Farmers Hailed As ‘Heroes’ In Romanian Press For Defeating Secret EU Funded Plans To Build Migrant Centre In Town

by OLIVER JJ LANE2 Feb 2016908

The inhabitants of a small Transylvanian town in Romania were outraged when they discovered a plan to house migrants in their community and quickly formed a resistance. They are now being hailed as heroes in their country.

A peasants’ revolt broke out in 5,000-population Ardud, in Satu Mare County, against the national government and the European Union after locals discovered a Church project to house the elderly was actually a secret migrant centre. The deception only came to light when the organisation running the camp started interviewing locals for jobs, and applicants were explicitly told they would be caring for migrants, reports Romanian national television news channel B1.

The project was part financed by the European Union, reports news site Expunere, and was organised through the interior ministry with the assistance of a French Christian fraternity who were to implement it on the ground. Now the plan has been shelved because locals organised quickly and promised the government “violence” if they didn’t reconsider.

One of the ringleaders of the revolt, which saw hundreds of local residents descend upon the town hall to petition a representative of the national government is 28 year old “hero” Ionut Sabau, a forrester and farmer born and raised in the town. He told press he would resist the plans fiercely because he had lived for a year in Paris, France, in a “predominantly Muslim neighbourhood”, and had seen the trouble migrants would bring with them.

The news of the surprise migrant centre for their community arrived in Ardud the same day the world learned of the murder of a young volunteer at a migrant centre in Sweden. The timing stiffened local opposition to the plan and caused nothing less than an “uprising”, reports Romanian newspaper Gandul.

The town mayor shared the concerns of the citizens and organised a town meeting to be attended by a representative of the national government. Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Sabu said: “We do not agree to the project under any circumstances whatsoever.

“I don’t care what the law says, whether the state approves or not. We are ready to use violence if you tread upon our will. Let us be perfectly clear to the project managers and everyone else — we will use violence if you go ahead. We are letting you know, so you can’t be surprised.

“Nobody can say we are being unclear! The local television is here, and I hope everyone gets the message”.

At this point Mr. Sabu is interrupted by the government prefect, who reminds him there are “institutions” he can go through if he objects, and tells him not to take justice into his own hands. Undaunted, Mr. Sabu continues:

“I understand that. But our children must also grow up in safe and civilised conditions, and we don’t want to end up like Western Europe where they are afraid to let children go to school alone, to leave wives alone on the street. We want none of that here.

“This is not just a matter of the Romanian state [as a whole]. We are simply defending our own families”.

Romania has been off the beaten track for most migrants, with only a handful deciding to settle in the less prosperous and deeply conservative eastern European state of their own free will. Just 71 illegal migrants were caught in January, most of which were hoping to pass north through the country on their way elsewhere.

Yet the number of migrants arriving legally is increasing, including those who were to be housed in Ardud, thanks to the European Union. Under the terms of the new migrant resettlement plan, Romania is to take 6,300 migrants in the first tranche of relocations, reports Digi24Romania.

Kraj izbegličkog raja u Nemačkoj

Kada je nemačka kancelarka Angela Merkel minulog vikenda prvi put javno priznala da će Iračani i Sirijci koji su tražili azil u Nemačkoj morati da se vrate u svoje otadžbine nakon što se u njima završe ratovi, pojedini mediji su tu njenu izjavu okarakterisali kao veliki zaokret kancelarke. Međutim, svako ko je pažljivo pratio unutrašnjopolitičke prilike u Nemačkoj već odavno zna da Merkelova nije ovog vikenda krenula da menja svoju politiku „otvorenih vrata” za izbeglice još prošlog oktobra.

Preokretom se može nazvati to da je svojevrsna izbeglička majka sada javno priznala promenu svoje politike i da je sirijske i iračke izbeglice uporedila sa izbeglicama sa Balkana, koji su posle kraja ratova na tlu bivše Jugoslavije većinom otišli iz Nemačke.

Status sigurne zemlje porekla ipak Berlin nije mogao da da Siriji i Iraku, ali je dogovoreno da za izbeglice koje dolaze iz ovih zemalja, ukoliko se dokaže da ne dolaze direktno sa ratom pogođenog područja, neće moći da dve godine dovedu svoje porodice u Nemačku. Kako će se ovaj uslov procenjivati zasad nije jasno, ali postoje naznake da svako ko je registrovan u nekom od izbegličkih kampova u Jordanu, Turskoj i Libanu neće biti smatran za izbeglicu koja spasava živu glavu bežeći od rata.

