THE forcible arrest of refugees huddled on a stony beach on the Italian-French border yesterday was "a punch in the eye for those who refuse to see," Italy's Interior Minister Angelino Alfano says. 

Alfano says he hopes talks with ministers from other EU member states will help "avoid the political bankruptcy of Europe."

Some hope.

Since the 1985 Schengen agreement, which opened borders between core EU states but made it much tougher to gain access from outside the bloc, the institutions of the anti-democratic union have been geared towards creating a "fortress Europe" inaccessible to outsiders.

The Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 effectively criminalised asylum-seekers. 

Things have got worse. So far this year almost 2,000 people have died at sea attempting to reach Europe - 10 times the number who died in the same period last year.

Most of those embarking on this desperate journey take ship from Libya.

It's no wonder people are fleeing Libya for their lives - since Nato's blitz on the country four years ago overthrew the Muammar Gadaffi regime it has been torn apart by sectarian warfare, with thousands dying at the hands of religious fanatics. 

Of course, Libya is also a transit point for refugees from other countries, because of its proximity to Italy. But if the number of refugees from across the region is rising the causes are not difficult to find. Not content with the carnage unleashed in Iraq and Libya, Western powers - Britain among them - have helped to equip and fund radical Islamists battling to replace Syria's government with a nightmarish theocracy. 

Arms and cash flow to these groups, sometimes from the United States and its Nato allies and more frequently from the autocratic butchers we've befriended in the Gulf. 

The response from the Western countries setting the world alight to the people seeking safety from the flames is a disgrace. 

Home Secretary Theresa May dropped British support for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean last year, claiming that saving people's lives simply encouraged people-traffickers. 

Then Italy itself ditched its Mare Nostrum patrols, which had saved tens of thousands of lives, replacing them with a pared-down exercise that only operates in Italian waters.

Who announced this change? None other than a certain Angelino Alfano, ignoring warnings from Human Rights Watch and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles that this would see death tolls soar.

But that wasn't a problem. At least, EU border agency Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri was quite clear in April that saving drowning refugees was not his priority, telling a British paper that Triton - which replaced Mare Nostrum - "cannot be a search and rescue operation".

EU interior ministers heading into talks yesterday have talked of the need to "show solidarity" with Italy and Greece as prime arrival-sites, although many dispute the idea that their own countries should agree to take in more "migrants" (never refugees).

Indeed, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve claims Italy needs to show "responsibility" by "organising the return of irregular migrants."

We should rather show our solidarity with the children, women and men forced to risk everything to get away from murderous wars begun by our governments. 

Save the Children CEO Justin Forsyth's suggestions that Britain should immediately offer a home to 1,500 unaccompanied children who have landed in Italy would be a start, and help to counter a culture where immigrants are scapegoated, incarcerated and demonised by a ruling class determined we should blame anyone but themselves for this country's problems.