'Peaceful Refugees' 'Politfully Request' Entry into Hungary

[easyt65]

From the Headlines:

ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON HUNGARY BORDER...
TEAR GAS, WATER CANNON...
RIOTING 'REFUGEES' PELT POLICE WITH GIANT ROCKS...
'ALLAH HU AKBAR'...

...coming to a state near you, thanks to Obama! Hey Minnesota, I hear you're 1st up!

 

[Claudette]

Just saw that on the news. I don't blame the Hungary for not letting them in. If they do get in they are arrested.

Peaceful my ass.

 

[waltky]

Hungary losing patience with migrants...

Hungarian police clash with migrants at Serbian border
Sep 16,`15 -- Baton-wielding Hungarian riot police unleashed tear gas and water cannons against hundreds of migrants Wednesday after they broke through a razor-wire fence and tried to surge into the country from Serbia. Crying children fled the acrid smoke and dozens of people were injured in the chaos.

With their path blocked, hundreds of other asylum-seekers turned to a longer, more arduous path to Western Europe through Croatia, where officials said 1,300 had arrived in a single day - a number that was sure to grow. On the sealed border into Hungary, frustrated men - many of them war refugees from Syria and Iraq - hurled rocks and plastic water bottles at the helmeted riot police as they chanted "Open" Open!" in English. Children and women cried as the young men, their faces wrapped in scarves, charged toward the police through thick smoke from tear gas and tires set on fire by the crowd. "We fled wars and violence and did not expect such brutality and inhumane treatment in Europe," shouted an Iraqi, Amir Hassan, his eyes red from tear gas and his hair and clothing soaked after being hit by blasts of water cannon spray. "Shame on you, Hungarians," he shouted pointing in the direction of the shielded Hungarian policemen who were firing volleys of tear gas canisters directly into the crowd.

Around him, women screamed and wailed, covering their faces with scarves as they poured bottled water into their sobbing children's eyes to relieve the stinging. Children gasped from the gas; blood streamed down the face of one man as he ran from the melee, carrying a small child. People fainted from the noxious plumes of tear gas, including one woman who collapsed while holding a baby. At least two people were seriously injured and 200 to 300 others received medical care for tear gas inhalation and injuries such as cuts, bruises and burns, said Dr. Margit Pajor, who treated people at a medical center in Kanjiza, Serbia.

Hungarian police use pepper spray on migrants at the "Horgos 2" border crossing into the Hungary, near Horgos, Serbia, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2015. Small groups of migrants continued to sneak into Hungary on Wednesday, a day after the country sealed its border with Serbia and began arresting people trying to breach the razor-wire barrier, while a first group arrived in Croatia seeking another way into the European Union.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "shock" at the behavior of Hungarian police, calling it unacceptable. Referring to Syria, he said: "People facing barrel bombs and brutality in their country will continue to seek life in another." Hungarian authorities insisted they acted legitimately in self-defense, describing the migrants as violent and dangerous. "We will employ all legal means to protect Hungary's border's security," said Gyorgy Bakondi, homeland security adviser to Prime Minister Viktor Orban. "We will not permit violent, armed, aggressive attackers to enter."

The ugly developments in Europe's migrant crisis took place after some of those massed in Serbia broke through a gate. They and hundreds of others had grown desperate after Hungary sealed off its border with Serbia with a razor-wire fence the day before to stop the huge numbers of migrants entering Hungary, which lies on a popular route to Western Europe. More than 200,000 have entered Hungary this year alone, turning the country into one of the main entry points into Europe for the rising numbers of people fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Orban said Wednesday he plans to also build stretches of fence along the border with Croatia. A day earlier his government said it was also extending the fence along a stretch of its border with Romania. Both Croatia and Romania, like Hungary, are members of the EU, and the moves are straining ties with those allies and herald the unusual prospect of fortress-like barriers between EU states.

