"The
echoes of the past haunt many of my fellow Kinder and I whose fate
similarly rested with members of the British Parliament."
"I
feel it is incumbent on us to once again demonstrate our compassion and
human kindness to provide sanctuary to those in need."
Sir Erich Reich, 1935 -- 2022
Jewish refugee children, part of a transport from Germany, soon after arriving in Harwich, U .K. on December 2, 1938 Holocaust Encyclopedia
During
the fateful years leading up to, within and after the Holocaust, Jewish
agencies were desperately attempting to persuade the world that a dread
occurrence of unimaginable dimensions was threatening the lives of
Europe's Jews. Before the official initiation of the 'Final Solution',
Nazi Germany was preparing its German population and eventually the
countries it occupied for acceptance of the approaching extermination of
children, old people, men and women who were Jewish by portraying the
'race' as sub-human with the status of pestilential insects, a pathogen
on the world body ripe for removal.
Antisemitism
was so pervasive demonstrating itself in what we now call the 'free
world' of Western democracies, that there was little interest in those
countries to burden themselves with the presence of unwanted people.
Nazi Germany's antisemitic campaign of stripping the Jews of every
vestige of their humanity was not needed in the countries that formed
the Allied forces against the Axis nations during World War II; it was
fully ensconced and resistance to rescuing Jews in general was
widespread. Just as ordinary Germans claimed post-war that they knew
nothing of the fate of Europe's Jews, so too did the world at large have
no idea ...
Before
the onset of the Second World War, fascist Germany opened its borders
to Jews wishing to leave to escape the viral persecution, humiliation,
belittlement, denial of dignity when Jewish professionals in law,
medicine, science, the arts, teaching, news media, were pronounced unfit
to hold jobs and Jewish children were forbidden from attending schools
while Germans were told not to frequent Jewish businesses. Those that
could managed to obtain visas to emigrate wherever they could find
acceptance.
Jews
themselves found it impossible to believe that they, as good citizens
priding themselves on love of country, became the 'enemy' to be hunted,
incarcerated, worked to death or simply murdered. By the time they fully
understood their plight, it was too late, the borders had closed in on
them and concentration and slave labour and death camps were being
established all over occupied Europe. Ships full of Jewish refugees
desperate to find haven abroad, from Palestine to Cuba were turned back
whence they came.
Erich
Arieh Reich, born in Austria on April 30, 1935, was the youngest of
three boys born to Schapse Reich and his wife Mina. Erich, at age three
along with his family were part of a mass deportation of 5,000 Jewish
families of Polish origin living in Austria, who were transported to
Poland by train. When they arrived at the Polish border they were
refused entry, the entire trainload of 5,000 left adrift with nowhere to
turn for months.
Jewish refugee children, part of a transport from Vienna, Austria, arrive in Harwich, Great Britain on November 12, 1938 Holocaust Encyclopedia
After
Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, under pressure of public opinion,
and the lobbying of Jewish charitable groups, the British government
agreed to temporary visas for an unspecified number of Jewish children
from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Private individuals in
the UK and Jewish groups had to guarantee a financial commitment in
sponsoring the children, and to usher them out of the UK at a future
date to be settled elsewhere. No adults, including the children's
parents were permitted to accompany them. Among them were infants left
in the care of the older children.
Among
them was the three-year-old Erich Reich, whose two older brothers
couldn't be accommodated at the same time he was given passage, but
eventually arrived months later. Little Erich never did leave Britain;
he was cared for and educated at the expense of the Jewish community;
the British public did not help through government financial support of
the children who in fact became orphans since their parents died in the
Holocaust along with other family members. Erich found a career in the
travel industry, eventually establishing his own company Classic Tours.
Reich next to Frank
Meisler's Kindertransport sculpture (the smallest figure modelled on the
young Erich), during a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the
first Kindertransport in Hope Square, ‘dedicated to the
Children of the Kindertransport who found hope and safety in Britain
through the gateway of Liverpool Street Station’ (in the words of the
plaque placed there by the Association of Jewish Refugees)Credit: A Images / Alamy
He
was knighted in recognition of the millions he had raised for charity.
As chairman of the Kindertransport group -- part of the Association for
Jewish Refugees -- he organized the 70th anniversary celebration of the
British Parliament's decision to permit Jewish children entry to
Britain. In recent years he was a prominent figure campaigning to
persuade politicians to give aid to other refugees abroad who were
facing persecution and desperately hoping to find haven.
The
three brothers of the Reich family, Erich, Jacques and Ossie had no
option but to leave their parents to find their way to the Baltic port
of Gdynia. Erich was speedily given passage at age three, a waif whom
fate had destined to never see his parents again and travel with other
children to a distant destination where their future awaited. Months
later Erich's brothers arrived, until the full complement of ten
thousand children were brought to Britain.
Ten thousand saved, an estimated one-and-a-half million Jewish children perished in the Holocaust.
Several
days after Erich's brothers arrived at the Port of London on August 29,
1939, Britain declared war on Germany. Erich lived to age 87. He died
on November 2, 2022.
The Kindertransport statue by Frank Meisler at Liverpool Street Station, featuring Sir Erich Reich (Credit: Frank Meisler)
"Long-distance spread of A.S.F. [African swine fever] can happen anytime, all over Europe." "Fences cannot prevent such events." Dr. Klaus Depner, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Germany "It's not a border fence. I don't want to hear any of that." "It's a veterinary fence made to protect our animals." Refslund Hansen, farmer, Denmark
"It's very un-European to build fences and boundaries between countries." "I fight for free movement in every other context. When it's right in this context it's because such a large part of exports is at risk." Minister of Environment and Food, Jakob Ellemann-Jenson, Denmark
An intersection near Mjolnerparken, a housing project in Copenhagen that is classified as a ghetto by the Danish government. Credit Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
African swine fever virus represents a threat to the production of pork which happens to be a major export for Denmark. The virus is readily spread, highly resilient and capable of surviving in pork products and feces for months, leading to easy transition. No vaccine is available nor any type of treatment against it. Outbreaks can only be contained by culling swine populations. Romania did just that, slaughtering 230,000 pigs in the process.
