As the World Economic Forumgets underway in Davos, Switzerland, the rich and famous will have an opportunity to pretend they are refugees thanks to a charity from Hong Kong—Crossroads Foundation. (I wonder if some of George Soros’ shell organizations are lurking behind this NGO.)
Sheryl Sandberg: Refugee for a day (30 minutes actually)
Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg may be the world’s newest billionaire, but she will mark the occasion fighting for food and scrabbling in dirt with machine guns pointed in her face. She is one of the global leaders in Davos scheduled to attend “Refugee Run”, an immersive and distressing descent into daily life in a camp for displaced persons.
Organised by the Crossroads Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation based in Hong Kong, Refugee Run is designed to make you look beyond the abstraction of data, such as the two million Syrians displaced from their war-torn homeland.
Crossroads believes that only when world leaders experience the chaotic conditions refugees endure will they experience real empathy and act.
Acting is fine. Rich people sending money is fine. Finding solutions to the never-ending Middle Eastern civil wars is fine (good luck!), but moving mostly Muslims into western countries is not fine.
And, get this, we heard exactly these same words only a few years ago about the Iraqi refugees!
Of particular concern at this year’s World Economic Forum is the growing crisis with Syrian refugees. Seven leading aid agencies and human rights groups issued a joint statement yesterday describing the humanitarian crisis in Syria as “the worst of our time”.
They probably just re-wrote some old press release from their Iraq days!
Every day our news alerts are jam-packed with the latest stories on the SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS. Here is a little round-up of the latest news.
MP Yvette Cooper, leader of the revolt: Bring in the Syrians!
Great Britain: ‘MP’s revolt over failure to admit Syrian refugees’:
The Coalition is under mounting pressure from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to perform a U-turn to allow some Syrian refugees to come to Britain.
Mark Harper, the immigration minister, angered some MPs yesterday by saying the United Nations plan for Western countries to accept 30,000 of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees would have only a “token impact”. [Then the you-know-what hit the fan—ed]
Lebanon: ‘U.N.: Syrian refugee’s murder of son highlights desperation’:
BEIRUT: The case of a Syrian man who was arrested Tuesday for strangling his 8-month-old son because he was crying reflects the desperate plight of refugees, UNICEF’s spokesperson said.
According to security sources refugee Hasan Ayesh strangled his son late Monday in his home in Minyara, in the northern province of Akkar, reportedly because the boy wouldn’t stop crying.
Mind you, it’s all about his status as a refugee, not the possibility that he might be a brute or mentally unstable to begin with. Sheesh!
David Miliband head honcho of the International Rescue Committee told Morning Joe that the international community must “massively scale up” its response. But, surprisingly he never mentioned his organization’s testimony in the Senate recently to resettle 12,000 Syrians here this year. I’m wondering if they have done polling that tells them not to mention bringing them here!
In light of upcoming international peace talks between the opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the numbers of refugees resulting from the war has created a “regional crisis” that demands attention.
“This is a regional crisis that demands a big international engagement,” Miliband, who is president and CEO of aid agency International Rescue Committee, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday.
The conflict in Syria has resulted in a “scale of brutality … that hasn’t been seen for a very long time,” Miliband said.
As a result, millions of people are taking refuge in neighboring countries. He called for the international response to be “massively scaled up.”
You can watch Morning Joe’s interview, here. Joe doesn’t look too worked up.
Russia: ‘Russia grants asylum to almost 500 Syrian refugees – FMS’:
This is a surprise, I wonder if they are taking mostly Christians since they don’t have a burning desire for more Muslims.
The number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Russia is on the rise, head of the Federal Migration Service Moscow department Olga Kirillova said.
“Due to the exacerbation of the sociopolitical situation in Syria, the number of citizens seeking asylum on the territory of Russia has grown significantly,” she said.
More than 1,000 Syrian citizens filed refuge requests with the Federal Migration Service Moscow department in 2013 and 478 were granted temporary asylum, she added.
Bulgaria: ‘Bulgaria Begins Construction of Border Fence with Turkey’:
The construction of the wire fence at the Bulgarian – Turkish border will begin on January 20, Minister of Defense Angel Naydenov announced.
“The site preparatory work and the construction of the facility will start Monday,” Naydenov said, cited by Focus News Agency.
The construction period will stretch over 45-60 days depending on the weather conditions.
Border fences can be built pretty quickly if a country is motivated.
Sweden: ‘Syria crisis: Influx of refugees into Swedish town’:
Some Swedish towns are struggling to cope with an influx of Syrian refugees, after the government there guaranteed asylum to fugitives from the civil war.
The right-wing Swedish Democrat party claims ethnic Swedes are angry at the cost of social benefits and rising pressures on schools, housing and health care.
In the past eight years, the town of Sodertalje has accepted three times more refugees than Sweden’s biggest cities.
It’s not just Australia, Israel, Bulgaria, Italy and the rest of Europe trying desperately to hold back the tide of migrants from the Middle East/Africa and other third world nations, but even in South America there is no peace from largely economic migrants (all calling themselves ‘asylum seekers’) looking for new places to call home.
