Early this week, I came across an article about three homeless people froze to death in Ostrava, in Czech Silesia. In the article, published by the Czech newspaper Prague Daily Monitor, the local police spokeswoman explains that the cause of their deaths is yet to be confirmed by autopsy, but there is the suspicion that the frosts that are currently striking Europe were to blame.
At first I didn’t really pay attention to this article found on Twitter on my way home, but then later I started thinking about it and I decided to read it again and to do some research. What shocked me most was the size of the article (only a few lines), the lack of sympathy in the spokeswoman’s explanation (as if she was not representing a State that did not protect its citizens), and nevertheless my first troubling indifference to the topic (as if it was normal that people freeze to death in 2018).
I think it is time for all of us to stop and reflect for a second on the type of society we are creating, what direction we are heading, and speak out to say that this should NOT happen!
The fact that men and women are forced by a unequal system to live their lives under a bridge or an underpass and they die in the cold literally beneath our warm offices is a huge scandal that needs to be faced before it will not be even worth writing an article about it.
According to the latest note published by the EU Parliament 118 million persons in Europe are at risk of poverty. Europe and its leaders should stop walking by and realize that this MUST be the priority. We have no reason not to do it and we have a lot of room in Europe to grow our commitment to poverty.
If the European Union wants to fight extremism and position itself as a global leader, it has to take serious actions to address poverty. That is because poverty affects people’s quality of life, including health, employment, and education, and costs state members more than an effective anti-poverty plan would ever cost.
From our side, to a society where people are stepping over each other to be competitive, we, Diaconia will always come up with a “new society” in which human being is at the very hearth and is given the opportunity to develop his/her full potential and move away from cycles of failure.
Have a good weekend,
Antonio