Those aren’t “economic hardships”, they’re a humanitarian crisis.
And refugees are those who flee humanitarian crises.
So, in conclusion, your posts are both utterly incorrect, and utterly sociopathic.
Turkey’s not an EU country, shithead.
Um, no. The UN definition of a refugee only allows for someone fleeing “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion” to be one.
Are the refugees fearing persecution in Turkey “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”?
See the dead kid that sparked this thread? His name is Aylan Kurdi, from a family of Syrian Kurds. The Kurds are not notoriously welcome in Turkey.
Sure. What % of the teeming masses trying to get to Germany are Kurds?
Oh, and you may be surprised at this, but these Syrian refugees are not “notoriously welcome” in Germany either.
That sucks. I truly empathize with you. My kids are also about that age, and that would be unbelievably stressful.
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c125.html
“Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom. They have no protection from their own state - indeed it is often their own government that is threatening to persecute them. If other countries do not let them in, and do not help them once they are in, then they may be condemning them to death - or to an intolerable life in the shadows, without sustenance and without rights.”
Let’s see, having to move to save their lives otherwise they’d be condemned to an intolerable life in the shadows, without sustenance and without rights seems to fit what’s happening to the people in the camps a lot more than your “economic migrant” label.
And, as the UN discovered in Zimbabwe, there is a category of displaced persons who don’t fit that definition of “refugee”, but are nevertheless not voluntary or economic migrants - the Regional Office for Southern Africa of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs labeled such people “migrants of humanitarian concern” or “forced migrants”, people who moved for the purpose of their and their dependents’ basic survival.
Your insistence that the people trying to leave these camps are merely “economic migrants”, rather than people trying to escape horrific and intolerable conditions before they die is, as I said, sociopathic.
How about the picture of the firefighter carrying (not just carrying, but cradling) a dead infant out of the wreckage of the Murrah building? It’s been twenty years and I still remember that one.
Terr would have fitted in at the Wannsee Conference, although he’d have just been taking the notes and happily carrying out the orders with a click of the heel and a sharp salute. A small person, of no worth or humanity. To be pitied, really.
The Syrians in Turkey aren’t even considered refugees by Turkey under the convention which lays out that definition. When Turkey ratified it, they ratified it with the geographical limitation that only people from Europe who met the definition above counted as refugees. The Syrians, as non-Europeans, are therefore excluded (Turkey considers the Syrians “guests”, not refugees).
The convention also mandates that refugees be guaranteed the right to work and to shelter. The Syrians in Turkey are guaranteed neither (and, in fact, are prevented from working entirely).
So that’s yet another reason for Syrians to want to leave there for a country where they are actually considered refugees and are treated accordingly!
Seems like this thread is saying that reality should be censored, because the horror might spur people to action?
I can see the importance of the image, but I also wish I wasn’t seeing it multiple times a day. I’m not particularly sheltered-- I’ve actually done some work related to the refugee crisis, and I deal with disturbing stuff every day, hopefully improving some of it.
But I have a daughter that age. And it’s hard to me to keep composed at work when I see that particular one.
The laws on claiming refugee status are quite clear, you go to the nearest safe country (as determined by the UN, not by posters on a message board who don’t like Turkey) and seek asylum there. What is missing is a proper international agreement on what happens next - really, every country in the EU, and other western countries, should be taking refugees from the camps on the borders in Turkey, Greece, Italy and wherever, in an orderly fashion.
I have plenty of sympathy for people fleeing warzones. I have rather less (that is, none whatsoever) for the hundreds of money grabbing cunts who decided to attack passenger trains because they’re not allowed into the UK from France. I have a great deal of dislike for France refusing to do its job, and take said cunts and send them back to wherever they came from. As far as I’m concerned anyone who refuses to follow simple rules such as “don’t use violence to enter a country when you claim you’re fleeing violence” should be permanently denied refugee status.
As for the father who put his son in such danger and caused his drowning, hopefully he’ll be locked up for a very long time. Same for anyone else who effectively kills their child by putting them on these boats.
So - Greece is not good enough, right? Neither is Macedonia. Serbia. Hungary. Nah. It has to be Germany, Norway, Denmark, UK. It definitely is not economic considerations, right? No, it’s the horrible persecution they would face in Greece, Serbia Hungary etc.
Again, I have full sympathy to people fleeing war. But once they get to Turkey or Greece, there is no war anymore.
They won’t be refugees in any other country, as Turkey is a safe country.
Not only has Greece has taken in almost as many as Germany, the Eastern European countries are hideously xenophobic, have mistreated Syrians, and (in some cases) closed their borders to the refugees entirely. Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Slovakia, for instance, are only willing to accept Syrian refugees if they’re non-Muslim.
No you don’t.
I’m so sorry, Lowdown. I hope he is completely well soon.
There’s more to safety than simply no longer being shot at. Being kept as a starving underclass unable to work or obtain shelter in violation of the conventions on the treatment of refugees is not “safety”.
In this case the family was not trying to go to the European countries listed above but to Canada because they had relatives there. They weren’t seeking to go someplace because it was a welfare state; they were trying to get someplace where they had family who could presumably provide them with shelter and help in establishing a life.