migrants – Page 2

EU official denies reponsibility in migrant crisis

The crisis of mass migration of refugees from Africa was not caused by European countries, but by autocratic leaders, a European official said on Tuesday.

Roeland van de Geer, European Union ambassador to South Africa, said the cause of the crisis in North Africa “lies squarely with its own leaders”.

Speaking after a meeting between President Jacob Zuma and the diplomatic corps, he told reporters he believed that this lack of democratic values was driving the multitudes to risk life an limb and life to reach Europe.

“So we lay the responsibility for what is happening in the countries of the Maghreb clearly in the hands of the leaders who were dictators and did not respect democracy,” said Van der Geer.

Earlier on Tuesday, President Jacob Zuma blamed European countries for the Libyan refugee crisis.

Addressing numerous ambassadors and high commissioners in Pretoria, Zuma said European countries had ignored the African Union’s proposal for peaceful intervention in Libya, destabilising the country, and should therefore welcome refugees from the north African country.

“What has happened? The consistent, systematic bombing by NATO forces undermined the security and caused conflicts that are continuing in Libya and neighbouring countries. That is why we have this problem (of refugees). It has not just popped up from nowhere,” Zuma said at the Sefako Makgatho Presidential Guesthouse in Pretoria.

Zuma said African countries were ignored when they repeatedly proposed an alternative road map to the “destabilisation” of Libya.

“Today, those who were part of destabilising that part of the world don’t want to accept the refugees. It is their responsibility. They caused it and they must now address it. That is of absolute importance. It is the painful truth,” said Zuma.

He said South Africa was ready to assist Libya in post-conflict reconstruction and development projects. The southern African economic powerhouse also offered to help Libya with reconciliation efforts, and to formulate a Constitution for Libya.

Libya’s long time leader Muammar Gaddafi died in October 2011 during the Battle of Sirte. He was captured by National Transitional Council forces after he had been hiding in a culvert. He was killed shortly after his capture.

On Tuesday, Zuma claimed that before the 2011 Arab Spring, and the killing of Gaddafi, there were no refugees in the northern part of Africa.

“It was all quiet. Things were normal in the north of Africa. It was the action taken, the bombarding of Libya, and the killing of its leader, that opened the floodgates, firstly for serious tensions within Libya.

“The beginning of the refugee (crisis), at least from the African side, was triggered by that undermining of the security situation. As people grapple with the problem of refugees, we forget easily, we might think Africa suddenly has a problem where refugees are flooding Europe,” said Zuma.

Commenting on the Syrian crisis, Zuma said European countries should not shut down their doors to the multitudes of refugees.

“It took the painful drowning of a four-year-old Syrian child to shake the world into action. Attempts to shut the borders by some European countries will not assist the situation,” said Zuma.

He said the international community must not support external military interference “or any action in Syria” that is not in line with United Nations’ charters.

“As immediate relief for the refugees, we call on our European Union partners as well as Syria’s regional neighbours to assist the Syrian refugees, in full accordance and compliance with all Human Rights and Humanitarian laws,” said Zuma.

“We pledge our support to the EU as it grapples with this challenging situation.”

Source: ANA

Hungary closes main migrant crossing as EU struggles with deal

Hungary closed the main migrant crossing with Serbia and more states imposed border checks Monday as the failure of EU ministers to agree how to share the burden of a flood of refugees deepened the crisis.

With Europe’s 20-year-old Schengen passport-free zone creaking under the pressure, Austria and Slovakia said they would follow economic powerhouse Germany’s lead in reinstating border controls to deal with the flow of people.

Poland said it was considering similar steps while the Netherlands said it would have “more patrols” on its frontiers.

Long traffic jams built up on the Germany-Austria border and refugees were left stranded on non-EU Serbia’s side of the frontier with Hungary in the latest chaotic scenes from the biggest such crisis since World War II.

Yet amid opposition from eastern states, EU ministers failed to reach agreement on a plan to share out 120,000 refugees and ease the burden on frontline states from the tide of people fleeing war zones like Syria and Afghanistan.

A day before Hungary has vowed to begin arresting illegal migrants, police fenced off a gap in the razor-wire barrier with Serbia that hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government is racing to complete.