Some Danes are responding to a government initiative to build a fence along its border with Germany in hopes of isolating wild pigs on the other side of the border, with the suspicion that its true purpose is to keep refugees that have inundated Germany from using the European Union's 'invisible borders and free movement' to their advantage to exit Germany and enter Denmark.
Authorities in Denmark have reached the conclusion that the country has absorbed more than enough such migrants, with the concern that they are failing to adequately integrate.
Rokhaia Naassan, center, with her back to the camera, resents the new mandatory preschool program for “ghetto children.” CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times
What the government poses as a deterrent to wildlife, those willing to absorb greater numbers of haven seekers identify as an opaque plan to deter refugees from entry to the country.
The virus in question is considered harmless to African animals such as warthogs and bush pigs as well as to people. Wild boars and domestic pigs are another story altogether; in them it causes a hemorrhagic fever that often becomes lethal. It has become widespread in Russia in recent years, and outbreaks have been reported in Romania, Belgium, Bulgaria and parts of China.
Denmark's government has conceived of a $20-million public awareness campaign, permission to hunt wild boars, and a fence some 1.5 meters in height along the 70-kilometer land border across the neck of the Jutland peninsula, from the Baltic to the North Sea. Environmentalists have appealed to the EU to stop the building of the fence, though work is set to begin early next year. There are planned openings for 14 border crossings, five waterways and local farmer passages allowing the movement of people and goods.
Boars are to be the target of the deterrent fence, although deer and otters will still be 'permitted' to cross. Perhaps signage will do the trick. Critics of the fence point out that wild pigs are intelligent and curious, foraging over great distances. The European Food Safety Authority concluded "there is no evidence that large fences have been effective for the containment of wild suids"(pig animal family)."It's like creating your retirement fund by buying a lottery ticket", jeered Hans Kristensen, a hunter opposed to the fence.
Cameras are to be placed where roads cut through the fence, ostensibly to record how frequently boars manage to circumvent the fence. A request has been received by the minister of justice from the Danish People's Party that the cameras be used as well to identify people attempting the illegal crossing of the border.
In reality, all Denmark has to do is to reasonably declare that they have absorbed more than enough Muslim migrants and have no intention whatever of taking in any more, just as Poland and Hungary have, and be done with it. No subterfuge is needed with a legitimate decision that enough is enough....
Veterinarians inspect a dead boar during an African swine fever outbreak exercise in Germany in June.
"In Yemen, bomb, bomb, bomb every time. No water, no electricity, no job, no school, nothing. How can I give a good life for my son? "Word spread about Jeju, and I heard I may have a chance." Muaadh Galal Mohammed al-Razeqee, Jeju, South Korea
"They can take many wives and produce many children." "Now, there are five hundred of them. In ten and twenty years, how many of them will there be?" Yang Eun-ok, 70, leadr, Jeju protest
"There was no safe place in Yemen for me to hide." "I heard South Korea was open for Yemenis." Hani al-Junaid, 37, journalist, Jeju, South Korea
Anti-immigration activists attend a protest against a group of asylum-seekers from Yemen, in Seoul on June 30, 2018.
AirAsia in December began flying direct budget flights from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Jeju in South Korea. Yemenites fleeing the deadly sectarian-fuelled civil war that has become a proxy war between the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran and the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who were allowed temporary visas to travel to Malaysia -- yet another Muslim-majority country -- saw those direct flights representing a way into mainland South Korea for asylum seekers on the subtropical island.
In the last several months the island that has a reputation as a honeymoon resort island has been visited by asylum seekers for whom their homeland has become an utter catastrophe; death by Houthi Shiites, or Saudi bombs, desperation of malnutrition and disease, nothing left for them in their homeland -- a place of conflict that the United Nations titles "the world's largest humanitarian crisis".
Jeju, off South Korea's southern coast, is where Yemeni refugees wait for the South Korean government to respond to their refugee applications. Their presence on the island, however, has led to an organized anti-asylum movement of "Let's kick out fake refugees!" A summer anti-refugee protest rally on Jeju reflected one held in Seoul. President Moon Jae-in received an online petition with 714,000 signatures, demanding a stop to taking in asylum seekers.
In the tumult of the violence of the civil war in Yemen, thousands of its citizens fled to Malaysia. One Muslim nation surrendering its population to another, for haven from destruction and death. But Malaysia will only permit the refugees a maximum relief of 90 days, refusing to even consider granting them refugee status. So they flee to Jeju and in so doing the former domestic vacation spot is no longer popular with South Koreans.
South Korea in 2002 granted permission to the island to introduce a no-visa policy for most foreign visitors; the perfect solution to fleeing Yemenis' search for haven, the refugees imagined. More recently, however, South Korea placed Yemen on its list of 11 other countries requiring visas to enter Jeju. The South Korean government barred 487 Yemeni asylum seekers still on Jeju from leaving for the mainland.
They must await the results of their applications for refugee status review while on Jeju. There are a relatively paltry several hundred Yemenis on the island, a minuscule percentage of the Island population of 660,000, yet their presence generates concern, sliding into fear. "If these people are safe, why doesn't the government let them move on to the mainland as they wanted to?" questioned Kim Jin-yi 32, an attendee of the Jeju protest.
Like Japan, South Korea prides itself on its homogeneous society, has been traditionally averse to receiving asylum seekers. Its location has helped in not presenting it as a major destination for refugees other than from its neighbour, North Korea and for whom the South has no qualms about accepting as compatriots.
In 2013, under pressure from rights groups, South Korea adopted a new law providing protection for refugees, seeing since then the number of asylum applications rise from 2,896 in 2014 to 9,942 last year. There are warnings internally circulating on the Internet of an invasion of Arab terrorists or rapists. The dysfunctional world of Islam creates the world's greatest number of refugees desperately fleeing oppression, violence and death.
Those Islamic countries not in conflict refuse to give haven to their co-religionists.
Anti-immigration activists attend a protest against a group of Yemen asylum seekers, Seoul, June 30, 2018.