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Paris authorities clear out hundreds from migrant camps
Sep 17, 15 -- Paris authorities are evacuating more than 500 Syrian and other migrants from tent camps and moving them to special housing as the country steps up efforts to deal with Europe's migrant wave.

City social workers and charity workers woke the migrants before dawn Thursday, and they gathered their belongings calmly, watched over by police.

The operations took place at a large camp near the Gare d'Austerlitz train station in southeast Paris, and another in the 18th arrondissement of northern Paris.

Paris city hall said migrants are being bused to special migrant housing centers in Paris and the surrounding region, and offered help applying for asylum.

France has been criticized for its relatively slow response to the migrant crisis even as neighboring Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands of people.

News from The Associated Press

Related:

The Latest: Hundreds seek to cross Turkey-Greece border

 

[waltky]

First refugee shot dead is Afghani...

Welcome to Europe: Hungary seals its border as Afghan becomes first refugee shot dead
Oct 17, 2015 - An as-yet-unnamed 25-year-old man has become the first refugee to be shot dead trying to enter the European Union when he was struck by a bullet fired by a Bulgarian border guard. The young Afghan, who died on Thursday night, had been among 54 refugees making their way to a better life in Europe when two guards tried to stop them.

He may be just one of thousands to perish on the hazardous journey westwards this year, and just one soul among the more than 700,000 refugees to seek asylum in the EU. But his death is a shocking illustration of the irony that, even as the EU opens its gates to refugees, it is adding guards to these gates. The young Afghan's death is just one element in the whirling vortex of Europe's refugee crisis, but it is a particularly grim landmark. Officials say he was probably killed by a stray bullet that ricocheted off the bridge under which he was hiding, near the town of Sredets in south-east Bulgaria - around 20 miles from the border with Turkey, a country that has become pivotal to the EU's response to the crisis.

Within Bulgaria, the death prompted widely different reactions. Atanas Atanassov, the chair of the parliamentary committee on internal security and a minority partner in the coalition government, said: "In such a situation, we are talking about murder." But Valeri Simeonov, co-leader of the nationalist Patriotic Front, took a contrasting stance. "The Bulgarian border police officers should be given medals because they were doing their job," he said. Such opposing opinions are reflected across the EU, where the refugee crisis has stirred both generous humanity and ugly insularity. At the moment the Afghan was shot, EU leaders were meeting on the opposite edge of the continent in Brussels to discuss their refugee policy. Upon hearing the news, the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov left the summit and headed home.

It meant that Mr Borisov missed the grand declarations at the summit's conclusion about new measures to deal with the crisis. The Prime Minister David Cameron and other leaders agreed to ease visa restrictions for Turkey's 78 million citizens and speed up EU entry talks as part of a deal aimed at securing Turkey's support in stemming the flood of refugees westwards. With 2.5 million Syrians currently in refugee camps on Turkish soil, Ankara's co-operation is essential in preventing an exodus into the EU. The European Council President Donald Tusk, chairing the fourth Brussels summit on the refugee crisis in six months, said an agreement with Turkey "makes sense only if it contains the flow of refugees".

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Mediterranean migrant crossings to Europe in 2015 soar past 600,000 mark: IOM
Oct 16, 2015: More than 613,000 migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe since the beginning of the year and more than 3,100 have died trying, the International Organization for Migration said on Friday.

Since January, nearly 473,000 people — most of them refugees fleeing brutal conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — have landed in Greece, while more than 137,300 have arrived in Italy, according to the latest figures from the organisation. The UN refugee agency meanwhile said that although arrivals in Greece had slowed somewhat in October compared to the previous month, there had been a sharp increase in recent days, with as many as 85 boats arriving daily. "The surge in arrivals could be the result of a temporary improvement in the weather, a rush to beat the onset of winter, and a fear that European borders may soon close," UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters. He said that throughout the day Wednesday, up to six boats were seen arriving at a time on the island of Lesbos, most of them rubber rafts carrying about 50 people each.

