Refugee situation / EU response - rolling news

Deserves a dedicated thread.

http://i.imgur.com/9JxFUE6.png

The ongoing crisis in Syria has led to a sharp increase in people seeking refuge in Europe - coming across the Mediterranean by boat (with over 17,000 drowning along the way) or through Greece and Eastern Europe. Germany says it is expecting 800,000 asylum applications this year - about 300,000 of which are from people who have come via Hungary. Hungary is in the process of building a 4m high razor-wire fence to cut it off from Serbia. Serbia has asked Macedonia to redirect people trying to cross into the country to Croatia. Macedonia is tear-gassing people trying to arrive from Greece, etc, etc.

Not least in the UK (which is currently taking 10% of the numbers Sweden is, per capita) there has been an ugliness to the response that seems unprecedented in recent memory. At the heart of the current issue is the fact that there are no mechanisms for ensuring refugees are supported fairly by all EU member states. The current code is voluntary - leading to Slovakia accepting a pitiful 200 people but specifying they must be Christian, Latvia agreeing to take 250 over the course of two years and Poland setting its absolute limit at 2000 - roughly the same number crossing into Serbia every day. The UK is also strongly resisting the idea of quotas.

Even if refugees are admitted into the country, there are wildly different standards for who qualifies for long-term shelter - with Bulgaria accepting 91% of claims in 2014 as valid and Hungary accepting 9%. France rejects 78% of claims, Sweden rejects 23%.

As much as it's perceived as a "European issue", the majority Syrian refugees are still in the region. Jordan currently has 630k - equivalent to about 10% of its entire population and Lebanon 1.1m - equivalent to 25%.

There's some great work being done by NGOs, for example:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/macedonian-volunteers-help-refugees-on-their-way-08-18-2015-1

and a bit of corporate assistance:

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/aug/19/syria-refugee-crisis-education-teaching-lost-generation-children

but it's a grim picture and only looks likely to get worse.

I was at the préfecture last week and there were lots of people with asylum cards reapplying for a continuation, and most of them were elderly, surprising me.

It's just shameful. Absolutely shameful.

Danish government was going to put commercials in foreign media explaining how horrible we were going to treat refugees, and that they should go anywhere but here. They've now changed the rules so that refugees will get a pittance in monthly support from the state, and of course they are still banned from working. And they should begin assimilating themselves at once, but also they are trying to change the rules so that for instance people from Syria can be returned once it's peaceful again. But of course, they should still assimilate themselves, even though they won't be allowed to stay here.

News recently that a report said that apparently Eritrea wasn't punishing deserters from the army anymore - which is most refugees - so now they could be sent home without problems. No other NGO or rights-watchers were aware of any change in Eritrea, and it was only supported by a couple of anonymous sources in the report. And that was former left-wing government, btw. It's just shameful.

Paywalled but jfc:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6edfdd30-472a-11e5-b3b2-1672f710807b.html#axzz3jFAIEhKz

As hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and poverty in Africa risk their lives to reach the safety of Europe, some eastern European states are embarking on a contentious strategy of selecting only Christian refugees for resettlement.
Poland agreed to accept 50 Christian families from Syria under an initiative led by a private organisation and agreed by the prime minister.
Slovakia has said it will take 200 refugees from the war-torn country, but only if they are devout churchgoers. The Czech Republic applied the same criteria to 70 families granted asylum this year.

“They [non-Christian refugees] can be a threat to Poland. I think it is a great way for Isis to locate their troops . . . all around Europe,” said Miriam Shaded, head of Estera, the Polish foundation that arranged the selection and immigration of Mr Saad’s and 49 other families into Poland.

“And if these people are not Isis representatives, [in Syria] their lives are not in danger, so then it is labour migration. If they are Muslim, they will not be killed because they are Muslims, because they believe in the same as Isis.”

Thank you for starting this thread. I don't have enough knowledge to contribute anything salient but I'm bookmarking the hell out of this.

agreed

http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/editors-blog/2015/08/al-jazeera-mediterranean-migrants-150820082226309.html

Good piece from al-Jazeera on why it's not going to use the word "migrant" for refugees any more.

After months of hostile coverage, Germany's biggest tabloid ran a section today about how it's readers could help support the refugee relief effort.

http://i.imgur.com/KdBCqL0.jpg

There seems to be a growing recognition that the attacks on refugees are going to intensify without huge political pressure from both right and left to change the tone of the discussion. There has been a string of serious assaults and arson attacks, the latest burning down a refugee shelter near Berlin last night. A thousand-strong neo-Nazi protest clashed with police earlier in the week in an effort to stop a bus carrying refugees reaching a town in the east. Merkel had been fairly quiet until recently but seems to be addressing it much more seriously now.

The awfulness is just relentless

This morning Danish public radio ran a story on how the NGO Danish Refugee Council admitted it was not possible to grant asylum to more than the equivalent of 0,3% of total population (whereas Germany's estimate is around 1%)

Where anyone are getting these percentile estimations from is beyond me

The Austrian police have said that they can't be sure how many people died in the lorry they found yet but it's definitely more than 70.

I swear that on 5 Live news last night the number dead was described as "several" in the lede, before going on to quote an estimate of 20 to 50+. interesting choice of adjective there BBC

Now around 70.

Meanwhile, barely ranking lower on the scale of crimes against humanity, the Mail laments "we are experiencing an unprecedented upheaval in the make-up of a country once united by ties of language, history, creed and patriotism." ... also intolerance, xenophobia, myopia, self-interest, hypocrisy.

on top of the Austrian horror: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-34082304

The most popular newspaper in Austria published pictures of the bodies but pixelated the name of the Hungarian company on the truck.

what i learned today is that most EU governments have a list of "safe" countries of origin deemed not too overtly horrible, for fast-tracking deportations. but no two lists are the same. hungary et al are in full Trump mode, vowing to defend their borders if the EU refuses

but facts on the ground appear to be overwhelming policy - the estimate on overall net migration now to the EU is almost 100K / month

i'm not sure i buy al-J's contention that "refugee" is better than "migrant", it seems to buy into cameron's "illegal economic migrants" schema he wants everyone to adopt

idk, talking exclusively about "migrants" plays into the idea that a high proportion of the people concerned are not fleeing in terror. "Migrant" as a term needs to have the poison taken out of it but if the vast majority of people making their way to Europe are war refugees by all normal metrics, it makes sense to refer to them as such and not conflate them with people moving for other reasons.

Not sure the Czech police have thought through the 'optics' of writing numbers on the forearms of the refugees they arrest:

http://blisty.cz/art/78732.html

The Hungarian response to the crisis might stop other European leaders from jovially referring to Orban as "Herr Diktator" to his face. Not sure how Germany can expect to get agreement on a quota system given the grim blend of ethnonationalism, religious bigotry and neoliberalism that dominates Central and Eastern European politics, particularly given how indifferent Spain and the UK are to forcing the issue:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/01/europes-migration-response-tempers-frayed-insults-traded-results-absent

the name is a tricky issue; I know some people&charities that work with refugees in the UK like to make the distinction between asylum seekers and refugees

Well, it isn't that these people&charities "like" to make this distinction: it is already a legal one. Someone is an asylum seeker until they reach a positive decision from the UK courts and are granted refugee status. The funding of many charities means that they are only able to help one or other of these categories of people, and of course the rights and restrictions (and consequent help needed) of the two statuses are very different.

good for the greeks for treating the refugees like human beings even though the rest of europe (germany) is demanding blood money from greece (which is a stupid policy for many reasons, not least of which is greece is the doorway to europe from the middle east)

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/08/greece-kos-refugee-crisis-ferry-syrians-150819194335100.html

yes, should have said like to make clear the distinction

That wouldn't be accurately worded either.

http://media.salon.com/2014/07/Screen-Shot-2014-07-15-at-12.03.22-PM1.png

The pictures are now getting so bad (especially the little toddler drowned on the beach) that even the Mail comments are sympathetic. OK, they're pre-moderated and some of them blame the socialist liberal open-door policy for it all, but the "ach let 'em drown" lot have finally shut the fuck up. Cameron of course using today to say he's against taking "more" refugees, like we're taking any.

Feeling particularly impotent and outraged rn.

I see Cameron's planning to bring peace to the Middle East instead of taking any refugees. At least Orban is honest.

worked out well for Tony B. Liar, if that is in fact his real name

Does anyone know the best place(s) to donate to that will help these people directly? Google is throwing up news links and nothing else.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

^ don't read the comments

http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/jungle-books-calais-migrant-library

Thanks, some of those look very good.

Meanwhile here we're capturing and locking up our asylum seekers on remote islands or in the PNG jungle where theyre getting beaten up and raped and killed and no one is doing anythign to stop it.

