This is a short follow-up to our post yesterday about the days-old stalemate at the port of Calais in France where Syrian “refugees” are refusing to accept an offer of asylum by France because they want to get to the UK. One woman demonstrator is quoted in the UK Express:
A woman, who would not give her name, said: “The procedures to claim asylum are far simpler and quicker in Britain. Once there we will be well treated and can bring our families, too. We can start new lives in Britain.”
This reminds me, did any of you read David Goodhart’s ‘The British Dream?’
Millions of pounds donated to help Syrian refugees caught up in the bloody civil war is being used to fund terrorism, the charity watchdog believes.
The Charity Commission said cash ‘undoubtedly’ ends up in the hands of extremist groups, while the Disasters Emergency Committee said it could not guarantee that some of the £20million it has raised has not bankrolled jihadists.
William Shawcross, chairman of the commission, said: ‘A lot of money is raised that goes to Syria, some of it undoubtedly goes to extremist groups… It is very hard for all organisations to determine that.’
Truth is, they have no idea where all the money goes.
Use our ‘Syrian refugees’ tag for all of our coverage of the on-going crisis.
Update October 11th: Refugees breed ill will on Lampedusa, here.
Update October 9th: German interior minister—the solution is NOT to allow more in, here.
This is a story you could hardly have missed over the last few days when more than a hundred of mostly African illegal aliens drowned trying to reach the island of Lampedusa in Italy. It was even reported in my small hometown paper, but I would be remiss in not noting it here since we have written so much over the last five plus years about the boat people trying to get from Africa to Italy or Malta.
Emergency workers among bodies
In fact, at least some of the Syrians now blocking the port of Calais in France say they made the journey across the Mediterranean, landed in Italy and simply traveled northward in Europe unmolested by immigration authorities.
With 111 bodies recovered from the waters off the Italian island of Lampedusa after a boat carrying 500 African migrants capsized, search and rescue teams had to abandon their efforts amid poor weather conditions.
The scale of the tragedy was evident when a ferry delivered 140 more coffins to the little island as preparations were made for mass funerals at five different sites in Agrigento on the Sicilian mainland. More than 350 people are now feared dead.
Coast Guard captain Floriana Segreto, said: “In total among the living and the dead when have accounted for 266 people. But our work is not finished.” Emergency services said that half of those confirmed dead so far were women.
The disaster occurred early on Thursday morning when a 20m boat carrying migrants mainly from Eritrea, Somalia and Ghana got into difficulty less than a mile from the shore of Lampedusa.Someone on board set light to a piece of fabric to attract the attention of nearby ships, but the flames spread, forcing the desperate refugees into the sea.
Vito Fiorino, a Lampedusa resident, said he was the first to come across dozens of migrants scattered in the Mediterranean Sea while he was on an early morning fishing expedition. He told the Associated Press that some of the survivors told him they had been fighting to stay alive for three hours and did not have the strength to grab the life-ring he threw to them. “It was a scene from a film, something you hope never to see in life,” he said.
Photo is from this story at the London Evening Standard, where we hear this:
….the independent UN investigator on the human rights of migrants said the boat wreck highlighted the dangers of harsh measures against people seeking a better life in another country.
I guess what this means is—we can’t beat the criminals so just open the borders world-wide and let them all in!
That’s a question that comes to my mind as I read the many reports coming out of France over the last two days about Syrians demanding entry into the UK even after France relented and offered asylum there. Hat tip: pungentpeppers who has been following the demonstrators’ demands closely.
Syrian invaders (oops! refugees) sit on a roof at the ferry terminal at Calais. Photo at NBC Philippe Huguen / AFP – Getty Images
I’m also reminded of Kilian Kleinschmidt at Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan saying that the Syrians were the most difficult refugees he had ever seen. Their attitude, that the West owes them something, is not going to endear them to the citizens of first world countries who are frankly sick of the angry squabbling Middle Eastern migrants.
Some 60 Syrian refugees – many of them on hunger strike – are in a standoff with police at a ferry terminal in northern France.
The group has occupied a footbridge at the port of Calais, a popular crossing point into Britain, and is demanding the British government grant them asylum into the U.K.
Between 20 and 40 of the group have not eaten for two days, activists and protesters said.
Katie Wellington, an activist with the Calais Migrant Society who is at the port, said some 70 riot police attempted to clear the site on Friday morning. In response two Syrians climbed onto a roof and threatened to jump if their asylum demands were not met.
Wellington said the group has effectively given the British government an ultimatum: “Let us into the U.K. or we will die here.”
“These people have different reasons for wanting to come to the U.K.,” she said. “Many of them have family or communities there, and they feel they will get better protection from the [British] government than in France.”
Denis Robin, the prefect of the Pas-de-Calais region, told Sky News he has offered the Syrians, currently illegal migrants, asylum in France.
Mohammed: “We are ignored.”
One of the protesters, 25-year-old Mohammed al Kayd, said he was an economics student studying in Damascus before he was forced to flee Syria one year ago.