Nešto slično je govorio i mađarski premijer Viktor Orban kada je zatvorio Mađarsku za ulazak izbeglica, rekavši da su se Sirijci i Iračani spasli od rata čim su stigli u Tursku i da put nastavljaju kao ekonomski migranti. Zbog toga su ga evropski mediji nazvali ksenofobom, što je epitet koji Merkelova nikad neće dobiti. Čak i kada u uvijenoj formi njena vlada donosi bezmalo iste odluke.

Austria threatens to extend border controls -newspaper
By REUTERS
PUBLISHED: 19:45 GMT, 6 February 2016 | UPDATED: 19:45 GMT, 6 February 2016

VIENNA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Austria will extend its border controls if Turkey does not take back refugees picked up at sea on their way to Greece, Chancellor Werner Faymann said in an interview with the daily Oesterreich, being published on Sunday.
He had earlier said that migrants picked up at the Greek external EU border should be sent back directly to Turkey because this was the only measure that would make a radical enough impact.

Austria is set to introduce a new border management system at Spielfeld, a key crossing point on its south-eastern border with Slovenia, which aims at speeding up applications and making the country less attractive to asylum seekers.
More such border management facilities on other routes may be needed if Turkey does not respond to his proposal, the chancellor was quoted as saying.

Faymann said Turkey must make a decision by Feb. 18, when EU leaders meet for a summit.
It would not be a solution if Turkish border controls led to 10,000 refugees arriving at EU borders instead of 20,000, Faymann was quoted as saying in the interview.

"Then we must secure our borders even more," Faymann said. "To protect internal borders is a makeshift solution. But we have to be prepared."

Norvežani protjerali nazad u Rusiju 50 migranata. Ovi valjda mislili da su ih spremili za Švedsku pa u Murmansk-u u jednoj diskoteci napadali djevojke.

Epilog: 18 ih završilo u bolnici, narod ih prebio, i 33 uhićeno. Sad im vjerojatno i ruska policija prebire bubrege pendrecima.

Migranti koji dolaze u evropske države u zadnje vrijeme često znaju napraviti probleme u kafićima u koje izlaze. Nije rijetkost da vrijeđaju djevojke ili da se potuku. Ipak, grupa migranata koja je vraćena iz Norveške u Rusiju nije se provela u noćnom izlasku kako su planirali.

Norveška je iz države izbacili 50 muškaraca sa Bliskog istoka zbog "lošeg ponašanja", te su ih vratili u Rusiju, budući da su tom rutom ušli u državu. Određeni broj muškaraca iz te grupe otišao je u diskoteku "Gandvik" u gradu Murmansku, gdje su vrlo brzo počeli praviti probleme i dobacivati djevojkama. Ipak, zaboravili su da ruski mentalitet nije ni blizu onoga u ostalim evropskim zemljama.

Epilog svega je da je 18 migranata završilo u bolnici, a njih 33 u pritvoru.

Prema komentarima na društvenim mrežama, migranti su pokušali da pobjegnu i da se sakriju, ali su Rusi ih pronašli i očitali im lekciju. Da nije došao veliki broj policajaca na lice mjesta stvari su mogle zaista da eskaliraju.

Da stvar bude još gora po migrante, policajci koji su stigli na lice mjesta nisu pokazali ništa veću toleranciju prema njihovom ponašanju. Iako su posavjetovali lokalne Ruse da ne linčuju nepristojne muškarce, i oni su se tiho pridružili ovoj "edukaciji", prenosi sajt "News.li".

"Dobrodošli u Rusiju. Oduševljeni smo što imamo posjetioce, ali ne smijete da zaboravite - vi ste ovdje gosti", rekao je jedan od učesnika ovog incidenta.

Meanwhile Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, on a visit to Sarajevo, praised Macedonia for its efforts to slow down the flow of people, adding that the Greek government 'did not help much in this area'.