Yes, Australia is very much a world-leader in abusing refugees and treating them like shit and genuinely hoping they'll go somewhere else and die so as not to inconvenience us

really having a hard time w this today, in my own head

i have no doubt that cameron's exact lines were trotted out in the 1930s

"europe" is really proving a comprehensive failure when it comes to responding to big problems

i have a three year old of my own and even just the thought of that photo is a wormhole, i go into the whole history - who put those shoes on him, and what were they thinking when they did, and what was he thinking, and what hopes did they have, and how scared they must have been. i'm sorry. none of this needs repeating. i really am finding it hard to deal

Dunno about "europe" failing and what the scare quotes indicate, but the Dublin Treaty is just a big ball of awfulness and needs to be declared dead quickly by a few more heads of state before anything at all helpful can be done on the European level.

scare quotes indicate states working together as a political entity rather than a geographical collection of countries - maybe i don't need them

i don't think it's very controversial to say that europe's failure to handle trade imbalances has been comprehensive

and europe has also been massively failing to deal AT ALL with the massive inflow of refugees/migrants/whatevs from the middle east. it's understandable to a degree that systems are not designed to cope with ~100K people per month but this has been going on awhile now. in an era of historically low interest rates and massively high unemployment surely europe could, like, build entire fucking towns for people to live in

That sounds suspiciously Keynesian.

didn't that happen in the 50s and 60s? governments just looked at a problem and were like "well obviously we need to build about 100 new buildings, MAKE IT SO"

Where have you been for that last 30-odd years? Are you some sort of Socialist?

i swear this is the most pissably impotent set of governments i can ever remember, america considers it a generational victory to force people to sign up for back-breakingly expensive health care and europe allows entire truckloads of people to die by the roadside because they're worried about what pensioners in hendon might do in a marginal seat in 5 years' time

Chunks of Europe that had property boom already have mostly-built now-empty towns, ffs.

Finding it pretty hard to deal with myself, TH. The pictures of him smiling and playing with his brother, who also died, are almost as difficult to see.

(I feel pretty shallow that it takes photographs to turn the sort-of academic anger I had before into this visceral outrage, but it is what it is)

i swear this is the most pissably impotent set of governments i can ever remember, america considers it a generational victory to force people to sign up for back-breakingly expensive health care and europe allows entire truckloads of people to die by the roadside because they're worried about what pensioners in hendon might do in a marginal seat in 5 years' time

Pissably impotent government preferable to BIG GOVERNMENT, I imagine.

(I feel pretty shallow that it takes photographs to turn the sort-of academic anger I had before into this visceral outrage, but it is what it is

And I feel callous that the concentration by the media on the death of just one child is irritating me.

(24 hour news is on at my work all the time, by way of explanation)

It takes one child photo to generate empathy.

hey i've got an idea, why not let people LIVE WHERE THEY WANT TO?!?!?!!! CRAZY I KNOW, IT'LL NEVER WORK, THIS IS MUCH BETTER

Back in the day, they tried to dissuade people from moving to London from Bolton.

I don't know what to think about this. I'm a new European arrival working/struggling with immigration offices daily, but in the position of having a permanent state functionary job, social capital, privilege out the wazoo. My kids have spent two of the last five years in French schools in FLE (français langue étrangère) with immigrants mostly from Africa; so I see integration happening, or not happening, every day, with their classmates and their classmates' families.

So I guess I don't know what to do. Obviously stop the dying. But is the right thing to do to allow everyone in Syria, Libya, Eritrea, etc. to immigrate freely to the European country of their choice? I feel rage at the horrors these people are going through now; and at what they're going through in their home countries. But I don't know: is the right thing to think as a European trying to be moral in 2015 to open the borders? I really don't know! I'm not asking as a question of what's politically "possible", but as a question of: what is the right thing for European nations to do? Is having any limit moral?

Nothing about *that* question is obvious to me; the only thing that's obvious is that we have to stop the dying, stop the suffering. But where does this go after that?

It's always worth remembering that the vast majority of refugees from those countries stay in neighbouring countries. The increase in numbers from Syria to Europe started when the refugee shelters in Turkey (2m Syrian refugees, Lebanon 1.1m, Jordan 620k and Iraq 250k) either became too crowded to take any more or came under attack themselves. There's no expectation of open borders but you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now.

^yes. but alas there’s no end in sight to the horror, chaos, disaster engulfing syria, libya, iraq etc...

"There's no expectation of open borders but you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now."

Doesn't "you can't build a wall around the sea and do have moral and legal responsibilities to the people who are here now" entail open borders though? Unless you're maintaining also that:

1) legal responsibilities don't entail long-term residency in the European nation of the refugee's choice
2) the flow of refugees will not continue...indefinitely? for long? for much longer?

don't economists wring their hands that there will not be enough workers to support an aging population? hey guess what I FOUND SOME

There is no legal expectation of permanent residency. However long the flow of refugees lasts, it won't change the relevant UN conventions on not sending people back to war zones. xp

In Hungary: https://twitter.com/jamesmatesitv?lang=en-gb

(nothing graphic btw..but if you are having a tough time to deal then might be best not to look)

Wee boy picture made me cry at work today (in a pub). But, on a plus side we have a right wing customer group, and they've all been very pro helpin people. Surprisingly so - every time it came up I was bracing myself for nonsense.

UKIP twat:

Peter Bucklitsch
‏@bucklitsch

The little Syrian boy was well clothed & well fed. He died because his parents were greedy for the good life in Europe. Queue jumping costs.

Bucklitsch? That goes back to pre-Norman times, I assume?

Since removed:

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11030543_10153688600104073_694587591403488514_n.jpg?oh=0498e7bf83dac90223f65d91fb6f18e9&oe=5664B508

ugh trying to figure out how to express my outrage at the Hungarian gov't about this without pissing off my Hungarian in-laws

If I were you I'd go right ahead and tell them their Prime Minister is a racist cunt.

i have a three year old of my own and even just the thought of that photo is a wormhole, i go into the whole history - who put those shoes on him, and what were they thinking when they did, and what was he thinking, and what hopes did they have, and how scared they must have been. i'm sorry. none of this needs repeating. i really am finding it hard to deal

There with you. "He died because his parents were greedy", I mean what the FUCK. I can't read about this any more.

Also just want to point out that that little drowned boy's family applied for refugee status to Canada earlier this year, and was rejected.

Good to see Cameron has been shamed into accepting more refugees, though hasn't specified how many.

Orban has been following the same line for years - trying to reintroduce the death penalty, putting Roma children in segregated schools, suggesting that immigrants to Hungary should be put in labour camps, etc. The only time he seems to get much push-back from the EU is when he suggests protectionist economic policies.

You can say and do what you like as long as Germany agrees with your economic policies.

ok i know it's fun to hate germany but their government has pledged to take 800,000 refugees this YEAR so everybody else had better respekognize

tracer your post upthread re drowned child is killing me. this is too big to bear tbh.

Yes, I had an overwhelming hyperventilating + sobbing moment earlier. I was on the verge a few times earlier but the dams broke :(

I dunno if I was just a more callous bastard before I became a parent but yeah I can't read/see that stuff and not have a really uncontrollable visceral emotional reaction

i found it devastating and i haven't spent significant time around a little kid since i was a little kid. im sure many will share this but there was something about his little shoes that produced the beginnings of a large sob that i choked back.

then was even more upset and also deeply angry when i found out that a relative of the little boy lives locally to me (metro vancouver) and that his family's refugee claim had been rejected. by coincidence an org here had just released a multimedia detailing how awful canada's immigration policy has been under the tories which i had just perused earlier in the day.

Good to see Cameron has been shamed into accepting more refugees, though hasn't specified how many.

Its really pathetic - a mere few thousand and no more, just enough so that the new cycle can churn around to something else. The exact figure "being thrashed out in Whitehall" according to Newsnight last night.

4000. Fucking hell.

Big Hearted Britain

Was this posted upthread? It's a pretty amazing piece: http://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jun/09/a-migrants-journey-from-syria-to-sweden-interactive

Yesterday's ceasefire failed today, so I had a couple of people in the pub telling me how we have to take care of our own first, we don't have room etc. Disappointing.

"we have to take care of our own first"

Some of the same people I have heard parroting this are also members of the "tough decisions have to be made" brigade, they obviously aren't referring to people when they say "our own".

I missed this, where are "our own" drowning at sea, lads?

"we have to take care of our own first"
Some of the same people I have heard parroting this are also members of the "tough decisions have to be made" brigade, they obviously aren't referring to people when they say "our own".

They would have to mean their immediate family because they sure as hell don't care about anyone else.

Wow, almost came to blows about it. Really sucks.

There is virtually nothing in politics right now that can't be summarised as "having to help you lot is holding us back, tough shit guys".

Reports of thousands of people WALKING along the motorway from Budapest to Vienna right now. That's about 150 miles.

http://i62.tinypic.com/1zlcb28.jpg

turns out my in-laws hate Orban too, problem solved!

many xxp

Have been trying not to just mash the retweet button today, but there's loads going on.

• Train in Hungary with refugees refusing to leave. Lots of women/children on board, has now been surrounded by riot police: https://twitter.com/griffwitte/status/639819841893990400
• The thousands walking to Vienna like Matt says. http://t.co/aETwE23mfJ James Mates from ITV is also with them: https://twitter.com/jamesmatesitv/status/639799561733709824 (lots in his tl)
• MSF says up to 50 are missing off coast of Libya https://twitter.com/MSF_Sea/status/639779855886884864 but have delivered two boatloads to Italy https://twitter.com/MSF_Sea/status/639731978284191744 and https://twitter.com/MSF_Sea/status/639778529773776896

And to cheer me up, kids in Budapest watching Tom & Jerry a couple of nights ago https://twitter.com/KaptainKulk/status/639821906506567680

Its really pathetic - a mere few thousand and no more, just enough so that the new cycle can churn around to something else.

it's not going to be churning around to something else any time soon.

yeah i think cameron is not smart enough to win this one.

Is the UK going to take more than 50K or something?

interesting but maybe a pipe dream?

http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-billionare-offers-buy-med-island-refugees-154413262.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=fb

yeah i think cameron is not smart enough to win this one.

