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href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/who-killed-oscar-and-valeria-the-inconvenient-history-of-the-refugee-crisis/">http://www.palestinechronicle.com/who-killed-oscar-and-valeria-the-inconvenient-history-of-the-refugee-crisis/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Who Killed Oscar and Valeria: The
Inconvenient History of the Refugee Crisis</h1>
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<div class="reader-estimated-time">July 17, 2019<br>
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<p><strong>By <a
href="http://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/ramzy-baroud"
title="Display all articles for Ramzy Baroud">Ramzy
Baroud</a></strong></p>
<p><span>History never truly retires. Every event of the
past, however inconsequential, reverberates throughout
and, to an extent, shapes our present, and our future
as well</span></p>
<p><span>The<a
href="https://www.france24.com/en/20190626-photos-migrant-father-daughter-drowned-rio-grande-river-anguish-texas-mexico"><span> haunting
image</span></a> of the bodies of Salvadoran
father, Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his
daughter, Valeria, who were washed ashore at a
riverbank on the Mexico-US border cannot be understood
separately from El Salvador’s painful past.</span></p>
<p><span>Valeria’s arms were still wrapped around her
father’s neck, even as both lay, face down, dead on
the Mexican side of the river, ushering the end of
their desperate and, ultimately, failed attempt at
reaching the US. The little girl was only
23-months-old.</span></p>
<p><span>Following the release of the photo, media and
political debates in the US focused partly on Donald
Trump’s administration’s inhumane treatment of
undocumented immigrants. For Democrats, it was a
chance at scoring points against Trump, prior to the
start of presidential election campaigning.
Republicans, naturally, went on the defensive.</span></p>
<p><span>Aside from a few alternative media sources,
little has been said about the US role in Oscar and
Valeria’s deaths, starting with its funding of El
Salvador’s “dirty war” in the 1980s. The outcome of
that war continues to shape the present, thus the
future of that poor South American nation.</span></p>
<p><span>Oscar and Valeria were merely escaping ‘violence’
and the <a
href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-drug-war-and-the-caravan-1541969416"><span>drug
war</span></a>s in El Salvador, many US media
sources reported, but little was said of the US
government’s support of El Salvador’s brutal regimes
in the past as they battled Marxist guerrillas.
Massive amounts of US military aid was poured into a
country that was in urgent need for true democracy,
basic human rights and sustainable economic
infrastructure.</span></p>
<p><span>Back then, the US “went well beyond remaining
largely silent in the face of human-rights abuses in
El Salvador,” wrote Raymond Bonner in the<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/time-for-a-us-apology-to-el-salvador/"><span> Nation</span></a>.
“The State Department and White House often sought to
cover up the brutality, to protect the perpetrators of
even the most heinous crimes.”</span></p>
<p><span>These crimes, included the <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/el-mozote-massacre-waiting-justice-40-years-181210151727647.html"><span>butchering</span></a> of
700 innocent people, many of them children, by the
US-trained Atlacatl Battalion in the village of El
Mozote, in the northeastern part of the country.
Leaving El Salvador teetering between organized
criminal violence and the status of a failed state,
the US continued to use the country as a vassal for
its misguided foreign policy to this day. Top US
diplomats, like Elliott Abrams, who channeled support
to the Salvadoran regime in the 1980s <a
href="https://therealnews.com/stories/elliott-abrams-the-war-criminal-running-us-policy-in-venezuela"><span>carried
on</span></a> with a successful political career,
unhindered.</span></p>
<p><span>To understand the tragic death of Oscar and
Valeria in any other way would be a dishonest
interpretation of a historical tragedy.</span></p>
<p><span>The dominant discourse on the growing refugee
crisis around the world has been shaped by this
deception. Instead of honestly examining the roots of
the global refugee crisis, many of us often oscillate
between self-gratifying humanitarianism, jingoism or
utter indifference. It is as if the story of Oscar and
Valeria began the moment they decided to cross a river
between Mexico and the US, not decades earlier. Every
possible context before that decision is conveniently
dropped.</span></p>
<p><span>The politics of many countries around the world
have been shaped by the debate on refugees as if basic
human rights should be subject to discussion. In
Italy, the ever-opportunistic Interior Minister,
Matteo Salvini, has successfully shaped a whole
national conversation around refugees.</span></p>
<p><span>Like other far-right European politicians,
Salvini continues to blatantly manipulate collective
Italian fear and discontent regarding the state of
their economy by framing all of the country’s troubles
around the subject of African migrants and refugees.
