Warning shots fired as migrants rush Serbia’s border with Hungary
HORGOS, Serbia (Reuters) – A Hungarian security officer fired three warning shots early on Tuesday after about 60 migrants tried to force their way through a checkpoint on the border with Serbia, and Serbian police said later they had arrested 37 people for trying to cross the frontier illegally.
No one was wounded in the incident, which took place at the Roszke/Horgos border crossing, Hungarian police spokeswoman Szilvia Szabo said.
Hungarian police said the group tried to enter the European Union member state at the crossing at about 0430 GMT, prompting the security officer on site to fire the warning shots.
There are thousands of migrants stuck in Serbia, with more than 6,000 migrants living in government-operated camps.
On Tuesday, in the village of Horgos, on the Serbian side of the border crossing, a group of about two dozen migrants from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Morocco said they were beaten up by Hungarian police and sent back to Serbia.
[….]
The crossing was the scene of a large-scale riot at the peak of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, when police clashed with hundreds trying to break through the frontier into the EU.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban subsequently ordered a steel fence erected along Hungary’s border, curbing arrivals.
But migrant traffic started increasing again late last year and there are currently several hundred attempted illegal crossings per week.
See all of my ‘Invasion of Europe’ posts going back nearly ten years. Orban came under political fire for referring to the “great replacement” at a conference in Hungarylast fall.
The use of the politically verboten words “invasion” and “great replacement” brought a legal judgement against a French author here, just last week.
That is one of the latest Leftwing media attacks on the President, but when I saw this headline (below) my reaction was WOW! that would be great!
Trump praised Orban in the White House in May—for saving Christians from migrants (sniffed) EuroNews. https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/13/watch-live-viktor-orban-holds-talks-with-donald-trump-at-white-house
Trump’s Dream Is to Become America’s Viktor Orbán
But, before I get to the news (a change of pace from the daily dribble of reports about weak-kneed Republican governors who have no hope of ever being brave leaders like Viktor Orban, or Donald Trump)—-Happy New Year!
And, thanks to all of you who have come back to the newly reconstructed Refugee Resettlement Watchafter efforts by the Leftists to delete my work from the internet failed earlier this year. Also, I very much appreciate letters and e-mails expressing support even if I don’t always have time to answer, and many thanks for donations that have come my way.
This morning I wanted to chuckle a little and so had saved for today thisNew York Mag story from the day after Christmas by political commentator Jonathan Chait famous for having gotten it hilariously wrong about a possible Trump presidency in 2016.
Chait said smugly in February of 2016 that liberals should welcome Trump’s candidacy, a story that was smacked down hereas one of the ten stories of the 2010s that should never have been published:
Chait’s immensely confident take on why the Democrats should support a Trump nomination is a humiliating crystallization of the wrongheaded thinking that propelled him to the White House: he asserts that Trump would easily lose (wrong), that he might force the Republicans to rebuild their party (wrong), that his presidency would do less harm than a conventional Republican (wrong) and might even do some good (WRONG!!!), that Trump’s presidency might end up like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California governorship (wrong, and based on nothing besides “they were both celebrities”).
In addition to wanting a break from dreary domestic refugee policy, I wanted to get back to a bit of news on one of my favorite topics—the Invasion of Europe.
Here is the ever astute Jonathan Chait (pretending to get inside Trump’s head) opining on how Trump wants to be an AUTHORITARIAN like Hungary’s Orban, or so Chait says of Orban.
AUTHORITARIAN must be a word selected as a Progressive talking point for 2020!
And, in case you don’t get it after the first or second time the word AUTHORITARIAN is offered, Chait uses the word ten times in its various forms to make his point.
For several years, Hungary has been the name American liberal intellectuals have given to their worst domestic nightmares.Hungary’s president, Viktor Orbán, has fashioned an apparently permanent majority for his conservative Fidesz Party by wielding the levers of the state to marginalize the social, political, and legal power of his opposition. American conservatives are now becoming fascinated in equal measure with Orbán’s Hungary. The liberal nightmare of an authoritarian America is becoming the conservative dream.