The increase in arrivals has added to an already chaotic situation on the Greek islands, and Edwards said UNHCR staff had been briefly evacuated from a registration site on the island of Lesbos Thursday when violence flared there. The agency's staff had returned to the centre Friday morning, he said. As many as 4,000 people meanwhile remained stranded near the landing spot on the north coast of the island, after bus transfers to the reception centre were halted due to the overcrowding there, Edwards said. Some of them were now trying to walk the 70 kilometres across the island to its capital Mitilini, he said. The UN children's agency spokesman Christophe Boulierac said on Friday that between 4,000 and 6,000 people were registered in Greece each day in September, with arrivals peaking on October 9 when 9,000 people came ashore.

Most of those crossing to Greece especially continue their journey up through Europe, sparking the greatest movement of people on the continent since World War II. More than 132,000 people have for instance been registered in Macedonia since June, Unicef said. Thirty-five per cent of those registered were women and children, it said, adding that the figures were "likely to be grossly underestimated" since as many as two thirds of those who transit the country are believed to do so without being registered. Afshan Khan, head of Unicef's office of emergency programmes, told AFP the agency was deeply worried about the continued movement of people through Europe as winter approaches, pointing out that the children on the move were particularly vulnerable. "I think there's going to be real risks in the next couple of months of increased hyperthermia," she said.

Mediterranean migrant crossings to Europe in 2015 soar past 600,000 mark: IOM - The Times of India

 

[Katzndogz]

It will take many more shot dead before this is over.

 

[waltky]

Baby, it's cold outside...

Winter is coming: the new crisis for refugees in Europe
Monday 2 November 2015 - From Lesbos to Lapland, refugees are bracing for a winter chill that many will never have experienced before. Some will have to endure it outside

Record numbers of migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean to Europe in October – just in time for the advent of winter, which is already threatening to expose thousands to harsh conditions. The latest UN figures, which showed 218,000 made the perilous Mediterranean crossing last month, confirm fears that the end of summer has not stemmed the flow of refugees as has been the pattern in previous years, partly because of the sheer desperation of those fleeing an escalating war in Syria and other conflicts.

Migration routes through Europe​

The huge numbers of people arriving at the same time as winter is raising fears of a new humanitarian crisis within Europe’s borders. Cold weather is coming to Europe at greater speed than its leadership’s ability to make critical decisions. A summit of EU and Balkan states last week agreed some measures for extra policing and shelter for 100,000 people. But an estimated 700,000 refugees and migrants, have arrived in Europe this year along unofficial and dangerous land and sea routes, from Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, north Africa and beyond. Tens of thousands, including the very young and the very old, find themselves trapped in the open as the skies darken and the first night frosts take hold. Hypothermia, pneumonia and opportunistic diseases are the main threats now, along with the growing desperation of refugees trying to save the lives of their families.

Fights have broken out over blankets, and on occasion between different national groups. Now sex traffickers are following the columns of refugees, picking off young unaccompanied stragglers. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, is distributing outdoor survival packages, including sleeping bags, blankets, raincoats, socks, clothes and shoes, but the number of people it can reach is limited by its funding, which has so far been severely inadequate. Volunteer agencies have tried to fill the gaping hole in humanitarian provisions in Europe.

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Revealed: trafficked migrant workers abused in Irish fishing industry
Monday 2 November 2015 - Exclusive: Sleep deprivation, inhuman hours and low pay revealed in Guardian investigation of undocumented migrants working on prawn and whitefish trawlers operating from Ireland

African and Asian migrant workers are being routinely but illegally used as cheap labour on Irish fishing trawlers working out of some of the country’s most popular tourist ports, the Guardian can reveal. A year-long investigation into the Irish prawn and whitefish sector has uncovered undocumented Ghanaian, Filipino, Egyptian and Indian fishermen manning boats in ports from Cork to Galway. They have described a catalogue of abuses, including being confined to vessels unless given permission by their skippers to go on land, and being paid less than half the Irish minimum wage that would apply if they were legally employed. They have also spoken of extreme sleep deprivation, having to work for days or nights on end with only a few hours’ sleep, and with no proper rest days.

