Tag: UNHCR

Jordan: Crime plagues refugee camp for Syrians

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just keeping up with the news about Syrian refugees, so we have an archive developed when the day comes that the UN/US announces we are moving Syrians out of camps to your American (Canadian, Australian and European) towns.

Angelina Jolie toured Zaatari last fall so that the UNHCR could get the media’s attention properly focused on the Syrian refugee crisis. Photo from the International Business Times

From Fox News:

AMMAN, Jordan –  The U.N. refugee chief says his agency is working with Jordan to bolster security at a camp for Syrian refugees where reports of drug trafficking, prostitution and other crimes have emerged.

Antonio Guterres says the Zaatari camp near the Jordanian-Syrian border now is de facto Jordan’s fourth-largest city, with a “complex” environment.

He told reporters in Amman on Wednesday that security will be “very strongly increased” and special measures will be undertaken to stop criminal activities.

Guterres spoke after meeting Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to discuss mechanisms to ensure that the rule of law is carried out in the camp. He provided no details.

Remember Guterres doesn’t want to establish UN camps within Syria and on the border of Turkey and Jordan because he wants the Syrians to have the “right” to ask for asylum in the West.  If they are within their own borders they don’t fit the definition of asylum seeker.  Now with the criminal element growing, it’s all the more reason to begin the resettlement clamor.

Coincidentally, this popped up just this a.m.  One of the top nine US Refugee contractors, the IRC, is looking to fill a position for a driver to get their workers back and forth SAFELY from Amman to Zarqa and Zaatari camps.

Guterres goes to Turkey: Syrian refugees should be allowed to seek asylum in West

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been mostly ignoring the clamor about the refugees flowing out of Syria because I know what it means.  Our refugee industry will be going into high gear to bring them to the West, and here Antonio Guterres, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, hints at that.

I’m beginning to think these Middle East wars are just one big fat excuse to move Muslims into the West!

From Reuters about the new milestone—1 million Syrians are now outside the country and looking for somewhere to go (emphasis below is mine):

This is a Reuters photo from 2011 showing the construction of a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey. The media campaign to pressure the West to take more refugees is well underway.

The number of refugees outside Syria could triple by the end of the year from the 1 million registered now if there is no political solution to the conflict, the head of the United Nations refugee agency said Sunday.

The millionth Syrian refugee was registered in Jordan Wednesday, following a dramatic acceleration in the number of civilians fleeing fighting in their homeland in the first two months of this year.

[….]

“If this escalation goes on … we might have in the end of the year a much larger number of refugees, two or three times the present level,” High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters in Ankara.

[….]

Most refugees have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt and some to North Africa and Europe. In addition to the refugees, the UNHCR says more than 2 million of Syria’s 22 million people have been internally displaced.

Refugees have “right” to seek asylum!

Turkey, tired of it all, suggested “international safe zones,” camps inside Syria, but Guterres says NO!   He is essentially saying here that UN camps would signal that this is a temporary situation, that they are going home in a short while, and he wants to keep the media pressure on so as not to “undermine the right of refugees to seek asylum in other countries.”

Guterres, who is on a four-day visit to Turkey, also warned of the risk of an “explosion” in the Middle East if there was no political end to the conflict in Syria, which has increasingly spilled beyond its borders. He did not explain his comments further.

Guterres will meet Turkish leaders during his trip as well as visiting a refugee camp near the Syrian border.

Turkey, which has more than 185,000 Syrians registered in camps on its territory, and tens of thousands more living in towns and cities, has long advocated setting up internationally protected zones inside Syria to protect fleeing civilians.

However, the notion has gained little traction in Western countries, who do not want to get further embroiled in the Syrian conflict.

Guterres said his agency was not against such safe zones in general but that they should not undermine the right for refugees to seek asylum in other countries.

The beat goes on!

A year ago this month, Guterres, a former Socialist Prime Minister of Portugal, was cited for mismanaging millions of your dollars as UN High Commissioner for Refugees since 2005.   But, here he is, still in his job! helping decide the fate of Muslim refugees, many of whom will be placed in your towns and cities in the US, Canada, Australia and in Europe.  Say no! We (US) were guilt-tripped (suckered!) into taking 100,000 Somalis and tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis as their Muslim countries imploded. Just say no!

Let the UN use its (your) millions to care for them in camps until they can return home!

Watching the collapse of Europe: Italian asylum problems a harbinger of what is to come?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So what the hell is Italy supposed to do?  Here is an article from the hoiyty-toiyty at the New York Times chastising the Italian government for how it is handling the huge populations of immigrants flowing toward Europe.  Italy, and to a lesser extent Malta, are the first bits of land illegal aliens reach as they in ever-increasing numbers run from Africa and the glorious Arab Spring on-going there.   Here is just one of our recent posts on the topic.