52% of Italians<a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48853050"><span> believe</span></a> that
migrants and refugees are a burden to their country,
according to a recent Pew Research Center study.</span></p>
<p><span>Those who subscribe to Salvini’s self-serving
logic are blinded by far-right rhetoric and outright
ignorance. To demonstrate this assertion, one only
needs to examine the reality of <a
href="https://gulfnews.com/world/mena/how-france-and-italy-fuel-libyas-war-1.62004454"><span>Italian
intervention</span></a> in Libya, as part of the
NATO war on that country in March 2011.</span></p>
<p><span>Without a doubt, the war on Libya, justified on
the basis of a flawed interpretation of <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-12782972"><span>United
Nations Resolution 1973</span></a>, was the main
reason behind the surge of refugees and migrants to
Italy, en-route to Europe.</span></p>
<p><span>According to the <a
href="http://www.migrationpolicycentre.eu/docs/migration_profiles/Libya.pdf"><span>Migration
Policy Center</span></a>, prior to the 2011 war,
“outward migration was not an issue for the Libyan
population.” This changed, following the lethal NATO
war on Libya, which pushed the country straight into
the status of failed states.</span></p>
<p><span>Between the start of the war on March 19 and June
8, 2011, 422,912 Libyans and 768,372 foreign nationals<a
href="https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/m/01BE9A2F283BC6B2C1257D1E0041161A_Employment%20policies_Libya.pdf"><span> fled</span></a> the
country, according to the International Organization
of Migration (IOM). Many of those refugees sought
asylum in Europe. Salvini’s virulent anti-refugee
discourse is bereft of any reference to that shameful,
self-indicting reality.</span></p>
<p><span>In fact, Salvini’s own Lega party was a member of
the Italian coalition which <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya/italys-berlusconi-exposes-nato-rifts-over-libya-idUSTRE7270JP20110707"><span>took
part </span></a>in NATO’s war on Libya. Not only
is Salvini refusing to acknowledge his country’s role
in fostering the current refugee crisis, but he is
designating as an <a
href="https://www.trtworld.com/europe/migrant-rescue-sailboat-defies-salvini-docks-in-italy-28042"><span>‘enemy’</span></a> humanitarian
NGOs that are active in rescuing stranded refugees and
migrants in the Mediterranean Sea.</span></p>
<p><span>According to the UN refugee agency (UNHRC), an<a
href="https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean/location/5205"><span> estimated</span></a> 2,275
people drowned while attempting to cross to Europe in
2018 alone. Thousands of precious lives, like those of
Oscar and Valeria, would have been spared, had NATO
not intervened on the pretext of wanting to save lives
in Libya in 2011.</span></p>
<p><span>According to<a
href="https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html"><span> UNHRC</span></a>,
as of June 19, 2019, there are 70.8 million forcibly
displaced people worldwide; of them, 41.3 million are
internally displaced people, while 25.9 million are
refugees who crossed international borders.</span></p>
<p><span>Yet, despite the massive influx of refugees, and
the obvious logic between political meddling (as in El
Salvador) and military intervention (as in Libya), no
western government is yet to accept any </span><span>moral
– let alone legal – accountability for the massive
human suffering underway.</span></p>
<p><span>Italy, France, Britain, and other NATO members
who took part in bombing Libya in 2013 are guilty of
fueling today’s refugee crisis in the Mediterranean
Sea. Similarly, the supposedly random ‘violence’ and
drug wars in El Salvador must be seen within the
political context of misguided American
interventionism. Were it not for such violent
interventions, Oscar, Valeria and millions of innocent
people would have still been alive today.</span></p>
<p><i><span>– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and
editor of Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The
Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press,
London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies
from the University of Exeter and was a Non-Resident
Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and
International Studies, University of California
Santa Barbara. His website is </span></i><a
href="http://www.ramzybaroud.net/"><i><span>www.ramzybaroud.net</span></i></a></p>
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