"I
can understand the concerns Canadians share about whether this is a
short cut, whether this is somehow uncontrolled immigration." "What I'm very pleased to be able to say ... is that the rules on Canada's immigration system continue to be enforced." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ... August 2017
"A
photo op after a meeting will not cut it. The Prime Minister of Canada,
in order to help the world's most vulnerable and to salvage the
Canadian asylum claim system needs to come up with a credible plan and
he needs o explain it to Canadians." Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel, Conservative immigration critic
"To
those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canadians will welcome you,
regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ... January 2017
"My
Canadian training, I'm a paralegal, means I have to tell them
[Salvadorans in the U.S. making enquiries about coming to Canada] that
because of our immigration laws, they can't just show up at the border." "When
Mr. Trudeau said welcome refugees and stuff like that, he didn't say
you have to visit our embassies or consulates, you have to get a visa." "He missed that part." Angela Ventura, head, Salvadoran community association, Windsor, Ontario
"There
are similarities to the policy context [the first wave of asylum
seekers in 1985 fleeing civil war when the U.S. granted asylum to only 3
percent] -- people who were not being recognized as refugees in the
U.S. but felt that they would be in Canada were coming over the border." "But
the main difference is the Safe Third Country agreement [between Canada
and the U.S.] because it changes the way the border works." Julie Young, post-doctoral fellow, Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario
How it works is that each, considered a country of safe haven, will only
contemplate receiving refugee claimants who come to either the U.S. or
Canada directly, turning away any who arrive for example in Canada after
first claiming haven in the United States, and vice-versa. To get
around this impediment, people living in the United States, mostly
Haitians and El Salvadorans, have taken to bypassing official border
crossings to cross illegally, where there is little option but to accept
their claims and begin the process of verification and deliberation.
And the man who boasted that Canada is ready,willing and able to welcome
any and all who come to its borders, anxious to disassociate himself
from the stance of the new American president who is doing precisely
what his predecessors did, effectively attempting to make some headway
in clearing out some of the millions of illegals living in the United
States, must bear a goodly portion of the responsibility for the chaos
that has now been visited on Canada. Justin Trudeau's much-publicized
tweet showing off his progressive credentials got wide coverage; he is
as needy of approval as the man he is eager to prove he is the direct
opposite of.
More than 260,000 El Salvadorans stand to be deported from the United
States once the temporary protected status granted them as a result of
the civil war that raged there years ago is lifted in March. In the same
token, a much lesser number of Haitians for whom temporary status was
given in the wake of the 2010 earthquake fear their status will be
revoked in January, and they have been arriving in their thousands at
illegal border crossings into Canada to declare themselves refugees.
Notwithstanding that Canada lifted its own temporary haven status for
Haitians a year ago.
Their arrival, some ten thousand in number since the turn of the year,
with hundreds arriving daily, has overtaxed Canada's claims system. It
will be many months before all the refugee claims can be processed,
perhaps even longer. In the meanwhile, communities and provincial
agencies are taxed with the burden of housing and caring for these
people. The Province of Quebec has initiated the process of disbursing
monthly welfare cheques to those who qualify, to enable them to move
from the temporary tent cities holding them to rental accommodation.
Those thousands of Haitians, many of whom have lived for many years in
the U.S. are leaving in fear of being deported by the Trump
administration, although the Obama administration had begun the process
of deportation back to Haiti. Many have children born in the United
States. Incorrect information went out through the medium of social
media informing Haitians they would be welcome in Canada. No one appears
to have informed them, however, that there are official channels that
must be respected, visas and other paperwork to be obtained.
Many of the asylum seekers now seeking entry to Canada from the United
States left Haiti as a result of faltering economic conditions after the
devastating earthquake in 2010, not directly after the earthquake had
occurred. They weren't eligible to take advantage of the temporary
protected status meant for those who left in the direct wake of the
disaster; they are among those the U.S. began deporting last November
following the six-year moratorium. Temporary doesn't mean 'forever' in
any language. But they heard on the grapevine that Canada would welcome
them.
For Canada, their arrival is not particularly auspicious; the backlog
experienced by Canada's immigration system under normal conditions is
bad enough. Now the Immigration and Refugee Board is struggling to
accommodate the added pressure loaded over their backlogs. The rush of
would-be refugee claimants are mostly Haitians at this point, but all
indications point to a swell of much larger numbers representing El
Salvadorans in the U.S. rushing the border into Canada as well. And
Canada will be hard-pressed to cope.
In the 1980s, fleeing civil war, Canada took in over ten thousand
refugees from El Salvador; Canada's acceptance rate at that time was 60
percent, as opposed to the three percent acceptance of the United States
in granting asylum to civil-war fleeing Salvadorans. And that was when
they showed up at official border points, before the two countries
signed the 'safe haven' agreement that has Haitians showing up in droves
at illegal crossings.
One thing has to be clarified: if Haitians know enough to bypass
official border stations because they will be turned back and not
allowed to make their refugee claims under that agreement, knowing that
at the illegal crossings they will be taken into custody and their
claims processed, how is it that they would not know that all claimants
are required to obtain visas beforehand in recognition of legal entry
requirements that all countries depend upon to control who and how many
people take advantage of their immigration and refugee policies?
"You can say 'I'm not a Muslim', but most people can't say 'I am a Christian'. There is an emptiness. And I think that's a society wide thing." "It's not just one group. It's a very wide problem." "People like Hoecke [Bjorn Hoecke, Alternative for Germany party] are pushing against this thing [exploiting the identity taboo in German post-war culture]." "He knows to put his words right there." Cornelia Reuter, Protestant pastor, Buch, Germany
"[Germans are] the only people in the world to plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital [Berlin, memorial to the Holocaust]. Identity is the question [of the day for German society]." "Germany needs a positive relationship with our identity. Because at the foundation of being able to move forward is identity. The foundation of our unity is identity." Far-right politician, Bjorn Hoecke
A typcial street scene in Bad Godesburg.