According to this story in the NYT, Italy allows too many asylum seekers to stay and then doesn’t take care of them.  With the European economy teetering, how the heck can they take care of all these destitute people (America pay attention!)?   And, if they said they were going to deport more, the international ‘humanitarians’ would scream bloody murder over that!  It is a no-win situation for Italy.  The NYT calls it a “paradox:”

ROME — The abandoned university building on the outskirts of Rome, colloquially known as Salaam Palace, was once a sparsely populated makeshift shelter where new arrivals from Africa — fleeing war, persecution and economic turmoil — squatted to create their own refuge.

Over the years, scattered mattresses were joined by sloppily plastered plywood walls, slapdash doors and scavenged furniture. Today, an irregular warren of tiny rooms includes a small restaurant and a common room. On a recent cold afternoon, a hammer clinked as a bathroom was added to a one-room apartment where an oven door had been left open for heat.

More than 800 refugees now inhabit Salaam Palace, and its dilapidation and seeming permanence have become a vivid reminder of what its residents and others say is Italy’s failure to assist and integrate those who have qualified for asylum under its laws.

Salaam Palace and an expanding population in shantytowns elsewhere are the result of what refugee agencies say is an Italian paradox surrounding asylum seekers.

“Italy is quite good when in the asylum procedure, recognizing 40 percent, even up to 50 percent of applicants in some years,” said Laura Boldrini, the spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy. “What is critical is what comes after.”

She and others involved in aiding refugees say that neglect and absence of resources add unnecessary hardship to already tattered lives and are creating a potential tinderbox for social unrest.

One of the reasons the European Union came to be was so that all of the countries would share in trying to solve problems that in this case only stem from the geographic location of Italy.  But, Italians now see that they are, for the most part, alone in coping with the migrant problems from Africa.

Because of its geography, Italy is more exposed to migration from Africa, and it has called on other European Union countries to help bear the burden. Even so, the country has lagged in its own response, refugee agencies say.

“It has never invested in a system that’s structural,” said Ms. Boldrini, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. “Every year is treated as if it’s any emergency.”

Under European Union rules, asylum seekers must stay in the country in which they entered Europe, and can be sent back if they go elsewhere. Many residents of Salaam Palace say they sought something better, in France, Britain or Germany, but found themselves back in Rome.

Read it all!

So, when are we in the US going to start taking Italy’s illegal aliens as we do Malta’s?  Our lengthy ‘Malta’ archive is here.

Time to read The Camp of the Saints?   Change the locale to Italy rather than France, and the origin of the onslaught Africa rather than India.

Here is what one reviewer at Amazon says about the nearly 40-year-old DARK novel:

This book is so politically incorrect that I admire Amazon.com for actually carrying it. Written in the early 1970s, this book looks beyond the cold war to a North-South confrontation in which European civilization is unilaterally morally disarmed. The thesis is simple: suppose a million starving people from the Ganges actually took Western rhetoric of compassion, explotiation, etc., to heart, and comandeered, en masse, shipping, with the intention of moving to the shores of France? (Raspail, of course, is French.) Would anyone stop them? The imagery employed is interesting. The title comes from Revelation, Chapter 20, and refers to the forces of evil laying seige to the camp of the saints, here meant to be the nations of the West…..

Muslim Bangladesh doesn’t want more Muslim (Rohingya) refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

So, they are now banning some aide groups fearing those groups only attract more Rohingya.  I have such a backlog of things I want to post today, so I’m just throwing this one up so as to keep our Rohingya category up-to-date and to make the point again that although Muslims claim to be the most charitable “religion” in the world they are pretty rotten to their own people.

Just a little background, these camps discussed in the story are mostly in and around Cox’s Bazar which has in the past been a breeding ground for Islamist terrorist groups (take my word for it we have posts going back 5 years confirming that).  Also, remember that the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) wanted to get into Burma to aid the Muslims there and the largely Buddhist country said no.

So my solution to this is let the money-bags of the OIC feed/clothe/house these Muslims in the Muslim country of Bangladesh.

Here is the story about the ban on some western NGOs.

COX’S BAZAR, 17 December 2012 (IRIN) – Some 40,000 undocumented Rohingya refugees are being adversely affected by a government ban four months ago on NGOs working at two makeshift sites in southeastern Bangladesh.

In August, Bangladeshi authorities ordered three NGOs – Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Action Against Hunger and Muslim Aid UK – to stop the formal delivery of humanitarian services, including health care and nutrition assistance to undocumented Rohingya refugees, saying such services would encourage more to flee to Bangladesh.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), there are more than 200,000 Rohingyas in Bangladesh, of whom only 30,000 are documented and living in two government camps assisted by the agency.

Some 12,000 documented refugees live at the Kutupalong camp in Cox’s Bazar District, with another nearly 18,000 further south at Nayapara – both within 2km of Myanmar. The 40,000 undocumented refugees live on the periphery of the two official camps.

Documented refugees are provided food rations by the World Food Programme (WFP), along with shelter assistance, non-food items, water/sanitation services, vocational training and supplementary feeding for malnourished refugees by UNHCR.

