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Tag: UNHCR

  • Turkey deports 600 Syrian refugees following protest over living conditions, official says

    Turkey deports 600 Syrian refugees following protest over living conditions, official says

    Turkish FM denies reports of forced evacuations, says 50-60 Syrians returned voluntarily; UNHCR reports riots in Jordan refugee camp.

    By Reuters and The Associated Press

    1100722365

    Syrian refugees make their way in flooded water at a temporary refugee camp, in the eastern Lebanese town of Al-Faour near the border with Syria, January 8, 2013. Photo by AP

    Turkey deported at least 600 Syrians staying at a refugee camp near the border after they clashed with Turkish military police in a protest over living conditions, a Turkish official said on Thursday in remarks disputed by the country’s foreign ministry.

    “These people were involved in Wednesday’s violence, they were seen by the security cameras in the camp,” an official in the camp told Reuters by telephone. “Between 600 and 700 have been deported. The security forces are still looking at the footage, and if they see more they will deport them.”

    Turkey’s foreign ministry, however, denies forcibly deporting the Syrians and said about 50-60 had returned to Syria voluntarily.

    “Some people have returned since last night, the numbers are closer to 50 or 60, and yes some of these may have been involved in the provocations from Wednesday but they returned of their own free will,” foreign ministry spokesman Levent Gumrukcu said on Thursday.

    The United Nations refugee agency voiced deep concern on at the reports of mass deportations of Syrians from Turkey and said it had taken up the issue with Turkish authorities.[1]

    “UNHCR is very concerned with reports of a serious incident and allegations of possible deportations from Akcakale Tent City in the past 24 hours,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters.

    Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency is reporting that a riot broke out at a refugee camp for Syrians in Jordan after some of the refugees were told they could not return home.

    Ali Bibi, a UNHCR liaison officer in Jordan, says it’s unclear how many refugees were involved in Thursday’s melee at the Zaatari camp. The riot broke out after some Syrians in the camp tried to board buses to go back to their country.

    He says Jordanian authorities refused to let the buses head to the border because of ongoing clashes between the rebels and President Bashar Assad’s forces in southern Syria, just across the border from Jordan.

    Bibi says there were no immediate reports of injuries. He says Jordanian authorities promised to organize the refugees’ return home at another time.

    In Damascus, activists say Syrian rebels are attacking army checkpoints in and around a key southern town that is a gateway to the capital. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebel attacks are under way in Dael and surrounding areas.

    The Local Coordination Committees, another activists group, says regime  bombardment of Dael killed at least three people on Thursday. Dael lies in the strategic Daraa province, which borders Jordan.The fighting comes as Mideast powers opposed to President Bashar Assad have stepped up weapons supplies to Syrian rebels in coordination with the U.S. in preparation for a push on the Syrian capital.

    That’s according to officials and military experts who spoke to the Associated Press in Jordan. The UN says Syria’s two-year civil war has killed more than 70,000 people.

    via Turkey deports 600 Syrian refugees following protest over living conditions, official says – Middle East – Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper.

  • Tiny Nation of Monaco Asks for Help as U.S. Billionaires Pack Hotels, Seeking Refugee Status

    Tiny Nation of Monaco Asks for Help as U.S. Billionaires Pack Hotels, Seeking Refugee Status

    MonacoHarbor

    By Gregory Luce

    Monaco, known for its expensive hotels and high-stakes luxury casinos, has requested international help to stem the tide of U.S. billionaires fleeing class warfare in the United States, sources close to Monaco’s ruling monarchy confirmed late this afternoon.

    According to a spokesperson for the government of Prince Albert II, approximately 100 wealthy Americans have sought refugee status in Monaco as a result of a proposed U.S. policy to tax the ultra-rich at a rate comparable to middle class Americans. The move has prompted some Republican candidates to declare class warfare, leading to billionaires fleeing the country in fear.