At the Roszke border crossing, several dozen migrants including many children, some in pushchairs, were stuck on the Serbian side of the border, with several women crying, after police shut the border, AFP journalists saw.

“We had heard the Hungarians were closing their border, but they told us it would be Tuesday,” cried Hassan, a Syrian in his thirties who is trying to reach Sweden.

The migrants were redirected to the official crossing around two kilometres (1.6 miles) away, from where they were being taken on buses to Roszke train station, officials said.

Hungary is on the frontline of Europe’s migrant crisis, with almost 200,000 people travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans and entering the country this year, most of them seeking to travel on to economic powerhouse Germany.

Austria and Slovakia pounced on the U-turn by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government — which had previously said it would throw open its doors to Syrian refugees — to reinstate their own border checks.

“We will proceed as Germany did,” Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said in Brussels.

Poland said it will impose border controls at the first sign of “any threat” while Netherland promised “more” patrols.

Source: AFP

Saudi Arabia offers to build 200 mosques in Germany

Saudi Arabia is offering to pay for the construction of enough mosques in Germany to facilitate the needs of every 100 refugees that enter the country. The offer comes as Europe has been flooded with hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq.

Fanning out across Europe, seeking refuge, some 4 million refugees are looking for a place to settle down as war ravages Syria. In Syria itself, another 6.5 million are displaced. There are only 10.6 million Syrians, just half of the nation’s total population, still living in their homes. Syrians now make up 20 percent of the planet’s refugees.

These people have needs, including food, shelter and other basics. They also want their spiritual needs met and since nearly all of them are Muslim, that means they want mosques. To meet that demand, Saudi Arabia is offering to build a mosque for every 100 refugees accepted by Germany. Similar offers may be extended to other nations.

The refugees are streaming into Europe instead of into Islamic countries. Saudi Arabia has welcomed some of the refugees, but other Arab states are denying entry to most of these people. These nations have incredible wealth, mostly because of their oil industries, but they would rather build mosques abroad than welcome these refugees into their territory.

Source: Catholic Online

Facebook pledges to combat German racism

Facebook pledged Monday to combat racist hate speech on its German-language network amid an upsurge in xenophobic comments online as Germany faces an unprecedented influx of refugees.

The US social media network said it would encourage “counter speech” and step up monitoring of anti-foreigner commentary, as company representatives were due to meet German Justice Minister Heiko Maas later Monday.

Facebook said it would work with other organisations in Germany “to develop appropriate solutions to counter xenophobia and racism and to represent this online”.

It also urged users to report offensive postings and announced a partnership with the group Voluntary Self-Monitoring of Multimedia Service Providers (FSM).

As Germany faces a record influx of refugees and a backlash from the far right, social media such as Facebook have seen an upsurge of xenophobic commentary.

Opposition Greens party co-chief Katrin Goering-Eckardt several days ago read out in a YouTube clip a litany of verbal attacks that had been posted on her Facebook page, and urged the company to “finally ensure that such hatred and filth” is deleted.

She said freedom of expression is important but “has its limits when it comes to agitation to commit violence, or sickening hate speech”.

Many users say that when they complain to Facebook about offensive posts, the network often responds that after a review the post does not violate its community standards.

Users also accuse the company of double standards for cracking down swifter and harder on nudity and sexual content than on hate-mongering.

Maas said Facebook was required to delete posts in violation of German laws against incitement of racial hatred.

In his invitation to company executives he said he wanted to talk about “improving the effectiveness and transparency of your community standards”.

Facebook said it was “convinced that social media can be used effectively to discuss and question views such as xenophobia”.

Weeks ago Germany’s most popular film star, Til Schweiger, blasted fans who left dozens of anti-immigrant comments on his Facebook page after he appealed for donations for a “refugee charity”.

And a German TV journalist’s impassioned appeal last month for an “uprising of decent people against racism and attacks on asylum-seekers” was viewed more than five million times via Facebook alone within 48 hours, drawing an outpouring of both support and scorn.

Facebook said in April it would not allow the social network to be used to promote hate speech or terrorism as it unveiled a wide-ranging update of its global community standards.

