https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20191119/p2a/00m/0na/009000c
A Mainichi article on the plight of refugees being locked up in ISA detention centers.
This came out in Norway via BBC.
"I brought us into government, and I'm now bringing the party out," said party leader, Siv Jensen, who is also resigning as Norway's finance minister.
PM Erna Solberg said her centre-right coalition would stay on as a minority.
The woman and her family returned to Norway on Saturday.
The government had earlier said it would help in their repatriation so one of the woman's seriously ill children could get medical treatment.
The name of the woman has not been released.
She is reported to have been brought up in a Norwegian-Pakistani family in Oslo.
In 2013, she left Norway to live in the territory held by the IS group.
The decision to allow her back into Norway had triggered heated debate.
Is she being charged with joining a terrorist organisation and her children placed in care?
Because allowing a terrorist to raise children is state sponsored child abuse.
Edited by Silasw on Jan 22nd 2020 at 11:41:45 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranYep. That was Oslo's plan.
So they’ve taken a dangerous terrorist off the streets and gotten two innocent children away from radical Islamists, but the right-wing party are pissed about it?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIf you've heard the news about public concerns about letting in potential terrorist sympathizers who can wreck havoc in parts of Europe...
That's the schtick there.
Salvini is due to be tried in court from his time as the interior minister.
Good. From what have I've heard, even some of his supporters were a bit disturbed about the consequences of some of his orders.
So Erdogan has an idea to pressure Damascus and Moscow.
This one's from AFP:
Around 13,000 migrants have gathered along the Turkish-Greek border, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said as several thousand migrants were in skirmishes with Greek police firing tear gas across the frontier.
The escalating tensions between Turkey and Russia, who back opposing forces in the Syria conflict, after an air strike killed the Turkish troops sparked fears of a broader war and a new migration crisis for Europe.
Erdogan said he would let refugees travel to Europe from NATO-member Turkey.
"What did we do yesterday? We opened the doors," Erdogan said in Istanbul.
"We will not close those doors.... Why? Because the European Union should keep its promises."
He was referring to a 2016 deal with the European Union to stop refugee flows in exchange for billions of euros in aid.
Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees.
- Thousands to spend 'cold night' at border -
Erdogan's comments were his first since 34 Turkish troops were killed since Thursday in northern Syria's Idlib region, where Moscow-backed Syrian regime forces are battling to retake the last rebel enclave.
Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said nearly 50,000 migrants had left Turkey for Europe via the western province of Edirne, bordering Greece, in comments published in the official Anadolu news agency.
But the IOM said its staff had observed "at least 13,000 people gathered along the 212-kilometre (130-mile) long border.
"Thousands of migrants, including families with young children, are passing a cold night along the border between Turkey and Greece," it said.
There were skirmishes on the Turkish-Greek border at Pazarkule Saturday, as Greek police fired tear gas to push back thousands of migrants who hurled rocks at them, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.
"Look who's lecturing us on international law!" Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted. "They're shamelessly throwing tear gas bombs on thousands of innocents piled at their gates."
- Unimpeded flow -
In 2015, Greece became the main EU entry point for one million migrants, most of them refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war.
EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen expressed "concern" on the unimpeded flow of migrants from Turkey to the bloc's external borders in Greece and Bulgaria.
"Our top priority at this stage is to ensure that Greece and Bulgaria have our full support," she tweeted.
In Athens, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis held an emergency meeting to discuss the crisis.
"We averted more than 4,000 attempts of illegal entrance to our land borders," government spokesman Stelios Petsas said after the meeting.
A Greek police source said migrants had started fires and opened holes in border fences.
Police and soldiers patrolled the Evros river shores — a common crossing point — and issued loudspeaker warnings not to enter Greek territory.
The Greek coast guard said that from early Friday to early Saturday 180 migrants reached the islands of Lesbos and Samos, crossing the eastern Aegean from the Turkish coast.
One rubber dinghy arrived early Saturday in Lesbos carrying 27 African migrants, many of them women, who wept and prayed on their knees, said an AFP reporter.
The UN says nearly a million people — half of them children — have been displaced by the fighting in northwest Syria since December, forced to flee in the bitter cold.
- Fresh strikes in Syria -
Turkey said its forces had destroyed a "chemical warfare facility," just south of Aleppo.
Syria's state media denied the attack and the existence of such a facility.
Turkish drone strikes killed 26 Syrian soldiers on Saturday, an independent war monitor said, after Erdogan threatened the regime would "pay a price" for its aggression.
The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes "targeted positions of the regime forces in the Idlib and Aleppo countryside".
The killing of Turkish troops by President Bashar al-Assad's forces — backed by Russian air power — has sent tensions between Ankara and Moscow soaring.
On Friday, Erdogan spoke by phone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. He may travel next week to Moscow for talks, according to the Kremlin.