Strange, that. German Jews up to the mid 1930s had convinced themselves they were German first, Jews as an afterthought; though they were proud of their heritage, they were fiercely proud of being German. German Jews felt superior about their full integration into German society, its cultures and its values. They identified ultimately with their German status as citizens. The intellectual culture of Germany, its language, music, art, laws and politics was quintessentially Jewish. The unity that German Jews experienced as being one with their ethnicity and citizenship was profound.
And what a rude awakening it was to discover their ethnicity, their religion, and their pride in the culture and its values were not theirs after all, when the Third Reich made its fateful distinction between Semites and Aryans; the former despicable, deformed and degraded grubbing lice infecting the world, the latter representing pure physical grace and beauty; blonde, blue-eyed, statuesque, strong and courageous. None of the fine attributes of Aryans were invested in the grotesque physical specimens that identified Jews as the vermin of Europe.
The penance of democratic Germany seen in the 'monument of shame in the heart of the capital', is the hairshirt that Germany is meant to wear in perpetuity for its adoption of fascism and its success in eradicating six million Jews from the face of the Earth, in a genocidal operation of stunning intent and efficiency to which manpower, treasury and rolling stock were devoted at a time when the Axis powers led by Germany mounted their challenge to the free world represented by the Allied powers which eventually destroyed the Third Reich's ambitions.
A result of the ignominious horrors discovered in the death camps with their incinerators and half-dead survivors was universal blame and shame leading to defining German identity became synonymous with ferocious inhumanity on a scale that shocked the world and sent German identity reeling for cover. Now, there is a struggle in Germany for its citizens to rediscover who they are, what they belong to; certainly not the shameful history of Nazism. Germans, eager to make amends to their dignity and their reputation, have become tolerant and eager to please.
Their initial enthusiasm in embracing the invitation of their redoubtable Chancellor's invitation to refugees and haven-seekers from the world of Islam has abated considerably under the real weight of supporting an influx of millions first through immigration, then through absorbing a substantial number of those flooding Europe. The nation that once murdered six million Jews of Europe now is home to six million Muslims from across the Middle East and North Africa.
Enthusiasm has waned among Germans, still struggling to find their pride in German identity harking back to its cultural heritage before it went berserk under the National Socialist German Workers Party. Germans now see that identity and the culture and the heritage smothered by the presence of a foreign culture, heritage and religion. No longer quaint, but threatening to the stable presence of their own, where the familiar has become exotic and strange and intrusive.
Buch, Germany, remains an island not yet breached by the tide of refugees. It does have a small refugee centre in mid-town where a few hundred people live, but nothing comparable to other German cities, towns and villages, crowded with foreign elements, intruding on the hospitality of Germans and committing crimes both large and small as they begin to accommodate themselves to their new surroundings, discovering how different the culture and its expectations for conformity to German values are.
The relative paucity of Muslims in Buch does not warrant that supermarkets bother to stock halal meats. But it does exist fairly close to other places whose familiarity with the past appears to have been hugely diluted by the presence of Muslims representing the present. Townsfolk feel the borders of their nation have been lawlessly trampled. And of course, the presence of hundreds of thousands without identifying papers, without proper visas to enter but with the invitation of Frau Merkel put the stamp on that impression.
Buch citizens have voted largely for what is termed the far-right political party in Germany. Their vote expresses their distaste and their fear of becoming like other places in Germany where the influx of foreign elements has frightening implications in the fact that they now outnumber the indigenous residents of those German towns, jealous of their heritage and their culture, suddenly under threat of disappearing under the weight of strange people with a strange religion.
A Woolworth’s store in Germany has stopped selling Christmas decorations because it is now a Muslim shop - Image: CenWoolworth
"We are seeing the new boats, which are not equipped with anything, but they carry more people." "This is going to be even more disastrous for the migrants." Ayoub Gassim, Libyan coast guard spokesman
"It's really strange that smugglers would take off the engine [removing from the large inflatable rubber flotation devices the only method by which they can be moved in the choppy waters of the Mediterranean, before abandoning those packed into the rubber watercraft to their fate]." Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman, International Organization for Migration, Rome
"Traffickers came and removed the engine from the boat and left the craft adrift." "This is not a only horrible number of deaths in one incident but it
strikes us as something that we haven’t really seen much of, which is
either deliberate punishment or murder of migrants." Joel Millman, spokesman, International Organization for Migration (IOM)
The bodies were found on the beach on Monday morning.
Photograph: Libyan Red Crescent
Not so strange, actually. The human smugglers don't concern themselves overly with the conditions they deliberately place vulnerable men, women and children in. Uppermost in their minds is the profit they will gain through their enterprise. And keeping their own costs to a minimum is key to exactly how much profit will fall to them. The rubber craft are expendable, the engines that drive them to their purported destination of freedom can be re-used, why waste them?
There is a world-wide pandemic that the World Health Organization has not yet addressed itself to. The propensity of people to risk their lives in a venture that clear thinking would identify as inimical to survival. Biologists were always baffled at the natural phenomenon of lemmings flooding a landscape in a mass move to commit themselves to a fated destiny, by throwing themselves over cliffs. Until they decided that wasn't what happened at all.
"An army of lemmings advanced with extraordinary purpose, 'never
suffering itself to be diverted from its course by any opposing
obstacles', not even when confronted by rivers, or even the branches of
narrow fjords. 'They are good at swimming'," explained Nils Christian Stenseth of the University of Olso in Norway. 'They can
easily go across small bodies of water, across small lakes'." It is predators like stoats that biologists now attribute their massive die-offs to.
In the world of humankind, the stoats are the corrupt governments that dispossess their citizens of their basic human rights, causing poverty and hopelessness, tribal repression and ethnic cleansing, amid sectarian-motivated conflicts. The governments that take for themselves the riches that natural resources gain, meant for the improvement of the country, while repressing and constricting opportunities for the masses.
IFRC MENA✔@IFRC_MENA
And apparently it is this mass of hopeless, opportunity-seeking, conflict-fleeing people who form the basis of the human herds that migrate from their countries of birth in hopes of arriving eventually at the shores of other, more successful, civilized countries whose leaders are infinitely less corrupt and less given to conflict and to leaving their populations to fend for themselves against hunger and deprivation. These are people who have convinced themselves that opportunities lie elsewhere.