I agree but that's not exactly what I meant, more that what we've seen so far is the tip of the iceberg - this is going to go on for a long time, sadly.

yeah, that's also true.

It will flip between Syria (which governments will sympathise with, because they have been forced to) and then economic migrants from Calais and the like where you can't build fences that are high enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/05/world/treatment-of-migrants-evokes-memories-of-europes-darkest-hour.html

In Hungary, hundreds of migrants surrounded by armed police officers were tricked into boarding a train with promises of freedom, only to be taken to a “reception” camp. In the Czech Republic, the police hustled more than 200 migrants off a train and wrote identification numbers on their hands with indelible markers, stopping only when someone pointed out that this was more than a little like the tattoos the Nazis put on concentration camp inmates. ...

Parliament is expected to pass a second raft of refugee laws by next week, giving greater authority to the police and the military, including the right to enter any home to search for migrants who might be hiding there.

i'd maintained steely composure up until now but seeing that image of the kids watching tom & jerry and thinking of it in relation to the others has done me in

For australians and others looking to contribute

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-04/asylum-seekers-how-to-help/6749062

http://i.imgur.com/l76WUOx.jpg

Seems legit.

Parliament is expected to pass a second raft of refugee laws by next week, giving greater authority to the police and the military, including the right to enter any home to search for migrants who might be hiding there.

???

Is it just me or is this shocking?

It's hard to get shocked at anything these cnuts would do.

govt has already told landlords in a few "pilot" areas that they're not supposed to rent to undocumented people, in effect making landlords an (unpaid) arm of UKVI; the landlords obviously have no clue which paperwork is legit so they have (predictably) responded by requiring BRITISH passports of anyone renting from them. probably breaking EU law in doing so, of course. but who can blame them? how can they know their EEA-4s from their whatever elses?

quote above is about the Hungarian parliament.

ha i can't tell the difference these days :/

UK govt is now talking about diverting cash from the UK aid budget to helping refugees, which is a handy smokescreen for chipping away at something most of your MPs don't believe should exist in the first place.

Big hearted Britain

That's why Cameron is our PM - 20K over five years.

UK Parliament is also proposing to deport Syrian orphans once they reach 18, which sounds legally dubious to say the least.

Waiting for the proposal to send 7 year old Syrian orphans up chimneys.

The petty, impractical small-mindedness of politicians around immigration is just astonishing

UK Parliament is also proposing to deport Syrian orphans once they reach 18, which sounds legally dubious to say the least.

They'd struggle to deport them if Syria is still "unsafe" but hundreds of Afghan kids get deported at 18 every year at the moment. They're deported after years out of their home country and with no obvious support network to go back to.

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/07/16/600-unaccompanied-child-asylum-seekers-deported-uk-afghanistan/

The petty, impractical small-mindedness of politicians around immigration is just astonishing

Sadly it's not just politicians. Civil servants and bureaucrats at every single level of the process seem more than happy to apply the letter and the heartless spirit of the law with zeal.

(Home office quote:) We take our international responsibility in cases involving children seriously and their welfare is at the heart of every decision made.

Hilarious.

Not necessarily to do w/politicians or civil servants - people here (all classes) just.don't.want more foreigners under any circumstances. Cameron is looking at the polls and nodding.

link?

Haven't you heard, we live on a TINY ISLAND.

There is the yougov one from above, and many have anecdotes (some in the thread) (I have one myself but I won't type out what was said) of encounters with people that don't give a damn.

It's hard to give that Yougov poll much credit - people can hardly be trusted to say whether we should admit higher or lower numbers than we currently do, when that figure itself is the most obscured and mis-reported in this whole issue. The poll itself massages the figures for the most sensational headlines: "Of the people who can put a number on how many Syrian refugees Britain should take, 50% say it should be zero." - but 734 of the 1579 question say they can't or don't want to give such a number! In the same poll 36% - the largest percentage - say we should admit more Syrian refugess than we are currently, only 14% say we shouldn't let any in. Still a dispiriting figure but nowhere near 50%.

Agree ppl in general can be more divided on the question.

However in the poll yesterday for Newsnight (and I think in the one above) it said something similar: largest % for more but the majority were happy with the current (low) figure or less which combined beats the largest % Unfortunately enough ppl have said immigration is a worry (usually tied to scarcity of jobs etc) and are now voting for UKIP in numbers, these aren't enough to convert to seats but that's more to do with the voting system. LOL @ that.

Allied w/the history of the treatment of immigrants over the years and the resentment over 'multiculturalism' and the like then I am prepared to believe that most people aren't going to budge.

people can hardly be trusted to say whether we should admit higher or lower numbers than we currently do

^ this is the line politicians should take in general over many of these things. Its about leardership and standing up for something like beliefs. LOL @ that.

but the majority were happy with the current (low) figure or less which combined beats the largest %

the majority - an even larger majority - are also happy with the current figure or higher! agree w/ your last point but the morass of disinformation at all levels is infuriating.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/04/the-arab-worlds-wealthiest-nations-are-doing-next-to-nothing-for-syrias-refugees/

Like European countries, Saudi Arabia and its neighbors also have fears over new arrivals taking jobs from citizens, and may also invoke concerns about security and terrorism. But the current gulf aid outlay for Syrian refugees, which amounts to collective donations under $1 billion (the United States has given four times that sum), seems short — and is made all the more galling when you consider the vast sums Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. poured into this year's war effort in Yemen

...

The Arabic hashtag #Welcoming_Syria's_refugees_is_a_Gulf_duty was tweeted more than 33,000 times in the past week, according to the BBC

Not sure those figures are entirely accurate. Kuwait alone has given over $1bn, iirc, and Saudi, Qatar and the UAE are all in the top ten donor countries. Kuwait has given 26 times more money than France this year. Obvs a lot more they could be doing to resettle refugees though.

“In the end, it is not right for us to accept a people that are different from us. We don’t want people who suffer from internal stress and trauma in our country."
- Kuwaiti official Fahad Al Shalami

I was slow at catching up with my current events and just recently found out that that 800,000 figure is actually 40% asylum-seekers from the Balkans.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/top-german-immigration-official-on-influx-of-syrian-refugees-a-1050685.html

Manfred Schmidt: That's difficult to say. Whether we have similarly high numbers next year will depend on if we succeed in lowering the influx from Balkans countries like Serbia and Albania. People who come from this region are almost never recognized as refugees or as being eligible for asylum. But they also represent around 40 percent of all current asylum-seekers in Germany.

The 800k figure is a projection for the year based on the expected increase in Syrian refugees. The 40% figure is of the 200k who applied in the year to August but it doesn't follow that the same proportion will be from the Western Balkans for the rest of the year.

Why are there so many people coming from the Balkans at this point in time?

political instability in most of the non-EU Balkan countries plus unresolved tensions caused by the wars in the former Yugoslavia plus established traditions of emigration to western Europe

The whole region has been unsettled this year but a lot of the push from Kosovo and Albania has been economic - Germany has traditionally not see Kosovo as a safe country so wouldn't deport people back there, though this has changed in the last few weeks.

The majority of people from Serbia who go to Germany are Roma who argue that racism and endemic poverty give cause for claims of refuge, though the German and Serbian governments disagree. I would guess that the increase in number of refugees making the same passage makes it easier for others to go too - if they were being waved through checkpoints, etc.

Big hearted Britain

― Fields of Fat Henry (Tom D.), Monday, September 7, 2015 12:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh tom, why the hell did i read the comments to your link?

In Germany, for instance, a rapidly aging population is becoming increasingly aware of the need to welcome foreigners.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/08/this-map-helps-explain-why-some-european-countries-reject-refugees-and-others-love-them/

The article talks about demographics, economies, and morals/ethics...

A call for communism to sort this out once and for all:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/slavoj-zizek/the-non-existence-of-norway

The greatest hypocrites are those who call for open borders. They know very well this will never happen

But dreaming of communism is just fine.

Got the govt's response to the '“Accept more asylum seekers' petition today. The take-home message:

Those who have already reached Europe are no longer in immediate danger and the European countries in which they arrive have a duty to provide adequate protection and support to refugees within their territory.

It is not inherently racist or proto-fascist for host populations to talk of protecting their ‘way of life’

It's a bit early for me - can't quite think of an example where doing this wasn't either of those things...

This has always been used by idiots. I never really understood that notion anyway.

We should avoid getting trapped in the liberal self-interrogation, ‘How much tolerance can we afford?’ Should we tolerate migrants who prevent their children going to state schools; who force their women to dress and behave in a certain way; who arrange their children’s marriages; who discriminate against homosexuals?

I don't know anyone who thinks like this. Maybe I don't read the correct loony-left blogs but this seems like a total non problem.

Who fucking asked Zizek anyway?

(Is a question that can be applied to many issues, I find)

The LRB, I assume, but cosign nonetheless.

Right wing populists the Swedish Democrats, who may now become the biggest party, are exploiting people’s worries about the end of the welfare state. The leader tweeted “The election is a choice between mass immigration and welfare. You choose.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/26/scandinavia-far-right-stolen-left-ground-welfare

I don't know anyone who thinks like this. Maybe I don't read the correct loony-left blogs but this seems like a total non problem.

That line seemed to be conflating several things - what the right-wing seem to think an effect of multiculturalism was, and then the international left's distrust/hatred of liberals. xp

Reading Zizek and Taylor Parkes' piece on Corbyn back-to-back yesterday was "one for the ages", as its sometime said.

