Category: Europe

UNHCR wants the EU to take more refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

That is the gist of this news report from Reuters this week.    The Czech Republic is set to take over the Presidency of the European Union shortly and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is insisting that there is more uniform acceptance of refugees throughout Europe.   There must still be some countries holding out.

UNHCR is issuing today a document entitled “A Europe Without Barriers,” containing its recommendations to the Czech Republic, which will take up the rotating Presidency of the European Union (EU) for a six-month period on January 1, 2009.

UNHCR remains seriously concerned that current laws and practice within the European Union mean that persons in need of international protection are not necessarily able to find it throughout the Union. In the document, UNHCR urges the Czech Presidency to ensure the outcome of negotiations among the EU member states is consistent with international refugee law and human rights law.

You hear that EU!  You better not let any sovereign nations make their own decisions.  When the  UN says “jump”—you better jump or else.

Asylum seekers helped fuel Greek riots this week

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Still another update Dec. 13th:   Gates of Vienna posts further analysis of the riots here today.

Update Dec. 13th:  Here is a response to yesterday’s update article—largely in agreement and very intersting.

Update Dec. 12th:   Thanks to an analysis written by a Greek, I am now returning to my earlier hypothesis.  It is not simply the s0-called anarchist students, but involves Muslim immigrants.  I have been thinking about this alliance ever since I saw the anarchists (Marxists) marching in DC alongside the Muslim American Society.  From the postcript to this article.   Thanks to Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna for this additional information

Quite a few Greek “radical groups” have adopted Arabic “Noms de Guerre”, promote illegal immigration of Muslims into Europe and call in for the destruction of Western civilazation. They are part of an almost global network that acts as a “Soft power” element of the hard one as envisaged by Al Qaeda. Once more, it has to be stressed that rogue elements of Western security forces protect them and they have to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Update later:  My apologies for a misleading orginal title to this post.  I said the riots were started by asylum seekers when in fact asylum seekers didn’t join the riots until a few day later here.

Update minutes later:   Riots spreading in Europe, see Gates of Vienna here.

You could hardly miss the news this week that Athens was experiencing horrific rioting, the mainstream media told us it was started by anarchists (you know sort of like our leftwing radicals), and now more information is coming out.

According to the BBC, riots by anarchists were fueled by further rioting of political refugees being refused applications for asylum.   The film linked here is a must see.

Greek police have clashed with hundreds of migrants waiting to submit asylum applications in Athens.

It is the latest example of tensions in the Greek capital – which community leaders say is at risk of becoming a racial battleground.

This year, Greece has attracted a record 80,000 illegal immigrants, but has been criticised by Europe for failing to help asylum seekers.

Thanks to Patrick Cleburne at VDARE for reporting this story here.

You can find our earlier report on the Athens street slaughter (mentioned in the BBC clip) here.

Camp of Saints anyone?

UN meets in Geneva for Refugee Pow-wow

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

An “international dialogue” opened this week in Geneva, Switzerland where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had some profound things to say about the plight of refugees.

GENEVA, December 10 (UNHCR) – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres on Wednesday opened a two-day international dialogue aimed at seeking solutions for millions of people caught up in the limbo of so-called “protracted refugee situations” in which they spend years in exile with no end in sight.

[….]

Guterres told some 300 representatives of more than 50 governments and governmental and non-governmental organizations in Geneva’s Palais des Nations that the world must do more to resolve the seemingly endless plight of nearly 6 million refugees who have spent years, and sometimes decades, in exile. Worldwide, UNHCR counts at least 30 such long-term refugee situations that have lasted five years or more, excluding Palestinians.

Check out the Palais des Nations here.   Can’t you just see the 300, many in native garb with wine glasses in manicured hand before a sumptuous meal discussing ‘what to do,’ ‘what to do.’

Describing the problem as one of “enormous proportions,” Guterres said many long-term refugees are effectively trapped. They cannot go home because their countries of origin are at war or are affected by serious human rights violations. Only a relatively small proportion have a chance of being resettled in third countries, and in many cases their first asylum country will not allow them to fully integrate or become citizens…

There is nothing new here, nothing profound.  I am sorry to say, there are no large governmental answers, only little personal answers.

To each of you losing sleep, find your own way to help someone, either close to home or abroad.

Changing the subject (a little),  did you see Bill Ayers on with Chris Matthews last night?   As he moaned about the terrible suffering of the Vietnamese people, supposedly at our hands in the late ’60’s, I wondered what he ever personally did to help anyone in Vietnam.  I also wondered if he has seen the poverty in present-day Communist Vietnam—the Communist country he helped create.

Germany to take 2,500 Iraqi Christians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

A while back Germany was talking about taking in 30,000 Iraqi Iraqi refugees. Now Deutsche-Welle reports on plans to accept up to 2,500 of them “in the framework of a European Union agreement.”

We posted several times on Germany’s plans, beginning last March. The churches began by pushing for 30,000. Naturally, some people thought it was unfair to specify Christians. We thought it was sensible, since that’s who is the most persecuted, Germany is (or was) a Christian country, and why shouldn’t churches ask for Christians? Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to approve.

