The Advisory Council of the ACM Foundation appeals to democratic public, national and international institutions to recognize and prevent the threat of totalitarianism, xenophobia and racism.
The Mediterranean Citizens’ Assembly Foundation (FACM) has gathered this 14th and 15 of September in Valencia, its Advisory Council meeting, composed of experts from Syria, Israel, Palestine, Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Albania, France, Italy and Spain, with the propose to make a diagnosis of the situation in the countries of the region, in which special emphasis has been placed on issues related to freedoms and human rights.
Analysts have pointed out that the European continent is experiencing a period of regression towards totalitarian systems that at the moment are not finding enough opposition in community policies.
“The migration crisis is setting the European agenda and feeding totalitarianism. Fascism is having only internal opposition. The far-right parties, which oppose the EU policy because open borders are not on their agenda, do not find a firm opposition in the Union. Even Turkey, with more than three and a half million refugees, and that until now has had an open door policy, is building a wall on the border with Syria, supplying humanitarian aid to civilians, given the evidence of the prolongation of the conflict”, says Aylin Ünver Noi, expert in IIRR from (Istanbul) Istinye University.
The writer Michel Warschawski, president of the Alternative Information Center (Tel Aviv), and one of the exponents of Israeli pacifism, has indicated that “in the face of this evident regression in the entire Euro-Mediterranean area, we can only reorient the strategy towards citizen resistance, based on the values of respect for diversity “.
The French-Syrian expert, Salam Kawakibi, director of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Paris), stressed that the humanitarian crisis in Idlib, has said that “The European Union is not playing a significant role in the Syrian issue but the situation affects it directly. You are playing a role of pay and do not play. It must take a stand before Russia and mediate to avoid the humanitarian catastrophe that looms over Idlib if it wants to prevent a new refugee crisis and get out of the niche of a mere payer of humanitarian aid and reconstruction. ”
“The current sociopolitical and economic situation in the area has a common denominator: the crisis. The clashes in the eastern Mediterranean, the growth of the far right in Western countries, the migratory flows and the refugee crises throughout the region are creating serious problems of coexistence in the Mediterranean, making it more of a cemetery than a sea of peace “, said the President of the ACM Foundation and former MEP, Vicent Garcés, insisting that” these serious problems must be attacked at the outset through cooperation, development and solidarity “.
The ACM Foundation promotes and defends in the Mediterranean the democratic values of freedom, peace, respect for diversity and environmental responsibility.