Source: AFP

Austria deploys army against migrants

The Austrian army has been sent to assist in introducing tougher border checks amid the growing migrant crisis, Reuters cited the country’s vice-chancellor as saying.

At least 2,200 soldiers will assist police in tackling the refugee crisis on the border, according to a statement from the Austrian government.

The soldiers will be deployed when their help is required, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said, Krone newspaper reported.

“If Germany carries out border controls, Austria must put strengthened border controls in place,” Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner said in a joint news conference with Chancellor Werner Faymann. “We are doing that now.”

Thousands of asylum seekers continue to pour into Austria from Hungary. Police told Reuters that 8,400 people had arrived on Sunday.

“The flow of refugees remains very high,” the spokesman said. “I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that we might exceed the threshold of 10,000 if it continues like this.”

Police spokesman Gerald Pangl told AP that some 14,000 people had arrived in the town of Nickelsdorf on Sunday, and about 2,500 in the early hours of Monday.

Slovakia has introduced temporary controls on its borders with Hungary and Austria, sending an additional 220 police officers, the country’s Interior Ministry said Monday.

The move comes after Germany introduced border checks over the weekend to tackle the flow of asylum seekers.

Source: RT

Finland to tax rich to pay for refugees

Finland’s government on Thursday proposed increasing capital gains tax and income tax on high earners to help pay for a 10-fold increase in refugees expected to arrive this year, its finance minister said.

The EU migrant crisis proposes a political as well as a financial challenge for the coalition, whose foreign minister, Timo Soini, heads the Eurosceptic party, The Finns, which campaigned for tighter controls on immigration.

Finance Minister Alexander Stubb said the highest bracket of capital gains tax would be raised by 1 percentage point while people earning more than 72,300 euros ($81,000) would be required to pay a so-called solidarity tax for two years, lowering the threshold from 90,000 euros.

“These will help to cover higher immigration costs which we estimate to be about 114 million euros this year,” Stubb told a news conference.

The centre-right coalition, which took office in May, is struggling to cut government spending quickly in a shrinking economy where unemployment is on the rise.

Finland last week doubled its estimate for the number of asylum seekers expected this year to up to 30,000, compared with just 3,600 last year.

The government agreed before the summer that any EU plan to apportion asylum seekers among EU states should be voluntary. Nevertheless, its interior minister, from the pro-EU National Coalition party, agreed in July to take about 800 refugees from among those who had arrived in Greece and Italy.

The government is due to decide on Friday on how to respond to a new EU quota proposal.

The tax proposals may also be aimed to counter accusations that the poor and middle class have been hit worst by government policies. The government also announced that members of parliament would be required to take a week’s unpaid holiday and all ministers would forgo a week’s pay.

Finland’s economy is shrinking for a fourth year in a row due to weak demand from European and Russian markets and problems affecting its main export industries, including technology.

Source: Reuters

Is Europe doomed as Gadaffi promised?

As Europe’s migrant crisis grows far and wide, many Russian media are recalling the late Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi’s gloom prophecy made several months before his violent death. “Now listen you, people of NATO. You’re bombing a wall which stood in the way of African migration to Europe, and in the way of Al-Qaeda terrorists. This wall was Libya. You‘re breaking it. You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell for thousands of migrants from Africa and for supporting Al-Qaeda. It will be so. I never lie. And I do not lie now,” said Gaddafi in an open letter obtained by the Russian daily Zavtra and published in May 2011 several months before the Lybian leader was killed.

Since the beginning of the year 500,000 refugees have arrived in Europe. The migrant crisis has become number one priority for the EU countries, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told the European Parliament in his annual message regarding the state of affairs in the European Union.

“It is Europe today that represents a beacon of hope, a haven of stability in the eyes of women and men in the Middle East and in Africa. That is something to be proud of and not something to fear,” said Juncker.

The question what caused the migrant crisis in Europe has evoked a deluge of comments from the expert community and Russian society in general. Europe is about to lose its reputation of the most stable place in the world, largely because the leading European countries and the United States have been shaking loose the regimes precisely in those countries whose people are now storming railway stations in the EU, experts say.

