Tag: Bulgaria

Bad News for Europe: Turkey Will No Longer Stop Migrants from Crossing into Greece

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Invasion of Europe news….

If Europe doesn’t have it bad enough already, it looks like a new wave of migrants from Syria is on the way to the west.  And, they aren’t all Syrians!

In 2016 the Turkish government, in a deal with the EU, agreed to not permit border crossings into Europe, but it looks like that agreement is now out the window.

At a time when the whole world is focused on the movement of sick people, here is an example of how vulnerable every country that doesn’t seal its borders is to the transmission of deadly pathogens.

From Deutsche Welle:

Turkey will not stop refugees ‘who want to go to Europe’

No caption to indicate where or when the photo was taken but note the two on the left in face masks.

 

Hundreds of Europe-bound migrants have begun heading to northwest Turkey towards Bulgaria and Greece. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party said the refugees began their journey after a Syrian attack in Idlib.

Turkey is “no longer able to hold refugees” following a Syrian attack that killed 33 troops in Idlib, Omer Celik, a spokesman for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, said on Friday.

The announcement comes as some 300 migrants walk through northwest Turkey towards its borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday, according to DHA news agency.

“As a result of the attack, the (refugees) in Turkey are heading towards Europe, and those on Syrian territory are heading towards Turkey,” Celik told CNN Türk shortly after midnight Friday morning. “Our refugee policy is the same as before, but we are now in a situation where we can no longer hold them.”

Demiroren news agency said the group of migrants, including women and children, embarked on their journey from Turkey’s Edirne province toward borders with Bulgaria and Greece — two European Union nations — at around midnight. Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Moroccans were among those in the group.

[….]

According to EU figures, Greece saw more than 60,000 asylum seekers arrive from Turkey on the shores of its Aegean islands in 2019, and it expects more than 100,000 more in 2020.

More here.

See my Invasion of Europe archive where I’ve been filing stories for a decade on the topic.

***Update***

Don’t miss my follow-up post this morning:

Middle East Migration: Could it Hasten the Spread of Covid-19?

 

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In Invasion of Europe news, huge refugee flow into Europe fueling the rise of the right wing

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This story is from the New York Times yesterday and is built around the news that Bulgaria has completed a significant border fence with Turkey in time for the spring flood of Syrians, other Middle Easterners and Africans trying to get to the more ‘welcoming’ and potentially lucrative, for them, western European countries like Germany and the UK.

Bulgarian security people believe the jihadists are in the flow.

From the New York Times (emphasis is mine):

Bulgaria attempting to keep migrants on the Turkish side of their border.

Lesovo, Bulgaria — Less than two decades after the painstaking removal of a massive border fence designed to keep people in, Bulgarian authorities are just as painstakingly building a new fence along the rugged Turkish border, this time to keep people out.

Faced with a surge of refugees from the Middle East and North Africa — and the risk that they include jihadis intent on terrorist attacks — Europe is bolstering its defenses on many fronts, including this formerly Communist country, which little more than a quarter-century ago was more concerned with stanching the outbound flow of its own citizens to freedom. For the past 16 months, Bulgaria has been carrying out a plan that would sound familiar to anyone along the United States-Mexico frontier: more border officers, new surveillance equipment and the first 20-mile section of its border fence, which was finished in September.

The hardening of the Bulgaria-Turkey border is one very visible manifestation of the agitation across the continent about the economic, social and political ramifications of the surge in immigration. With warmer weather fast approaching and more refugees likely to be on the move, nations along Europe’s southern tier are beefing up border staffing, adding sensors and other technical barriers, expanding refugee facilities, and building walls.

More than 200,000 refugees are known to have penetrated Europe’s land and sea borders last year, not including those who were able to sneak through undetected.

And the numbers for the first two months of this year, when Europe enjoyed its second mild winter in a row, were up sharply compared with the same period last year.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is increasing in Britain, France, Hungary, the Czech Republic and elsewhere across the continent. Parties espousing ethnic nationalism are seeing their support rise, some to the point where they threaten the dominance of more traditional parties.

“The rise of the right wing in Europe is a reaction to this refugee flow,” said Boris B. Cheshirkov, chief spokesman in Bulgaria for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

[….]

Slavcho Velkov, a Bulgarian security expert and university lecturer, said he believed there was more jihadist movement through Bulgaria than the authorities acknowledged.

“I have seen such fighters here with my own eyes,” he said. “I spotted some at the central bus station and struck up a conversation. When I asked them where they were going, they said, ‘We are going to heaven.’ ”

There is a lot more. Continue reading here.

We keep you informed on the ramifications of the ‘Invasion of Europe’ because the US is headed down the same path, just a few years behind Europe.

See our growing archive on beleaguered Bulgaria, here.

 

Bulgarian village says NO to Muslim migrant kids in school

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There are ‘pockets of resistance’ in some European countries which still have a will to live—one of those countries is Bulgaria which recently came under fire from the UN for building a border fence with Turkey so as to keep from being overrun.

