By Michael B. Gerrard in Washington Post – Rather than leaving vast numbers of victims of a warmer world stranded, without any place allowing them in, industrialized countries ought to pledge to take on a share of the displaced population equal to how much each nation has historically contributed to emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing this crisis. According to the World Resources Institute, between 1850 and 2011, the United States was the source of 27 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions; the European Union, 25 percent; China, 11 percent; Russia, 8 percent; and Japan, 4 percent. To make calculating easy, let’s assume that 100 million people will need new homes outside their own countries by 2050. (That number could be way off in either direction — we won’t know until it happens.) Under a formula based on historic greenhouse gas emissions, the United States would take in 27 million people; Europe, 25 million; and so on.
By RT – Some 5,000 activists in Berlin rallied in front of Reichstag and dug at least one hundred graves to express their solidarity with asylum seekers, who have died trying to reach Europe after fleeing war and persecution in their home countries. The rally was organized by the Center for Political Beauty; a group, which says it wants to “re-transform Europe into a continent of immigration.” The organization used the controversial slogan: “The Dead Are Coming,” while they have also made art works to spread their message. The protest, which took place a day after UN World Refugee Day, gathered at least 5,000 people, according to police estimates. An officer told AFP that a “small number” of people were arrested for minor offences. The activists, many of them dressed in black, carried improvised coffins, which apparently symbolize the caskets of asylum seekers who have died while trying to make their way to Europe.
By TeleSurTV.net. This year, World Refugee Day comes as the number of displaced people around the globe hits records levels of nearly 60 million, the majority of whom are hosted in developing countries. By the end of 2013, developing countries hosted 10.1 million refugees, or 86 percent of the global population of refugees. Countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, and Jordan carry a considerable burden of hosting the world’s displaced, whereas wealthy countries such as U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K. are lagging far behind in helping to address the global refugee crisis.
In a move to take their message of solidarity to refugees across the country and calling for their voices to be heard in Europe’s ongoing debate on migration, Germany’s asylum seekers have taken their nationwide protest movement for change on the road under the slogan: “You Can’t Evict a Movement!”. Earlier this month, in a twist to conventional protest movements, refugees organised a Refugee Bus Tour across Germany, turning action into networking through mobile solidarity. “We wanted to go out and bring a message of solidarity to all corners of Germany, to meet other refugees and tell them not to be afraid, to take life into their own hands and above all that you are not a criminal,” Napuli Görlich told IPS, tired but relieved after a month of travelling.
When the crisis of unaccompanied minors migrating to the United States burst onto the front pages last summer, it seemed at last the U.S. government would come to grips with its legacy of disaster amid the current havoc in Central America. The United Nations documented that most of the children were fleeing violence — violence caused in part by the failure to restore constitutional order following the Honduran coup of 2009 and the unfinished peace processes after the dirty wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, where Washington propped up right-wing dictatorships for years. The governments of those three countries — known as the Northern Triangle — certainly share some of the blame for the mass exodus, which is not as new or unprecedented as the press made out when it sounded the alarm.
It’s estimated that the attack against Mosul in Iraq that the United States is hoping to launch to remove ISIS governance, using Iraq troops, will result in 1.5 million refugees. Two million people were already “displaced” in the fighting over Mosul last summer, according to McClatchy News. The warnings of the new refugee flood coming from the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross may have been a factor causing the Obama administration to back off from publicizing a spring assault on Mosul. But the US plan is apparently still in place to use Iraqis and Kurds to retake Mosul on behalf of the US puppet government in Baghdad. Clearly civilians will be the primary casualties in the slaughter that is now being engineered in Washington.
“You matter.” “We are working hard to make sure you are able to stay in this country.” “Come and live in California!” It’s not exactly the incendiary rhetoric we’ve grown accustomed to in the last few weeks, as American leaders clash over the question of what to do with tens of thousands of child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in their home countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The messages above—along with more than 1,800 others—have flooded the website TheyAreChildren.com since it was launched last week by the California Endowment and partner organizations. The aim is to bypass severe political condemnation from those who are calling for the immediate, no-questions-asked deportation of the children (see Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks’ proposal of buying them all one-way tickets for a $27 million bargain). Instead, letter-writers are sending kids messages of encouragement, compassion, and solidarity. Hundreds of notes submitted by ordinary people—many of them children and members of faith communities—will be translated and delivered through service providers to children in detention facilities “to make sure these children know that thousands of people are praying for them and extending support and compassion,” said Anne Stuhldreher, the project’s coordinator.
