Ignominy

This is not the Europe that the revolution in the Arab world needs. The silence and inaction with which the EU received the demonstrations that overthrew Ben Ali and Mubarak in Tunisia and Egypt, have now been followed by a lukewarm reaction to the massacre perpetrated by Gaddafi. When a tyrant sends in tanks and planes against his own people, it is simply ignominious to speak of restraint in the use of force. These are not the first crimes committed by Gaddafi, but they are the most shameless. Regarding them, the EU has shown that it is more concerned with how to keep the Libyans shut up within their own frontiers, than with supporting citizens who have been risking their lives to speak out, and to bring down a tyranny of decades.

In the face of this barbarity, the cautious terms of the communiqué issued by the EU's foreign policy head Catherine Ashton, and by the Council of Ministers, are unacceptable. Let's not fool ourselves: if two countries, Italy and the Czech Republic, were able to water down the common position, it was because the rest of the 27 states were not unhappy with the final result. Yet it is not acceptable from any point of view. This is why the victory of the above two states over the rest is in fact a humiliating defeat for them all.

While Ashton and the Council put on their sad performance, the Commission deepened the opprobrium with the words of its interior spokesman, Michele Cercone, who said that the EU is worried about the consequences of the revolts in terms of immigration. If this is really the Union's overriding concern at this time, it means the Brussels bureaucracy has lost its capacity to rank problems according to their importance, placing on the same level the earthquake now shaking long-suffering Arab countries, and an obsession that was first that of European populist parties, and has now spread to democratic parties willing to stoop to anything to win votes.

But it also means that the EU, haunted by its ghosts, now declines to see the difference between an immigrant and a refugee. In the face of a massive crime such as that of Gaddafi, the EU most despicably wonders aloud about the best way to keep the Libyans within their frontiers, leaving them at the mercy of ferocious repression. Their concern ought to be about how to help along the downfall of a grotesque regime. From the official communiqués we can gather neither one thing nor the other. Worse, while the 27 states polish the bland language of their common position, Gaddafi is using mercenaries to repress the demonstrators, and aggravating the climate of terror by refusing to allow removal of bodies from the streets.

The West has committed countless errors in the Middle East, having accepted the dogma that dictatorship was a lesser evil in comparison with the threat of Islamist fanaticism. In fact these are two opposed but complementary enemies which have fed on each other, holding millions throughout the Arab world in a trap, deprived of liberty and any hope of progress. Now, when these people are speaking out at the risk of their lives, the West cannot make a new mistake of similarly global scope. At least, Europe cannot and must not do so, as this would amount to a definitive betrayal of the great principles on which the Union was supposed to be built. The people who have risen, and are still rising against the dictatorships, demanding liberty and dignity, need to receive from the democratic and developed world a clear message that their demands are rightful ones. And the European Union cannot speak in whispers, or mutter about its mean fears.