Bulgaria attempting to protect itself from invasion from Turkey built additional border fencing this year. Photo Credit: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov

Here is a bit of the latest news.  Although most of our readers are from the US, it is important for you to know the trajectory Europe is on.

From Novinite:

Residents of the western Bulgarian village of Kovachevtsi have issued a declaration demanding that the immigrants accommodated at the National Children Ecological Complex leave by October 30.

The declaration was adopted by the local Municipal Council, which held an extraordinary sitting on Monday after a protest over the decision to admit children of immigrants to the school in the village of Kalishte.

Ventsislav Todorov, Chair of the Kovachevtsi Municipal Council, informed that the declaration would be sent to the President, Prime Minister, the Education Minister, and the Chair of the State Agency for Refugees and the District Governor of Pernik.

“We oppose integration in a situation where Bulgarians are a minority, while Somali and Afghan nationals without refugee status are a majority,” he explained, as cited by the Bulgarian National Radio.

See our Bulgaria archive here, and our ‘invasion of Europe’ series here.

Bulgaria may extend border fence with Turkey to slow invasion

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is one more in our ‘invasion of Europe’ series.  And, one more story about tiny Bulgaria being beaten-up by the international humanitarian industrial complex working tirelessly to erase borders worldwide.

 

Bulgarian border police stand near a barbed wire fence on the Bulgarian-Turkish border July 17, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov

 

From Reuters:

(Reuters) – Bulgaria may extend the fence at its border with Turkey to stop more refugees from Syria and Iraq entering illegally, a top interior ministry official said on Wednesday, while the foreign minister warned of “terrorism imports” to the EU member state.

The problem border is the one with Turkey.

The Balkan country is considering adding 130 km (80 miles) of barbed-wire fencing to an existing 33-km fence along the 240-km southeastern border which, the interior ministry’s Chief Secretary Svetoslav Lazarov, said would save 2 million levs ($1.36 million) a month on policing the area.

“It would be a prohibitively facility,” Lazarov told reporters. “Our country has enough border points and those who want to come as a refugee can go through them.”

More than 10,000 refugees, mainly Syrians, entered Bulgaria illegally last year from Turkey and, in an attempt to limit the influx, authorities deployed over 1,000 police officers.

Bulgarian authorities said the Black Sea state could face an even greater influx in the coming months due to intensified fighting in Iraq in recent weeks.

There is more, including the usual whack from the human rights agitators.  I always wonder why they aren’t whacking Turkey for letting the migrants pass through to the Bulgarian border.  Legitimate asylum seekers are supposed to ask for protection in the first safe country they come to—in this case Turkey.

For more on Bulgaria, click here.  For our whole ‘invasion of Europe’ series, go here.

Bulgaria trying to save itself from invasion comes under criticism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Recently we have praised two first world countries where governments are trying to save themselves from migrant tides rising around the world—Australia and Israel.  I should have added Bulgaria to the short list of countries with a will to survive.

More in our invasion of Europe series…..

Bulgarian nationalist party ATAKA wants Bulgaria for Bulgarians! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_%28political_party%29

Consider the source of the criticism—Human Rights Watch!

From Novinite.com:

Bulgaria has embarked on a “Containment Plan” to reduce the number of asylum seekers in the country, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Tuesday.

According to the 76-page report, called “Containment Plan: Bulgaria’s Pushbacks and Detention of Syrian and other Asylum Seekers and Migrants,” the plan has been carried out in part by summarily pushing back Syrians, Afghans, and others as they irregularly cross the border from Turkey. [Ticks me off!  No one ever criticizes Muslim Turkey for allowing the crossings of mostly Muslims into Bulgaria!—ed]

The document speaks of how in recent months Bulgarian border police have summarily returned people, who appear to be asylum seekers, to Turkey without proper procedures and with no opportunity to lodge asylum claims. Bulgaria should end summary expulsions at the Turkish border, stop the excessive use of force by border guards, and improve the treatment of detainees and conditions of detention in police stations and migrant detention centers, the report said.

Bulgaria has not been a host country for significant numbers of refugees on average registering about 1,000 asylum seekers per year in the past decade. The situation changed in 2013 when more than 11,000 people, over half of them fleeing Syria’s deadly repression and war, lodged asylum applications. Despite ample early warning signs, Bulgaria was unprepared for the increase, Human Rights Watch claimed citing a February 5, 2014 report by the Interior Ministry saying that “Until mid-2013 Bulgaria was completely unprepared for the forecasted refugee flow.”

Keep in mind that Bulgaria is not only being overrun with Syrians, Africans ‘make their way’ all the way to Bulgaria— some going through Turkey as well.

We have followed the plight of tiny Bulgaria for some time now, click here for more.  And, for our ‘invasion of Europe’ series, go here.