Fortress Europe keeps cruelly raising its walls against the global south | Pia Klemp

The deliberate policies of the EU and its member states have turned the Mediterranean into a mass grave - as we watch

In 2019 the city of Paris offered me the Grand Vermeil medal, an honor for bravery, to recognize work I've done as a captain in civilian search-and-rescue (SAR) operations to rescue people at risk of drowning while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

I declined the award. I don't see sea rescue as a humanitarian action, but as part of an anti-fascist fight, and I didn't want to uphold hypocrisy. Paris is a city whose police steal blankets from people they force to live on the streets while suppressing protests and criminalizing people who defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

Pia Klemp is a German biologist and human rights activist