Category: Other refugees

Short takes: refugees around the world, diseases, rapes, suicides, trafficking etc.

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got such a backlog of stories to post, I’ve decided to do a compendium of sorts to catch up.

Rohingya men demand justice in Thailand. AFP photo

~Syrian refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, overloaded and unsanitary conditions may lead to disease

Here is the story at Relief Web:

DOMIZ CAMP, 3 July 2013 (IRIN) – On a hot June afternoon, 27-year-old Gharib Mohammed stands outside his tent at this camp for Syrian refugees in Iraq, shovel in hand.

Sewage and garbage have blocked the small stream that runs the length of his dusty avenue and the smell has entered his tent.

~Center for Disease Control has a report on the high Bhutanese refugee suicide rate in the US.  Looks like not much new beyond what we have already reported.

From February 2009 to February 2012, the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reported 16 suicides among Bhutanese refugees in the United States. This number far surpasses the number of suicides reported to ORR among any other refugee community in the United States, yielding a suicide rate that is twice as high as that in the general United States population.

~In Egypt, Egyptian men think they can get Syrian refugee brides cheaply, from The Star:

Men across the region are now seeking Syrian brides. In Turkey and Jordan, where refugee camps pepper the landscape, the desperation of the Syrians is far easier to spot as rich Persian Gulf men scour the camps to buy brides living in tents. Rape, child brides and temporary marriages are prevalent.

[….]

But in Cairo, where there are no camps, the dashed dreams of both Egyptians and Syrians in the post-Arab Spring world meet on more equal terms.

Egyptian men, now poorer as the economy founders, find hope in the desperate Syrians, who can’t live in their own nation because a war that once promised revolutionary change has brought devastation and forced flight instead.

[….]

Some Muslim clerics have urged Egyptian men to marry Syrian women as an act of charity, and there are even rumours that top members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the secretive religious society through which Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi rose to prominence, have taken Syrian women as second wives.  [LOL!  I bet this practice came to a screeching halt in the last few days!—ed]

~In Thailand a policeman was charged with helping Rohingya man rape Rohingya woman, from AFP where the story is used to once again blame the Buddhists in Burma.

BANGKOK — A policeman has been charged with trafficking after a Rohingya woman was allegedly lured from a shelter in southern Thailand and subsequently raped by a man from the refugee Muslim minority, police told AFP Friday.

It is believed to be the first time a Thai official has been charged with trafficking of Rohingya boat people, despite probes into alleged people smuggling by authorities including the army.

[….]

The woman was allegedly raped repeatedly by the Rohingya man, believed to have worked as a translator at the shelter, who has been charged for the assault.

US Catholic Bishops would like the US to take more Rohingya (and Syrians!) to your towns, here.

~Woman (Mexican national) charged in US with trafficking child from El Salvador into the US, from the Brownsville Herald:

Another child is heading to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and a woman is accused of trying to smuggle the undocumented girl into the country, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release.

Mirtha Veronica Nava-Martinez, 38, is accused of inducing an undocumented child to enter the U.S. illegally for financial gain, a criminal complaint revealed.

Bhutanese refugees still want to return to Bhutan

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There appears to be a new push on to pressure the Bhutanese government to take back some of the people of Nepalese origin that they booted out of the country more than two decades ago.

In its infinite wisdom, the UNHCR with the blessing of the US (and the resettlement contractors hankering for a new batch of clients), which took the largest number of Bhutanese/Nepalese refugees over the  last five years, dispersed the camp populations living in Nepal to the “four winds.”  It seems a little late for a renewed effort to pressure world governments to in turn pressure Bhutan, but some 10,000 or so refugees who refused resettlement, have renewed their clamor to “go home.”

Here is a short piece, hat tip Ralph.  And, below is a link to a New York Times opinion piece from Friday on the same topic.

DAMAK, June 29: The Bhutanese refugees residing in different camps in eastern Nepal have asked the Nepal government to keep their repatriation mission open.

