The United States on Friday urged Thailand to protect some 200 asylum seekers who are reportedly from China’s Uighur minority, after police said they discovered them at a secret camp.
Thai police said Thursday that they discovered the families in a raid in the kingdom’s deep south and that the asylum seekers, who appeared to be preparing to head elsewhere, said they were Turkish.
The Uighurs come from Xinjiang province. The March 1 terror attack occurred in Kunming.
US broadcaster Radio Free Asia, quoting relatives, said that the asylum seekers were actually Uighurs — a Turkic-speaking, predominantly Muslim group from China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.
“We are urging the Thai government to provide full protection to the victims (and) to ensure that their humanitarian needs are met,” State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters.
The annual US Human Rights Reports said that China carries out “severe official repression” of Uighurs in Xinjiang, including over their freedom of speech and religion.
March 1 mass stabbing at train station:
Xinjiang is periodically hit by violent clashes and Chinese officials blamed Uighur separatists for a March 1 mass stabbing at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming that killed 29 people and injured 143 others.
Malaysia among countries forcibly returning Uighurs to China.
Under Beijing’s pressure, Cambodia, Malaysia and Pakistan have all in recent years forcibly returned Uighurs to China.
The UN refugee agency criticized Malaysia for its deportation of six Uighurs to China in December, saying that they were sent back to a country where they were at risk even though the group had registered asylum claims.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that it is providing assistance to the 200 asylum seekers in Thailand but has not confirmed their identifies.
Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish territory where Africans are storming the border fences.
We told you about thisalmost two weeks ago and posted a map at right. Spain has territory on the Moroccan coast and obviously Morocco is allowing tens of thousands of African migrants through its country in their attempt to break into the Spanish territory.
The New York Times has now joined the fray with a piece aimed at making Spain look bad (what else!). Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers.’
MADRID — About 80,000 African migrants are heading for Spain’s two enclaves along the Moroccan coast, leaving Spain struggling to contain the efforts that are coming in larger and increasingly coordinated surges in recent days.
The Spanish interior minister, Jorge Fernández Díaz, said Thursday that the situation at the enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, was a problem not only for Spain, but for all of Europe, and needed to be handled “in cooperation with the European Union.”
The government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has faced intensifying criticism — within Spain and from the union — over its defense of the enclaves.
As Mr. Fernández Díaz noted on Wednesday, the first day of his two-day visit to the enclaves, “There are 40,000 people in Morocco who are waiting to cross illegally into Spain, and 40,000 more at the border between Mauritania and Morocco.”
They are mostly economic migrants and only a small number will be able to claim asylum. If I were the EU, I’d be putting the screws to Morocco. Just as the good professor said of Canada recently—they are paralyzed by the toxin of multiculturalism.
The Court was concerned about “immigration control!”
This is a case followed closely by the human rights industrial complex around the globe. Was George Soros paying for it?
The decision has them seething.
Honestly though most “refugees” and “asylum seekers” are not persecuted people, but are economic migrants looking for work and social services. When access to those things are easily obtained, more will simply arrive in the country. See Germanyand Sweden which are inviting them and Israel which is attempting to remove them.
This decision is clearly designed to keep the flood gates closed in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal recently delivered a highly disappointing judgment in GA. v. Director of Immigration, unanimously deciding that refugees may be denied a right to work in the country. The decision, which has received considerable international attention, has been widely criticized by the public as unjust, inhumane and lacking in common sense.
Although Hong Kong’s law currently provides that asylum seekers, recognized refugees and torture claims may be granted “discretionary permission” to work by the Director of Immigration, in practice, this discretion is rarely exercised. As a result, these individuals are forced to reside in often-intolerable living conditions, work illegally and rely on a minimal government-backed allowance.With only approximately one hundred refugees in the territory, there is little weight to the argument that extending the right to work to refugees would have any notable impact upon Hong Kong’s labor market.
I think in fact the court used “common sense” by understanding that there are only a hundred “refugees” in the territory and not 1,000 or 10,000 simply because they can’t work or get handouts.
Tarnished reputation (ho-hum!):
The decision further entrenches an inadequate asylum policy in the territory, and thus, Hong Kong now must face its tarnished reputation as one of the few developed countries in the world who bans recognized refugees from fulfilling their fundamental right to work.
Who says it’s a fundamental right to work?
I just searched for any complaints at Refugee Work Rights about Saudi Arabia and its treatment of “refugee” workers, I could find nothing. They must be too blank to take on the Saudis!
The first thing I noticed in this Deutsche Welle “news” story is the number of times the reporter was able to get the words “right-wing” into one report! Check it out yourself (for a chuckle)!
Readers, we report refugee and asylum news from around the world so that you know how far ahead some countries are with their own cultural/demographic decline and the political backlash coming from the citizens. And, we have a substantial readership particularly in Europe, Canada and Australia.
