Civil patrols in Sofia—Bulgaria for Bulgarians! http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/world/europe/far-right-gains-as-syrians-reach-eastern-europe.html?_r=0
This is just a short news item to keep our Bulgaria archive up-to-date. Bulgaria, on the border with Turkey, has been a gateway for Syrians andAfricans to slip through the border from Turkey and get a foothold in Europe. They really do not want to stay in Bulgaria, wanting instead to get to the countries with more goodies to give away, like Germany.
Should they slip through their country of entry, the EU has a policy that says “asylum seekers” must be returned to the first country in which they arrived to be processed there, thus placing the largest ‘refugee’ burden on border countries, like Italy, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria and Malta.
According to the UN, Bulgaria had been doing such a rotten job taking care of refugees, that previously the so-called refugees were not returned there. Now that has changed. Notice that the UN is calling the shots, the EU isn’t even in charge.
The UN’s refugee agency said Tuesday it was partially lifting a call to stop returning asylum seekers to Bulgaria because conditions there had improved.
Under current rules, European countries must return asylum seekers to the first country on the continent they arrive in.
But in January the United Nations urged European nations to suspend all returns to Bulgaria, citing “systematic deficiencies in reception conditions and asylum procedures” after the country was swamped with refugees from war-ravaged Syria.
See all of our recent posts on the ‘invasion of Europe’ here.
I thought construction had begun awhile ago, but here is a report from the Turkish Press that tells us work just started on the barbed wire barrier last Wednesday along the border with Turkey.
As we have reported in many posts in recent months, Bulgaria is being over-run by Muslim migrants, the largest group has traveled across Turkey from Syria.
SOFIA, Bulgaria – Bulgaria began on Wednesday building a fence on its border with Turkey to end illegal border crossings into the country.
The idea of building of a 30-kilometer (18 mile) wire fence has gained traction since late last year due to the government’s concerns over the Syrian refugee influx.
A recent activity report released by Bulgaria’s Defense Ministry said 87 military personnel began to put the wire fence on parts of the 30 km long route that was cleared and prepared for the building work.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party government in late 2013 ordered works for the fence in the mountainous region of Elhovo on the Turkish border, one of the areas that are the most prone to illegal crossings.
[….]
The project has caused controversy in the country and tension between Bulgaria’s Defense Ministry and Interior Ministry over the government budget allocated for it.
UN chastises Bulgaria for trying to protect itself!
The project has also drawn criticism from the European Union and the United Nations in that it would be considered a measure for limiting the access of refugees to Bulgaria, which violates international law on refugees.
“Introducing barriers, like fences or other deterrents, may lead people to undertake more dangerous crossings and further place refugees at the mercy of smugglers,” said Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in November.
The word over the last few days, apparently still unconfirmed, is that Turkey has closed its borders to Syrian refugees.
Miliband, as British foreign secretary, met with Prime Minister of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2009 to discuss Iran. http://www.news.az/articles/turkey/1735
At the same time we have David Miliband, the new CEO of the International Rescue Committee, one of the largest of the taxpayer-funded resettlement contractors, praising Turkey for its generosity to Syrian refugees.
Don’t tell me they are planning to reward Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan with a prize as they did Hamid Karzai a few years ago!
Our interest here at RRW is why is Turkey allowing Syrian Muslims to cross its other border into Bulgaria thus swamping that tiny poor European country with thousands they can’t possibly take care of and who are now causing social unrest there?
Then to top it off, Turkey’s Prime Minister (pal of Obama) has asked Obama to go after Erdoğan’s chief opponent who lives where? In Pennsylvania!
Yesterday several media organs reported that Turkey had closed its border to Syrians fleeing their country on account of the fact that the number of Syrians in Turkey would jump up to five million in a very short time.This information has not yet been corrected by AFAD or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, nor has it been denied.
If this is Turkey’s new policy it will have critical long-term ramifications for host communities, including Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and for Syrian civilians. Turkey is one of the biggest host countries for Syrians, and while the Turkish government estimates that a total of 700,000 Syrian refugees are in Turkey, local and international non-governmental actors who are managing the crisis on the ground have a more realistic estimate: 1.5 million.