Some 10,000 refugees have expressed their willingness to return to their home in Bhutan.

Forced into resettlement by donor agencies.  Who could that be I wonder?

In the memo, the Committee has claimed that different donor agencies have forced the Bhutanese refugees for third country resettlement.

*****

Journalist and filmmaker Vidhyapati Mishra

Read also, ‘Bhutan is no Shangri-La'(but we want to go back anyway!) written by Vidhyapati Mishra at the New York Times.

Mishra describes how his family lived in Bhutan for several generations but had to leave everything behind when the government of Bhutan decided two decades ago to expel the people of Nepalese origin.

Frankly, to this day, I don’t know why it became the responsibility of the US to wholesale remove these people from that part of the world and get them meatpacking jobs scattered across America (or worse a job at 7-Eleven in St. Louis).   If we had to get involved could we not have used our enormous economic pressure on these two countries—Bhutan and Nepal—to work this out among themselves!

Here is some of what Mr. Mishra says (obviously still holding out hope that they can go back to Bhutan)  Hat tip: Joanne:

We were among the 90,000 Bhutanese refugees who flooded shelters in eastern Nepal at that time. The population grew to more than 115,000, as people kept trickling in and children were born. My parents, a brother and I have called these shelters our home for 21 years.

The original seven refugee camps have shrunk to two, but almost 36,000 people continue to live in misery here. More than 80,000 have been resettled in other countries; 68,000, including my wife, most of my siblings and extended family, have moved to the United States. I expect to be able to join them very soon.

Helping us, though, is not the same as helping our cause: every refugee who is resettled eases the pressure on the Bhutanese government to take responsibility for, and eventually welcome back, the population it displaced.

Bhutan became a constitutional monarchy in 2008, two years after King Jigme Singye Wangchuck abdicated the throne to his eldest son. To live up to its promises of democracy and its reputation as a purveyor of happiness, the government must extend full civil rights — including citizenship and the right to vote — to all of the Lhotshampa still in its borders. It also must allow those Lhotshampa it expelled to return.

Instead, Bhutan has steadfastly ignored our demands; multiple rounds of talks between Bhutan and Nepal over the status of the Lhotshampa have yielded little progress.

The international community can no longer turn a blind eye to this calamity. The United Nations must insist that Bhutan, a member state, honor its convention on refugees, including respecting our right to return.

Other countries bear responsibility, too.

The UN still needs to explain why they have a double standard.   How can the Palestinians still demand a right to return (after six decades), but the Bhutanese were scattered around the world after only two.

Japan doesn’t take many refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Truth be told—Japan wants to maintain its Japanese cultural identity. They know very well that a small country with open borders will soon be overrun and frankly gone!  They don’t buy the ‘diversity-is-strength’ mumbo-jumbo.

Only a few countries understand ethnic nationalism.  By the way, that is what Bhutan was doing when it expelled its Nepalese immigrants.  And, what Israel is trying to do, but may be too late.

A Geisha. Cultural preservation is a driving force in Japan.

Here is some news from Japan (the English isn’t the greatest, so I’m not sure if the writer wants more refugees or not), but it should be instructive for readers nonetheless.

Visit some of our earlier posts on Japan, here, where we learned that the “humanitarians” and the UN badgered Japan to take refugees, but only a trickle have been approved.

Call them “unwelcoming!”   But, why should Japan be forced to change? There is no proof that multi-culturalism works!

From a blog called JapanSociology:

It is said that the number of refugees is 43.3 million in the world now and many refugees are driven away from their living places. Although many of them are staying at their home country or the neighboring country, there are also refugees who come to the developed countries such as the US and Canada in order to look for their safe and stable life. This is refugee resettlement. Since 2010, Japan also began to the program of refugee resettlement as the first country of the Asian country. In 2010, 27 refugees of Myanmar who live in refugee camp of Thailand came to Japan. This is a new approach for Japan.