I thought there were a lot of interesting points in Zizek's approach.

It is not inherently racist or proto-fascist for host populations to talk of protecting their ‘way of life’: this notion must be abandoned. If it is not, the way will be clear for the forward march of anti-immigration sentiment in Europe whose latest manifestation is in Sweden, where according to the latest polling the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats have overtaken the Social Democrats as the country’s most popular party. The standard left-liberal line on this is an arrogant moralism: the moment we give any credence to the idea of ‘protecting our way of life’, we compromise our position, since we’re merely proposing a more modest version of what anti-immigrant populists openly advocate. And this is indeed the cautious approach that centrist parties have adopted in recent years. They reject the open racism of anti-immigrant populists, but at the same time profess that they ‘understand the concerns’ of ordinary people, and so enact a more ‘rational’ anti-immigration policy.

But what does this mean? Is there no way of avoiding immmigration and no way of life to protect?

Immigration IS a way of life and the only one worth protecting.

if a "way of life" can't accommodate change then chances are that it is pretty rubbish

Morris Dancing RIP

I read that as Morris Dancing MP, I thought what constituency does he represent?

Hitchin & Bitchin

the U.S. has admitted only 1,500 since the war started four years ago

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/09/09/obama-propose-higher-refugee-ceiling-syrian/71948318/

Refugee relief groups have called on the United States to allow as many as 65,000 Syrian refugees in the United States

"The greatest hypocrites are those who call for open borders. They know very well this will never happen"

But dreaming of communism is just fine.

Why isnt it? He's calling for alternatives to global capitalism. The liberal faux moral high ground isnt going to provide any.

the world and her dog are calling for alternatives to global capitalism. i don't see why zizek's moral high ground is any less faux.

^

A reply: https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/building-norway-a-critique-of-slavoj-zizek/

Germany has reintroduced controls at the Austrian border.

https://twitter.com/DanAmira/status/643503538065272832

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34275400

Hungary using water cannon and tear gas against refugees now. Serbia is sending police and medics to protect them at the border and says it'll never erect fences to keep people fleeing violence out. Victor Ponta, Prime Minister of Romania, has said Orban's measures bring “shame to the culture and values of the European Union.”

Seems to be a concerted effort on the side of Poland to push their position in the Western press at the moment:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/16/eastern-european-migrants-refugees-selfish

Marcin Zaborowski talking about "creating safe havens within Syria" (!) for them to stay and Jacek Rostowski, former deputy Prime Minister indicating that they should all stop in Greece / Malta / Italy:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/606bf3ec-5b07-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3lyjkzIpf

my uni announced we're going to host 100 syrian refugee students for their 3 years toward a licence, with Qatar picking up the bill at 600,000 euros per year. I guess that's one way Gulf states can handle their consciences.

Its encouraging to see Hungary being shamed by other Eastern countries. The European Union not being as harsh on Hungary as they were with Greece when not dealing with payments.

Bet Eastern Euro have a better infrastructure than Lebanon. xp

This is great:

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/3266/spanish-football/2015/09/16/15434232/refugee-tripped-by-hungarian-reporter-to-coach-in-getafe

The guy who was tripped up by the Hungarian camerawoman while carrying his son was previously a Premier League coach in Syria and has been offered a job to work with Getafe.

This is what's confusing people: The idea that refugees could be people with capabilities and strengths, as opposed to starving, skinny, etc.

As soon as the winner of "Syria's Got Talent" turns up, well...

Serbia getting good publicity for the first time in... well, possibly ever. Good job there, Hungary.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/sep/16/refugee-crisis-hit-uk-working-class-powerless

"We must not turn on each other". No thanks. Remaining silent on racism - whether its by the members of the working class or not - doesn't help. The widow in the parable gives without resentment so its insertion in the piece is confused.

Why not look at what a change of reality would look like instead of accepting it, or is that a stretch of imagination?

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/10/the-stunning-hypocrisy-of-mitteleuropa-refugees-poland-hungary-czech-republic/

Interesting piece that looks at this from all sides.

Counterintuitive as it may be, the periods of emigration and the tragedies that triggered them may be part of the reason that the Central Europeans feel entitled to refuse refugees from elsewhere. There is a prevailing attitude in the region that these countries have suffered enough at the hands of history — that they are small, poor nations that have gotten the short end of the stick so many times that they’re still entitled to think of themselves as victims. Now, just when they’re getting back on their feet, they feel they should be able to look out for themselves.

Given the fraught atmosphere in Central Europe at the moment, it would in fact be a grave mistake for the EU to force these countries to accept unwanted refugees. This would put the newcomers themselves in danger. If reluctant governments, as outspoken as they’ve been, are muscled into it, there’d be a green light for right-wingers and populists to abuse the new arrivals. There’d be shelters burned down within a week, just as happened in eastern Germany in the early 1990s. (Refugee shelters still burn in Germany today, but anti-foreigner sentiment remains on the margins of public opinion, not smack in the center.)

But there could be voluntary quotas for all of the EU’s 28 countries: higher than those currently proposed, with provisions for EU aid for countries with lower-than-average GDPs that take in refugees. The money would enable the leaderships of these countries to put a positive spin on accommodating those in need. There shouldn’t be penalties attached to noncompliance — but the lack of empathy shouldn’t be forgotten when it comes time that these nay-sayers are in need, either.

Contradicting some of what I said earlier - still really maddening.

"Poland, Christ of Nations" complex strikes again.

Anti-migrant sentiment hardly seems "on the margins" of German society and it was only a concerted effort from the government that started to turn the tide in a more positive direction. It's not about money so no amount of assistance from Western Europe is likely to change things. For the most part, it's about keeping nations white and Christian in the face of new European realities.

And on that note, locals in Jelena Gora called the police on a group of suspicious brown people they thought had been smuggled across the border illegally. They were tourists from Malta:

http://www.gazetawroclawska.pl/artykul/8014001,zobaczyl-uchodzcow-wezwal-policje-a-to-turysci-z-malty,id,t.html?cookie=1

There has a lot more pro-migrant talk and sympathy in Germany than I'm seeing from Eastern Europe.

Get the feeling if politicians took a lead in a more positive direction in Poland and Czech republic it would be bad for them.

I think there's a danger of overstating how welcoming Germany was before Merkel's massive effort to make a moral case for taking refugees and underestimating how uneasy a lot of people still are now, but i agree it seems a lot warmer than most places in comparison. I don't think it would be as warm without Merkel's moral leadership, though.

It's not as though CEU leaders have simply failed to push for greater acceptance, in many cases they've actively campaigned against with lies and hostile misinformation. Claiming that 95% of refugees are actually economic migrants or that the European way of life faces an existential threat goes beyond failing to accentuate the positive in the face of public scepticism.

It's not a case of one isolated policy, though, it's in the DNA of post-Soviet politics in lots of countries in the region across a wide spectrum of issues. There is no credible centre-left and little break on exclusionary nationalism, sectarianism and radical individualism. Expecting them to do any different in a political climate twenty years in the making is probably unrealistic but damn them anyway.

Yes there are causes to a lot of this and yet how far do you go? Its like the piece I linked above trying to excuse racism, staying silent as bad incidents with newly arrived refugees are used to not take in anyone and help people fleeing persecution.

This is where politicians and leaders come in and set the record and stop looking at polls all the time. Merkel has indeed been good in providing that leadership.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/croatia-is-the-new-frontline-in-europes-refugee-crisis/2015/09/17/3723efc0-5c93-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html

A day earlier, thousands of men, women and children started to arrive in Croatia from Serbia after their old route was blocked by Hungary’s 108-mile-long border fence.

At first they were met with open arms and promises of help to speed them on their journey as many seek final haven in countries such as Germany and Sweden. But the friendly reception turned harsh — a measure of how the vast numbers of people fleeing war and poverty are quickly outstripping a divided Europe’s ability to accommodate them.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/europe/italy-migrants-christians-thrown-overboard/index.html

Rome (CNN) Muslims who were among migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy in a boat this week threw 12 fellow passengers overboard -- killing them -- because the 12 were Christians, Italian police said Thursday.

Italian authorities have arrested 15 people on suspicion of murdering the Christians at sea, police in Palermo, Sicily, said.

If it's not love then it's the foam that will bring us together.

quickly outstripping a divided Europe’s ability to accommodate them

I don't think it's a matter of inability.

.....good to know...?

If my understanding is correct, the entire EU hasn't yet absorbed as many Syrian refugees as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which is the size of Portugal and has a per capita GDP of $5,600 a year.

The EU has voted by majority to apply quotas for refugees - against the wishes of Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/eu-governments-divisive-quotas-deal-share-120000-refugees

The quota for the CEU accessions states is low - with the nine EU accession states being asked to take 15,000 between them out of a total of 120,000 - but it's still being furiously opposed. It looks like Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania will go along with it but Robert Fico, PM of Slovakia, has said that he'd rather be in violation of EU rules than accept refugees under the scheme. This is something of a change of tune given that he was one of the main cheerleaders for Greece being forced to follow the rules in the recent economic crisis. Fico's party is a member of the "Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats" in the EU parliament along with Labour and the French Socialists, btw.

Poland ended up siding with the rest of the EU in the end but as the Guardian article mentions, the government is almost certainly going to be voted out next month anyway to be replaced with the far-rightish Law And Justice Party.

Also worth noting that the UK is the only country that can opt out of the scheme and did. Denmark and Ireland can opt out but didn't.

Also this is only to deal with the current numbers, not an ongoing solution.

