This time it is alleged that traffickers, angry at the passengers, deliberately rammed the ship forcing it to capsize.
The USS San Antonio rescued illegal migrants here in 2013. Note that our men have donned protective clothing. bhttp://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/uss-san-antonio-rescues-migrants-mediterranean-sea-near-malta-f8C11409455
About 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after the boat carrying them from Egypt to Malta was apparently rammed and deliberately sunk by people-traffickers, an intergovernmental group has said.
The news – based on the accounts of two Palestinian survivors – emerged on the same day up to 200 more people were feared dead when another boat heading to Europe capsized off Libya.
[….]
Huge numbers of people are attempting to flee from Africa to Europe, with numbers sharply up this year, in part due to the continued violent chaos in Libya and Syria. More than 100,000 people have been rescued since January, the UNHCR, says.
And, then get this! After the Italian Navy rescues a bunch of illegal migrants, the traffickers slip back and re-take their ship to be used again.
Earlier this year a leading Libyan people smuggler, speaking anonymously to the Guardian, explained how he uses a different tactic to ensure the trafficking boat can be used again.
The man said that once the Italian military was en route to the ship he and his crew would decamp to a small rubber inflatable. Once the migrants are removed they return to the smuggling boat and return in it to Libya. [Italy might at least burn the damn ships!—ed]
I’m at the point of saying, Europe deserves what is happening to it—they are so dumb. If they just escorted some of the migrant boats back to Libya and Egypt thus blockading Europe, this whole business would end in a nanosecond. Of course, look who is talking as we similarly don’t close our US borders!
Maybe throw a little pork sausage into that sauce?
Thanks to all who sent this outrageous story today.
Refugees who spent thousands of Euros paying smugglers to get them to Europe (some having been rescued from drowning by the Italian Navy) have rioted in Northern Italy because they say they are being fed too much pasta and are bored!
A protest held by refugees against “monotonous” Italian food was “excessive”, especially at a time when thousands of Italians go hungry, the president of a police organization told The Local.
For two days, a group of about 40 asylum-seekers staying at a refugee centre in the Veneto province of Belluno refused to eat the “pasta with tomato sauce, bread and eggs” meals they were given and called to be fed food from their own countries, Libero Quotidiano reported.
To reinforce their point, they blocked a street with a wooden bench, put their lunch on the ground along with bags of clothes and threatened to leave the centre in La Secca, a hamlet in Ponte nelle Alpi.
They reportedly said “we do not eat this stuff”.
The refugees, said to have been staying at the centre for the past four months, also reportedly slashed the tires of cars belonging to staff working there in protest against living conditions.
Waiting for a ticket out to a more ‘welcoming’ country:
Sam, who paid a people smuggler €4,000 to travel to Italy, said he passes the days by travelling on buses throughout the capital.
“I don’t want to hang around the centre all day. I can’t work and even if I could, too many Italians are also looking for jobs. Once I get my documents I want to go somewhere else, maybe Germany or The Netherlands.”
Perhaps the Italians should do what the Israelis have done—pay the mostly ‘economic migrants’ to return to their own country where they can get the food of their dreams.
Editor: This is a guest post by reader ‘pungentpeppers’ giving us a more vivid picture of what is happening with illegal migration in France (and Europe generally). Note our post from earlier in the week—From Catalonia to Calais….
“In France, as here in the U.S., the press often shows illustrations of women and children in stories about illegal migrants and refugees.” But, the French are mostly “fed up.” Photo: L’Express. Pascal Leray.
From ‘pungentpeppers’ (emphasis is RRW’s):
Illegal migration is stressing the French Republic.
From Lyon in the south to Calais in the north, from the Paris suburbs of Bagnolet and Saint-Ouen, and east to the German border, and south to Menton on the Mediterranean, our basket of news from France is filled with recent worrisome stories.
Last year France ranked third, after Germany and America, among rich countries for asylum applications received. French authorities handled almost 66,000 asylum requests, but granted protection to fewer than 11,500. Some migrants, refused asylum, stay on illegally. The rest join hundreds of others who want to leave France to try their luck elsewhere. Many head for the northern port city of Calais from where they hope to smuggle themselves into the United Kingdom.
Calais in Disarray
Angry mobs of hundreds of Sudanese and Eritrean migrants desperate to leave France battled each other last week in the northern French port city of Calais. Wielding iron bars and knives, and hurling masses of stones and rocks, they fought for control of an area of land from which they could sneak onto trucks headed for the U.K. More than 50 migrants were injured in the melee. The fighters are part of a group of about 2,000 Africans and Middle Easterners currently encamped in Calais, sleeping in makeshift tents, waiting for a chance to smuggle themselves abroad. Conditions are rough, and numerous fights have broken out over food and supplies. French police have at times bulldozed the migrants’ camp sites, citing health concerns – including an outbreak of scabies – but the migrants keep returning.