At first, why does not Japan receive many refugees? About 1.6 thousand refugees came to Japan in order to be recognized as refugees in 2008. However, the refugees who were recognized as refugees by the Minister of Justice are only 56 refugees. This number shows that many refugees can not be recognized as refugees and be allowed to come to Japan. Compared with other developed countries such as the US and France, the number of refugees being received is very few. The cause that the refugees in Japan are a small number is the system on the refugees and entry into a country. In Japan receiving entry permit to Japan is difficult in the eyes of the system of Japan. In the present day, refugees who came to Japan in order to be recognized as refugees are accommodated in an accommodation temporarily and they are treated like illegal immigrants. The food they receive is a poor Japanese food and they can not eat well because they do not adapt to Japanese food. They suffer in the accommodation until the result of the procedure comes out.

Read it all.

We previously noted, and this article does too, that Japan is second only to the US in giving financial aid to impoverished people elsewhere in the world.  So maybe the UN should just leave them alone!

Pew: Christians still make up most of US immigrant population, but Muslim share is growing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

No worries!  Only a quarter of a million US Muslims say violence against civilians in the name of Islam may sometimes be justified!

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life came out with a new study just yesterday about the religious make-up and size of the mostly legal immigrant population in the US.

As you read through this ponder these facts (I’ve rounded the numbers):

~ The US population is around 315 million.

~Pew says the US Muslim population as of 2011 was 2.75 million.

~We are adding roughly 1 million immigrants a year (for the past 20 years) and 100,000 of them are Muslim.

~Christians make up the largest share, but the share of Muslims and Hindus is growing.

Here are some interesting segments of Pew’s conclusions (I’ve highlighted the parts that interest me):

Over the past 20 years, the United States has granted permanent residency status to an average of about 1 million immigrants each year. These new “green card” recipients qualify for residency in a wide variety of ways – as family members of current U.S. residents, recipients of employment visas, refugees and asylum seekers, or winners of a visa lottery – and they include people from nearly every country in the world. But their geographic origins gradually have been shifting. U.S. government statistics show that a smaller percentage come from Europe and the Americas than did so 20 years ago, and a growing share now come from Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East-North Africa region.

With this geographic shift, it is likely that the religious makeup of legal immigrants also has been changing. The U.S. government, however, does not keep track of the religion of new permanent residents. As a result, the figures on religious affiliation in this report are estimates produced by combining government statistics on the birthplaces of new green card recipients over the period between 1992 and 2012 with the best available U.S. survey data on the religious self-identification of new immigrants from each major country of origin.  [US refugee program does track religious affiliation, they just don’t make the information public.—ed]

While Christians continue to make up a majority of legal immigrants to the U.S., the estimated share of new legal permanent residents who are Christian declined from 68% in 1992 to 61% in 2012. Over the same period, the estimated share of green card recipients who belong to religious minorities rose from approximately one-in-five (19%) to one-in-four (25%). This includes growing shares of Muslims (5% in 1992, 10% in 2012) and Hindus (3% in 1992, 7% in 2012).

More coming from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The geographic origins of new permanent residents have shifted markedly during the past two decades, according to U.S. government data. In 1992, a total of 41% of new permanent residents came from the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East-North Africa region or sub-Saharan Africa. By 2012, more than half (53%) of new green card holders were from those regions.

No surprise!  Most Muslim population growth in US is coming from immigration.

The estimated number of new Muslim immigrants varies from year to year but generally has been on the rise, going from roughly 50,000 in 1992 to 100,000 in 2012. Since 2008, the estimated number of Muslims becoming U.S. permanent residents has remained at or above the 100,000 level each year. [Readers, that means that probably the biggest chunk of legal Muslim immigration is coming through our refugee and asylum programs—ed]

Between 1992 and 2012, a total of about 1.7 million Muslims entered the U.S. as legal permanent residents. That constitutes a large portion of the overall U.S. Muslim population (estimated at 2.75 million as of 2011).