At the Macedonian border, migrants know time is running out

Syrian refugees fear the border will close. For north Africans it already has
Feb 9th 2016 | GEVGELIJA AND IDOMENI | Europe
Timekeeper

ON THE migrant trail at the border between Greece and Macedonia, everyone is scared. Refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are scared that Europe’s doors are closing. Economic migrants from Morocco and Algeria, trying to pass themselves off as refugees, are frightened that they will be turned back and forced to take deadly risks to evade border guards. The Greeks are worried that if the Macedonians seal the border, the refugees will be trapped in Greece. The Macedonians are frightened that the Serbs, one step further along the migrant route, will do the same to them.

The point of arrival for migrants in Macedonia is a transit camp set up last year among the vineyards outside the dusty town of Gevgelija, better known before the crisis as a place where Greeks come to gamble in local casinos or have cheap dentistry work done. The Macedonians built the camp next to the railway line that comes up from the Greek port of Thessaloniki, which crosses the border fence next to a marker bearing the letters SFRJ—the initials of the long-vanished Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Nearby, a covered passage allows refugees to walk from the Idomeni transit camp, just across the fence on the Greek side, up to the checkpoint that brings them into Macedonia.

Since November only Iraqis, Afghans and Syrians have been allowed through. They show the border guards the travel documents given to them by Greek authorities when they arrive in Greece. At the moment 50 to 100 migrants are rejected every day because the Macedonians say they have fake papers, or can tell (by accent or other clues) that they are not from eligible countries. In both camps everyone wants to move as fast as possible, terrified that the path to Germany could be closed any day. Already the Macedonians are building a second layer of razor-wire fencing. “You can feel the fear,” says Jesper Frovin Jensen, the UNICEF emergency coordinator in Gevgelija.

But hold-ups are frequent. In January taxi drivers in Gevgelija began blocking the railway line out of the camp. Many had purchased taxi licences—at €1,500 ($1,680) each—the previous summer, hoping to profit from the refugees by taking them to the Serbian border. Then the authorities built a makeshift train platform next to the camp, cutting the cabbies out of the business.

To prevent obstacles such as the taxi drivers’ protests from creating bottlenecks, the Macedonian police report frequently to the Greek police to let them know how many migrants have been processed and sent north. The Greeks in turn delay the buses coming up from the port of Piraeus until the Macedonian camp is clear, regulating the flow. The entire system is remarkably well-organised. Nikola Poposki, Macedonia’s foreign minister, said his officials were in daily contact with their counterparts all the way up the line to Berlin. In any case, he reflected, the current migration is really nothing new: in their trek up the Vardar river valley, the migrants are following an ancient route “used by the Romans, Ottomans and Crusaders”.

For those fleeing the Middle East’s war zones, getting through means everything. Sena Suleiman, 38, is a Kurdish nurse from the city of Mosul in Iraq, controlled by Islamic State (IS) since 2014. She reached Gevgelija with her husband and three children, coming the entire way with a metal walker; her legs were injured, she says, when IS fighters blew up the house of her uncle next door. Her brother was killed by crossfire in the street, and another relative was beheaded. “I will never go back,” she says through tears.

Just 200 metres away, across the Greek border in Idomeni, Qamar Ahmad Noor, 34, sits on the ground with his wife Neelah, 23. She is due to give birth within ten days. They fled their home city of Lahore, in Pakistan; Mr Noor says he is a member of the persecuted Ahmadiyya religious minority, and that his wife’s brothers kidnapped her twice and might kill them if he does not convert to their brand of Islam. But Pakistan is not one of the three countries whose citizens are presumed to need asylum (such as Syria), so Mr Noor has no idea how to get across to Gevgelija.

The picture is bleak for those who fail. Every day the Macedonians expel people they have caught who had crossed illegally. Yasin Tasak, A 22-year-old Moroccan economic migrant, was sent trudging back to Greece with five other Moroccans and one Algerian, after they had walked 50km (31 miles) west from the camp to circumvent the border fence. When they stopped to rest, five men approached them. “They stole our phones and everything. They had guns. Then they let us go,” says Mr Tasak. After walking another two days and reaching a railway station, they were arrested by the Macedonian police, who, he says, beat them on the legs to deter them from trying the journey again.

