Category: Who is going where

Australia apologizes for breaching Indonesian waters to push back migrants, but….

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

….we are going to continue to turn boats away from our shores, said Immigration Minister Morrison!

I wasn’t planning on writing a second post on Australia today (see first one here), but when I saw this photo, I wanted you to see it!

What the heck is this—a strategy session with a white ‘community organizer’ where Somali men, at a hotel in Indonesia, plan their next attempt to break into Australia!

If they want asylum, ask for it in Indonesia, a safe Muslim country!  International law requires legitimate asylum seekers to ask for asylum in the first safe country they reach!

This is the caption published with the photo: “Somali immigrants gather at a hotel where Indonesian authorities have billeted asylum seekers hoping to reach Australia. (AFP/JEMS)”

Here is the story that accompanies the photo, from Reuters:

SYDNEY — Australia’s government on Friday acknowledged its navy breached Indonesian territorial sovereignty several times as part of its controversial operations to stop boats carrying would-be asylum seekers from entering Australian waters.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said he had been informed earlier this week about the “inadvertent breaches” and immediately informed the Indonesian navy.

Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, the officer in charge of “Operation Sovereign Borders,” said the breaches occurred on multiple days but declined to provide further details.

“We deeply regret these events and have offered an apology,” Morrison told reporters. “However the Australian government remains committed to continuing to implement the policies to stop the boats.”

Most of those they are pushing back are from:  Afghanistan, Darfur, Pakistan, Somalia and Syria.

There is more.

Bulgaria refugee story reads like scare tactics; pro-Palestinian blogger the source

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

We have reported on the rise of the rightwing in Bulgaria, the poorest of the 28 European Union countries, as it struggles to deal with thousands of Muslim “refugees” (not only Syrians) coming across their border from Turkey.  Why isn’t Turkey stopping them when they get to Turkey’s border? That is what we want to know?

Blogger Ruslan Trad

But, this story in the Standart (and reprinted from the International Business Times) looks to me like it’s designed to whip-up a frenzy of anti-right sentiment linking the Bulgarian right to Greece’s controversial Golden Dawn.  And, they rely on a blogger they describe as a Syrian/Bulgarian, founder of the Forum for Arab Culture (in Bulgarian language we presume), who produced these pro-Palestinian youtube clips (here and here).  He would hardly be an unbiased source.  Emphasis below is mine:

Bulgaria nationalist groups have launched civil patrols to round-up migrants in the country in a hate attack strategy that is reminiscent of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn group, The International Business Times reports.

The Balkan country has seen a surge in xenophobic attacks since a wave of refugees escaping from the horrors of the civil war in Syria, 2,000 km south of the capital Sofia, has entered via the Turkish border.

From June 2013, more than 10,000 refugees reached Bulgaria and human rights organisations expect tens of thousands to make the journey in the coming months.

The surge of nationalist sentiment, which led to the creation of the new Nationalist Party of Bulgaria, is fuelled by the government’s lack of preparation, information and adequate response to the refugee crisis, according to Ruslan Trad, Syrian-Bulgarian blogger and founder of Forum for Arab Culture.

“Lack of information leads to aggression and fears. And these fears are used by nationalist factions,” he told IBTimes UK.

“We have no clear information for the refugees: who are they, what’s their ethnic and religious composition.

Wouldn’t that last bit concern you no matter what your home country is that is being overrun?

Read it all.  Trad appears to be the source for the whole piece.

Our growing archive on Bulgaria can be found by clicking here.  Time to read about Al-Hijra, the Islamic doctrine of immigration!

20,000 African ‘asylum seekers’ marched in Tel Aviv over the weekend, demand their “rights”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  UNHCR blasts Israel’s treatment of would-be “refugees” (here).  So where is the blast at Saudi Arabia?

Those paragons of Muslim charity in Saudi Arabia can deport Africans by the thousands with no public outcry, yet, Israel is called evil for not giving asylum to tens of thousands of Africans who would soon turn Tel Aviv into Marseille!  The double standard is outrageous, and heck S.A. actually has the land to accommodate their fellow Muslims.