Most Muslim immigrants coming from Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, Iraq, Somalia and Ethiopia.

The most common countries of origin among Muslim immigrants in 1992 included Pakistan, Iran and Bangladesh. Those countries, as well as Iraq, also were among the most likely birthplaces of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. in 2012.

In recent years, a higher percentage of Muslim immigrants have been coming from sub-Saharan Africa. An estimated 16% of Muslim immigrants to the U.S. in 2012 were born in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia. In 1992, only about 5% of new Muslim immigrants came from sub-Saharan Africa.  [Whew! That means about 16,000 Somalis and Ethiopians came last year!  Higher than I thought!—ed]

Now just for fun, go to Pew’s worldwide Muslim survey last month, here.

Don’t you just love it how Pew spins this with the word ‘few’!

Few U.S. Muslims voice support for suicide bombing or other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam; 81% say such acts are never justified, while fewer than one-in-ten say violence against civilians either is often justified (1%) or is sometimes justified (7%) to defend Islam. Around the world, most Muslims also reject suicide bombing and other attacks against civilians. However, substantial minorities in several countries say such acts of violence are at least sometimes justified, including 26% of Muslims in Bangladesh, 29% in Egypt, 39% in Afghanistan and 40% in the Palestinian territories.

So, if we have roughly 2.75 million Muslims in the US and 8% say it’s often or sometimes justified to use suicide bombings and violence against civilians in the name of Islam, that means that 220,000 American Muslims think violence against civilians is justified (someone check my math, maybe I have too many zeros!).  Ahhhhh!

I’m confident (aren’t you?) that when we take immigrants from Egypt, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories that we are only getting those from the percentage who do not approve of violence against civilians in the name of Islam—right!

I bet there is a lot of juicy stuff in here for anyone with the patience to dissect it!

Partnership marks the launch of Support The Belly—refugee contractor joins Ingrid and Isabel for fundraising

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Dear critics:  Much to your surprise I’m not going to make fun of the International Rescue Committee for raising money through a capitalistic joint venture with a for-profit business like Ingrid & Isabel.   That is, assuming, of course, that the more money the IRC raises privately means they will dip into the US Treasury less—right!

The kind of support every refugee woman needs!

And, helping poor refugee women around the world sure beats “resettle and dump on… “  American cities and towns.

Besides, the IRC needs to raise money to pay its new CEO—David Miliband—the $400,000 plus salary he will be receiving, and the less of that coming from the US taxpayer the better.

Here is the gist of the new ‘Support the Belly’ partnership:

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Ingrid & Isabel, the maternity company known for its best-selling Bellaband, has partnered with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), a non-profit organization that responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, for the launch of Support the Belly, the company’s philanthropic initiative. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC offers lifesaving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, the IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The organization delivers 200,000 babies in crisis settings annually. Refugee women with little or no access to maternal health care are particularly vulnerable, and this is why Ingrid & Isabel wants to help.

“Motherhood is life-changing, it shouldn’t be life-threatening. So, we are proud to join forces with the IRC to address the dire need for healthcare, nutrition and maternal support around the world.”

“Ingrid & Isabel’s passion and focus is the expectant mother,” explains Ingrid Carney, Founder and CEO of Ingrid & Isabel. “Motherhood is life-changing, it shouldn’t be life-threatening. So, we are proud to join forces with the IRC to address the dire need for healthcare, nutrition and maternal support around the world.”

Together with the IRC, Ingrid & Isabel has developed a selection of charitable “Rescue Gifts” that can be purchased on www.rescue.org/Support-the-Belly to help expectant mothers in need. Ingrid & Isabel has pledged to match donations to the IRC up to $30,000. These tax-deductible gifts are offered at a variety of price points:

For gift ideas, read on.  I repeat, private charitable giving should be the goal of all NGOs doing humanitarian work!

If you are old and managed being pregnant ‘back in the day’ without a BellaBand, go here to learn what you missed.