Yes, which put Hungary in the strange position of voting against rules which would require them to take under 2000 refugees but would mean that 64,000 who are already in Hungary would be placed elsewhere.

Theresa May, the British home secretary, declared that “we need, as Europe, to get on with the job”, while stressing that the UK would not take part in any refugee-sharing scheme.

Mind boggling.

indefensible really

surely europe, as the OECD said yesterday, has the experience and capacity of rising to this challenge??

or you know, maybe not!

that's what i don't get about the immigration deniers, the keep-em-out crowd - surely the nation you love so much is strong enough, generous enough, flexible enough, robust enough to handle welcoming thousands of new workers, taxpayers, citizens?

and if not well maybe your country isn't quite as hot shit as you think it is!

mate we're full up. workers? scroungers more like. etc etc

Well, y'know, that's why anti-immigrant sentiment, and really, most types of racism, at least in Europe, flare up during tough times, as Europe has very much had since 2008. And why so much anti-immigrant sentiment comes from the working classes, under attack from globalization for decades, and in competition with these new people for the few remaining paychecks. Like, I don't want to defend them too much, they're racist assholes, but they're also already suffering from the globalized capitalist system.

But really, my response is that whether or not our beloved states are strong enough to survive the multi-culturalist future, they definitely aren't strong enough to keep refugees out, not without losing ourselves in the straight up fascist methods that would be needed. The job is to create a multiculturalist society that doesn't just result in lowered wages for the workers, and more exciting cuisine for the middle classes.

(xp) TINY ISLAND etc

the supply of jobs is not fixed! welcoming 50K immigrants would result in a LOT of shit needing to get built, staffed and supplied which..... wait for it....... CREATES JOBS!!?!2111eleven!!!11!

and just so we follow this full circle, the people in those jobs.... pay....... TAXES!!!!!!111!1!eleventy111!!!

but no, let's not borrow at historically low interest rates and gas prices to do this, that would be MADNESS

that's what i don't get about the immigration deniers

similarly the proudest american patriots who exalt their country above all else and whose goal is to transform out of all recognition

like, our country is the greatest. except it is so feeble that it can't grow and change. and if gay people marry each other it might fall apart. other than that though we are the HOTTEST SHIT

we are experiencing an unprecedented upheaval in the make-up of a country once united by ties of language, history, creed and patriotism don't forget

Not to mention immigrants are good for the growth of the all-sacred Small Businesses.

Over the last 20 years, the number of small businesses grew 58% – from 3.1 million to 4.9 million – and immigrants started about 540,000 of those, or about one-third, over that period. And more than half don’t even have a college degree.

http://business.time.com/2012/06/15/immigrants-outpacing-the-rest-of-us-in-small-business-ownership/

The aging German population is one of the reasons the government has been so keen to bring more people in.

It's going to be substantially worse in CEU if they are not going to be open to any immigration. Everyone talks about the decline of the Russian birth rate as having reached crisis point but it's higher than every EU accession country in the region. They have also probably lost 5-10% of their populations to intra-EU emigration in the last ten years and that's not likely to stop any time soon. It's a demographic nightmare.

A small indication of some of the 'astonishing and grotesque' barriers put in the way of those trying to start a new life in the uk:

https://www.freemovement.org.uk/approach-of-home-office-to-nationality-case-astonishing-and-grotesque-rules-high-court/

Still happening daily this, just not getting anywhere near the top of the news. http://news.yahoo.com/38-missing-aegean-migrant-boat-sinking-102457060.html

At Least 18 Asylum Seekers Are Tied to New Year’s Eve Assault in Cologne
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/09/world/europe/cologne-new-years-eve-attacks.html

The good news is, there's a massive feminist backlash against people making this a race issue. Massive as in "crowds of young women standing around in public spaces, having spontaneous debates concerning the menfolk." Because if it hadn't been for the theft and pigmentation, the victims would have been expected to laugh it off.

It was my impression that the victims were being expected to laugh it off because and not despite of the "pigmentation" involved. It's a very inconvenient story for Merkel's policy goals.

The reporting on this "assault" -- which is basically a series of unrelated crimes in the middle of a shitshow near the Bahnhof and made possible by some very shitty policing and crowd control -- has been awful. I have yet to read an entirely coherent description of the night's events -- much contradiction everywhere, including what the police say and what has been attributed to police sources. The Pegida crowd of course attributed reticence to report on an as-yet-unclear story as part of the massive Gutmenschen media conspiracy to thrust Sharia law upon us, and the media has since been responding as stupidly as you'd expect.

I don't think you need a Sharia law conspiracy to understand motivations to ignore this story -- they aren't trying to establish Sharia Law but Merkel does believe that bringing refugees into the country is both a compassionate policy and a productive one. This kind of thing undermines that policy. You don't need to be a conspiracy monger to understand why this might be an inconvenient story.

And it's not a coincidence that at least 18 asylum seekers were tied to the assault. They are coming from a region where the oppression of women is pandemic. You can't bring in a large number of people from a vastly different culture w/ vastly different values and then act surprised when they don't immediately sign onto egalitarian Western values. It's not a series of unrelated crimes (which isn't to say there's a refugee conspiracy) and it's not the fault of the police and crowd control. That's just more shifting the blame to avoid the awkward facts.

xxxpost - This was p much business as usual for a NYE, groping, rape and all. Only news is, they weren't drunk white guys.

Egalitarianism does not apply to girls in Germany btw. Pretty much everyone accepted this until NYE.

Acc to the NYT German police called this an unprecedented number of reports for NYE.

Taking advantage of the New Year’s Eve street party, hundreds of young men broke into groups and formed rings around young women, refusing to let them escape, the authorities said. Some groped victims while others stole wallets or cellphones.

Witnesses described the atmosphere around the city’s central train station as aggressive and threatening, with firecrackers being thrown into the crowd. The women who were attacked screamed and tried to fight their way free, a man who had struggled to protect his girlfriend told German public television.

The Cologne police added that they had received 90 complaints from victims, including one who said she had been raped. No arrests have been made.

like if this is a normal NYE in Germany the country is far more fucked than i realized

I am saying, Mordy, that there is very little evidence that this was AN assault, and very little evidence that there is any connection among the various assaults except time and place (and when the time is New Year's Eve and the place is the Domplatz, that's less of a connection that you normally think), and very little produced in the way of comparisons to last New Year's Eve in Cologne (my friends there tend to get the fuck out of Dodge), and to run with this as if there are policy questions to be analyzed and fought over before the facts are at all clear is, well, entirely modern and still dumb.

x-post: German papers, especially the local ones, have not been very good at distinguishing official sources from "my cousin Larry the racist cop" sources in reporting what police say, and the Times prints All The International News We Can Translate In Time.

Again, victims of sex crimes are, or feel like they are, routinely shamed into not reporting assaults. If they get mugged or assaulted by foreigners, they ARE expected to report the crime. Feminists claim that's why the number of reports is so high, and not because of immigrants' exuberant criminal and sexual energy or w/e.

Again, it's not about the immigrant's exuberant criminal and sexual energy. It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

What, every single one of them comes from the same place? Do we know where they come from yet?

xpost - Apparently the ladies feel like things aren't going so well regarding the domination of women in our own culture?

The 31 people linked to the violence in a police report have been identified by name and include nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians and four Syrians, said an Interior Ministry spokesman, Tobias Plate. Two German citizens, an Iraqi, a Serb and a United States citizen were also among those linked to crimes that night, Mr. Plate said.

xpost, You're right though, they need to see things in perspective :3

A US citizen! Bro culture!

At last carnival in Aalborg, much smaller than Köln, there were four attempted rapes over a couple of hours, two succesfully. This wasn't really groping attacks, but organized burglaries / assault, it seems to me from reading. Gangs from Düsseldorf. To put it on different cultural values seems massively simplistic, though of course debating the problems of women in MENA along with our problems is always good.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

comparing "the treatment of"*

It's about them coming from a culture that regularly degrades women - forces them to cover themselves sometimes from head to toes, that has honor killings, that does not believe in marital rape, that allows children to be married off, etc.

This covers all of those countries of origin, does it?

Mordy conveniently forgot to include the following paragraph from the same article:

He said that a vast majority of the 32 criminal acts documented by the federal police on the night had been linked to theft and bodily injury. Three were related to sexual assaults, but the police had no names of suspects tied to those acts, Mr. Plate said.

Wes, I will not deny that Western culture is far from ideal in terms of full egalitarian rights and protections for every member of our society. But comparing women in the West to women in the Middle East as though to suggest there's some kind of parity is slightly disingenuous don't you think?

Do you share those egalitarian values? Do they apply to all human beings or just Westerners? Or just your favorite Westerners?

What are you arguing? That this isn't a real issue? Merkel thinks it is. Norway thinks it is. I suspect anyone who isn't ideologically committed to avoiding it thinks it is. It doesn't mean that the borders need to be closed, or that the refugees all need to be shipped home, but it does mean that there's an issue that needs to be addressed even if it's inconvenient.

Wes, please be more specific about what you're asking. I share egalitarian values. I think they should apply to all human beings, including Westerns and including my favorite Westerners. Who do you suppose my favorite Westerners are, though? John Ford?

I was hoping it would be Hawks.

If you were truly egalitarian, you wouldn' try to separate people by ethnicity, nationality, or behaviour at all. Period. Because treating people different makes them different, and nothing else.

If you can't think that way, please don't call yourself an egalitarian. It's misleading.