From 972Mag:

Over 20,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea, assembled in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square Sunday morning to demand recognition as refugees. Across Israel, asylum seekers went on a three-day strike, and more protests were planned.

In recent weeks, the government stepped up the arrest and imprisonment of African asylum seekers who entered the state without permits. Several months ago, Israel’s High Court of Justice struck down a law authorizing the state to lock up for three years any person who entered the country illegally, and in some cases, indefinitely. But last month the Knesset passed a new law, authorizing the state to hold asylum seekers in “closed” prisons for a year. A new “open” holding facility named “Holot” began operating in the desert, where asylum seekers can be held indefinitely until their eventual deportation.

The government has stepped up enforcement measures against Israeli businesses that employ asylum seekers in recent weeks and months and municipalities have been shutting down shops and restaurants owned by Africans, adding to a feeling of despair in the asylum seeker community.

The general strike is the latest step in the African protest campaign against the recent measures.

There is more, go to 972Mag for the story and especially the photos.

Aljazeera puts the number of protesters at 30,000, here, called the largest “migrant rally” in Israel’s history.

See our category Israel and refugees for more on the issue.

Watch for it! More Iraqis coming our way?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Still not close to the number of Syrians entering Jordan, but the pace of Iraqis on the run is increasing (again!).

Iraqis have only one place to go—Jordan. Saudi Arabia takes no refugees!

Just when you thought one Muslim civil war was over and we could stop taking their “refugees,” along come the Islamists to fire things up again as we learned this weekend in the news from Iraq.  It reminds me of the game ‘whack-a-mole!’

A BBC story on the resurgence of fighting in Fallujah inserts these paragraphs which doesn’t bode well for the US getting a break from Iraqi refugees—the largest group of refugees we resettled in FY2013—almost 20,000!

BBC:

Meanwhile the conflict appeared to be having an effect on the flow of Iraqi refugees into Jordan.

The UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said registration had increased fivefold since the beginning of December, though most new refugees came from minority communities in Baghdad.  [Minorities also include Sunni Muslims—ed]

Smaller numbers were coming from Anbar province, where the fighting was taking place, and from the majority Shia community, the UN said.

An average of 415 Iraqi refugees a week are now entering Jordan, compared with 500 Syrians per day, it added.

Saudi Arabia does not allow refugees to come across the border, and if they manage to get in they are deported—even the Muslim ones.

This is our 599th post on Iraqi refugees.

UN: Don’t send asylum seekers back to Bulgaria!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Where they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment” say the UN bullies.

If you are wondering what this is all about, the European Union has this dumb thing called the ‘Dublin Regulation’ which says if ‘asylum seekers’ trek across some poor border country—like Bulgaria, Greece, or Malta—and seek asylum in some other European country then they can be sent back to the poor border country and apply there.  You can see how this might deter the migrants who are asylum shopping, but imagine what it does to the poor border country that couldn’t handle the influx in the first place.

Bulgaria’s rightwing Ataka Party is expected to do well in May EU elections.

Here is the story from Fox News:

BERLIN –  The United Nations’ refugee agency is urging European countries to hold off returning asylum seekers to Bulgaria, citing problems with access to basic services and with asylum procedures.

Under the “Dublin procedure,” European Union countries return illegal migrants to the first EU country they entered. Bulgaria is on the bloc’s eastern edge and has seen increasing numbers of asylum seekers in recent months, among them people fleeing Syria’s civil war.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees urged other countries Friday to suspend returning migrants to Bulgaria because of risks they could face “inhuman or degrading treatment”; it plans to review the situation in April.

April! More likely May after the EU Parliament elections so they don’t tick-off the rightwing so much that they defeat some of the socialists who now run the EU!

It says Bulgaria has made progress but problems remain with asylum seekers’ access to food and health care, registration delays and risks of arbitrary detention.

You can see that my sympathies are with Bulgaria.  For more on Bulgaria’s “refugee crisis,” click here.

Photo is from this story at Top Conservative News.