And who, despite all the dangerous obstacles they most surely are aware of that they will encounter in the vast distances they must cover to reach a place of haven, embark on such journeys, risking those very real, and impending dangers. All the more so when it has become common knowledge that thousands of migrants and would-be refugee and asylum seekers have died attempting to cross from North Africa and the Middle East toward the shores of Europe.
The mass psychosis once attributed to lemmings now appears to have infected people desperate to escape their fate of limited life experiences, poor health outcomes, starvation, government instituted massacres and the stasis of mental and physical impoverishment. And so, for them there is no such thing as 'better judgement'. They compartmentalize the shocking news of thousands drowning when unstable watercraft disintegrate leaving their passengers to a watery fate. It happens, it will happen.
Their luck would prevail. They harbour such desolate thoughts of their circumstances that they feel, alternately, that taking the gamble is their only choice. That should they lose, all they will give away is a life not worth living. The temptation to reach a harbour where they will be accepted, however reluctantly, because there are sympathetic responses to their plight, and they will, given time, prosper there and obtain a life hitherto denied them, is the motivating factor.
There may be people indigenous to the country they are entering 'illegally' whose status is as compromised by poverty and lack of opportunity equal to their own, but they would not believe that to be so, in any event. They risk everything, and yet nothing. The popular sea traffic route to Europe gave up 74 dead bodies this past week, and winter is not yet over, leading those on the receiving end of the endless stream of migrants and death, to speculate on what spring will bring.
IFRC MENA✔@IFRC_MENA
The smuggling season reaching from Libya to Europe on a wintry sea route has begun with a vengeance; what is yet to come is horrendous in its outcome. Close to the bodies of the dead African migrants, more bodies were noted floating out further at sea, along with a torn rubber boat. The smugglers, noted Mr. Gassim, left Libya for Italy on Saturday and were left to drift for several days. The rubber boat was packed with up to 180 people; a number more likely to capsize such a fragile vessel.
But this obvious observation appears not to have deterred those who boarded from doing so.
A week ago Friday and Saturday over 500 other migrants were rescued while at sea. In January alone 228 deaths at sea were recorded. The total for 2016 was over 4,500 drowning deaths, migrants on smuggling routes from Libya to Italy, according to a European Border and Coast Guard Agency report. With the acknowledgement that the figure given represents a low estimate since so many deaths are unrecorded. With each year that passes the death toll increases over that of the year before.
The boats are poorly built, they are smaller than in previous years, yet they are packed tight with migrants, shipped in greater numbers than previously, to maximize profit. This year the average boat carries 150 each vessel, whereas in years previously the average per vessel had been roughly 100 migrants. Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the Middle East are the sources for most of the migrants, convinced a better life awaits them in Europe.
"I picked up kids who tried to cross the border twelve times. There were four deaths on the highway. My inaction and my silence would make me an accomplice. I do not want to be an accomplice." "Whatever happens, I'll continue." Cedric Herrou, Breil-sur-Roya, France
"A handful of activists . . . blinded by a far-left ideology [has organized the] clandestine entry of foreigners across the French-Italian border." "Who can say with certainty that of the hundreds of migrants that Mr. Herrou has proudly brought across the border there isn't hidden among them a future terrorist?" Eric Ciotti, president, Alpes-Maritimes Department
"It's astonishing that humans smugglers continue to pass through -- the real smugglers who get rich on the backs of others while humanitarians are harassed in this way." "The authorities can't control the borders so they're putting pressure on people in the valley to discourage them from supporting migrants, by detaining people and putting them on trial." Me Zia Oloumi, lawyer defending Cedric Herrou
Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters
The influx of migrants from North Africa, along with refugees from Syria has engulfed Europe in a dreadful dilemma, a crisis of huge proportions for which no solution glimmers hopefully on the horizon. Already burdened with a surfeit of foreigners who have flooded into Europe, that flood has ebbed somewhat, but as soon as spring arrives, it will once again gather force, challenging Europe to meet yet another crisis of placement and absorption of hundreds of thousands of illegals.
A Europe struggling to accommodate the humanitarian needs of people fleeing conflict, and others searching for stability and economic and social promise denied them in their home lands, has been beset as never before with the threat of a forever-altered demographic whose presence will have a profound effect on their ethnic, religious and cultural traditions. The indigenous peoples of Europe are witnessing their heritage and their values dissolving in a sea of foreign values and cultures.
It is a call to act, but how to solve the dilemma? That, for example of Pierre-Alain Mannoni who finds himself facing charges akin to human trafficking because one evening driving along mountainous back country near Nice he encountered the presence of 50 people taking haven in an abandoned railway building. Stricken by their situation, he agreed to take several people for medical care to Nice.
"I hesitated because I was working the next day, but when I saw them, the answer was clear. Three Eritrean girls appeared. They were all badly injured, one wearing a cast, another could barely walk. They had come by foot. You could see they were cold, frightened and in pain. They needed help." But on the way they were stopped and Mr. Mannono was arrested under an article of France's immigration law that anyone who "facilitates or attempts to facilitate the illegal entry, movement or residence of a foreigner in France shall be punished by imprisonment for five years and a fine of 30,000 Euros".
Mr. Mannano was caught in the "crime of solidarity" where people were prosecuted for supporting migrants and asylum seekers. Over 100 NGOs, charities and labour unions signed a manifesto for an end to the criminalization of what they describe as humanitarian activity. "What we're seeing is that all of the cases have one purpose, and that's to discourage any kind of support for the foreign population, be they migrants, Roma or asylum seekers", stated Claudia Charles, legal expert at rights group Gisti.
Mr. Mannoni, 45, an engineer and professor of geography, was acquitted at trial, due to a legal clause stipulating that financial benefit from the accused transaction must take place, and there was no financial benefit to Mr. Mannoni taking place in the situation where he was apprehended. But there is an appeal, and the prosecution is counting on a six-month prison term as punishment for the man's humanitarian response to a situation he could not abide.