Truck drivers heading for the U.K. are terrified. One driver, Tommy Harrison, was ambushed by a gang in Calais. He said: “One of them pulled a knife on me while others climbed up on top of the cab and cut a hole in the curtain to get inside. It was very frightening. There was very little I could do. About 10 of them got in. It’s hopeless going to the gendarmes [French police] because they don’t want to know, so I drove to a lorry park where I knew there would be other drivers and we got them out.”
The French blame the British for the terrible situation in Calais. If Britain wasn’t such an attractive nuisance, the migrants wouldn’t try to go there, and Calais wouldn’t be having all of this trouble.
The New “French Resistance”?
It’s obvious that France isn’t measuring up when it comes to the uninvited migrants’ expectations for hospitality. Instead of greeting needy foreigners with a warm “bienvenu” (welcome), and offering them housing, food coupons and interpreter services, the French instead give them the cold shoulder. Perhaps it’s the famed “French Résistance” technique. Migrants arrive thinking they will wear the French down – but instead the French wear the migrants down and try to make them want to leave. If going to Britain isn’t appealing, the second prime destination choice for migrants escaping the country of fine wine and camembert is the land of ale and schnitzel.
To Germany By Train
Migrants have begun to head east from France to Germany in search of the elusive European “better life”. They travel by train, using tickets purchased from smugglers. So far this year, over 1,000 illegal migrants have taken advantage of Paris-Frankfurt rail links that connect the two countries. The trend worries Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the governor of the German state of Saarland. Her region is at the receiving end of the migration and is responsible for handling the asylum applicants arriving from France. As in the U.S., an increasing number of migrants pose as unaccompanied minors who are guaranteed special youth housing, medical care, and schooling paid for by local German taxpayers. German Chancellor Merkel is seeking French cooperation on the issue. Perhaps Germany should do like the French, and send the migrants back to Italy?
One Way or Round Trip?
Tens of thousands of illegal boat migrants have landed in Italy after sailing across the Mediterranean from Africa. Many of these newcomers, dissatisfied with the little that Italy has offered them, now dream of a better life in Germany, Britain or Sweden. On the way to dreamland, however, lies an inconvenient nation called France and the very bothersome French border police.
Faced with a massive influx of migrants leaving Italy, the French border police, newly reinforced, is concentrating its efforts on catching illegal travelers entering the south of France through Menton, Lyon, and other places. Many illegal migrants travel by rail, and the French border police have been arresting about one hundred a day, mostly Eritreans, on the trains and in train stations. They are then sent back to Italy. Thus the passengers, who planned a one-way trip, find that the French force them to travel round trip! Some travelers, however, show up sick.
Kidney Dialysis and a Transplant for Free!
Doctors and medical staff who treat kidney disease patients in the southern French city of Lyon are extra busy these days. Seriously ill kidney patients, from countries like Albania, Kosovo and Georgia, are arriving in Lyon seeking immediate medical treatment. Per the typical scenario, the traveler arrives at the train station very ill. He is immediately transported to a hospital emergency room. There the doctors see that the patient needs kidney dialysis. At that point the patient files for asylum, even if citizens from his country are not eligible. He then starts his emergency medical treatments. Per French law, three months after an asylum request is made, the patient becomes eligible for full free taxpayer-paid medical coverage and he is put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant. Eventually, even though his asylum claim is denied, the patient is granted special status as an “unwell foreigner”.
Per a report in the French “Le Monde” newspaper, well-organized networks are sending seriously ill patients to France as a business. The “medical refugees” arrive in Lyon knowing the full extent to which they can exploit the French system, have the names and addresses of dialysis centers in the city, and are quite open about coming to France “purely for health reasons”.
These new foreign patients are putting a serious strain on health facilities. For example, the Edouard-Herriot hospital has only 24 kidney dialysis patient beds and is running at maximum capacity. Besides the strain on medical facilities, unchecked migration is also contributing to a housing crisis in France.
Migrants Sleeping Rough: If Not Under a Bridge, Then in Front of City Hall
Migrants quit France for lack of housing, per a “Newsweek” report. “I’ve just been in Paris,” says Samuel (an Eritrean migrant), “and even the people I knew who had got asylum there were sleeping under a bridge.”
