European Diary, 11.9.2020: Thousands of refugees from the Moria camp on Lesbos are now living on the streets in the dirt. Germany and France, and several other European countries want to take in 400 children and young people. Austria is willing to send some blankets and tents. The day before yesterday, Minister of Foreign Affairs Schallenberg added his very own tone to the Austrian concert of shame.
Jovial as always, in chosen words, he confirms to interviewer Armin Wolff on Austrian TV that the misery on the Greek islands has its purpose: deterrence. And he says that this is something that we do not want to change in the future either. “It is precisely this calm and objectivity” that gives his appearance, as Irene Brickner writes in the Standard, an “aura of the ghostly and unspeakable”. He talks like a good-humored, nice, friendly gentleman who is completely at peace with himself. But he talks about hostage-taking, child abuse, coercion, and bodily injury resulting in death. Just about those things with which he and his colleagues are currently inscribing themselves in the history of violence in Europe. Armin Wolff had no chance to break open this “armour of official mentality and refugee deterrence”, said Brickner. Meanwhile, other European politicians are slowly bursting their collars. Germany’s conservative Minister of the Interior Seehofer “is surprised”. Jan Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, is speaking plainly: “The whole of Europe has been taken in by Kurz’ talk that all that is needed is to close the borders so that the refugee problem can be solved.” Even the Kronen-Zeitung thinks that this is now going too far. And it quotes the Austrian chancellor with downright disgust: “Why are the children on the Greek islands closer to us than those in Venezuela?” A telling question…