Orban has been working to keep Soros hard Left political agitators out of Hungary. BTW, have you noticed that the Left is now suggesting that attacks on Soros’ globalist political machinations are somehow displays of antisemitism.
Orbán’s attacks on liberal democracy long predate Donald Trump’s candidacy. Five years ago, Orbán delivered a famous speech denouncing liberal democracy (“liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex, and violence”) and promising an alternative. To the extent American conservatives paid Orbán any attention then, it was to denounce him, perhaps while throwing in a swipe at the Obama administration for failing to confront him forcefully enough. The Republican Party’s growing defense of Orbán is a window through which we can glimpse its slow descent into authoritarianism. [Ha! I doubt the Republican Party is defending Orban!—ed]
Orbán’s political style, combining hyperbolic denunciations of Muslim immigrants with anti-Semitic tropes targeting George Soros as puppeteer, anticipated Trump’s by several years. He has won a place in the president’s circle of trust. Orbán, along with Vladimir Putin, reportedly helped persuade Trump to distrust Ukraine’s reformist president. Connie Mack IV, a former Republican member of Congress and a paid lobbyist for Orbán, participated in a whisper campaign undermining hawkish Russia adviser Fiona Hill as a tool of Soros.
You get the drift of where this is going, read it yourself.
He wraps with this paragraph suggesting that any of us who are concerned about immigration and its impact on western civilization are really just hankering for AUTHORITARIAN control.
Even so, the appearance of Orbánism on the American right is yet another sign that the most dangerous undercurrents of the Trump era are not particular to one buffoonish septuagenarian reality television star. Trump has brought out a strain of authoritarianism on the right that will survive his presidency. Whether or not Trump succeeds in his transparent goal of becoming America’s Orbán, he will not be the last to try. [There is no one on the horizon who will come close to trying, sadly—ed]
If you are as much an Orban fan as I am, read it all (for a laugh!).
Now, here is the primary reason for Orban’s popularity, something that Chait barely mentions (from Politico in 2015):
Orbán says migrants threaten ‘Christian’ Europe
….and Western Civilization!
Interesting that in Chait’s polemic there is only a tiny mention of why Orban is so popular at home and admired by many here, and that is his dogged defense of his borders, his people, and his fight for western civilization and a Christian Europe.
So if indeed President Trump wants to be more like Orban, he needs to work a little bit harder in 2020.
See my complete file on the Invasion of Europe by clicking here. And, go here, for my previous posts on my hero—Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
This is just a quickie follow-up to a post I wrote here on Tuesday in which I reported that European Union countries are behind in their commitment to the United Nations to take in 50,000 UN-chosen refugees over a two year period.
First International Organization for Migration (IOM) International Charter Flight from Ethiopia Brings 154 Refugees to New Homes in Germany
(Just so you know the IOM had previously been a separate organization, but is now part of the UN. The US sends the IOM gobs of money!)
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Ethiopia organized on Tuesday its first international charter flight carrying 154 Somali refugees to be resettled in Germany.
If you see someone with a bag like this at an airport near you, you know they are refugees.
The group had been residing in Jijiga and Dolo Ado refugee camps in southern Ethiopia. They included 63 males and 91 females, 47 of whom are minors.
IOM has supported the German Resettlement Programme in their efforts to resettle 500 refugees living in Ethiopia to Germany since March. These efforts are closely coordinated with the Ethiopian Government’s Agency for Refugees and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Federal Government of Germany.
An additional 220 refugees will depart for Germany on a second IOM-chartered flight in mid-November. The majority of these people have already undergone the necessary interviews and health assessments.
“It is important that we facilitate the smooth resettlement of refugees by providing safe transportation,” said Milun Jovanovic, Operations Officer with IOM Ethiopia. “We are happy that refugees enjoyed this facilitated charter flight from departure to destination, with no hassles faced.”
For the past 15 year, IOM Ethiopia has been involved in relocating refugees to more than 16 countries, including the USA, Canada, Australia, Norway and the European Union through resettlement, family reunification and humanitarian admission programmes. Since 2016, the Organization has arranged 36 domestic charter flights for refugees travelling to Addis Ababa from camps throughout Ethiopia.
In 2019 alone, IOM has assisted 4,000 refugees to resettle to new countries together with UNHCR.