Last week a group of 200 Africans, mostly from Mali, set up camp outside the city hall of Bagnolet, a suburb of Paris. Joined by French anarchists, they demanded housing after the abandoned building where they had been squatting was destroyed in an arson fire. The local authority found housing for two families who had school-age children. However, the municipality issued a communique stating that they already have 3,000 applicants for social housing and do not have the means to relocate or house the rest of the migrants – and sent the police to evict them. The migrants then sought shelter under a highway bridge at first, but later settled themselves into another squat in the same suburb, an unoccupied building that used to serve as an employment agency.
Saint-Ouen – First Syrians, Now Kosovars or are they Kurds?
Back in April, I wrote about the refugees from Syria who occupied a city park in the Paris suburb of Saint-Ouen. After the municipality locked them out of the park, Syrian women continued to arrive, settling themselves on the sidewalk along the park fence. Because there were children with them, the French authorities expedited the asylum process and located housing for the families. The news of their victory must have spread, because in July a new group arrived on the scene.
This time, the municipality quickly locked up the park to prevent a recurrence of April’s events. Instead, the latest group of arrivals – about 40 families – set up camp on and alongside a grassy strip under a highway bridge at the entrance to Saint-Ouen. This new group was different from the April arrivals. They did not seem interested in seeking asylum. Their toddlers sometimes ran into the road amid the automobiles. The parents allowed their children to go and beg from passing motorists. During the evenings, the men fought over food and clothing donations. Per William Delannoy, the mayor of Saint-Ouen, the men were taking goods donated to them by car to local markets for resale. At the time he believed they were not refugees but Kurdish nomads from Syria. Per a later report, the municipality checked the group members’ papers and determined that although some were Syrian, most of them were Kosovar Albanians – and thus ineligible for asylum.
In France, as here in the U.S., the press often shows illustrations of women and children in stories about illegal migrants and refugees. An August “L’Express” report about the latest Saint-Ouen migrants refers to the group as “Syrians” and features at the top a photoshot showing a pair of cute little fair-haired girls grinning and flashing peace signs. How do the French people view such propaganda? Below the article, the most popular reader comment with over 100 upvotes states simply, “les Français commencent à en avoir marre!” or “the French are getting fed up!”
Editor: I was just imagining what America could look like someday with illegal alien squatters living under bridges and in encampments in US city parks (those cities away from the border!)—it will make news like that from Ferguson, MO this week look like a picnic. Americans simply won’t tolerate it, especially those who are struggling to make ends meet themselves. Or, is that sort of revolutionary “change” what some agitators are looking for?
We have been so busy writing about the invasion of America that we have let news pile up about the mostlyMuslim migrant invasion of Europe which is not being covered by the American dinosaur media. Europe represents the ‘canary in a coal mine’ for western civilization.
While ISIS fights militarily for the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, their Muslim brothers wage the demographic war in Europe.
Catalonia is a region of Spain seeking to break away from Spain. From Breaking Israel News:
RRW geography lesson! Muslims want to reestablish their former enclave in Europe as Caliphate-building continues.
Muslim leaders in the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia say they have been promised a mega-mosque in Barcelona if they support independence from Spain in a referendum set for November 9.
Officials from the Catalonia’s ruling Convergence and Union Party (CiU) are seeking the ballots of all of the roughly 100,000 Muslims in the region who are eligible to vote. “If you support us in the referendum, there will be a mosque,” CiU officials are said to have promised Muslim leaders, according to Spanish media.
The mega-mosque in question is said to involve a 2.2 billion euro ($3 billion) project to convert a historic bullfighting stadium in Barcelona into the third-largest mosque in the world, after those in Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.
The tentative plan calls for the Emir of Qatar to purchase the stadium, known as the La Monumental, and to cover all costs associated with converting the property into a mosque. The five-year project would be completed sometime around 2020.
The mosque would have an interior capacity for 40,000 worshippers and an exterior capacity for another 80,000. The mosque complex would include a Koranic study center, a library, a conference room and a museum of Islamic art and history.
The mosque would also include a research center on the history of Al Andalus, the Arabic name given to those parts of Spain, Portugal and France that were occupied by Muslim conquerors (also known as the Moors) from 711 to 1492.
Moreover, the mosque would be accompanied by a towering 300-meter (985-foot) minaret which, if approved, would dominate the Barcelona skyline. The proposed minaret would completely overshadow the spectacularly emblematic Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic cathedral that is situated less than one kilometer from the bullfighting arena. The spires of the church, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, are only 170 meters (560 feet) tall.
Catalonia is home to an estimated 465,000 Muslims, who account for more than 6% of the total Catalan population of 7.5 million. This gives Catalonia the largest Muslim population in Spain.
