Day: June 9, 2008

Somali suicide scam: take us to America or we will kill ourselves

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is so much happening in South Africa since anti-immigrant riots broke out last month that I can’t possibly keep up with all the news.   This story, however, was an eyecatcher.   Seems that Somalis are migrating to a camp near Cape Town enticed by rumors of possible resettlement by the UN to a first world country.  

Conditions deteriorated and they were told that resettlement was likely not an option so many said they would jump into the sea and kill themselves.

Residents of Soetwater Camp, a shelter on the outskirts of Cape Town, have threatened to commit suicide in an attempt to draw attention to dire conditions in the camp and a growing feeling of neglect and inaction at the hands of authorities and aid agencies.

Soetwater, 30 km south of Cape Town, has become home to over 4,000 foreign nationals displaced by South Africa’s recent wave of xenophobic violence. Local media reported that about 100 people, mainly Somali nationals unhappy with their treatment at Soetwater Camp, had threatened to walk into the sea to drown themselves and said four people were already feared dead.

But according to the South African National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), which had deployed three boats to search the waters on June 8, the rumors proved false.

Turns out they didn’t.   But, here is the rest of the story.    A UN official concludes that the Somalis are just trying to get attention.   No, you don’t say.

In a statement released on June 8 by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African activist group, called for the immediate closing of the Soetwater Camp where “a tradgedy was unfolding” because the settlement fell far “below international humanitarian standards.”

“There is enormous dissatisfaction at the camp. The conditions are awful: it is cold and insufficiently sheltered – Both the [Western Cape] province and civil society have condemned these camps,” the statement said.

A meeting with UN officials on June 7 at the camp reportedly fueled the incident. “Displaced refugees had several meetings with a representative of the United Nations at the TAC and AIDS Law Project offices in Cape Town. One of these meetings broke down. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the latest crisis is a consequence of this,” the TAC statement said.

According to Yusuf Hassan Abdi, spokesman for the UN High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), a “rumor had gone round that the UN would start registering people for resettlement in a third country – like the United States, UK, Australia or Canada.”

This was a “major pull factor,” drawing large numbers of Somali refugees to Soetwater. Abdi estimated that the camp now accommodated some 1,800 Somali’s.

But, Abdi said, given recent events and “the large number of refugees and asylum seekers affected, resettlement can not be a priority at this point in time.” He added: “There was no attempted suicide at all – they [the Somalis] used this to get attention.”

For new readers, we have resettled over 80,000 Somalis in the US in recent years.  Don’t be surprised if the State Department ultimately says, what’s a few more!

A Rohingya defender speaks out (and calls us names)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

See my post of April 24th that prompted this post and the belated response by temme.

We’ve been following the public relations efforts of Rohingya refugee advocates to convince the United Nations that 20,000-30,000 of these Burmese Muslims should be resettled in the West.  Canada has already taken some.   Just 10 days ago UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres visited camps in Bangladesh and urged repatriation of Rohingyas to their homeland. 

Here is what Time magazine said about the Rohingya in Bangladesh a few years ago (read our whole post here): 

Today, southern Bangladesh has become a haven for hundreds of jihadis on the lam. They find natural allies in Muslim guerrillas from India hiding out across the border, and in Muslim Rohingyas, tens of thousands of whom fled the ethnic and religious suppression of the Burmese military junta in the late 1970s and 1980s. Many Rohingyas are long-term refugees, but some are trained to cause trouble back home in camps tolerated by a succession of Bangladeshi governments. The original facilities date back to 1975, making them Asia’s oldest jihadi training camps. And one former Burmese guerrilla who visits the camps regularly describes three near Ukhia, south of the town of Cox’s Bazar, as able to accommodate a force of 2,500 between them.

Here is what a blogger, temme at the rahrahparty, in Malaysia says about us in a post entitled “I need to punch someone“: 

The site, https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/ is run by bigoted people who does not give a flying [editor: F-word deleted] for anyone but themselves. Don’t they realise that there are bigger threats to their safety running around in their own country compared to the handful of refugees resettled in the US? Don’t they realise that the biggest terrorist in the world is their own country with all its intervention activities and sanctions? Don’t they realise that refugees have bigger threats to fear if they are not resettled than the Americans have to fear of those refugees? Come on la, do you honestly think that refugees fearing for their lives have all the time in the world to plot random conspiracies against the US? All they want to do is just lead a life where they are not constantly afraid. F….ing [edited] xenophobia, it ruins the advancement of man, I tell you.

I am so angry and disturbed, I am going to punch the toilet walls. ARGH 

My question for temme (an obvious love and peace to all person) is why do so many refugees want to come to the US if we have big threats to our safety here and are one of the biggest terrorist countries in the world? 

To learn more about the campaign to admit Rohingya into Western countries read our whole category entitled “Rohingya Reports” and make up your own mind.   

Also, I urge everyone to watch (or re-watch) the Numbers USA film linked at the top of our blog.  I viewed it again the other day and it is a reminder of how futile it is to attempt to save the world, dragging down America in the process.