President Donald Trump admitted 30,000 refugees to the US in the last fiscal year (ended September 30th), but did you know that the entire European Union could not resettle 50,000 in a two year period!
They might argue that well, heck, we have tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands!) arriving illegally and asking for asylum, but so do we!
However, the tone of the international media is consistently anti-US, anti-Donald Trump (aka the meany), yethere is newsfrom Deutsche Wellecompletely lacking in any snarky tones about European big mouth heads of state NOT MEETING their promised target of 50,000 OVER TWO YEARS!
Not surprisingly, Deutsche Welleblames the inability to get the job done on those pesky right wing citizens.
EU breaks promise of safe passage for 50,000 refugees
European governments, including the German government, have failed to deliver on a pledge to admit 50,000 refugees by this month, DW has learned.
The European Union launched the resettlement program two years ago with a deadline of October 31, 2019. But only 37,520 people have arrived in Europe under the program so far.
You need to know that the UN Secretary General Guterres is a past socialist prez of Portugal. So it is especially humorous to me to see how lousy Portugal is at welcoming refugees!
A spokesperson for the European Commission has admitted the target will not be reached by the end of October.
[….]
Germany was one of the countries leading the EU resettlement initiative. Last year, Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly promised to accept 10,200 people under the program. A spokesperson for the country’s Interior Ministry told DW that just 4,800 had arrived so far. He said that the delay in forming a government after German elections in 2017 had led to “complex organizational preparations” for the refugees’ arrival being pushed back.
[….]
The resettlement program is supposed to offer a safe route for some of the most vulnerable people fleeing conflict zones such as Syria and Libya. It is intended as an additional option to the right of asylum.
[….]
EU Commissioner Avramopoulos’ term in office ends on October 31, so the task of coordinating any future EU resettlement program will fall to his successor Margaritis Schinas, who has been at the center of controversy even before starting his job.
Schinas has been appointed under the new title of commissioner “for Protecting our European Way of Life” — a name which critics said mimicked the rhetoric of far-right populists, who claim immigration threatens European values.
Many political parties across Europe have made immigration an election campaign issue, taking a lead from populist parties and the far-right.
[….]
Africa Expert Leonie Jegen https://www.ies.be/user/284
Leonie Jegen, a migration expert at Germany’s Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, said resettlement was a divisive issue among EU countries.
“Resettlement is something that is not completely off the political agenda, but discourse around refugees has shifted in a negative direction in recent years,” she said.
German Interior Minister Warns of Migrant Wave Bigger Than 2015
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned that the country could soon be overwhelmed by a refugee wave more significant than the one in 2015.
“We need to do more to help our European partners with controls at the EU’s external borders. We’ve left them alone for too long,” Seehofer said during a visit to Turkey. “If we don’t do this, we’ll experience a wave of refugees like in 2015 – or perhaps an even larger one.”
[….]
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to “open the gates” for illegal immigrants if the European Union fails to meet his ever-increasing demands. Ankara could again use the threat to silence Europe if it wages war against the Kurds in neighboring Syria.
[….]
While Greece makes desperate calls for strengthening the border and coastal security, NGOs backed by Germany, and the EU continue to pick up migrants along the North African coasts and disembarking them in Greek, Spanish, and Italian ports. [I assume you know that Salvini, who had protected Italy for months, is out.—ed]
If financially bankrupt Greece is unable to secure its coastline, Berlin isn’t in any better shape either. Nearly a million migrants — mainly from Arab and Muslim countries — swarmed the country after Chancellor Merkel opened Germany’s borders in September 2015. The surge led to a series of deadly Islamic terror attacks and a rise in violent migrant crime.
Four years on, the Merkel-led Germany is unprepared to face a migrant wave of the magnitude witnessed last time. There were not enough trained police officers to man Germany’s border, the head of Germany’s police union admitted.
“We don’t even have winter boots,” chairman of the German Police Federation (GdP) Jörg Radek told Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Here is the ever astute Jonathan Chait (pretending to get inside Trump’s head) opining on how Trump wants to be an AUTHORITARIAN like Hungary’s Orban, or so Chait says of Orban.