Big smooch from Miliband to Turkey. Does Miliband think he is still Britain’s foreign secretary? He is the well-paid headof a US resettlement contractor, that’s all (right?). Speculation abounds that the IRC is really a covert arm of the US government.
Turkey deserves applause in receiving Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their country and providing assistance for them, stated David Miliband, Britain’s former Foreign Secretary and president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) during an interview in Washington.
Miliband attended a panel which was held to draw attention to the plight of the Syrian refugees on Thursday and spoke to Anadolu Agency (AA) correspondent in the aftermath of the panel.
Praising Turkey’s policy on the refugees, Miliband said he was in close cooperation with Turkish officials and attached importance to a very strong partnership with Turkey.
I had to laugh and wondered if the IRC was getting ready to award a prize to Erdoğan like they did Hamid Karzai—to “embrace political Islamism” as David Miliband would say. The IRC and Miliband recently saidthey would like the US to take 12,000 Syrians this year.
They can’t get to Bulgaria without having passed through Turkey!
Bulgaria
Bulgaria is swamped by Syrians flowing in from Turkey. Why isn’t Turkey stopping them on their side of the border? Is Turkey facilitating the invasion of Europe by Muslims?Why do news accounts never mention the fact that in order to get to Bulgaria they had to cross Turkey? Here is yet one more story about poor Bulgaria, this time at The Seattle Times:
Bulgaria, the poorest nation in the EU, has a refugee crisis. In the second half of last year, hundreds of undocumented Syrians arrived every week, putting a strain on a country ill-prepared for the flood of refugees escaping a civil war.
Bulgaria built a border fence with Turkey which has slowed the flow somewhat.
Pennsylvania?
Don’t miss this story at Creeping Sharia! Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants Obama to go after his enemy and close the schools of the Fethullah Gülen movement!
The African migrants flooding into Israelwant to stay there, but Africans overwhelming Bulgaria are there attempting to get through the tiny country and into more prosperous German, French and British cities. The European Union, however, requires that they register at their first stop in Europe (in this case Bulgaria where the Turkish government must have let them move through Turkey!). The policy thus sets up the very thing that happened here last month.
Standoff between police and African migrants in Sofia.
Most mainstream media accounts want to promote the idea that poor persecuted Syrians are being abused by Bulgaria, but why so little attention to the thousands of Africans getting all the way to Bulgaria? As a reader, I would like to know how they are traveling to that country and where they get the money to do it.
A series of videos surreptitiously filmed from the window of a refugee centre in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia last month shows a standoff between police and dozens of African migrants, who had been kicked out of the centre for staying there without permission. The men chant “racists, racists” at the police before being taken into custody. The scene captures how tensions are now regularly boiling over in a country grappling with a surge in asylum seekers. [Economic migrants!—ed]
[…..]
From 2011 to 2013, asylum requests have multiplied by eight-fold in Bulgaria, with over 7,000 people filing requests in the last year, according to the State Agency for Refugees. About 3,800 of them are accommodated in Bulgaria’s refugee centres; more than three-quarters of these are Syrian nationals. Another 3,700 registered asylum seekers are not accommodated at the centres. The registration process can take months, so there are also an untold number of migrants living in Bulgaria who are not accounted for in these numbers.
In the past few years, immigration both from Syria and from African countries has soared. Many are from regions that have been wracked by conflict, notably the Democratic Republic of Congoand Mali. Diana Daskalova, the founder of the Centre for Legal Aid, a nonprofit that helps migrants with legal issues in Bulgaria, says that about 80 percent of those who come to seek their advice are from African countries: “They have a lot more problems navigating the asylum-seeking process than Syrians, for whom it is more streamlined, and who have an easier time obtaining asylum status.” She says that in the past year, out of all the cases of Africans her organisation has worked on, only one person was granted asylum: “And it was a special case – she was a woman with serious health problems, which was a decisive factor.”
[…..]