    In Monaco, officials pleaded with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to do something about conditions in the tiny kingdom. “Conditions in the country are definitely worsening,” said one government official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. “Our hotels are nearly full, and we are receiving demands for in-room Baccarat and 56-inch plasma televisions that we simply cannot accommodate. It’s dire.”

    In related news, New Mexico’s governor has asked federal officials for help in dealing with an influx of poor families from Texas who are said to be fleeing a decade-long “economic bombardment” by Texas officials, who are said to be intent on denying any signs of poverty other than fast food signs. New Mexico officials said they are not prepared to handle the influx other than to continue the same policies as other Republican governors in more populous neighboring states.

    www.freewoodpost.com, September 20, 2011

  • Learning human rights lessons from Turkey?

    Learning human rights lessons from Turkey?

    Turkey promised to keep its borders open for the people fleeing the violence in Syria. Many thousands of Syrians have crossed into Turkey and footage shows men and women, children walking into that country.

    Even though Turkey is a country with a large population of over seventy million and already coping with an overflow of many other nationalities, it has not lost its humanity in doing the right thing by extending its hospitality to those so much worse off. They are quickly opening disused buildings and building camps, constructing a temporary hospital.

    If Turkey can do it, where is our compassion?

    Lack of ‘humaneness’ is what seems to doggedly divide Australia from most of the rest of the world with a deeply engrained hostility towards others. It is especially directed to those hapless victims of endless wars that somehow managed to make it anywhere near our shores.

    Our present minister and previous Government ministers have exalted in, ‘we must make conditions here as harsh as possible as a deterrent’. The general gist of the messages from our ‘Leaders’ has been very constant, ‘No-one, we repeat, no-one should come here under the understanding they will be treated with compassion or care if they jump the ‘queue’ or come ‘illegal’ by boat,’ is what they mainly are saying. The political leaders are well aware that those sentiments will be well rewarded with the approval of thousand of voters.

    The latest threat of sending at least 800 refugees to Malaysia just about takes the cake in the manoeuvring of our desperate Government keen to further whip up our xenophobia. The fact that this whipping might be translated to a caning in Malaysia was just seen as a mere bagatelle, easily overcome with a few soothing words of a promise that that would most likely not happen. The UNHCR seems less convinced.

    While the conversation is continuing and a flurry of visits to New Guinea and Nauru intending to underline our tough stance once again, some might question where this dreadful fear comes from. Is there something in our history that gives us clues?

    We couldn’t do much wrong by visiting our most recent history of how we treated children, both in our mother country of the UK and in our own.

    Just having seen the film Oranges and Sunshine and previously read David Hill’s, The Forgotten Children, I wonder if one day we might admit there was something rotten going on in our culture dating back perhaps hundreds of years. I know of no other country that exported and deported over 130,000 children in recent times. I also know of no other country that then allowed the further destruction of those children in the institutions they arrived at.

    Is it is the history of bullying children and sending them into the hierarchical system of the English Boarding Schools, the Public (Private) Schools with its whipping masters and the degrading of all those coming into contact with the ‘British system’ of parenting and educating?

    This seems to go to the very heart of why Australia has never managed to shake of that bullying that defined us from the very start.

    Yet, when it comes to cattle or suicidal whales we all get teary eyed, ban the export of cattle or stand in the sea for days stroking dying whales. Where is the stroking for the flotsam of humans cast on our shores?

    Last Monday’s Four Corners: again ‘bullying and degrading’ at the very core of our armed forces. It is totally ‘us’ and not just the isolated few of ‘them’. Howard, Ruddock, Abbott, Gillard, Morrison, Bowen. What chance did they all have growing up and indoctrinated into a system of bullying? No Government except the British conduct parliament so appallingly and again, bullying is at the very heart of it.

    In the meantime we should take a leaf out of Turkey’s book. We will not turn them away, is what the Turkish Minister for Immigration is reported as saying. They are human beings in distress.

    I can’t even imagine one of our politicians saying that.

    via Learning human rights lessons from Turkey? – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).