcibly remove people to the African country was “projected to cost a staggering £1.8 million per asylum-seeker returned,” which is equal to €2.13 million or $2.3 million. The coalition called such schemes “not only an unjustifiable waste of public money, but also a lost opportunity to spend it in ways that would truly aid people seeking asylum by investing in fair and humane asylum systems and the communities that welcome them.”
Olivia Sundberg Diez, Amnesty’s E.U. advocate on migration and asylum, said in a statement Tuesday that “attempts by states to outsource their asylum responsibilities to other countries are not new—but have long been criticized, condemned, and rejected for good reason.”
“Just as the U.K.-Rwanda scheme is, rightly, collapsing, the E.U. and its member states should pay attention, stop making false promises, and wasting time and money on expensive, inhumane, and unworkable proposals,” she continued. “As this legislative cycle starts, the E.U. can and must do better than abandon its commitment to the global refugee protection regime.”
The EU and its member states have had some truly terrible policies toward asylum seekers in recent years.
The meeting scheduled for next week will follow the Pact on Migration and Asylum that the European Parliament passed in April and the Council of the E.U. adopted in May. The coalition highlighted that “civil society organizations have been clear about their serious concerns” regarding the reforms while also explaining that “the transfer of asylum-seekers outside of E.U. territory for asylum processing and refugee protection is not provided for in the pact, nor within current E.U. law.”
“After the E.U. and member states have spent close to a decade attempting to reform the E.U.’s asylum system, they should now focus on implementing it with a human rights-centered approach that prioritizes the right to asylum per E.U. law and fundamental principles of international refugee law to which they remain bound,” the coalition concluded. “They should not, mere weeks after the reform has passed, waste further time and resources on proposals that are incompatible with European and international law.”
Social movements and trade unions in France are rallying behind the New Popular Front, which promises a genuine alternative to the far-right and liberal health policies
Trade unions and activists warn that a National Rally victory would spell disaster for public healthcare in France. If the far-right wins the upcoming election, as polls currently predict, changes would come at the expense of sexual and reproductive health services and migrant health, among other things.
Marine Le Pen’s party recently dominated the European Parliament elections, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call for a snap election, hoping to mobilize voters against the far-right. According to analysts, Macron gambled that the people of France would go to great lengths to keep the National Rally out of power, perhaps even reaffirming his mandate.
However, Macron’s policies, including privatization and commodification of health services, have fueled the far-right’s growth. His administration has caused closures of local hospitals, creating health deserts, and continues to push for more privatization, causing patient suffering. Despite the failures of this approach, liberals continue to pursue the same strategy in the current campaign, advocating for a more profit-driven logic in healthcare. The Trade Union of Health Centers’ Physicians (USMCS) stated: “We are experiencing the consequences of this policy on a daily basis. Patients suffer. We want no more of it.”
The far-right is expected to continue liberalizing the sector while introducing intolerance and xenophobia by prioritizing French citizens and marginalizing other residents. “If implemented, the [far-right policies] will pose a major risk to public health, not only for these ‘excluded’ individuals but also for the population as a whole,” USMCS warned.
“Abandoning the values of solidarity and universalism that underpin our healthcare system, a right-wing program will worsen social and territorial inequalities. We reject any program that proposes a healthcare policy based on exclusion and discrimination.”
Trade unions and organizations, united under the Tour de France pour la Santé, are backing the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing coalition opposing Macron’s policies as much as the far-right. The NFP plans to retract the controversial pension reform, curb living costs, and rebuild the healthcare system by recruiting healthcare workers, increasing incomes, and regulating the private sector. For example, the program states that new private clinics will only be allowed if they provide guarantees that patients will not face any out-of-pocket costs.
The USMCS emphasized that the NFP’s program is the only one to offer real prospects for healthcare reform. To support this, the Tour de France pour la Santé announced a series of actions during the election campaign, starting with an assembly in Lille on June 27, where activists will discuss the importance of resisting the far-right. Speakers will include Françoise Nay from the People’s Health Movement (PHM) France and Ramon Vila from the trade union SUD Santé Sociaux.
“Confronted with the threat of the extreme right, now more than ever, we urge citizens, trade unions, associations, mutual insurance societies, and progressive parties to unite in defending the right to health for all,” the platform said in its press release.
Ahead of the first round of the election on June 30, the National Rally leads with approximately 35% in polls, followed by the NFP at more than 29%, and Macron’s party at 19.5%. Bridging the gap between the far-right and the progressives might be possible with strong social movement support.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
As the U.S. faces another potentially record heat wave this week, the Middle East and Europe’s Mediterranean have endured extreme temperatures that have proven deadly.