But the Turkish leader remained critical on Saturday.
"I asked Mr Putin: 'What's your business there?'," Erdogan said. "If you establish a base, do so but get out of our way and leave us face to face with the regime."
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Russia and Turkey to establish a "lasting ceasefire" in the Idlib region, after separate phone calls with the two countries' leaders, a statement from his office said.
Seeking support from Europe after the Idlib casualties, Erdogan told Macron that Ankara wanted to see "clear and concrete support" from NATO "not only in words but in deeds", according to the Turkish presidency.
Erdogan also warned the humanitarian crisis would "deepen unless the regime's attacks are stopped in Syria."
I dont really see how Erdogan is pressuring Russia. At best he is pressuring Syria and the EU.
Almost all of the EU diplomats in Brussels have mentioned in anonymous interviews that they're pissed at Ankara. They're giving them no choice but to either deal with Erdogan by providing more money or do something to prevent refugees like securing the borders.
Due to the coronavirus, Canada is not going to welcome new asylum seekers.
Fresh fires burn at Greece's largest refugee camp Moria
Greek authorities have launched an investigation to determine who started the blazes after local media reports suggested migrants had done so to protest lockdown measures enacted to contain a coronavirus outbreak at the camp.
Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi backed those allegations, saying that although the initial cause of the blazes remain unknown, "what is certain is that the fire was started because of the quarantine by asylum seekers in the facility."
"Instances of unlawful behavior such as the ones we experienced yesterday will not be left unpunished," said Mitarachi. "Such behavior is not acceptable, and also respect for law and order is a necessary precondition for the asylum process."
Moria: a tinderbox
But critics have also taken aim at Greek authorities as well as the EU for failing to find a sustainable solution for dealing with Greece's overcrowded migration facilities.
Prior to the fires, the Moria refugee camp hosted more than 12,000 people, four times more than its maximum intended capacity.
Erik Marquardt, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) with Germany's Greens, told DW that the fire represented a "political disaster" for Europe for failing to better manage the 2015 migration crisis.
"The situation we have there is a big problem. This kind of catastrophe can happen every time," Marquardt said. "We should feel ashamed for that."
Marquardt called on the German government to address the underlying issues at similar camps, saying it should shoulder the burden of relocating some of those displaced by the fires to Germany.
"How much more suffering is needed to actually make all the national leaders act, to make the European Commission act and to commit to relocating these people away from these camps, away from these horrible situations?" Damian Boeselager, another German MEP, told DW.
Germany offers support
However, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said the German government had already reached out to Greek authorities and offered support.
"We will not leave Greece alone with this situation — and above all — we will not leave the people in this camp alone," said Maas. "I believe that the European Union as a whole has a responsibility."
Other European figures backed calls for a European approach to irregular migration.
"This was a time bomb," Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council told DW. "Now it has gone off and hopefully this is the wakeup call that the leaderships in the European capitals need."
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 14th 2020 at 7:49:57 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.The only solution to this is to rebuild the camp in better conditions. Relocating the refugees will only a)reward criminal behaviour like the aleged burning of the camp b) create further pull factors and c) place further burden on a few countries since an "European approach" is simply not realistic.
What? We don't even know who the heck set the camp on fire and you're just putting all the people in there under general suspicion?
I'm gonna be blunt, that this camp was allowed to exist as such for so long is a mark of shame for the EU as a whole and the solution isn't "just put them back in there, but make it a bit nicer".
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 14th 2020 at 9:04:06 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.I wrote "alleged burning" and given that there were reports about refugees obstructing the firefighters, that is a fair statement.
There is also nothing iherently wrong with housing refugees in camps, as long as they allow for humane living conditions and their application has not been decided upon. It is the most effective way to care for a large number of people, and ressources will become more of an issue in the post-corona world.
Edited by Zarastro on Sep 14th 2020 at 9:37:31 PM
The camp holds four times the intended capacity, you can’t rebuild it to humane conditions, you have to relocate people to elsewhere. You can locate camps in other places, there’s no logistical reason to overcrowd one specific camp.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranThe most efficient, and humane, way to deal with refugees is to allow them to integrate into society at large. Most of them will get jobs and become productive residents.
It's only about 22k votes, but most people voted in favour of relocating more of them to Germany.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 14th 2020 at 3:24:03 PM
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.Canada has accepted a couple from HK as refugees.
An editorial on Hong Kong's problem with handling refugees.
The Mediterranean Holocaust is beginning anew (if it ever paused...). The Italian navy has recovered at least 20 fatalities from a ship carrying refugees that capsized, and 21 people are still unrecovered.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanLet's not use tasteless analogies here.
A BBC vid on the Hmong settling in French Guiana:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/experts-react-turkeys-intervention-us-diplomacy-and-crisis-syria
This is relevant with Turkey getting into Syria now and with the threats of "unleashing" Syrian refugees to the West.