“Let us put it generally: if a regime is immoral, its citizens are free from all obligations to it.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.
[Pictured: Captain Pia Klemp sitting in a chair beside her controls.
@VivianAngrisani on Twitter wrote on 6/8/2019: “Pia Klemp, a German biologist & boat captain faces 20 yrs in prison for rescuing 1,000+ migrants at risk of drowning whilst crossing the Mediterranean. Seeking asylum is a human right. Only 1 in 100 sea captains are female. This woman is a humanitarian, not a criminal. #FreePia”
@Galactic_Rabbit quote-tweeted on 6/10/2019 and wrote: “Thinking about all those videos of people honored in their old age for hiding/protecting Jewish people.”]
To all the people commenting that she’s an accessory to “illegal immigration,” note that seeking asylum is a human right. Countries which refuse asylum are in violation of the Geneva Convention. They get away with this and propagandize complacency towards the victims by using bureaucracy to complicate immigration proceedings. During times of genocide, this is tantamount to hearing a would-be murder victim knocking on your door and locking the deadbolt.
People who risk dying getting smuggled across borders do so out of sheer desperation because the situation they’re leaving is worse. Finally, you are missing the entire point: violation of the law is warranted when the laws violate human rights and criminalize existence. Laws which call immigrants “illegal” are tools of a systemic negligence designed to condemn those who need legal protection the most.
Reminder that if you’d ever wondered what you’d do during WW2, if you ever thought “I’d never let that happen”, or “how could people do that?”…. well what you’re doing now is your answer. How you react to this heroic woman is your answer. How you react to refugees is your answer.