Lately, protests at Bulgarian refugee centres have become frequent, both over dire living conditions and the slow pace of the asylum process. In November, Bulgarian police quelled a protest by Algerian migrants at a centre in the town of Lyubimets. That same month, Syrian refugees threatened to go on a hunger strike at a centre in Harmanli, in south-eastern Bulgaria.
The United Nation’s refugee agency recently urged European countries to hold off on returning any asylum seekers to Bulgaria – which they have the right to do if it is the first country they entered in the European Union – citing problems with registration delays as well as access to food and health care.
We hear Turkey has some beautiful refugee camps—-send them there! Add a little diversity! It will bring strength to those camps!
We have been following the plight of poor Bulgaria for months (click here for our complete archive).
Every day our news alerts are jam-packed with the latest stories on the SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS. Here is a little round-up of the latest news.
MP Yvette Cooper, leader of the revolt: Bring in the Syrians!
Great Britain: ‘MP’s revolt over failure to admit Syrian refugees’:
The Coalition is under mounting pressure from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to perform a U-turn to allow some Syrian refugees to come to Britain.
Mark Harper, the immigration minister, angered some MPs yesterday by saying the United Nations plan for Western countries to accept 30,000 of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees would have only a “token impact”. [Then the you-know-what hit the fan—ed]
Lebanon: ‘U.N.: Syrian refugee’s murder of son highlights desperation’:
BEIRUT: The case of a Syrian man who was arrested Tuesday for strangling his 8-month-old son because he was crying reflects the desperate plight of refugees, UNICEF’s spokesperson said.
According to security sources refugee Hasan Ayesh strangled his son late Monday in his home in Minyara, in the northern province of Akkar, reportedly because the boy wouldn’t stop crying.
Mind you, it’s all about his status as a refugee, not the possibility that he might be a brute or mentally unstable to begin with. Sheesh!
David Miliband head honcho of the International Rescue Committee told Morning Joe that the international community must “massively scale up” its response. But, surprisingly he never mentioned his organization’s testimony in the Senate recently to resettle 12,000 Syrians here this year. I’m wondering if they have done polling that tells them not to mention bringing them here!
In light of upcoming international peace talks between the opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the numbers of refugees resulting from the war has created a “regional crisis” that demands attention.
“This is a regional crisis that demands a big international engagement,” Miliband, who is president and CEO of aid agency International Rescue Committee, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday.
The conflict in Syria has resulted in a “scale of brutality … that hasn’t been seen for a very long time,” Miliband said.
As a result, millions of people are taking refuge in neighboring countries. He called for the international response to be “massively scaled up.”
You can watch Morning Joe’s interview, here. Joe doesn’t look too worked up.
Russia: ‘Russia grants asylum to almost 500 Syrian refugees – FMS’:
This is a surprise, I wonder if they are taking mostly Christians since they don’t have a burning desire for more Muslims.
The number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Russia is on the rise, head of the Federal Migration Service Moscow department Olga Kirillova said.
“Due to the exacerbation of the sociopolitical situation in Syria, the number of citizens seeking asylum on the territory of Russia has grown significantly,” she said.
More than 1,000 Syrian citizens filed refuge requests with the Federal Migration Service Moscow department in 2013 and 478 were granted temporary asylum, she added.
Bulgaria: ‘Bulgaria Begins Construction of Border Fence with Turkey’:
The construction of the wire fence at the Bulgarian – Turkish border will begin on January 20, Minister of Defense Angel Naydenov announced.
“The site preparatory work and the construction of the facility will start Monday,” Naydenov said, cited by Focus News Agency.
The construction period will stretch over 45-60 days depending on the weather conditions.
Border fences can be built pretty quickly if a country is motivated.
Sweden: ‘Syria crisis: Influx of refugees into Swedish town’:
Some Swedish towns are struggling to cope with an influx of Syrian refugees, after the government there guaranteed asylum to fugitives from the civil war.
The right-wing Swedish Democrat party claims ethnic Swedes are angry at the cost of social benefits and rising pressures on schools, housing and health care.
In the past eight years, the town of Sodertalje has accepted three times more refugees than Sweden’s biggest cities.
