The starving legion dies at sea

In the pathological tendency of the left to chop up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (it defends some, but forgets others), we are witnessing here and now a noisy nominalist debate on violations of women's jurisdiction, we point out who dares against excesses of gay pride, we are scandalized if someone does not respect transsexuality and we proclaim a halt to progress with the advent of the ultra-right in the equations of power.

So saturated are the circuits of fights typical of satisfied societies, that there is hardly a space reserved on the events page for the umpteenth marine tragedy of the world's poor. If it is about the rich, change the story, even if it is by land. Concrete borders for the needy. Then the international mockery of the principle of freedom of movement, also for the poor, which is one of the 30 globally recognized human rights, becomes more scandalous..

On the moral condition of man, León Battista Alberti (15th century), one of the precursors of Humanism, said that human beings are what they want to be. Some act inspired by necessity, others on a whim.. It is not the same to die beaten on the fence of Melilla (one year ago today of the tragedy that shames Spain and Morocco) than doing tourism in the depths of the ocean.

Nor was it the same going to the rescue of 5 millionaires in a mini-submarine than 50 outcasts in an inflatable boat between the Sahara and the Canary Islands.. Impressive display of public media (robotic technology, ships, planes…) with preferential media attention focused on the rescue of five people. Instead, tons of political-administrative negligence and disinterest in information for the thirty-five who, almost at the same time, were swallowing the sea. Twelve hours passed since the boat was sighted, in danger of sinking, until a Moroccan patrol boat came without being able to save half of the zodiac's occupants..

The mini-submarine of tourists at $ 250,000 per head kept the world on edge, according to the chronicles. Not half a tear, listen, for the “catastrophic loss of pressure” in the cabin of the submersible. But the emotional comparison with the corpse of a five-year-old girl floating upside down is embarrassing because the rush to avoid it was subordinated to a stupid disparity of opinions on the jurisdiction of waters where fifty human beings were about to shipwreck (Spain washed its hands and left the task to Morocco).

In all cases (the Melilla fence, the implosion of the Titan or the sunken inflatable boat on the way to Gran Canaria) it is not even useful to pray because, as Battista Alberti said, “the gods cannot stop what men have set in motion”. The defense of human rights has been globalized in the declaration of intent, not the commitment to guarantee them and prevent their violation.

Someone other than the Ombudsman should be looking for those responsible for what happened on Wednesday near the Canary Islands. An occasion for Dolores Delgado to debut as a prosecutor of the Supreme Court, in case someone had incurred in an “omission of the duty of relief”. “Illegal” immigration, would Minister Marlaska say. Okay, but no less illegal than chartering a submersible without technical approval.

The soldiers of the famished legion are the ones who risk the only one they have at the gates of Europe or the US to have a better life. The poor of the globalized world become visible in those dramatic waiting rooms next to the borders that separate the honey from the flies, as I once heard Santiago Carrillo say. Never has a rhetorical figure seemed so cruel and at the same time so realistic.