“In Calais we sleep in the streets and no one asks us what we need or what happened to us. We are ignored,” he told NBC News via telephone. [Well, Mohammed, apparently a good community organizer, managed to not be ignored by NBC.—ed]
Check out Mohammed’s travel route:
“I left Syria with a little bit of money which I had to spend on food and travel,” he said of his 2,000-mile journey across Europe. “I went through Jordan and from there through Egypt and to Italy by boat.
“The journey by boat lasted for 10 days [What? Was he in a rowboat?—ed] and the last three of these I went without food. From Italy I went to France and traveled to Calais by train.” [Sounds like he had a pretty easy time traveling across Europe which no longer has border checks on each country—ed]
At France 24 we learn that some of the poor and destitute travelers spent $13,000 to reach the port of Calais and they unleashed their anger at the French President where even the Socialist Hollande now apparently knows that an invasion is on.
Ali, a 38-year-old, can barely hide his anger, saying although French President Francois Hollande had taken a strong stand against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons, the French were not welcoming at all.
“Why does the president say one thing and the police another?” Ali said, adding that he had spent $13,000 (9,500 euros) to come to a country where the “president said ‘we must help Syrians.'”
“Here even animals are better treated than us,” he said.
$13,000! $13,000! Where the h*** is all that money coming from?
Does no mainstream investigative reporter ever ask? I believe young Muslim activists are being paid to lead these demonstrations, the question is, who is funding them?
I hear Al Azraqcalling! That is the state-of-the-art UN refugee camp in Jordan that sits empty. How about packing all of the demanding Syrians up and taking them there (including the ones now plaguing Bulgaria). Such action would send a message and other Syrians would think twice before heading off to Europe. It is a simple solution, but too sensible for the UN.
For more information: We never did make a special category for Syrian refugees (a mistake), but if you use our tags you should be able to find the dozens of posts on the topic. (See tags in right hand side bar).
For the longest time Muslim migrants moved from Turkey to Greece, but Greece has been tough on them, so I suspect they have now discovered the weaker border crossings into Bulgaria.
I’ve been receiving alerts (dozens of them) about the refugee crisis in Bulgaria for weeks now, sorry I didn’t get to the story sooner.
A few days ago a reader sent me this BBC storyabout the head of Bulgaria’s refugee agency being fired because the problem is getting out of hand. Bulgaria is the poorest nation in the European Union and has the misfortune of being on the border with Turkey which is apparently letting Syrians just pass through their borders and move on further into western Europe.
In my view, Turkey is simply advancing the Islamic doctrine of immigration (Al Hijra!).
The head of Bulgaria’s refugee agency has been dismissed as the EU country struggles to cope with increasing numbers fleeing the conflict in Syria.
Nikola Kazakov was fired by Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev for failing to handle the influx.
The UN’s refugee agency last month described Bulgarian centres for displaced Syrians as “dire”.
Mr Kazakov said Bulgarian leaders had ignored his warnings of a refugee crisis even as they asked for EU help.
Bulgaria is the gateway to the European Union for refugees fleeing Syria via Turkey, many crossing the border illegally to seek asylum.
It now receives up to 100 mainly Syrian refugees a day – a sharp increase on the four per month arriving a year ago.
Bulgarian officials said on Wednesday that 2,377 migrants had been detained on its border in September alone.
Kazkov warned superiors in June of the pending crisis!
Mr Yovchev, the interior minister, said Mr Kazakov’s “inadequate organisation” was to blame for the problems at the country’s three refugee centres.
But Mr Kazkov insisted he had warned the government of an impending refugee crisis in June but was ignored, the Sofia News Agency reported.
The article is focused on the UN complaining that the refugees aren’t being well cared-for (what else is new!), and the Bulgarians are asking for help from the European Union (good luck with that!). I’ve seen many articles in recent weeks about how the citizens of Bulgaria are furious about what is happening to them.
Last month Mr Youchev said more than 4,000 people were seeking asylum in Bulgaria, a number he called a “disproportionate burden” for the EU’s poorest nation.
He appealed for other EU states to host some of its refugees and provide financial assistance.
Meanwhile a Bulgarian publication warns of the potential for terrorists to be among the refugees.
From the Standart(they need a little better English translator, but you will get the idea):
Some of the Syrian refugees in Bulgaria may be terrorists as Syria currently trains terrorists which it spreads around the world, terrorism expert Col Ivan Boyadzhiev told on Nova TV today citing two Israeli sources.
The expert supported his claim with the fact that some of the Syrain illegal border crossers to Bulgaria carry large amounts of cash and valid IDs. [pay attention to this business about “refugees” with large amounts of cash—-ed]
According to Boyadzhiev, the Syrian terrorist cells are seeking less protected countries, as they get caught fast in the USA. [I don’t know what that means, how many are getting into the US across our borders???—ed]
Th ecolonel noted that having a refugee shelter in the Sofia suburb of “Vrazhdebna” just ”meters away” from the Bulgarian capital’s airport was an ”alarming” idea.
Boyadzhiev also alerted that some Iraqis, Jordans and people from across the Middle East are trying to enter Europe through Bulgaria by presenting themselves as Syrian refugees without ID papers. [We are hearing this all over the world even as far away as Australia! Everyone is a Syrian now!—-ed]
He was also adamant, that Bulgaria needs European help in dealing with the current refugee situation which is runnining out of control.