Medecins sans Frontieres publicly denounced police violence against migrants facing harassment, early this month. Sleeping rough, the migrants complained of routine harassment as police dismantled their makeshift camps, confiscating their blankets, and leaving the migrants exposed to the cold. MSF has treated cases of hypothermia among migrants sleeping in the streets, and that was before the weather turned even colder.
In response, government and the city of Paris set up new reception centres, one for women and children, in Ivry-sur-Seine, south of Paris, as temporary havens. But shelter shortages are persistent, in Paris, in the south of France, and near Calais. This is a dilemma of huge proportions, with no relief in sight, and certain to accelerate as better weather encourages more migrants to try their luck at establishing themselves where they feel their future should lie.
Migrants
watch smoke rising from fires in the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais,
northern France, during a massive operation to clear the squalid
settlementCredit:
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
"These raids have struck fear in the hearts of the immigrant community as many fear that President Trump's promised 'deportation force' is now in full swing." Congressional Hispanic Congress
"Donald Trump has effectively created a way to deport individuals who have been accused, charged or convicted of anything from murder to jaywalking." "And if you read the text of that executive order broadly, that applies to all non-citizens. I can tell you, the possibilities have made a lot of people here shudder." Angelica Salas, executive director, Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles
Protesters gather at JFK International Airport's Terminal 4 to
demonstrate against US President Donald Trump's executive order, on
January 28, 2016 in New York.
Trump has signed a sweeping executive order to suspend refugee arrivals
and impose tough controls on travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia,
Sudan, Syria and Yemen. (BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images)
"I had a few people call me saying they [illegal migrants from the United States] were ringing their doorbell and banging their doors. I know one household that let a young family in until the police came." "He felt sorry for them. At that point, you know, the humanitarian part kicks in." Greg Janzen, mayor, Emerson, Manitoba
Does a nation have the right to determine who and how many whos should enter their borders to aspire to achieving all the rights of residence? Do people entering a nation's borders have the right to do so lacking proper authority through bypassing normally recognized channels leading to legal ingress by obtaining the required paperwork to formally gain them admission? There are millions of illegal aliens in the United States, politely called undocumented migrants.
In the best of all possible worlds, there would be equality and generosity everywhere; open borders and ample opportunities and resources to share. But we do not live in the best of all possible worlds and nations have the internationally recognized right to determine who may be admitted within their borders and who may not, in their own best interests. This is as much a reflection of human nature as it is the fact that some countries are well-organized, social-oriented and regulated where human rights are respected, and others are the antithesis of this.
Those living in the latter, strive to become residents of the former; that too is human nature. It is also human nature to resent and to wish ill upon those seen as privileged over the less privileged. Some are capable of laying aside their resentment and others use that emotion to create chaos. Any country has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens by restraining ill-doers from their shores. And anyone who has travelled unauthorized to a country where they execute criminal acts can be deported.
The crisis of undocumented migrants living and working in the United States has gone on for decades and has built to a crescendo. It is a matter of the public weal, of stretching resources, and at the same time of recognizing that those who live in undocumented fear as law-abiding people who have invested many years in their lives as undocumented migrants have raised families and since they often fulfill jobs others reject, they have earned their right to due consideration.
With a new American administration vowing to fulfill what earlier administrations have failed at due to the complexities involved and due regard for humanity, American Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted enforcement actions within large urban areas arresting hundreds of individuals and detaining them, presumably prior to deportation. Bearing in mind that these are people who have no legal rights, who have chosen to invade another country.
Donald Trump's executive order titled "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States", fulfills his election promises that he would rid his country of those illegal aliens who have committed crimes and are still at loose. All those living in the United States, or are recently arrived as economic migrants, are understandably concerned for their personal well-being, uncertain of the outcome of their fragile situation.
Their choice for whatever reason was to migrate to the United States, universally recognized as a civil place of great opportunities. Fear is beginning to drive some of these people elsewhere, in the hope of finding haven less threatening to their aspirations. And so a small town close to the border with the United States, on the Manitoba side in Canada has been experiencing a mini-invasion of people eager to declare themselves refugees seeking haven in Canada.
These are mostly migrants from Somalia and Ghana, prepared, they think, to risk harm to themselves by walking for hours through snow-thick fields to breach the border and go on into Emerson, Manitoba in the past few months. Residents of the town have been awakened by loud, insistent knocking at their doors in the middle of the night; an unpleasant experience. But those who have been walking across the border during a miserable, cold Manitoba winter would be risking life and limb to the cold.
SUPPLIED Seidu Mohammad, a refugee claimant from
Ghana, expects to lose his fingers after he walked for more than seven
hours toward the Canadian border on Dec. 24.
Two men originally from Ghana had done so in December and for their troubles had become badly frostbitten, the result of which was that digits on both hands had to be amputated when gangrene set in. Increasingly Somalians and Ghanaians risk freeing temperatures to trudge into Canada. They are crossing through to Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia. Once asylum seekers cross the border they do so in circumvention of the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States.
That convention is based on the premise that both nations are safe countries for refugees and ordinarily officials in Canada will not admit refugees who have claimed asylum first in the United States. Once in Canada, they can make their claims, however. "With the instability and insecurity these people feel in the United States, they try to enter illegally, because that's the way to go around that agreement", explained immigration lawyer, Julie Lessard. "They want to be noticed, they're not hiding. They want to be picked up", Paul Viau, mayor of the township of Hemmingford Quebec, the province that has received the greater bulk of cross-overs, said of refugees coming across the border on a daily basis, directly into the trust of RCMP officers prepared to take them into custody.