That's silly. Egalitarians favor equality for all people. Being egalitarian doesn't mean ignoring the very real differences in various cultures and communities.

They are less serious than you think.

I'm a freshly converted Christian nutjob, so don't mind me.

For instance: "Everyone should have the right to perform their own cultural practices." Excellent egalitarian statement - everyone should be equal to behave according to their traditions. Except that some of those traditions include honor killing which isn't an egalitarian practice at all but rather a horrifically misogynistic one. So in cases where two aspects of egalitarian faith collide (belief in respecting all traditions, belief in women not being murdered to cover the shame of their being raped) a real egalitarian picks the one that fits their values.

xp oh well that makes sense then

fwiw South Carolina doesn't believe in marital rape, not sure about honour killings.

So what do you think should be done, Mordy?

I think there a few things. I think that programs like Norway's to educate refugees as a way to speed up the acculturation process are essential. I think allowing refugee communities that are distinct from the general pop is a disaster and new arrivals should be seeded into a variety of already established communities, also to speed up that process. I think that on the deterrence side host countries need to aggressively investigate + watch recent arrivals, both before they come (w/ the understanding that intelligence gathering on refugees coming from a war torn country will be difficult) and certainly after they arrive. I think there should be a no tolerance policy for anyone convicted of a crime (or at least certain kinds of crimes should be cause for immediate deportation). I'm sure there are other good ideas as well. Ultimately if you're going to accept refugees into your country - something that is morally desirable (and possibly even desirable from an economic/demographic pov) you need to be v hands-on in how you integrate them into your society.

All that said, I don't think there's a bulletproof answer. There will always be tensions - but the current gov has an obligation both to its citizens and to its refugees to reduce those tensions as much as possible. Otherwise the right-wing /will/ come back into power and that won't be good for anyone, least of which the refugees.

of all the things to throw money at wrt refugees, surveillance is quite low down the list

I disagree. Even if it is a tiny minority of refugees who cause problems that is sufficient to poison people against them as a group. It's not fair but you can't make policy based on how you want people to act but on how they actually do act. Another incident like the recent Paris attacks could be extraordinarily dangerous to European politics.

how you want people to act but on how they actually do act

I am utterly convinced these are one and the same. I guess it won't help my argument if I start dropping bible quotes?

You're convinced that people act the way you want them to act?

I mean this is all putting aside the fact that there may be motivations for keeping Paris style attacks from occurring besides just fear of radicalizing the polity.

xpos - They become like we as a society subconsciously want them to become. Because people always pick up on some level if you like them, or if you're afraid of them. So if you act warily around $group, they become wary themselves.

And my English is getting worse.

Let me put it this way: There may be objective differences between people, but you must never, ever allow yourself to differentiate subjectively between people. You can do it, of course, but you need to catch yourself doing it every time.

This will get easier over time.

I think those are pretty good answers Mordy even if I take issue with some of the things you say, particularly around deportation

The reason I ask is that this is the challenge of this generation of European politicians: can they rise to it? Or will they just point fingers?

I'm not sure what link is being made between the drunk mobs in cologne and the paris attacks carried out by french nationals. increase spending on security if you want, but why would you target refugees as a group? have people follow congolese women who don't leave the house because they don't speak english, whose children are all officially born on the 1st of january. you could make exactly the same arguments re: public opinion for general surveillance of muslims

also how do you surveil hundreds of thousands of people? where do you deport a refugee?

Right

There is a law and order issue here, not an immigration issue

I want to believe that, but I can understand why right wing politicians would disregard that idea as humanist bullshit

There are certainly infrastructure and integration challenges to mass immigration but the question is, is Europe up to it? Does it have the imagination and generosity to make this not a problem but an opportunity? Or will it hide its head in the sand?

Now I can't figure out if you're being sincere or mocking clichés?

Why would I be mocking that?? Jesus you people

Because a lot of people are!

a lot of people would say that refugees deserve help & respect but if they bring cultural values that clash with ours (such as different views on gender equality) they need to somehow leave those values behind and accept ours instead - and the "Köln incident" is supposed to demonstrate that some refugees have terrible values

best way to argue this is not the case is perhaps to show through journalism/research that "Köln incident" is misrepesented in mainstream/social media and that few conclusions as to general "refugee cultural values" can be drawn from it

Bear in mind, for the nonsensical 'cultural values' debate at least, only two weeks ago it was reported 1 million migrants and refugees had reached Europe in 2015 alone. I wonder how many of them have been assaulted themselves since arrival (let alone before).

the German interior ministry said 31 people had been identified as being involved in the violence, of whom 18 were asylum seekers suspected of crimes ranging from theft to assault. None of the asylum seekers was suspected of committing sexual assaults of the kind that prompted outrage in Germany over the past week.

How common are sexual assaults in Europe? They are so incredibly common in the United States (one every two minutes) that I would not imagine that the number of assaults carried out by a percentage of migrants tops what we already have. (Hence, if true, zero cultural difference at all.)

I'm surprised it's controversial to suggest there's a cultural difference in views on gender equality between "western" and "arabic" world

I've heard it suggested that leftists think all cultures are alike but always thought this was a strawman...

Who finds it controversial?

glad to hear there's no place for sexual assault in western values

Yeah, I didn't say zero cultural difference on views of gender equality, I raised the question of whether it's ultimately zero cultural difference in terms of the number of actual sexual assaults.

i'm not surprised a strawman think's it's controversial to do anything at all, that's what they do

The idea that MENA cultural values are behind any crimes, rather than any of the other reasons young men emboldened by the perceived anonymity of crowds might commit them, is poisonous orientalist nonsense. The main takeaway from the list of fucked up interactions between a proportion of migrants / tourists / foreign workers - whether British, Moroccan, American or Chinese - and women is that people frequently tend to behave in ways that run counter to their "cultural values" when they can view the women as 'other' and think they can get away with it.

There can be situations in which what codes as persistence in some cultures reads as sexual harassment in others (which is also true within Europe and within individual countries) but nobody commits criminal assault through an ignorance of 'western norms' or an adherence to alternative cultural values. To suggest otherwise is phenomenally dangerous.

Thank you.

Seconded.

Mordy, you need to (hopefully re-)screen "Battle of Algiers" right now.

Or rather, don't. It hurts to realize you've been an oblivious, unrepentant unmensch all your life, along with (mostly) everyone else. I know because I realized about a week ago and I'm still reeling.

I caught myself looking for ways to identify Syrians so I could put on an encouraging face to help them with their plight, while reserving my good old frowny face for the 'old' immigrants, people I was taught BY SHEER BODY LANGUAGE by my peers not to trust.

A collective negative feedback loop, that nobody but nobody sees the whole picture of, a human forest fire and it would be very easy to stop if everyone woke up and got their act together.

Are bullshit and hypocrisy synonyms I do not have the language.

Or even a positive feedback loop.

So how I'm attempting to fix this is to be as nice to random strangers as I would be to, say, my mom, unless I can't pull it off without making it seem like they owe me something.

Growing up, after 37 years, is exhausting

Remember that Jack Handey joke with the knife in the jack'o'lantern

Being a melanomically challenged person in Germany rn means getting handed pumpkin after pumpkin after pumpkin in the street BY EVERY PERSON YOU PASS

Kafka, Theresienstadt, Polanski's fucking Pianist, we have not learned a thing, not where it counts. We're looking for our lost keys in the wrong place because the light is better.

Yes I'm preaching sue me

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/when-are-you-really-an-adult/422487/

Adulthood is a social construct. For that matter, so is childhood. But like all social constructs, they have real consequences. They determine who is legally responsible for their actions and who is not, what roles people are allowed to assume in society, how people view each other, and how they view themselves. But even in the realms where it should be easiest to define the difference—law, physical development—adulthood defies simplicity.

It doesn't

1. Obey your local laws, unless they make you an unmensch
2. Treat everyone - even Assad, when you meet him - like a close relative

That's it. Seriously. Love is literally all you need.

melanomically challenged

Are you kidding me

You think snarky comments make you, or the commented upon, a better person

Signing off. I'm fezaffe btw, I insulted the dear departed liz:x by remembering her, please ban me

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/09/my-syrian-refugee-lodger-helen-pidd

Ha looking back now at Mordy's 'Germany must aggressively keep tabs on all refugees who enter' I am fugoggled by its authoritarianism (and frankly I'd imagine him to be more aware of the unfortunate historical resonances in such a stance)

I'm fezaffe btw

I don't know who that is, sit down

The idea that MENA cultural values are behind any crimes, rather than any of the other reasons young men emboldened by the perceived anonymity of crowds might commit them, is poisonous orientalist nonsense. The main takeaway from the list of fucked up interactions between a proportion of migrants / tourists / foreign workers - whether British, Moroccan, American or Chinese - and women is that people frequently tend to behave in ways that run counter to their "cultural values" when they can view the women as 'other' and think they can get away with it.

There can be situations in which what codes as persistence in some cultures reads as sexual harassment in others (which is also true within Europe and within individual countries) but nobody commits criminal assault through an ignorance of 'western norms' or an adherence to alternative cultural values. To suggest otherwise is phenomenally dangerous.

Very good post, though I must admit I'm not entirely convinced cultural values have no bearing on crimes commited. Sexual assaults in the West are linked to Western values, right?

Anyway, I'd like to convince myself that you're right. Not so sure I'll be able to convince other people, though.