As the Department of Homeland Security tries to deliver busloads of Central American children and families to places of temporary safety, shrieking demonstrators in California, Arizona, and other states are barring the way and demanding these kids be dumped over the border. These outbursts resemble the ugly mentality that, in 1939, prompted our government to send a ship with more than 900 German Jews aboard back to Europe where many were eventually killed by the Nazis. Like them, many of the Central American children will be murdered if they are returned home. That’s what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees concluded after interviewing hundreds of these kids. “The M-18 gang told me if I returned to school, I wouldn’t make it home alive,” said a 17-year-old boy identified as Alfonso. “I was threatened by a gang. In El Salvador, they take young girls, rape them and throw them in plastic bags,” said 15-year-old Maritza. Like Alfonso, she fled to the United States. Our government has apprehended more than 50,000 children so far. Protestors objecting to their arrival call them “invaders,” but these kids are refugees. They travel here on their own out of desperation — to escape murder, rape and conscription into gangs. And the United States bears much responsibility for the violence they’re fleeing.
Last week, the news broke that another wave of unaccompanied migrant children crossed the border, which brings the number of unaccompanied minors that have attempted to escape into the United States since October to more than 52,000. Most of them are fleeing escalated gang violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. Unlike many migrants from Central America and Mexico, coming to the United States to escape economic hardship, this new wave of migrants is escaping brutal drug-related violence plaguing the region. For this reason, both immigrant justice activists and the United Nations High Commission on Refugees are calling upon the U.S. government —which has already allocated $116 million to process the deportations and pay the transportation of the most recent wave of children — to treat these migrants as refugees, allowing them to seek temporary or permanent asylum in the United States. Political instability and corruption in Central America allows drug trafficking gangs fighting for control of key smuggling routes to grow unchecked. The resulting violence has been called an undeclared war, with murder rates in Honduras being the highest in the world.
Berlin police used force to evict 40 refugees occupying the city’s landmark TV tower on Wednesday. The demonstrators emphasized their place in German society and called for better political conditions, stating, “We are also people.” “Everywhere we are rejected. Everyone has the same answer for us, everyone pushes us further, no one listens to us,” said a statement from the group, published on the ‘Refugee Struggle for Freedom’ website. Around 40 refugees and several of their supporters bought Fernsehturm tickets and rode the lift up to the ball of the tower at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz, after moving from a cleared protest camp at Oranienplatz that sprang up on Saturday, according to local press reports. The protesters have demanded a meeting with Berlin’s mayor, according to RT’s video agency Ruptly which was live at the scene.
There is a rooftop standoff ongoing in Berlin for the 5th day in a row, in which the riot police have tried and failed to evict an occupied refugee squat and school. People from Berlin gathered in sit-in, blockades and protests have stopped cops for yet another night from evicting the refugees who found shelter on the roof so they can’t be attacked, brutalized, arrested and deported. Their solidarity was stronger than the army of cops, and all their abuses. Several people were arrested and injured by cops, because they defended the refugees. Berlin: Tomorrow Saturday 28 June, at 16:00 (0400pm), there will be a demonstration against the army of cops occupying the Kreuzberg district. Starting point will be Hermann Platz. The cops tweet: “Refugees rejected the offer of the senate. Police is not planning further steps.” Their offer was a scam to lure them in so they can arrest them, of course they refused it. Cops ordered hundreds of police from other states to Berlin. Convoys of cops from other states were seen driving towards Berlin tonight. Refugees will need more support. Cops seem upset that people do not appreciate their abuses, violence and brutality. Refugees say they never threatened to burn the school and that they have no gas or gasoline. But they will jump from the roof when the police enters the building. “We have nothing to lose. When the polices comes into the school we will jump.”
Afghan refugees in Turkey have been protesting outside the UN refugee agency in Ankara for 26 days — denouncing discriminations against them and accusing the agency of taking too long to process their asylum requests, leaving them stuck in Turkey in “unbelievably difficult” conditions. Dozens of Afghans have been sitting outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) headquarters day and night in a makeshift camp that is home also to about 40 children, according to local reports. As their cries for a fairer screening process and better conditions in Turkey went unheard, about 12 of them went on a hunger strike and sew their lips in protest. ‘Why don’t you do anything for us?’ “Afghan refugees and asylum seekers have come to the streets of Ankara to convey their demands which are based on the fundamental rights of asylum seekers to the UNHCR’s deaf ears,” the group said in a statement. “The refugees’ rights are violated by UNHCR incompetence and Afghan refugees are deprived of their fundamental rights.”
This month marks the 10th anniversary of the arrival in Canada of Jeremy Hinzman, the first Iraq War resister to seek asylum here after refusing to participate in an illegal and immoral war. Yet 10 years on, Jeremy and his family, and many other U.S. war resisters, are still living in limbo – not certain if they will be forced to return to the U.S., where they face harsh punishment for their courageous decision. From January 12 to 19th, join Canadians across the country in Let Them Stay Week 2014, to send a message that U.S. war resisters are welcome in Canada, and that the Canadian government must stop the deportations and enact a provision to let them stay.
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