Sweden is probably the farthest along in its demographic “change,” but Germany is trying hard to catch up as it, along with Sweden, welcomes large numbers of so-called asylum seekers across their borders. Germany has invited 10,000 Syrians to enter Germany this year on top of the Afghans and other Middle Easterners flowing over their borders. Most of the illegal aliens are economic migrants and will have no legitimate claim to asylum.
Pro Asyl’s Burkhardt: Silence the “right-wing propaganda” and allow only our socialist propaganda. So, who are the real fascists?
The Deutsche Welle “news” is really no new news, just a rehash and a call to silence the “propaganda” of the “right-wing!” Emphasis is mine:
In the Bavarian city of Fichtelberg on a Saturday afternoon in January 2014, a group of men pushed their way into a refugee shelter. Dressed in black and partially masked, the intruders stopped at the stairwell and began yelling, according to sources quoted in the local newspaper “Nordbayerische Kurier.”
Nobody in the shelter, however, understood what the men were shouting as most of the refugees had just arrived in Bavaria and spoke no German. After the shouting, the black-clad group quickly left the refugee shelter.
Arson attacks, broken windows and racists slurs painted on buildings are among the rising number of right-wing acts of aggression against refugee shelters across Germany. The Federal Criminal Police (BKA) registered 59 right-wing offenses in 2013, more then twice as many as the year before.
Fear that the “right-wingers” will join forces with the regular German folks! Eeek!
The German government also said it is concerned by the BKA statistics. “The right-wing scene turned noticeably against asylum seekers in 2013,” Pamela Müller-Niese, a spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior, said in a statement.
The number of asylum seekers in 2013 reached its highest level since 1999. A total of some 127,000 people from Syria, Afghanistan and other hot spots in the world fled to Germany last year. To accommodate them, numerous cities have converted empty schools and military barracks into temporary housing.
In many places, however, residents feel ignored, and right-wing extremists have taken advantage of the situation by joining anti-asylum protests in their neighborhood. Such was the case in Berlin-Hellersdorf. The situation there became so tense last year that refugees required police protection to enter their housing units.
“The far-right is trying to exploit the mood in many parts of the population,” said Günter Burkhardt. “There’s an attempt to connect to the middle of society.”[This Deutsche-Welle “news” story is designed to warn-off the middle of society from any association with the “far-right.”—-ed]
Interior Ministry spokeswoman Müller-Niese also said there were concerns about the right-wing appealing to more of society by hyping allegations of “asylum abuse.”
Half of Germans say the country already has too many asylum seekers, according to Funke.
The real fascists in Germany are those who want to silence the people!
Pro Asyl‘s Burkhardt called on politicians to take responsibility for curbing the right-wing’s populist propaganda in Germany.He said there needs to be a clear commitment to the basic right of asylum and corresponding measures that allow asylum seekers to integrate in Germany.
Burkhardt goes on to say, give the asylum seekers apartments and jobs which I suspect is the thing that will infuriate the “middle of society” the most, and it will attract more migrants to Germany!
This is an incredible story from Illinois. A family of Romani was arrested this week for shoplifting millions of dollars of merchandise from stores over a ten year period and selling the stolen goods on eBay.
The $1.3 million home of the Bogdanov family. Photo: Alexandra Chachkevitch, Chicago Tribune
The first story sent to me today by a reader while I was away is this one from AP. Note that the only way we know they are immigrants is that the wife needed a Romani translator for her court appearance.
However, a second story unearthed by ‘pungentpeppers’ identified them as being from the former Yugoslavia. The funny thing is that you have to watch the ABC News clip (to the very end) attached to the written story to find out where they are from and that they may not even be US citizens. Amazing how skittish the media is about reporting immigrant wrong-doing.
By the way, we have taken refugees from the former Yugoslavia (thousands of them!) so they could indeed be refugees.
CHICAGO (AP) — A father, mother and daughter from a posh Chicago suburb stole $7 million in merchandise during a decadelong shoplifting spree — traveling to stores nationwide and targeting dolls, toys, cosmetics and other valuables — according to a federal complaint released Wednesday.
The three were arrested earlier this week at their $1.3 million Northbrook homeafter returning from a three-day trip through Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, where authorities say they shoplifted from stores. Working in tandem, the family traveled from their Chicago-area residence to hit businesses in multiple states, including Maryland, Tennessee and Florida, according to the 20-page complaint.
Branko Bogdanov, 58, Lela Bogdanov, 52, and their 34-year-old daughter, Julia Bogdanov, are charged with one count each of interstate transportation of stolen property.
[….]
Lela Bogdanov frequently donned a long black skirt with large compartments sewn on the inside during the alleged shoplifting binges and was caught on surveillance cameras leaving some stores with her skirt looking notably fuller than when she entered, the complaint says.
Standing in orange jail clothes Wednesday in federal court, Lela Bogdanov wiped away tears as U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason explained her rights. She followed the proceedings through a Romani interpreter.
The Chicago Tribunestory (which has the photo) does mention their ethnicity.