I suspect those are not the Western values Mordy is referring to. I'm not a sociologist but sexual assault seems both entirely universal and usually inversely proportionate to the effectiveness of domestic police. Talking about a "clash of cultures", which even a lot of liberal commentators are trotting out, essentially boils down to 'it is in their nature to rape and our nature to stop them', which is fatuous on a number of levels.

It would be naive to think that there are not law and order issues related to a sudden influx of people who have no direct ties to community yet, no legal right to work, nothing much to do all day and whose prior records can't be effectively checked but using 'eh, that's just what they're like' when issues occur doesn't strike me as the most useful starting point.

Similarly, there can often be a lot of issues more directly related to gender and equality with immigrant groups of all stripes and entry routes but the most effective ways to combat them tend to actively seek out the participation of women from those communities rather than demonising the whole.

As TWU indicated, the sequence of crimes is still being properly investigated but the Polish government has just used the 'clash of cultures' narrative to ban all Muslims from seeking refuge. Feeding that narrative carelessly is not without consequence.

It's actually quite difficult to piece together what happened in Cologne, especially as the police apparently decided to just stand by and let it happen. How credible are the reports that the assaults were "co-ordinated", as opposed to a general snowballing of behaviour akin to riot? I'm assuming the answer to this is 'not very'.

I don't really get what happened either. The bbc was reporting that a police officer was dismissed because he didn't identify the alleged perpetrators by ethnicity. I gather we're in the usual thin blue line period.

the only thing I know about possible coordination is an interview in the Bildzeitung where the Minister of Justice talks about his suspicion that there was an agreed-upon date and time, no evidence whatsoever. AFAIK snowballing/riot/mass psychology/... seems like a much better guess.

Yeah, there was an interview with Der Spiegel as well where he said that it happened after coordination, or perhaps a vote. But his proof is apparently just, that it makes sense that way...

That said, I've heard that the police are suspecting links to organized crime. Ie that it has more to do with the robberies than the assaults. Which seems quite possible.

There are organized pickpockets in any major European city. Have been for decades, maybe longer.

Right, but this is a quite peculiar method.

Oh is it, officer?

Yeah, according to the officers. Wtf?

When and where did "the officers" say this?

Gangs attacked groups of foreigners in four separate incidents on Sunday in Cologne, the city where dozens of New Year’s Eve assaults on women took place, German police have said, as the government warned against letting the incident lead to suspicion of all migrants.

Cologne police said on Monday afternoon that the victims were two Pakistanis, two Syrians and a group of Africans.

Police said they had stopped and checked 153 people on Sunday evening, 13 of whom were known members of far-right organisations and a further 80 of whom belonged to rocker gangs.

what IS it about white german culture?? wait don't answer that

"rocker gangs" = Denglish non-translation, means hardcore biker gangs.

Polish papers were leading with "Refugees Rape Their Way Across Europe" last week. Russia's main tabloid opts for "Could Cologne Sex Jihad Happen In Moscow?"

http://i.imgur.com/CwGqn2x.jpg?1

Making preparations to move far, far away from Cologne before carnival.

I guess that makes me a refugee :O

Switzerland to follow Denmark in stripping refugees of their valuables when they enter the country:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/switzerland-joins-denmark-in-seizing-assets-from-refugees-to-cover-costs

what the fuck

take an administration fee, sure, take a tax upheld by statute but taking WHATEVER 'over 1000 francs' is just fucking thuggery!!

there's speculation in Danish media that the proposition is a hoax that'll never pass parliament but will work as effective anti-asylum PR - hasn't been passed yet, legalities of it all very unclear

The Swiss aren't proposing -- they are doing it already. It's not entirely clear when the practice started. Another pretty bad translation alert: the word translated as "undignified" was very likely "unwürdig", which in this context means more "inhumane" than "unseemly".

still misleading that article talks abt "a practice that has drawn sharp rebukes for Denmark" when it's not practised

but ofc absolutely idiotic idea

Presumably this is meant primarily as a deterrent? Rapidly cut down on the number of refugees entering your country by sending the message that it would be financially punitive to do so, thus diverting them elsewhere. I wouldn't have thought that the flow of refugees into Switzerland would have been particularly high in the first place. I'm guessing they won't be the last country to try this.

and all this is going on while Germany is still v dovish on immigration. one can only imagine which ugly measures will be proposed by the other Member States when the last dove in the room turns into a hawk.

Switzerland's on a through-route from the southern EU to the promised land, and some refugees have gotten stuck. There have been some bad stories about poor treatment.

it appears that Bern started doing this before the refugee crisis; last year 112 people had to pay.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/schweiz-nimmt-fluechtlingen-geld-ab-a-1072143.html

It's not clear at all when the practice started -- no indication in that article.

it's fucking medieval

The Danish parliament has backed a controversial proposal to confiscate asylum seekers' valuables to pay for their upkeep.
Police will be able to seize valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (1,340 euros; £1,000) from refugees to cover housing and food costs.
MPs also approved plans to delay family reunions for asylum seekers.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35406436

Yup. Really proud of that one...

Also, the government has begun criticizing the opposition for making the law look bad outside of Denmark. Because clearly it would not if it was reported objectively.

iirc Denmark isn't the only country doing this right? i think i've seen similar laws being floated in other european countries.

yeah acc to the guardian germany + sweden also have such policies. presumably it's more about disincentivizing refugees than it is about a budget deficit.

Switzerland, not Sweden. And it's a bit different in the Netherlands, because there refugees are quickly allowed to work.

But yeah, it's about being shitty to refugees, nothing more than that. The epitome of that idea was putting ads in lebanese newspaper explaining how shitty Denmark was towards refugees - and getting in trouble for lying about it and making it worse than it is, apparently the foreign ministry isn't allowed to lie. The major stupidity is that they apparently haven't thought about the fact that more foreigners than refugees might notice the signals being sent, and come to the same conclusion. The policy is in short to tell refugees that Denmark is an awful place for a foreigner to be, while telling EU and the rest of the west that that isn't true and the Denmark is an awesome place for foreigners to be. It's idiotic.

some UK news
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/24/asylum-seekers-made-to-wear-coloured-wristbands-cardiff
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/20/asylum-seekers-north-east-claim-identifiable-red-doors-houses

This was in the guardian today:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZrpMWaWEAAyFgv.jpg

The red doors thing might be less sinister than it looks but it was interesting to see how hard the Times went in - iirc the headline on the front page was "apartheid on the streets of Britain".

before i googled the quote i thought you meant the NYT + i was shocked

The Times is a conservative, centre-right Murdoch paper so not in their normal style either.

iirc the headline on the front page was "apartheid on the streets of Britain".

hearing that to the tune of the smiths' panic tbh

foreign minister Christiane Taubira resigned from Hollande's cabinet today because of her opposition to Hollande & Valis' plan to strip dual French citizens of their French citizenship if convicted of terrorism charges. very much unsure what I think about that plan.

Seems to me like more of a symbolic measure than a practical one. How many French terrorists have dual citizenship?

probably quite a few?

the Harper government in Canada passed a law last year that has the same affect. Dual citizenship Canadians can be stripped of their Canadian citizenship if convicted of terrorism offences. Total BS obv, citizenship shouldn't have tiers.

Sweden: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-sweden-idUSKCN0V60HB

Sweden is likely to deport up to half last year's record 163,000 asylum seekers either voluntarily or forcibly, presenting a major challenge to authorities, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said on Thursday.

Between 60,000 and 80,000 people will likely have to leave, Ygeman said, which would represent about 45 percent of the total number of applicants.

jfc

bring me 55% of your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

where are they gonna deport them to, Finland?

wherever

who cares?

out of sight, out of mind!

i'm sure they'll be fine

they're only desperate human beings driven from their ancestral homes, it's not like it's somehow our problem, what have they got to do with us

they don't even know the words we know, they can't speak properly, what a bummer for us!

The current line appears to be 'it'll only encourage more of them to come'.

yes that's why i never give money to panhandlers, they need to learn

just a reminder that iirc the US took in a whopping 10,000 Syrian refugees in 2015

obama has pledged that amount over the coming year iirc

factcheck.org says a total of 2,290 Syrian refugees have arrived in the United States since fiscal year 2011

whatta country

POTUS has a lot of say in how refugees come in. I read that the limit is determined by his consultation w/ congress but I'm guessing he makes the final decision?

well they have to have somewhere to go and state governors have a lot of say in that iirc

iirc Sweden grants refuge to the highest proportion of applicants anywhere in the European Union and the implication that two thirds will stay is vastly more positive than it would be anywhere else.

yeah iirc upwards of 75% of asylum applications in France fail

Yes, and France is not the worst offender. Sweden has always deported close to 0% of Syrians, etc and close to 100% of Albanians and Kosovar, etc. A change in policy is important to pick up but without knowing where unsuccessful applications are from, it can't be read into the bare numbers.

right the success rate in France is quite different for people from the Balkans than for people from today's war zones

Germany's Merkel says refugees must return home once war is over

also this fresh horror: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3423968/Mobs-hundreds-masked-men-rampage-Stockholm-central-station-beating-refugee-children.html

Yeah, the motorcycle gangs and football ultras are getting very, very organized around this bullshit throughout Europe.

How much of a crossover is there with PEGIDA or is it a separate phenomenon?

37 people inc. 10 children drowned yesterday in the Aegean Sea

The Dutch Labour party is proposing a scheme where all refugees who reach Europe by sea are deported immediately:

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/netherlands-plan-ferry-refugees-turkey-160128170612335.html

sounds productive

xpost -- there is some crossover. They march along with the Pegidiots, but are probably more physically and less politically dangerous.