“That the refugee crisis is an outcome of US-European policies is clear to the naked eye,” says senior research fellow Boris Dolgov, of the Oriental Studies Institute under the Russian Academy of Sciences. “The destruction of Iraq, the destruction of Libya and attempts to topple Bashar Assad in Syria with the hands of Islamic radicals — that’s what EU and US policies are all about, and the hundreds of refugees are a result of that policy,” he told TASS.

“It’s a very serious and multi-faceted problem,” Professor Irina Zvyagelskaya, of the oriental studies department at the Moscow state institute of international relations MGIMO, told TASS. “The civil war in Syria and tensions in Iraq and Libya keep fueling the flow of migrants, but that is not the only cause. I agree with those who see the current events as a trend towards another mass resettlement of peoples, which leave the weaker countries with ineffective economies. There are systemic problems that cause people to abandon their homes and take to the road. And the liberal European legislation allows many of them to not only stay in Europe, but also to live there on social benefits without seeking employment.”

“These people are exhausted, angry and humiliated. They have no idea of European values, lifestyles and traditions, multi-culturalism or tolerance. They will never agree to abide by European laws,” says Russian author, playwright and stage director Yevgeny Grishkovets in his blog. “They will never feel grateful to the people whose countries they have managed to get into with such problems, because the very same states first turned their own home countries into a bloodbath.”

“Angela Merkel vows modern German society and Europe are prepared for problems… That’s a lie and nonsense! I am certain that many of those in France, Italy and Germany, who are pretending compassion and shaking their heads in bewilderment at the news more migrants have drowned or died of suffocation or fatigue on the way, in reality are saying to themselves something like this: ‘This serves them right! That will teach others a lesson!” says Grishkovets.

Columnist and blogger Vitaly Tretyakov wonders why the European Union has walked into this trap which it will never be able to get out of.

“The reasons are many, but all of them are confined to arrogance and exaggerated self-confidence. In most cases this high-handedness is never expressed aloud, but the ‘Europeans’ always feel superiority over everybody else in this world.”

“It remains to be seen whether the European Union succumbed to Washington’s pressures or preferred to manifest solidarity with the United States when it decided to speed up the so-called ‘process of democratization’ in North Africa and the Middle East. Whatever the case, by doing so it helped thrust open Pandora’s Box. Now a vast territory has plunged into civil wars and armed chaos and millions of refugees were forced to flee for life,” Tretyakov said.

Source: TASS

Hungarian army prepares for border defence

The Hungarian army has started military drills to prepare its soldiers for service at the southern border amid the unfolding refugee crisis, Chief of Staff General Tibor Benko said, according to MTI news agency.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said legislation to deploy the army could not be passed before the end of September, although actions to increase the speed of a border fence should be expected.

“Everyone has to get ready to do intensive work in the coming weeks,” Orban told a Hungarian newspaper, reported AFP news agency.

Soldiers joined by police will be charged with to bringing the border, which is currently crossed daily by thousands of refugees and migrants from Serbia, under control.

The exercise comes amid record numbers of migrants and refugees crossing into the central European country in a bid to enter the EU and declare asylum. Many of them are fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and heading for Germany via Austria.

Hundreds of migrants broke through police lines in Hungary near the Serbian border Wednesday for a third day running, as the army began mobilising.

The break-out involving at least 400 migrants took place near the flashpoint town of Roszke, where migrants have to wait at a collection point before being taken to a nearby centre for registration.

Shouting “No camp!” they scattered in all directions, some heading for a nearby motorway leading to Budapest, which police then temporarily closed down.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s response to the refugee crisis has been criticized by human rights watchdogs, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

‘Syrian refugees’ have discarded Pakistani, Bangladeshi ID’s

Muslim “refugees” in Budapest chanted “Allahu Akbar” and “f**k you” while others in Italy attacked an old lady and threw feces at bystanders as Germany announced that it would be prepared to take 500,000 asylum seekers every year.

Although mainstream media coverage of the migrant crisis has focused on happy families and children, footage not broadcast by TV networks shows a different side to some of those crossing into Europe.

A video shot just outside Budapest’s Keleti railway station shows Muslim migrants chanting “Allahu Akbar” and “f**k you” as they engage in running battles with police.

