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.

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/