This one was launched from Egypt. Note in my previous post, about the other sinking on Friday, that the graphic we found doesn’t even show launches from Egypt. And, this story, with a death toll of a meager twelve illegal aliens (compared to the two recent sinkings) wouldn’t be post-worthy except for the mention of who the migrants are (or at least the living ones that have been interviewed).
Twelve people died when a boat carrying illegal migrants and Syrian refugees sank off Egypt’s northern coast on Friday, security and medical sources said. [And, if one is Syrian apparently one is not also an illegal migrant—ed]
“The Egyptian coast guards saved 72 Palestinians, 40 Syrians and four Egyptians,” one security source said. The circumstances of the accident and the nationalities of the deceased were not yet known.
Palestinians!
We are accustomed to hearing about the Africans and more recently the Syrians trying to get into Europe, but Palestinians! Are these asylum seekers or invaders?
Georgians were among the earliest to adopt Christianity as a state religion. The neighboring Armenians were first. (Vano Shlamov/AFP/Getty Images)
Egypt’s long-persecuted Coptic Christians are getting out of dodge—out of Egypt in spite of the removal of the Obama Administration’s pals, the Muslim Brotherhood, from the seat of power.
They are being welcomed in Christian Georgia.
From the Global Post(thanks to a reader for sending it):
TBILISI, Georgia — Ever since ouster of Egyptian strongman President Hosni Mubarak two years ago, Adel has faced a difficult dilemma: Leave behind a relatively cushy life in Egypt or stay and risk discrimination and violence as religious and sectarian tensions rise.
[….]
“In Egypt, it’s difficult to get visas to the U.S. or Europe,” 50-year-old Adel says. “We didn’t chose Georgia, Georgia is choosing us.”
He’s not alone. Christian minorities from both Egypt and Syria are starting to look to the South Caucasus countries of Georgia and Armenia as a refuge from violence and uncertainly.
The choice isn’t as random as it may seem. Sandwiched between Turkey, Iran and Russia’s predominately Muslim North Caucasus regions, both Georgia and Armenia have ancient Christian traditions dating back to the 4th century.Their churches are closely related to the Copts and other Eastern Christian confessions.
Muslim Brotherhood is the reason they are moving out. Even out of power, the MB is dangerous!
Adel, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of reprisals against his family, said that although Christians faced discrimination under Mubarak’s long rule, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in 2012 has increased pressure on religious minorities and led many of Egypt’s estimated 5 million to 15 million Copts to look for the exits.
[….]
Although he supports the Egyptian military’s ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government earlier this month, he says he fears the Islamist organization will be “just as dangerous out of power.”
Read it all. The photo and caption are from this Global Post story as well.
Oh, yuk, see this from The Economist only yesterday where the EU is pressuring Georgia to have “European values.”
Writing at World Review, economic analyst Bernard Siman asks whether Europe could handle a new wave of “refugees” escaping Egypt this time.
Greece and Cyprus are the closest European countries to Egypt in Africa.
There has been little, if any, public discussion of possible scenarios, let alone serious crisis planning, whether politically, economically, administratively or militarily.
This is potentially a huge scale multi-dimensional problem.
Egypt’s 82.5 million population is separated from the Schengen area’s most eastern point of entry at Cyprus by 500 kilometres of Mediterranean Sea.
Any mass population movement fleeing Egypt’s violence – and in extremis civil war – will potentially be a game-changer at a time of serious and combined financial and economic crisis across Europe.
Austerity, deep financial cuts, widespread and vocal populist discontent about multiculturalism and immigration are affecting the eurozone and Cyprus and Greece in particular – the two Schengen members closest to the north Egyptian coast.
It is hard to say whether any naval crisis-planning exists to deal with such a sudden mass influx of Egyptian boat-people in the eastern Mediterranean.
Civil War in Egypt?
Egypt is descending into prolonged instability at best and civil war at worst. Both are likely to lead to increased migration through normal individual arrangements or mass exits.
The impact will not just be Europe’s to suffer….
See all of our posts on Malta (and Italy) going back almost 6 years and the problems they face with migrants arriving from Libya to get an idea of what Cyprus and Greece might face. The US State Department has already set a dangerous precedent by transforming Malta’s illegal alien Africans into refugees being resettled now in your cities. What is to stop them doing the same for (Muslim Brotherhood???) Egyptians arriving on Cyprus?
There is nothing new that we haven’t written about here at RRW in recent years, but it’s a short and handy reminder of what is happening in Africa and the Middle East and some new readers may not know that black Africans, even the ones who are Muslim, are not liked by Arabs.
Fences make good neighbors! Israel built a border fence along its Egyptian border. Photo by Eliyahu Hershkovitz at Haaretz
Black African refugees in Egypt are frustrated by ongoing racism and discrimination, particularly as they witness the assistance given to Arab refugees, the pan-Arab Aljazeera network reports.