The big picture: Multiple heat-related deaths have been reported in Greece during the country’s earliest heat wave on record and Jordan’s official news agency said Sunday “14 Jordanian pilgrims died and 17 others were missing” in the searing heat while on the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Tourists outside the Acropolis during high temperatures in Athens, Greece, on June 12, when authorities announced the closure of the ancient site for five hours due to soaring temperatures that also shut schools. Photo: Hilary Swift/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The heat waves sweeping these regions this month have been made “at least five times more likely” because of human-caused climate change, per new Climate Central analysis.
Context: Climate Central’s analysis is based on the group’s Climate Shift Index (CSI), which compares observed or forecast temperatures with simulations of the same weather conditions minus excess atmospheric greenhouse gases, per Alex Fitzpatrick.
The idea is to compare real-world conditions with what might have been the case had human-caused climate change been absent.
Saudi Arabia had a CSI of 5, meaning that human-caused climate change made a given daily average temperature five times more likely as of Monday morning. Greece, which has endured two weeks of extreme heat, had a CSI of 5 last week and 2 on Monday. Parts of Turkey had a CSI of 5.
A joint report by UN and European Union agencies found in April that Europe’s temperatures are rising about twice as fast the global average due to human-caused climate change — making it the fastest-warming continent on Earth.
Royal Marine commandos moving off the Normandy Beaches during the advance inland from “Sword” beach, June 6, 1944
WITH the Tories and Labour exchanging blame over Channel crossings, we mark 80 years since a Channel crossing of a different kind.
On June 6 1944 British, US and allied troops crossed the Channel to open a second front against the Nazis in Europe, something the Soviet Union, which had borne the brunt of the war against fascism for the previous three years, had long urged.
Veterans are arriving in Normandy for commemorations of this heroic chapter in Europe’s liberation. Modern hostilities overshadow celebration of the anti-Nazi alliance of the 1940s, with the US and Britain criticising France for inviting Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, though they themselves have never been excluded from World War II memorials while laying waste to countries from Vietnam in the cold war to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya more recently.
These diplomatic divisions raise a question we should be asking our own politicians. Have you any right to claim the inheritance of anti-fascist victory if you are dismantling its achievements?
The world war against fascism was the crucible of international institutions as we know them today. The United Nations was established in a joint declaration by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China on January 1 1942: it formalised the alliance against the Axis powers Germany, Italy and Japan, and a condition of membership was to declare war against Nazi Germany and its allies.
The foundation of the UN and new treaties like the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (on the conduct of war) and 1951 (on the treatment of refugees) expressed hope that a more civilised world order would stop any future descent into Nazi barbarism.
These agreements are not perfect, and powerful countries have often ignored them. But their existence is a legacy of the sacrifice made by those who gave their lives to smash fascism on D-Day, or at the battles of Stalingrad or Berlin, or among the heroic resistance movements that sprang up across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Politicians talk now as if the rules are outdated: the refugee conventions were drawn up by people who couldn’t conceive of the scale of “irregular” migration today. It isn’t true: World War II and its aftermath saw huge population displacement, the uprooting of millions of people. The Refugee Convention of 1951 set out universal obligations to refugees because of these horrific experiences.
Those obligations are ones governments across Europe, including ours, are trying to erase. The end of EU search-and-rescue operations, the active persecution of civil rescue crews by states like Italy, have fatally undermined the binding responsibility to aid anyone in distress at sea. The odious Nigel Farage clearly approves, having insulted brave volunteer lifeboat crews by calling the Royal National Lifeboat Institution a “migrant taxi service” for presuming to save people from drowning.
Farage has never yet been elected, but his ability to call the tune at Westminster is as great as ever if the first leaders’ debate is anything to go by: with Labour’s Keir Starmer calling Rishi Sunak, the PM of the Rwanda deportations scheme and the Bibby Stockholm prison barge, “the most liberal prime minister we have ever had on immigration.”
This is gutter politics, and a betrayal of what the D-Day heroes fought for. But so, at home, is the systematic destruction of the NHS and welfare state built after defeating fascism, fruits of a victorious people’s war and a recognition that fascism had emerged from a Europe wracked by poverty and unemployment.
It is no coincidence that today, with living standards falling, public services failing and the brazen theft of our wealth by an ever smaller corporate elite, the far-right politics of grievance and hate are on the march across the continent.
The real commemoration of D-Day must be to mobilise against them. For peace and socialism, against fascism and war.