However, most Rohingya – a mainly Muslim ethnic group who fled persecution en masse to Bangladesh from Myanmar’s neighbouring Rakhine State years earlier – are undocumented.

UNHCR has not been permitted to register newly arriving Rohingya since mid-1992.

Only those who are documented receive regular assistance, while those who are undocumented are largely dependent on a handful of international NGOs who until recently were allowed to work in the area.

Why do we care about the UNHCR in Bangladesh and Burma?  Because if the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has its way, more Rohingya will be coming to your towns and cities.  From testimony at the May 2012 hearing held by the US State Department about resettlements for 2013:

…..one thing that jumped out at me in what I’ve read so far (or heard at the meeting) is that no one spoke for Christians persecuted by Muslims!  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops never even mentioned them, but they sure asked the State Department to send more Muslims to the US, in particular, they want more Somalis and Rohingya* (Burmese Muslims)!   Several of those testifying also called for the prompt re-opening of the P-3 family reunification program that has been closed for nearly 4 years due to the widespread fraud uncovered involving Africans, mostly Somalis.  The State Department has reported that as many as 36,000 Africans entered the US fraudulently in a 5 year period after 9/11!

Recognizing Jewish refugees from Arab countries

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As the United Nations continues to bemoan the fate of so-called “Palestinian refugees,” the history of Jewish refugees from the time before and shortly after the creation of the State of Israel has been long forgotten—until now.   Regular readers know this is a topic we’ve discussed on several occasions recently and previous posts can be found in our Israel and Refugees category.

Here is another good article on the issue and it’s worth repeating because any future discussion about the Palestinians and “peace” attempts will necessarily include consideration of fairness to former Jewish refugees.

Here is Michael Curtis writing at the Gatestone Institute (Hat tip:  Richard Falknor at Blue Ridge Forum):

The status of those Jews as refugees has been found to be in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees. The UNHCR announced on two occasions, in February 1957 and in July 1967, that Jews who fled from Arab countries “may be considered prima facie within the mandate of this office,” thus regarding them, according to international law, as bona fide refugees.

The Palestinian narrative of victimhood, emphasizing the pitiful condition of Palestinian refugees, and portraying them as the world’s major refugee problem, has convinced many in the international community to accept this version of their unfortunate plight and the injustices done to them.

That narrative, however, essentially one of historical revisionism, denies the truth that the Jews who left, fled, or were expelled from Arab countries can really be regarded as refugees, as well.

The story of these Jewish refugees has been much less well known than that of the Palestinian refugees, about whose fate international resolutions have been passed, and on whose behalf thirteen UN agencies and organizations have provided aid. The issue of the legitimate rights of the Jewish refugees, and the individual and collective loss of their assets, have not yet been seriously addressed; nor have there been any real attempts in international forums at the restitution of their rights and assets.

The contrast is startling. Between 1949 and 2009 there were 163 resolutions passed in the UN General Assembly dealing with Palestinian refugees; there was not one on Jewish refugees. Similarly, since 1968, the UN Human Rights Council (formerly Commission) has adopted 132 resolutions dealing with the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but not one directed to the Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Other specialized agencies of the UN have been specifically established, or charged, to pay attention to the Palestinian refugees. These refugees have benefited from international financial assistance; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), since 1950, has provided over $13 billion (in 2007 prices). Jewish refugees have received nothing from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international organization dealing with refugees all over the world except Palestinians, who have the UNRWA solely devoted to them.

There is more, read it all here.

Forever a thorn in the side of Israel

It should be stunning to those who don’t know already—Palestinian “refugees” are the only people the UNHCR never tries to resettle in other countries.  Indeed they have their own UN agency—UNRWA—to which we in the US send billions of dollars to help maintain them as permanent refugees generation after generation (60 plus years!) while demanding their “right to return” to the land that is now Israel, whereupon Israel would promptly become a Muslim country.

Contrast that to how we quickly did the UN’s bidding and scooped up tens of thousands of Bhutanese/Nepali people expelled from Bhutan (as one reader said because Bhutan feared the ethnic Nepalis would end up out-populating them in their own country—sound familiar!).   The UN and the US did not demand a “right of return” for the Bhutanese/Nepali people to either of those countries which we very easily could have done through financial aid sweeteners (if we needed to get involved at all!).   Instead we simply moved them out to your cities.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am not promoting the mass resettlement of Palestinians (to western countries, let the Arabs take them in) now that Hamas is running the place, but just pointing out the hypocrisy of the United Nations (and fascist one-worlders) when it comes to Israel and refugees generally.

Did we really help the Bhutanese/Nepali “refugees” by bringing them to America, ripping them out of their Buddhist culture, subjecting them to crime and murders in rotten US slum neighborhoods, and jobs in chicken factories?  Really?

LOL!  There is a lot of hypocrisy in the refugee industry and pointing it out keeps me going every day!