Some migrant workers claim to have been deceived and appear to have been trafficked on to trawlers for labour exploitation, an abuse that would be a form of modern slavery. Our evidence suggests that some boat owners and crewing agencies are smuggling African and Filipino workers in to Ireland through entry points at London Heathrow and Belfast airports, and then arranging for them to cross from Northern Ireland in to the Republic by road, bypassing Irish immigration controls.

Agents and owners appear to be exploiting a loophole designed for international merchant shipping, which allows non-EU seafarers to transit through the UK for up to 48 hours if they immediately move on to join vessels working in international waters. These transit arrangements are not intended for fishermen working in national waters or constantly coming in and out of Irish ports. We understand the loophole was first exploited by agents to recruit migrant workers for the Scottish fishing fleet and the practice appears to have spread from there to the Irish fishing industry. Many workers describe subsequently living in fear of deportation and being told to stay on their boats in port because the owners would be fined if they were spotted and stopped by the authorities. Some workers said they were controlled by debt to the agencies that recruited them and charged them substantial and illegal placement fees to arrange visas, jobs and itineraries.

MORE

 

[waltky]

Germany To Give Syrian Refugees New Status...

German official proposes restricted Syrian asylum status
November 6, 2015 — Germany’s interior minister said Friday he wants to give many Syrians arriving in the country a form of protection that falls short of full asylum and wouldn’t allow them to bring relatives to Germany for two years. The proposal by Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere appeared to catch at least part of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition by surprise and created new confusion over the government’s crisis response.

De Maiziere’s ministry said the idea was that Syrians who don’t present authorities with evidence of individual persecution but are fleeing the civil war in general should be given “subsidiary protection,” something that falls short of full asylum status but is granted to people who face serious risks in their homeland. While people with full asylum status get a three-year residence permit, those with “subsidiary protection” get a one-year permit that can be extended repeatedly. On Thursday, Merkel and her coalition partners agreed that people with “subsidiary protection” shouldn’t be able to bring relatives to Germany for two years. They didn’t mention Syrians, and that agreement came alongside a deal to set up new centers to process more quickly people who have little hope of asylum — such as those from Balkan countries.

De Maiziere told Deutschlandfunk radio Friday that other countries in similar situations grant residence “for a limited time, and we will do this in the future with the Syrians as well, in that we tell them: you will get protection, but the so-called ‘subsidiary protection.’” It wasn’t clear to what extent the conservative de Maiziere had discussed the idea with anyone else in Merkel’s coalition. Ralf Stegner, a deputy leader of the center-left Social Democrats, said his response was a “clear no.” Hours later, de Maiziere appeared to walk back from his proposal. “There is no change in the approval practice for Syrian refugees,” he said, adding that a change had been planned at the beginning of the week.

However, he said, in light of the decision Thursday on limiting some people’s ability to bring relatives to Germany, “there is need for discussion in the coalition, and so things will now stay as they are until there is a new decision.” The government faces strong pressure to limit the influx of refugees into the country, and Thursday’s decision to set up new processing centers itself followed prolonged squabbling in the coalition. Germany has seen more arrivals than any other European Union country. Authorities registered 181,000 asylum-seekers entering Germany in October, bringing the figure for 2015 so far to 758,000. Syrians are the largest single group arriving. Ulla Jelpke, a lawmaker with the opposition Left Party, condemned de Maiziere’s idea. “It will lead first and foremost to women and children who are waiting to be able to come here now setting off on the dangerous refugee routes, and that often means their death,” she told ARD television.

German official proposes restricted Syrian asylum status