"With the apparent attack on the Christmas market in Berlin, our worst fears have come true." "Now the security concepts at all the Christmas markets in Germany have to be examined -- including the question of whether they can still take place at all." Stephan Mayer, Christian Social Union, Bavaria
"Exercise caution at holiday festivals, events, and outdoor markets." "[Credible information has surfaced that ISIL, al-Qaeeda] and their affiliates continue to plan terrorist attacks in Europe, with a focus on the upcoming holiday season and associated events." U.S. State Department alert, November 21
"We were enjoying the Christmas lights and mulled wine. We were ready to get up when we heard a loud bang. To our left we saw Christmas lights torn down and the top of an articulated lorry crashing through the stalls and through people." "We wanted to get out as soon as possible." Emma Rushton, tourist, Berlin
Policemen stand near the site where a truck speeded into a christmas
market in Berlin, on December 19, 2016 killing nine persons and injuring
at least 50 people. / AFP / John MACDOUGALL
"I know that it would be particularly hard for us all to bear if it were
confirmed that a person committed this act who asked for protection and
asylum in Germany. This would be particularly sickening
for the many, many Germans who work to help refugees every day and for
the many people who really need our help and are making an effort to
integrate in our country." "Twelve
people who were still among us yesterday, who were looking forward to
Christmas, who had plans for the holidays, aren't among us anymore. A gruesome and ultimately
incomprehensible act has robbed them of their lives." "[But this attack cannot change the German way of life]." German Chancellor Angela Merkel
The Breitscheidplatz market holds a huge appeal to Christmas shoppers in Berlin, as a valued Christmas ritual to look about at the various stalls and take advantage of impulse buying as gifts for family and friends. And who could take seriously the warnings that at Christmas time, the time of universal peace and good tidings one must take especial care to avoid mingling in large crowds whose presence might conceivably invite a terrorist attack? People are understandably loathe to give up longstanding traditions that hold great sentimental value to them.
Aside from which, this is their country, their own place of serenity and refuge where a wealthy nation can take pride in the living conditions offered to hard-working, loyal subjects of a government priding itself on its humanitarian outlook on life, unafraid to open its borders to others seeking haven from life's more unfortunate tendencies to violence and destruction, common in other parts of the world where populations are oppressed and degraded, and economic opportunities for advancement are absent.
People believing in equality and in the concept of multiculturalism and viewing other cultures and religions as having equal value to their own, pride themselves on their humanity. This describes much of Western Europe, now grappling with the growing threat of Islamist imperialism and violent jihad reaching for the jugular of Christianity and its open generosity. Where indigenous citizens of the great cities of Europe wonder what has happened to their culture, their values, their security.
Suffering under the threat of violence, and from that violence as it unfolds.
Paris knows intimately how compromised life for the French has become. England as well, though both will deny they have any problems that patience and goodwill cannot solve. Belgium can testify how well inclusive welcome has worked for it. And Germany's police forces, grappling with a growing wave of crime and assaults complain that German politicians have sacrificed Germany for an illusion, that they cannot, in the tide of welcome of millions of Muslim immigrants, refugees and haven-seekers, uphold the security they are entrusted with.
Poland, whose Eastern European nation peers have, like it, refused the EU-apportioned ingress of refugees, finds itself embroiled by mischance in this vehicular homicide attack driven by an Islamist who murdered a Polish truck driver to commandeer a Polish transport truck for use as a mass murder weapon. It worked wonderfully well in Nice where 85 were left dead, while a more modest dozen were mown down in Berlin, a death count that may rise if any of the 56 injured succumb to their wounds.
Throughout Europe, and in North America, crowded places of worship and celebration for Christmas and New Year's are being re-engineered in their social-gathering components of carefree joy in the season. They all wish to avoid the kind of panic and horror that motorized mass murder provokes with its death and injury toll and above all, the constraining of societies' day-to-day normalcy, now in obvious jeopardy in the crosshairs of Islamist jihadists who see no reason why non-Muslims should enjoy life for any reason. Firefighters
look at the debris after the trailer has been towed away from the crime
scene in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2016, the day after a truck
ran into a crowded Christmas market and killed several people. (AP
Photo/Markus Schreiber)
"I heard the truck crashing against the first stall." "It came fast, too fast to be driving off the road accidentally." "It has swept me and ran over both of my legs." Inaki Ellakuria, 21, Spanish student tourist tweets, Berlin, 19 December 2016
"Chaotic scenes have erupted on the coastal Mediterranean frontier between Italy and France. On August 4, for instance, hundreds of migrants, chiefly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and the Sudan sought to storm the crossing in their attempts to make it to Northern Europe." "Both the Italian and French forces at the border were taken by surprise," remarked Giorgio Marenco, a police commander in Ventimiglia, where tear gas was used to disperse the migrants. Others merely braved the choppy waters of the sea to breach the crossing by swimming towards their goal." "The Italian town contains the last train station in Italy near the border. The besieged terminus lies three miles from the French Riviera. It has been a gathering point for the predominantly Muslim migrants since June 2015. A fractious tent city for migrants has sprung up, mirroring others spread across Italy. The capital of the French holiday district is Nice, which experienced a jihadist massacre on July 14." George Igler, political analyst, London, (director of the Discourse Institute) Gatestone Institute
African
migrants camp out on the beach in the northern Italian town of
Ventimiglia, along the French border, as they wait for the opportunity
to cross into France, in 2015. (Image source: AFP video screenshot)
"If a group of Jewish or Christian terrorists in Algeria, Egypt or
Saudi Arabia had committed the same kind of stabbings, car-rammings,
throat-slittings and shootings that France and Germany are suffering
now, they would have provoked an immediate reaction. Tens of thousands
-- maybe hundreds of thousands -- of enraged Muslims would have rushed
into the streets to kill, stab or eviscerate the first group of Jews or
Christians they met. Within 24 hours, no church or synagogue would be
able to open its doors: all of them would have been burned to cinders." "These words are not to stigmatize anyone; they are meant to explain what terrorists want. According
to Gilles Kepel, professor at the Paris Institute of Political Studies
and a specialist of Islam, "ISIS calls for stabbing dirty and evil
French people... because they want to trigger a civil war." Muslim
terrorists behind the wave of terrorist attacks apparently assume that
thousands of French, Germans or Belgians will rush out into the streets,
as they would do themselves, to kill, stab or eviscerate Muslims.
