Europe refugee crisis tied to chaos in Libya: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with William Spring, a London-based human rights activist, to discuss the unprecedented influx of refugees into Europe.

What follows is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: The UN chief could have played a part when it came to some of the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa in terms of preventing them from happening. Do you think the UN has not played its part when it comes to the asylum seeker crisis that we are seeing now?

Spring: The UN has failed completely. We did tell Ban Ki-moon and the previous secretary general how disastrous the policies of the United Nations organization were. It seemed that the Security Council was given a mandate to just devastate the world, a mandate given by the UN organization, and particularly over the Iraq war and also over Libya. What they have got. They have got an idea that the Security Council… has a right to intervene under Chapter 7 in every conflict in the world, but of course there is no such right in the United Nations charter. The United Nations charter maintains the supremacy of the sovereignty of states and an attack on one state, without any justification what so ever, without natural imminent threat from that state, is a breach of international law. Now it took ages to get even an admission from the previous secretary general that they warn Iraq… In the end, he made his admission on some sort of talk program on radio, but he could have said it to the UN. I know that the other secretary generals, such as Dag Hammarskjold, would be appalled at a craven, absolute craven lack of courage of the secretary general and his previous secretary generals who were simply put in power by the United States. For example, the conflict in Bosnia led to the appointments of a gentleman from – whose name I’ve forgotten - Nigeria, because he’d favored the American bombing in Bosnia. He was regarded as a good egg by Richard Holbrooke and therefore they put him in power or put him into that very important position.

I think that what has happened now is that all the Western countries, all the countries of the world really, have to make a decision. Do they want an international order or not? If they do, then they should maintain state sovereignty. They should maintain a system of law.

People like Blair are obviously war criminals who should be pursued in every country until they are finally dragged into the dock. He has made so much money as with these illegal wars. And the war in Libya was only possible because there was chap … in Moscow who gave the green light to the West to attack Libya. And the Libyan war is the direct result - or rather the refugee crisis in North Africa and all sinking in the Mediterranean - are the direct result of David Cameron’s and Nicolas Sarkozy’s Libyan war. David Cameron wanted a war. Conservatives wanted to have a successful war, just like Blair had supposedly a successful war. They wanted war that was limited, where there was no risk to British troops. So they got that war, and they succeeded in toppling Gaddafi, that was not difficult, but the results are now that the whole of Europe is in chaos, and I blame David Cameron, I blame him, for his illegal, unlawful, absolutely disgraceful way of attacking Libya, and also involving himself personally in the murder of Colonel Gaddafi. Libya was a much more stable place before the British, the French and the Americans overturned the status quo there.

We need a return to basic values. We need the Chilcot report to be published. We need David Cameron to be hounded out of public life and also Blair, instead of getting votes and being voted back in. I just hope that Jeremy Corbyn will get into power and get rid of these criminals … who have led to so many innocent lives being lost. How can these chaps really sleep at night when they know they are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the Mediterranean, thousands of people in Europe, thousands of people all over the world but particularly in the Mediterranean Sea. I do not see why David Cameron is allowed to go off on a holiday and just relax, looking at sea when he knows that he personally is responsible for drowning thousands of migrants who have been taken in by people smugglers who are desperate to get rid, get out of the chaos that they have in their own countries, which have been created by NATO, been created by the Americans and been created by this attitude of ‘we can go in where we like and do what would like.’

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