Sources told the network that they have few rights in Egypt. “Even if you’re a recognized refugee, and you have a blue card, you have no right to medical treatment, no right to education, no right to work,” NGO programmer Christopher Eades explained.
Aid worker and refugee Yagoub Hamdan told Aljazeera, “When there was an influx of African refugees, there was no attention from the NGOs.” But when Syrian refugees began to arrive, he said, the United Nations took notice, and built camps for them.
So, the Africans went to Israel in large numbers (see our category on Israel and refugees) until they wore out their welcome and Israel built a border fence.
In recent years, African Muslim refugees in Egypt increasingly began fleeing to Israel, which provides illegal entrants with several social services. High crime among Sudanese and Eritrean migrants, particularly high-profile incidents of violent rape and anti-Semitism, led to a backlash against Israeli policy.
In recent months the government completed a border fence that has contributed to a massive drop in illegal entry from Egypt.
Update July 17th: 7,500 Germans have been killed by aliens since the Berlin Wall came down—hmmm! Guess it’s xenophobic to mention that. See TheMuslim Issue for the news.
Of course they are—how else does one explain that the German people are getting anxious about the extreme numbers of asylum seekers pouring into Germany when jobs are scarce and they fear crime from the mostly Muslim migrants coming in from war zones.
Charming “refugees” demand that Germany take them in! At Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in 2012.
Here is a story from Deutsche Welle explaining that residents of Berlin and also of former East Germany have had enough. (LOL! How many times in this story is the word ‘xenophobe’ used?)
Residents of Berlin are fighting a new home for asylum seekers with xenophobic rhetoric, while refugees in Munich are staging hunger strikes. Both sides of the asylum debate are becoming more vocal in their protests.
Some residents in Hellersdorf, a district in Berlin, have been increasingly worried of late: about home and property values, about peace on their streets, and about the well-being of their children.
They don’t want asylum seekers to end up living in their neighborhood, and their arguments against a new residence for asylum seekers are becoming increasingly xenophobic.A few weeks ago, residents of another Berlin neighborhood collected signatures against establishing emergency accommodation for refugees. Such buildings are desperately needed, because the number of refugees in need of help in the German capital has increased since last year and now stands at around 6,000.
A study says that a quarter of Germans (20 million) harbor deep dark secret xenophobia:
It is well known that in Germany, asylum policy is a touchy subject and xenophobia is on the rise. According to a study conducted in 2012, more than a quarter of Germany’s 80 million people harbor xenophobic tendencies.
Maybe they just have concerns for the economic well-being of their families:
He [Social scientist who conducted the study] said more than half of Germans in the former East Germany wish that foreigners would get sent home, because jobs are hard to come by there.
Asylum seekers are getting more aggressive (Gee, maybe that is why the xenophobics are so upset):
But it’s not just the Germans whose resentment about the country’s asylum policies is growing. The other side is also developing a harsher tone. Refugees are raising public awareness about limitations on their personal freedoms, and protest initiatives are becoming bolder.
There are just too many invaders demanding a piece of the German pie!
Mesovic believes the explanation for the tense situation is clear: Germany has underestimated the number of asylum seekers.
“Plans were made for a very low number of asylum seekers on the basis of historic data,” he said. “These were accurate as of four years ago. Back then, there were about 30,000 to 40,000 asylum seekers per year. But this year it could climb to 90,000.”
Then this morning there is a story from All Africa reporting that Egypt is turning back Syrian refugees, but funny thing is that there is not a word about Egyptians being xenopobes!
The United Nations refugee agency said today it is concerned about reports of a number of flights carrying Syrians being turned back from airports in Egypt, and reiterated its call on all Governments to admit and protect Syrians who have fled the conflict in their country.
According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Syrian nationals that were turned back were returned to where their flights originated, including Damascus and Latakia.
This follows a decision on 8 July imposing new visa requirements, under which Syrian nationals are required to apply for a visa and security clearance prior to their travel to Egypt. UNHCR noted that the Egyptian Embassy in Damascus does not currently have the capacity to issue visas.
The Egyptians are traditionally hospitable (not so those German xenophobes):
“I appeal to the Egyptian authorities, as I have to all other Governments in the world, to admit and protect all Syrians seeking refuge in their country,” High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said.
“I fully understand the challenges faced by Egypt at the present moment. But the traditional hospitality of the Egyptian people should not be denied to Syrians trying to fleethe most devastating and dangerous conflict in the world today,” he added.
I guess you can tell I get annoyed by the double standard when a largely “unwelcome” Muslim country is treated with kid-gloves while largely Christian and Western countries are filled with a bunch of haters if they don’t want their country to collapse.