Then Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki visited Merkel and told her he wants the refugees back in Iraq. We’re all for resettling the refugees back home. But Maliki has not been straightforward about the Christians, or he has been living in a fantasy. The Christian communities are being utterly destroyed, unless something has happened since I last read about the situation. But Merkel seemed to be rethinking taking a lot of refugees.

Also, the UN is involved.

[The plan for 2,500 refugees] comes on the same day as the UN’s Special Commissioner for Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, expressed his concern about the situation of Iraqi Christians in Iraq in talks with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin. De Mistura said a further exodus had to be stopped and called upon Germany and other EU countries to urge Baghdad to give more protection to the minority grouping.

Urge, shmurge. Baghdad hasn’t done anything for the Christians and doesn’t know what to do. Unless they get their own militias and training, they’ll all be killed off or driven out. Urging Baghdad to do something is about as effective as urging Ahmadinejad to give up his nukes. (I’d love to be proven wrong.)

The article is interesting for something else — how differently Germany treats refugees from the way we treat them. First of all, they have to get acculturated.

Hessen’s Interior Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) stressed that the process foresaw long-term resettlement of the refugees and that they would be expected to take part in a three-month integration course, which would also involve language teaching.

Then, unlike refugees here, who are permanent residents once they arrive,

Berlin’s Interior Minister Ehrhart Koerting (SPD) said the refugees would initially be given three-year residence permits. These could be renewed and lead eventually to German citizenship. 

Why don’t we do that? Kind of probationary residence. If they don’t behave and start to become Americans, out they go. Think of the trouble that would prevent.

At the end of the article is something that’s new to me. (I admit I haven’t been following the Iraqi refugee issue as closely as I should have.) The last I heard the UN was talking as if millions of Iraqi refugees needed resettlement. Now:

Stefan Teloeken, a spokesman for UNHCR Germany, said a small fraction of the two million refugees sheltering in countries neighboring Iraq were neither able to return home nor to integrate into their host countries.

“For these people we have to find third countries,” he said on Thursday. “There is a program set up to this end and we hope that many countries will join this program.

I guess I missed the part where the UN realized Iraq really is being pacified and most of the refugees will be able to go home. Well, hallelujah.

Iraqi Palestinians going to Sweden (via India)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Iraqi Palestinians are apparently favored by the United Nations which doesn’t seem to have the same passion for resettling the Iraqi Christians, at least not that we hear.    Now, here is news that the UNHCR has arranged for this group of Palestinians, driven out of Iraq and given a safe haven in India, to be resettled in Sweden.

In case you are wondering why Muslims should turn on other Muslims, articles like this one never tell you the full story of why the Iraqi Palestinians are persecuted in Iraq.  It was because they were favored by Saddam Hussein and when he met his end, those who had been persecuted by him turned their anger on his favorites.

NEW DELHI, India, November 11 (UNHCR) – More than 100 Palestinian refugees from Iraq are leaving India in the first large-scale resettlement of Palestinian refugees from outside the Middle East.

A total of 137 Palestinian refugees who fled Baghdad for India have been accepted for resettlement by Sweden. So far, 91 have left for Sweden; the rest are due to leave in the next six months. Another 10 left for Norway earlier this year.

Within the community, the mood today is noticeably different from before. Back in Iraq, like other Palestinians after the regime change of 2003, they had been targeted and persecuted. Kidnappings were routine, as were midnight knocks on the door in Palestinian homes. Their shops were torched, their homes looted and bombed. They fled terror and the first groups reached India in March 2006.

This group was lucky, they got to India.  Others are living in miserable camps on the border of Iraq and Syria.  Syria won’t let them in.  Neither will any other Muslim country.  Why?   Well, this article which I meant to post a few days ago, tells us why.

As we have seen in the past, the Iraqi refugees of Palestinian Arab origin are symbolic of the hatred that the Arab world has for Palestinian Arabs. The UNHCR has tried mightily for years to find permanent homes for these people, kicked out of Iraq, but no Arab country (save for a cynical Sudan) has offered to help.

The only countries that do help – Canada, Iceland, Chile and a few others – are vilified by Arabs who pretend to care about their Palestinian brethren, and the reason is clear: to them, “resettlement” means that the refugees will no longer be pawns in the gigantic game of pressuring Israel. Every Palestinian Arab who no longer sits in stateless misery is one less bullet against Israel. The very idea of Palestinian Arabs becoming full citizens of Arab countries is treated as blasphemy, an idea that the UNRWA tried to push in the 1950s but was so violently rebuffed that it became the largest perpetuator of PalArab pain in the guise of gigantic, ever growing “refugee camps.”

And the only people that get hurt are Palestinian Arabs themselves. The Arab world congratulates itself on maintaining “Palestinian unity” but it is just a code word for Palestinian Arab misery.

Frankly, there is no other reasonable explanation for why rich countries like Saudi Arabia won’t take in their fellow Arab Muslims, and no one seems to have the guts to tell them to do their duty.  Where is the famous Muslim charity we hear about?

Now, back to the Palestinians headed to Sweden.  I thought this was a revealing comment.  

What the Palestinians lacked in India was a sense of belonging. Perhaps more than any other community, they long for a homeland, a country to call their own. Resettlement gives them that opportunity. “We dream of Sweden…”

Sweden will be a country of their own?   A homeland?  Really?  Do they know something we don’t know?