I seem to remember an article about hooligans "shepherding" crowds v efficiently at the original PEGIDA demos.

They are existing groups used to, shall we say, crowd control issues, so it's a natural fit.

Greece football protest: Players sit on the pitch after kick-off

Yesterday at about 9.30am, David Cameron visited the Notting Hill farmer's market with about 10 hired goons, all in 'casual navy' (DC was wearing a hideous navy fleece). Even the Tories who work and shop at the market aren't crazy about him and/or his apparent lack of compassion. He was there to be seen to be caring about small producers yada yada, you get the drift...

One of the guys who works on the tomato stall criticised Cameron to his face for the appalling way he speaks about refugees (no swearing was involved). By 12pm, head tomato office called to tell the guy he might be sacked, because ~somebody~ on Team Cam phoned them up to complain about his interaction with the PM. Tossers.

also this fresh horror: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3423968/Mobs-hundreds-masked-men-rampage-Stockholm-central-station-beating-refugee-children.html

― Mordy, Saturday, January 30, 2016 4:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, the motorcycle gangs and football ultras are getting very, very organized around this bullshit throughout Europe.

― Three Word Username, Sunday, January 31, 2016 12:19 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, here it is

xp is that legal?

Uppity proles have been given marching orders at the behest of snide toffs since the dawn of time. Am just hoping the tomato boss calms down and sees his employee's actions as perfectly reasonable 'taxpayer feedback.'

Ugh, old friend of mine was sharing PEGIDA crap on facebook today.

what a world

http://mashable.com/2016/03/09/syrian-refugees-get-warm-canadian-welcome-at-furry-convention-in-vancouver/

omg

https://twitter.com/SLevelt/status/720654077315694592

A comic for about-to-be-deported refugee children on why being deported is actually really great.

Jesus!

That is truly revolting

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mainstream-hopefuls-lag-as-austrians-vote-for-new-president-1461495458

Voters in Austria’s presidential election Sunday sent a stern warning to the established parties that have ruled the country since World War II, making a populist, anti-immigrant candidate the front-runner.

Preliminary results published by the Austrian interior ministry, which didn’t include mail-in ballots, showed that Norbert Hofer, from the anti-immigrant Freedom Party, which is known by its German initials FPÖ, with 36.4% of the vote.

Alexander Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old economist and former spokesman for the Greens who took a pro-refugee stance during the campaign, secured nearly 20.4% of the vote, according to the ministry. Mr. Van der Bellen, himself a child of refugee parents, is opposed to all restrictions on asylum seekers.

Candidates from the Social Democrats and Austrian People’s Party, which together form the current coalition government, each received around 11% of the vote.

Mail-in ballots didn't change much, except that the SPÖ are now a tick ahead of the ÖVP. Will still be a run-off between the Fasc... uh I mean Freedom Party and the Greens, which means a referendum on foreigners (in Austria, it's always about foreigners, even when they say it's about refugees), which means I am wondering whether to renew my residence permit. I am not surprised by this outcome even though polling showed a much closer race between VdB and Hofer, because Austrians who hate foreigners are chicken shits who think the mean Americans will punish them for admitting their true feelings and are afraid even of pollsters; if polling shows a close race in the run-off, it will mean a landslide for Hofer.

The major parties have also been triangulating poorly by making Austrian immigration law progressively more incomprehensible and xenophobic over the last 10 years; folks clearly want the real thing. Pfui.

there are few things more dispiriting in the world than the European reaction to the refugee crisis and the consequences - new found hegemony of the xenophobic right in multiple countries - it will have for, the rest of our lives, i suppose?

The other thing that is wildly different about Austrian politics for people who know German politics: in Austria, a Grand Coalition always means failure and stagnation -- neither of the major parties wants it to be successful, so no coherent ideas come out of it. This has meant with this particular government in this crisis a Socialist Chancellor who talks about tolerance and openness vis-a-vis refugees with a black (I can't say Christian Democrat, the words get stuck in my mouth) Minister of the Interior who sets acts like she's part of Orban's cabinet and nobody does anything, no elections aren't called, and Austria just moved to a longer five-year cycle for standard terms of office.

Kenya has announced it is going to close the Dadaab refugee camp, the biggest in the world, and force the more than 300k people either back to their country or onto somewhere else

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/11/kenya-close-worlds-biggest-refugee-camp-dadaab

Run-off elections in Austria today: 50-50 results. Going to the absentee ballots. (Vienna did not vote for the Nazi, nor did, to my happy surprise, my tiny town.) Am cautiously optimistic as absentee ballots favor better educated voters, and clearest demographic trend here has been O-Levels Green, no O-Levels, extreme right.

Nazi loses.

NOW it's official 50.3 -- 49.7. The FPÖ are screaming -- keep your eyes on Austria in the coming months.

they're claiming fraud etc? else the usual indignation when the silent majority has failed to summon itself into existence

http://www.zugespitzt.at/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/csm_aufderuni2_a95509a9b0.jpg

Yes, they started hollering fraud yesterday, at which point I started relaxing a little.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/25/why-are-so-many-muslim-refugees-in-europe-suddenly-finding-jesus.html

In Denmark it's apparently illegal to help refugees now. One politician let two immigrants sleep at her place for a night, after which they left for Norway. She's probably going to jail for it.

wtf

so i found a link, here: http://cphpost.dk/news/danish-politician-on-trial-for-harbouring-refugees.html

Where it says:

The charge sheet accuses the two defendants of allowing two African refugees to stay overnight at their home and then arranging transport and ferry tickets so they could travel on to Norway the next day.

You'll also notice that the informer was a conservative politician.

The Danish Alien Act says:

(7) Any person is liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to 2 years if he –
(i) intentionally assists an alien in illegally entering or transiting Denmark;
(ii) intentionally assists an alien in illegally staying in Denmark;
(iii) intentionally assists an alien in entering Denmark for the purpose of entering another country illegally from Denmark

the act is 3 years old

Australia is closing their refugee detention camp in PNG - or rather has been told to close it by the PNG supreme court and has agreed:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/17/manus-island-detention-centre-to-close-australia-and-papua-new-guinea-agree

But also: '“Both Papua New Guinea and Australia are in agreement that the centre is to be closed,” O’Neill said, but offered no time frame, only stating that the process should not be rushed." and "offered no detail on the future of the 854 men held there – except that Australia remains adamant it will accept none of the detainees for resettlement."

This is absolutely horrific.

The Greek government is taking migrants from detention centres, including babies, putting them on overloaded inflatable life rafts and abandoning them at sea for the Turkish Coast Guard to rescue https://t.co/qxgKcgksj8

— Abi Wilkinson (@AbiWilks) August 16, 2020

Christ.

It really, really is...

right wing on twitter already advocating for the uk to do the same, not going to link to it, nobody needs to see that

What can one say to this kind of evil? I think we’re way down a very dark path and I can’t see the way back.

no market or supranational body could unite europe like ethnic cleansing does

the remainers who shouted down any attempt to raise this issue are as bad as everyone else

the remainers who shouted down any attempt to raise this issue are as bad as everyone else

otm

Sadly, this is who 'we' are and who 'we' always have been. It's just another milestone in the Grand History of Humanity.

death to europe

Happy Easter 🐰 🐣 🌼 to all who celebrate it today, especially those who help to make Europe’s borders more secure!

This holiday weekend there are hundreds of people in Frontex operations far from home. They support countries around Europe to protect our borders. Thank you! pic.twitter.com/lKrwLJMze6

— Frontex (@Frontex) April 4, 2021

This is what a world of hard borders looks like, with its citizens employed as prison guards.

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fortress-greece

#EU states are spending ludicrous sums of money on dystopian technology to deter #refugees and #migrants.#Europe #HumanRights #Morocco #Syria #Turkey #Libya @JustinSalhani https://t.co/DwFfR73zju

— Fanack (@FanackMENA) July 15, 2022

potentially stupid question from an American:

how much of the xenophobia / racism against refugees is centered around these people being "violent and dangerous" and if so, do the citizens of European countries find this rhetoric credible? (e.g. Trump's dog whistle campaign comment about Mexicans being bad hombres)

most of it, though at this point the necessity for ethnic cleansing is seen as so self evident that the case often doesn't need to be made. most of this stuff goes unreported and to question it is inherently politically extreme, unserious, elitist, antisemitic (somehow) and maybe treasonous. so people believe it (or pretend to) including most prominent liberals and leftists

Sarah - as the report in the NLR says, Islamophobia is playing a part in turning sections of the Greek population against refugees.

that's just horrible. ugh.

right-wing eejit P Hitch once wrote that the EU is a de facto continuation of the German Empire, it's probably not at all in the sense that he meant it, but not that far off from being that either if you look at the wider picture.

it's depressing in that one wants to think that civilizations and governments and people learn from mistakes and horror and get better ...and this just reminds me, 1945 wasn't that long ago.

also that America doesn't have a monopoly on egregious behavior like that

if the Cleves-Jülich crisis of 1609 taught us anything it’s that refugees streaming into your territory boost the economy, this is basic stuff

Mass deaths at sea are to the EU what mass shootings are to the US.

- It keeps happening.

- And every time, politicians pretend to be concerned.

- And every time, politicians keep in place the government policies at the root of the problem.

- And it keeps happening.

— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) June 15, 2023

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/europe-migration-tunisia-humanitarian-disaster-italy-asylum-seekers/