COVID-19 News: NGOs in Europe Call on Governments to Take Better Care of Migrants

This is a bit of maddening news!

Non-profit groups that have encouraged the migration of Africans and Middle Easterners to Europe for a decade or more are now demanding the governments of Greece and France do more to protect migrants as the virus crisis deepens.

Why?

Because as one official at Catholic Charities Caritas said: “[W]e need to protect our volunteers and staff.”

What! So governments need to send in government workers instead of their ‘volunteers!’

Here is the invasion of Europe news from The Guardian:

NGOs raise alarm as coronavirus strips support from EU refugees

Governments across Europe are facing calls to urgently put into place measures to protect refugees and migrants – in particular lone children – as the coronavirus epidemic sees volunteer numbers plunge and many vital support services close.

On Tuesday, groups working with refugees and unaccompanied children in France and Greece implored the authorities in both countries to provide urgent help to refugees and unaccompanied minors, whom they say have been effectively abandoned by the authorities. [Abandoned by authorities? Sounds like abandoned by the NGOs!—ed]

NYC based International Rescue Committee (led by moneybags Miliband) is one group that is demanding Greece and France do more. They said in a statement this week: “The physical health and safety of our staff, our clients, and our communities is the International Rescue Committee’s top priority globally.” “Clients” are refugees. Community does not mean your town, it means their community of migrants and volunteers.

In France, a group of 24 organisations sent a letter to the French government and the mayors of Calais and Grande-Synthe imploring them to provide urgent interventions to refugees and migrants in northern France.

In the letter, the organisations, which include Médecins du Monde and Refugee Rights Europe, say:

“The situation of exiled people is unspeakable: lack of accommodation, cold, humidity, stress, fatigue, crowding together in light tents, daily expulsion from places of life, deplorable sanitary conditions.”

The groups say that, in the absence of any other protection measures, the state should provide accommodation and basic food distribution as well as access to hot water and soap to try to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus among the migrant community.

[….]

The groups, including the IRC [International Rescue Committee], Human Rights Watch, and the Danish Refugee Council among others, also called for a raft of protective measures including an end to deportations and pressing forward with relocation and family reunion programmes for unaccompanied minors across Europe.

[….]

One charity in northern France told the Guardian they are losing desperately needed volunteers as the epidemic takes hold across the continent.

No kidding!  When the s*** hits the fan, the fair-weather do-gooders beg for government help!

More here.

If you are a new reader, and want to know more about the ‘Invasion of Europe’ my archives are here. To learn all about moneybags Miliband, click here. 

This is the IRC’s statement on the refugee shutdown that begins (supposedly) today in the US.