By way of comparison, if Catalonia were to achieve independence, it would emerge as the country with the third-largest Muslim population in Western Europe, in percentage terms, just behind France and Belgium, and far ahead of Britain and Germany.
Calais, France has been “taken hostage“: Clashes continue between migrants trying to reach the UK (Shangri-La for migrants) and French police (hat tip: Cathy). This AP storyis from last week, but the riots are on-going:
Migrants receiving first aid in Italy. Photo from story about the clash in Calais. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/dozens-hurt-migrants-clash-france-553817832
PARIS (AP) — Migrants flowing into Europe in unprecedented numbers are causing a tense summer in France, as clashes break out among asylum-seekers in overcrowded camps and police fire tear gas to quell the chaos.
Sudanese and Eritreans battled in the heat in France’s port city of Calais, frustrations rising as the Africans jockey for space while trying to sneak into Britain – the dream destination some 30 kilometers (20 miles) away.
[….]
Most migrants in Calais start the European portion of their treacherous Mediterranean journeys in Italy, arriving on boats in the island of Lampedusa. Last year, total arrivals in Italy tallied 42,000 – which was already surpassed by spring. With the year far from over, over 60,000 migrants have arrived on Italian shores.
EU immigration law says that illegal aliens (would-be asylum seekers) are to be processed in the first country in which they arrive, but obviously many are heading north and there seems to be nothing EU authorities can do. Read thewhole story.
Italian Navy rescues another nearly 1,000 migrants this past week alone. From Gazzetta del Sud:
Pozzallo, August 6 – As many as 958 illegal migrants arrived in the Sicilian port of Pozzallo Wednesday aboard a coast guard vessel as thousands of people trying to reach Europe from Africa were plucked from small craft in the Mediterranean by Italian Navy and merchant ships, port officials said. The arrival of the 958, including many women and children, aboard the ship Dattilo was the largest number of migrants to land at the small port in the province of Ragusa since Italy launched Operation Mare Nostrum aimed at preventing loss of life in Italian waters.
[….]
They represented a constellation of nationalities from Africa, the Middle East and Asia including Egyptians, Pakistani, Eritreans, Syrians and Somalis.
In Berlin, Germany a “crush” of refugees from News Round:
In July Berlin accepted 1047 new refugees. That is the highest monthly entrance for 15 years, explained health and Minister for Social Services Mario Czaja (CDU) on Wednesday. Besides in July approximately 900 further asylum seekers in the city arrived and for several days were cared for, before they further-traveled to other Federal states. In the first seven months approximately 5000 refugees came to Berlin, for the entire year count Czaja on an entrance of altogether 10,000 humans.
The refugee crush places the city before large challenges, said the senator. After the Königsteiner key, which regulates the distribution of asylum seekers on the Federal states, must take up Berlin five percent of all refugees, who place a request for asylum in Germany. The Federal Office for migration expects 200.000 applicants in this year.
And the beat goes on…..with no end in sight because no one seems to have the will to fight it!
[Alas, the canary is passed out, near death, on the floor of its cage.]
For all of our posts on the ‘invasion of Europe’click here.
This is essentially a companion piece to our previous poston Spain.
The “spring migration offensive” is apparently in full swing.
Migrants rescued in February on their way to Italian island of Lampedusa.
Again, from the UK Daily Mail(Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’):
More than 4,000 migrants have arrived on Europe’s shores by boat in the past two days, with the Italian government calling the crisis ‘increasingly glaring’.
The emergency comes days after Italy’s Home Secretary Angelino Alfano warned that more than half a million migrants were ready to set sail from Northern Africa for Europe.
Italy’s southernmost island, Lampedusa, is the gateway for illegal immigrants to enter Europe. [And the Pope went therelast summer to welcome them!—ed]
More than 40,000 people made the journey to Italy last year, often on unseaworthy boats.
So far this year 15,000 migrants have landed on the Italian coastline, a ten-fold increase on the first three months of 2013.
British experts believe one in five of them continue on to the UK.
The economic migrants (NOT refugees) will move on throughout Europe if not detained.
Illegal migrants landing in the EU have to remain in the country where they first seek asylum.
But many hope to pass through Italy undetected to northern Europe, which has better job prospects and generous benefits.
Europe is in deep trouble if leaders there keep dithering about getting tough—tow the boats back to Libya and send a message! Take a lessonfrom Australia!
Of course, European leaders and Obama are to blame for the lawlessness that now is out of control in Libya. And, Gaddafi was right when he predicted that the invasion of Europe could be done without swords—the Muslim population of Europe would eventually bring Europe’s (western civilizations!) downfall.