Many of those who do not make it across congregate at the Hara hotel, down the road from the transit camp. Here they meet traffickers who promise to get them to the Serbian border, or simply congregate in groups to try the crossing again. Sami Ziad, 28, from Tunisia, says he has tried to get through five or six times. Pointing at a snow-capped mountain to the west, he says he tried to cross there with a group of twenty. “Two or three died. They could not walk anymore.” Eventually the Macedonians caught them, firing pistols in the air as they rounded them up. Asked if he might give up, he says there is nothing for him in Tunisia. “Personally I am not frightened,” he adds, “I have to go.”

Greece's defense minister says he wants an agreement with neighboring Turkey that would allow the European Union's Frontex border agency to stop and turn back — within Turkish waters — boats carrying migrants to the Greek islands.

Panos Kammenos said Monday that he has already made the proposal to his EU colleagues, who "showed great interest," and will raise the matter with NATO officials.

He said Greek authorities are in a position to locate smugglers boats as they leave the nearby Turkish coast and alert Frontex, and the Turkish coast guard. Kammenos said this would "stop the great migratory flow to Greece" and stop deaths of migrants and refugees trying to reach Greece in rickety boats.

Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz says his country will not be able to handle the same number of migrants this year as it did in 2015 and will help Western Balkan nations stop them at their borders.

Last year Austria received 90,000 asylum-seekers, which overstretched its capacities, Kurz said Monday in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

"Macedonia is ready to accept the help of the European Union. This is unfortunately not happening in Greece," Kurz said, insisting that the EU offered Greece support but it was rejected.

He said last summer he warned that the welcome culture in Europe was correct on a human level but that it could encourage more people to head toward the continent, which is what happened.

Kurz noted that it was wrong for Europe to watch migrants arriving in Greece and then let them be directed further to non-EU countries.

Nisi ga ti razumio. Grcima je preko glave migranata. Sad to žele zajedno sa ostatkom Europe riješiti. Zaustaviti, ne preraspoređivati.
Iskreno moje osobno mišljenje je da su to Grci radili da im oproste dobar dio kredita i duga. Pa su skužili da su se jako zajebali, jer su turizam morali čuvati kao zjencu oka svoga. Ponašali su se neka susjedu crkne jedna krava makar meni dvije. Sad im te dvije poskupe. A i primaklo se vrijeme novih pregovora o otplati kredita.

Erdogan: Strpljenje ima granice, otvorićemo kapije

Ankara -- Predsednik Turske Redžep Tajip Erdogan rekao je da će njegova zemlja "imati strpljenja do određene granice, ali da će posle toga morati da reaguje u Siriji".

IZVOR: B92 ČETVRTAK, 11.02.2016. | 11:55

Foto: Beta, AP
Foto: Beta, AP
Erdogan je rekao i da je čelnicima EU jasno rekao da će doći vreme kada će Turska otvoriti kapije izbeglicama ka Evropskoj uniji.

"Mi smo zaustavljali ljude na vratima ka Evropi, zaustavljali smo autobuse. To se desi jednom ili dva puta, ali mi ćemo jednom te kapije otvoriti i poželeti im srećan put. To sam im rekao", rekao je Erdogan.

Kako je rekao, ono što je rečeno na sastanku sa briselskim liderima Donaldom Tuskom i Žan-Klodom Junkerom nije nešto čega se treba stideti.

"To nije nikakva tajna i to nismo rekli samo tada i tamo, to je rečeno u svakoj prilici", rekao je Erdogan.

U svom govoru, Erdogan je rekao i da Ujedinjene nacije imaju dvostruke aršine po pitanju krize u Siriji i da je neiskreno to što UN apeluje na Tursku oko puštanja izbeglica iz Sirije u zemlju, a ne reaguje u samoj Siriji.

"Licemerno je podsećati Tursku na njene međunarodne obaveze. Turska je uradila više od bilo koje druge države, to se vidi i po brojevima - ko je koliko ljudi primio", rekao je Erdogan.

On je pozvao UN da na isti način apeluje i na druge zemlje kako bi "Turska mogla da pošalje izbeglice u te zemlje".

Takođe, rekao je da ksenofobija i rasizam postaju normalni u Evropi.

Ali nigdje u novinama nećeš vidjeti izvinjenje Orbanu ili podsjećanje na ona pljuvanja... mediji danas...

Mogao bi Edo i sankcije dobiti. Pa onda ide "tursko proljeće" i znamo već kako dalje.

Americi trenutno ne odgovara proljeće u Turskoj.