Muslim sponsors of terrorism may not even be able to imagine that
Europeans may not wish to participate in the pleasure of bloodthirsty
riots." Yves Mamou, French journalist, Gatestone Institute
The Western democracies of the world are tremendously understanding of the plight of the oppressed, feeling it their duty as humane and civilized governments to extend not only sympathy but open arms of welcome to hapless people who are suffering under the conditions that tribal, under-developed, sectarian-divided nations impose upon their own. From Sharia law-ridden nations who exploit the opportunities that Islam affords them to identify political opponents as enemies whose punishment is torture and death, to the same release from life extended to those practising forbidden religions, or refusing to accept the sex that birth gave them, life is a misery
Add to that the inequality between the enterprising wealthy and the plight of the countless indigent poor struggling to provide for themselves and to survive often violent societal norms and the brutality of police forces whose only function is to suppress dissent however it presents itself, along with unequal access to education, health care, employment and hope for the future, and the formula for large portions of the depressed populations to wish to escape their fate is explicable. Migrating elsewhere when at all possible does offer hope when haven is found outside the constrictions of their experiences.
But it also burdens other societies with their own cultures, their own heritage, their own ethnic groups with the assimilation of people of entirely different backgrounds. And all too often it is discovered that those different backgrounds have imprinted in those who have become refugees an inability to adapt to the social mores of the accepting country. Disagreeable situations arise when the refugees attempt to create for themselves an environment reflective of the one they left, installing their culture and their religion and expressing an entitlement of recognition from the indigenous population.
Invariably, among those who arrive at their new destination to begin their new lives there will be those who yearn for what has been left behind, augmented by a sense of obligation by the faithful to the tenets of the religion that is a vital, functional and indispensable part of their daily lives; all aspects of their lives. Their resentment toward non-Muslims and their response to the calls for violent jihad lead to terrorist attacks that leave the host country stunned. But what has occurred is that the host country has been fated by some strange psychological alchemy, to forgive, to overlook, to 'understand' the motivations that bring terror to their populations.
The terrorists take on the guise of troubled, depressed young people who have been steered toward barbarous action by some inexplicable process that leads them to commit murderous acts. None of which have anything to do with religion, and certainly not Islam which its explainers repeat endlessly is a religion of peace. To believe otherwise on the basis of observation of the spread of violent extremism reflecting Islam, reflecting the original and authentic expressions and actions of its founder, the Prophet Mohammad, is to betray oneself as "Islamophobic", and non-Muslims will do anything to avoid that charge.
The very coupling of the words Islam and terror, or Islam and jihad is silently forbidden. To speak of them represents a social breach of civility. It's quite all right to speak of terrorism, but never to link it with Islam. As far as politicians are concerned, it is becoming a career-ending move to accuse Islam of fomenting divisions between people and it is becoming increasingly fraught to speak of Islam as the driving force across the globe of mayhem and slaughter of the Muslim faithful themselves. All the more so as those listening have gained the influence of numbers with the populations of Muslims having reached immense proportions throughout the non-Muslim world.
In France a wave of attacks against Jews by Muslims in support of the "Palestinian cause" has taken an impressive number of Jewish lives. Supporters of that same cause in countries where that level of violence has not yet taken hold, express their hostility and anti-Semitic rage through propaganda painting Jews in the colours of slander reminiscent of the Nazi preparation through propaganda of promoting Jews as sub-human and dispensable, a generally accepted premise that led inevitably to the state machinery geared to exterminate Europe's Jews. Europe's Jews are being exterminated in another sense now by the influx of Muslims where Jews have lived for centuries, leading Jews to return to the Middle East and Israel, while Muslim and Arab populations are doing the very reverse.
The
conviction of radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary (centre) -- the
most prominent extremist in Britain -- has been widely welcomed in the
UK. Telegraph
Britain's single most abhorrent Islamist agitating for the United Kingdom to be transformed into a Muslim state, acting until now in a state of utter impunity for outrageous Islamist entitlements has been found guilty of shilling for the Islamic State and has been imprisoned as reward for his prodigious efforts. But Britain is relaxed and easy on the subject of Islam and its viral malice as expressed by visiting clerics who are given grand welcomes and assured of no interference by government. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury graciously welcomed two Pakistani clerical extremists on a month-long visit to various British mosques.
When the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province was assassinated by one of his own guards for defending the human rights of Pakistani Christians, the assassin was feted both in Pakistan and abroad, who shared the assassin's view of Salman Taseer, the governor as an apostate for stating that the country's blasphemy laws should be more humane. So when his assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was given the death penalty for the murder, religious leaders in the UK condemned his punishment.
This is merely jihad by other means, the promulgation and acceptance of views integral to Islam that are completely foreign to Western values. The two-pronged assault through immigration and the declaration of refugee status that has seen the Muslim faith infiltrate everywhere in Western society is the slow, steady drip of population increase and social, political jihad. This is the jihad that is ignored because to make note of it is uncivil and to be taken notice of for such incivility identifies one as a bigot.
The other form of jihad is the type that everyone pays notice to, since it's difficult to overlook. But the proud displays of traditional Islamic punishment meted out to those who offend the Islamic sense of justness and propriety through beheadings, crucifixtions, amputations, are all part of the tradition of Islam, a tradition that plays out institutionally in official Saudi and Iranian, Pakistani and Afghan justice. Since it is institutionalized, it is not taken note of.
Instead, the march of Islamism through the auspices of Islamic jihad expressing itself in terrorist acts is what draws attention for its frighteningly repulsive visibility. Not, however, to be mentioned in polite company, as an element of Islam. So there it is; simply not possible for a humane, civil society to turn its back on the spectacle of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of human beings fleeing poverty and war and oppression to find a better future for themselves elsewhere. They are human beings in need of haven.
But they are also representatives of stealth jihad. They do not necessarily mean to be that, of course, they are simply doing what people have always done; looking for a better life for themselves which cannot be found in their countries of birth where Islam dominates and opportunities do not. The far-reaching end result will eventually see the kind of oppression and commanding faith being imposed worldwide through the globe's fastest-growing religion. Conquest is its game.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