Homeless “asylum seekers”
From Deutsche Welle (The star of this story is Mohammed from Syria):
Brazil has seen the number of asylum seekers increase nearly tenfold over three years and official agencies are woefully unprepared to deal with the refugees. Few people receive asylum and help for immigrants is sparse.
[….]
In Brazil, political refugees from the Middle East or Africa have been a rare sight over the last few years. The South American country appears far removed from the horrors of war on foreign continents. But that is changing. Between 2010 and 2013, the number of people seeking asylum in Brazil increased nearly tenfold, from 566 to 5,200. Adding to those numbers are thousands of immigrants from Haiti, Senegal, Angola, Liberia, Bolivia, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“Brazil has to prepare for an increasing crush of immigrants,” said Andres Ramirez, who represents the UN’s refugee agency in Brazil (Acnur). Since 2013, the organization has been operating a small office in Sao Paulo. One of the biggest problems, he told DW, is the lack of emergency shelters. “Many refugees sleep on the streets for days before they get any help,” he said.
Of the 5,200 people applying for asylum in Brazil, just 649 were recognized, according to figures from the country’s Ministry of Justice. The largest group among them, 283, came from Syria, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with 106, then Columbia and Angola.
The largest group seeking asylum, however, were the 1,814 Bangladeshis. Just one was recognized as a political refugee. Senegal followed with 868 asylum seekers, of whom four were recognized. In other conflict regions, such as Lebanon, Guinea-Bissau and Somalia, acceptance rates stood at below 3 percent.
Such statistics don’t include the 15,000 Haitians in northern Brazil. Roughly 70 per day arrive in Brasilia, a city of just 10,000 in the state of Acre, bordering Peru.
[….]
The unofficial influx has become a political problem. In an extraordinary cry for help, the state government of Acre requested on Wednesday (15.1.2014) that the federal Ministry of Justice allow it to close the border to Peru.
As always, I wonder how the poor and destitute from places like Bangladesh are getting the money to travel half way around the world to Brazil. And, do they all pass through Cuba on the way??? I suppose it’s just a matter of time before they work their way north to the US border!
In one photo accompanying the story in Aljazeera, protestors (mostly men) seeking asylum carry a sign that says they are not “dangerous.” Then here is another photo in the same spread that surely doesn’t look like they are exactly meek and neighborly either—why the raised fists? Is it the pose of Islamic conquerors?
For the second time in less than a month, hundreds of Afghan asylum seekers and their supporters held a three-day protest march in Belgium.
The 70-km march started on January 11 in Brussels and ended in Ghent. The aim was to publicise the situation of Belgium’s Afghan asylum seekers, and put pressure on the Belgian government to provide protection and legal residency.
After the first march, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo expressed some sympathy for their situation. But Maggie De Block, the secretary of state for asylum and migration and for social integration, has taken a tougher line. During the march, the protesters stopped in front of her home and left her a symbolic bus ticket to Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
Many of the participants had been denied asylum despite the fact that Afghanistan is still insecure. Some Afghans have even been deported. The group of Afghan asylum-seekers, some of whom have lived in Belgium for years, began protesting last year after some of them were denied asylum. Two hundred of them, including women and children, have been occupying a church in the center of Brussels for the past four months – where they have access to only two toilets.
This is our previous post on Afghans demonstrating in Belgium, poor Belgium.
And, get this, it is the same ‘humanitarian’ aid agency that sent the Flotilla to Gaza ***in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade.
If you are a regular reader of RRW, you know that we have been pointing a finger at Turkey for letting so many “refugees” simply pass through Turkey and into a beleaguered Bulgaria. Now, I guess because Obama’s buddy,Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, has political problems they are making some moves on questionable border activities.
ISTANBUL, Jan 14 (Reuters) – Turkish anti-terrorist police raided the offices of an aid agency on the border with Syria on Tuesday, in part of what local media said was an operation in six cities against individuals suspected of links to al Qaeda.
The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said police had raided its offices in the southern Turkish city of Kilis, which borders Syria, and detained one person.
The IHH came to prominence in May 2010 when Israeli marines stormed its Mavi Marmara ship to enforce a naval blockade of the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists.
“IHH aid is delivered to Syrian babies, children and those who freeze in the cold … This is an operation to change perceptions (about IHH) and stop aid from being delivered inside Syria,” the group said in a statement.
Turkey has maintained an open-door policy throughout the Syrian conflict, providing a lifeline to rebel-held areas by allowing humanitarian aid in, giving refugees a route out and letting the rebel Free Syrian Army organise on its soil.
Nothing better than a little “humanitarian” aid (with pictures of doves) to cover all sorts of nefarious border activity!
***This gave me a great excuse to watch again Latma’s production of ‘We con the World!’ If you are not one of the 2.6 million viewers of this hilarious remake of ‘We are the world’ then please click here and enjoy!
And, get this, it is the same ‘humanitarian’ aid agency that sent the