Meanwhile, an eyewitness at the Italy-Austrian border relates how she saw an elderly Italian woman grabbed by her hair and pulled from her car by a group of “aggressive young men” who wanted to steal the car to get to Germany, while others threw excrement at bystanders.

“Half an hour ago on the border between Italy and Austria i saw a huge crowd of immigrants. With all solidarity to people in difficult circumstances I have to say that what I saw arouses horror. This huge mass of people – sorry – but it’s an absolute wilderness … Vulgar, throwing bottles, shouting “We want Germany”. So what, Germany is now a paradise?”

“I saw an elderly Italian woman in a car that was surrounded by the immigrants. They pulled her by the hair out of the car and wanted to use it to go to Germany. They tried to topple the bus I was in. They threw feces at us, banging on the door for the driver to open it, spat on the glass. My question is- for what purpose? How do they want to assimilate in Germany? For a moment, i felt like in a warzone. I really feel sorry for these people, but if they would reach Poland – I do not think they would receive any understanding from us.”

Footage taken at a migrant camp near Milan shows refugees rioting over “poor living conditions”.

The wave of migrants crossing into Europe shows little sign of abating, with Germany announcing that it would be willing to take 500,000 “asylum seekers” every single year in addition to the 800,000 expected to arrive before the end of this year.

Many of the so-called “refugees” are actually economic migrants who are fleeing to a higher standard of living, and not from war or ISIS persecution.

“If Europe does not seal its borders, what is to stop the Islamic world and Third World from coming and repopulating the continent with their own kind, as the shrinking native populations of Europe die out?” writes Pat Buchanan in his new column.

Source: Infowars

Austrian far-right leader blames US, NATO for migrant crisis

The leader of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPO) has blamed the United States and the NATO Western military alliance for triggering the refugee crisis that has overwhelmed Europe.

“The USA and NATO have destroyed Iraq and Libya with their military intervention, bombs and missiles; provided financial, logistical and military support to the opposition against President Assad in Syria, and thus made possible the destruction, chaos, suffering and radical Islamism (IS) in the region,” Heinz-Christian Strache said on his Facebook page.

Strache’s opposition FPO party, which leads opinion polls ahead of the centrist Social Democrats and People’s Party coalition partners, typically espouses anti-Muslim and isolationist approaches to dealing with foreign policy.

Source: Jerusalem Post

‘Refugees threaten Europe’s Christian roots’

The influx of refugees into Europe threatens to undermine the continent’s Christian roots and governments must control their borders before they can decide how many asylum seekers they can take, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said.

In an opinion piece for Germany’s Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, Orban said the people of Europe were at odds with the majority of governments on the refugee crisis.

“The people want us to master the situation and protect our borders,” he wrote. “Only when we have protected our borders can questions be asked about the numbers of people we can take in, or whether there should be quotas.”

Hungary is building a 175 km (110-mile) long fence along its border with Serbia to keep out an accelerating flow of migrants entering from the south.

Orban said his country was being “overrun” with refugees, adding most were not Christians, but Muslims.

“That is an important question, because Europe and European culture have Christian roots. Or is it not already and in itself alarming that Europe’s Christian culture is barely in a position to uphold Europe’s own Christian values?” he asked.

Source: Reuters

Murder of elderly couple fuels anti-immigrant sentiment in Italy

Italy’s simmering anti-immigrant sentiment has been stoked by the murder of an elderly couple in their home in Sicily, allegedly by an African asylum seeker.

Mamadou Kamara, an 18-year-old from the Ivory Coast, allegedly slit the throat of Vincenzo Solano, 68, and then attacked his Spanish-born wife, Mercedes Ibanez, 70.

Ms Ibanez fell to her death from a second-floor balcony, during a robbery that turned violent.

Mr Kamara is one of thousands of migrants and refugees living at a vast reception centre at nearby Mineo, in south-eastern Sicily.

They are accommodated there after arriving by boat from Libya, and wait sometimes for months to have their asylum applications assessed.

The migrants are allowed to come and go freely from the facility, a former US military base where prostitution, links with organised crime and the trade in illicit goods is said to be rife.

Mr Kamara, who was rescued in the Mediterranean on June 8 and brought with other migrants to the port of Catania in Sicily, allegedly broke into the pensioners’ flat in the village of Palagonia, six miles away, and slit the throat of Mr Solano.

The elderly man’s wife was found dead in the courtyard of their three-storey apartment block.

Mr Kamara was arrested after police searched his bag on Sunday as he returned to the migrant centre.
Inside they found a mobile telephone, a laptop computer, a video camera and a pair of trousers, allegedly belonging to Mr Solano, that were covered in blood.

The young African man claimed to have “found” the items, but police arrested him and are expected to charge him with two counts of murder.

Source: The Telegraph

‘We face an Armageddon scenario with migrants’

The General Secretary for Danish Refugee Help, Andreas Kamm, used to be a politically correct pro-multiculturalist. But he has had a change of mind, and is not even sure if we can save our societies.

From Jyllands Posten:

The number of refugees and migrants heading towards Europe is historically high. The political institutions that are in charge of handling refugee flows are collapsing. The solidarity within the EU and international conventions are under increasing pressure.

We are therefore heading towards a greater collapse, concludes Danish Refugee Council’s longstanding Secretary General Andreas Kamm. …

“We are risking that conflicts between refugees and migrants on the one side and local populations on the other goes awry and will escalate, and in my eyes, we face an Armageddon scenario.”

He estimates that the current pressure from streams of refugees constitutes a “permanent” challenge that will not go away, and recommends the development of new tools that can address and solve the problems.

But the answer is not that “Europe should import the world’s surplus populations,” Kamm said.

“We are not obliged to destroy our own society. We must stop before that if we possibly can,” he says.

Meanwhile American volunteers aid the migrants. MOAS (the Migrant Offshore Aid Station) is a foundation helping Africans to come to Europe, based in Malta.

It is dedicated to “preventing loss of life at sea by providing assistance to migrants”. MOAS is funded by the son of an American oil engineer from Lake Charles, Louisiana, one Christopher Catrambone.

Ground Zero for migrants errupts in chaos

Keleti train station in Budapest, which has emerged as ground zero in Europe’s spiraling migration crisis, temporarily shut down its services on Tuesday under the strain of an influx of migrants trying to travel to Germany from Hungary.

Emphasizing the sense of confusion across Europe, Austria’s interior minister, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, called on Germany, the preferred destination for many of the migrants, to clarify its stance on asylum rules.

Rows of riot police officers wearing red caps tried to contain the migrants in Budapest, and the migrants erupted in protest after the station stopped allowing them to board trains. Instead, they were allowed into the courtyard of the station, which has been transformed into a makeshift camp.

The migrants, who had been gathered since 5 a.m. in the hopes of boarding a train, chanted: “Go free! Go free! Go free!” Later, they shouted, “Merkel, Merkel,” referring to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, whose country is expected to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year.

Train services at Keleti were restored shortly after 10 a.m., and no migrants were being allowed back into the station.

The scenes of confusion and despair at Keleti underlined the challenges facing Europe as tens of thousands of migrants, buffeted by civil war and conflict in the Middle East and Syria, are trying to make the perilous journey to Europe, only to be confronted with a patchwork of policies across a 28-member bloc that is ill equipped to deal with the surge.

In the last five days, the number of migrants trying to leave from the Budapest station has grown to 2,000 a day from about 800.

The chaotic scenes at the station came as Austria asked Germany to provide guidance about how to handle asylum seekers.

The cold reception migrants received in Budapest was a marked contrast to the one in Munich, where the police said on Tuesday that about 2,500 people had arrived on trains from Budapest, via Vienna, in the span of 24 hours. Hundreds more continued to arrive early Tuesday.

Streets around the city’s central train station were blocked off to allow the authorities to organize the migrants and bring them to the city’s refugee processing centers, where they were to be registered and begin the process of applying for asylum.

Matching the flood of people was a flow of donations of drinks, food and baby necessities from Munich residents. “There is no end to the willingness of people to help — Great!” the police said on Twitter.

In Hungary, the center-right government, under pressure from a far-right anti-immigrant party with a sizable voice in Parliament, has itself aired some of the most strident anti-immigrant speech on the Continent.

Source: NYT