For Shame!! Double Standards of Europe

(Ukrainian refugees welcomed in Germany)

Blonde haired, blue eyed and beautiful are the Ukrainian refugees and Europe is gushing over them! European countries are racing with each other as to what country can show more hospitality-what country can offer more to those unfortunates. Nobility and humanity at its apex. Really nothing to fault European behaviour here. However Europe has another side to it – a sadder side- a less noble side for not all refugees have been treated with the same generosity as the Ukrainian ones.

(Syrian refugees-A section of the crowded and trash-strewn Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece)

Brown haired, brown eyed and brown skinned are the Syrian refugees and Europe is not gushing over them! Treated badly and disdained Syrian refugees in many cases escaped from the horror of terrorists in their own country Syria to the horror of living abroad in countries that do not want them. Many of them crossed the border and entered into Turkey where they were amassed and put into camps akin to concentration camps. Turkey then proceeded to use these refugees(which it had created) as a pressure point with Europe threatening to open its borders and send them over if Europe doesn’t agree to its demands.

 “Hey EU, wake up! I say it again; if you try to frame our operation there as an invasion, our task is simple: we will open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants to you.” These were the words pronounced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the 10th of October, 2019, as a response to European criticisms of the Turkish invasion in northern Syria.. On the 5th of September, he had already threatened to “open the gates” if the international support for the establishment of a refugee “safe zone” fails to materialize. On the 7th of November, Erdoğan reiterated his threat: “Whether we receive support or not, we will continue to aid the guests we are hosting. But if this doesn’t work out, then we will have to open the doors”. Such aggressive statements illustrate the extent to which the Turkish regime uses and abuses the Syrian refugee crisis to its own benefits.

Many  Syrian refugees  beg on the streets of Turkey

So they borrow money to pay smugglers who help them cross the Aegean Sea to Greece. The island of Lesbos off the Greek coast hosts many refugees but it has poor sanitary conditions with women sharing living space with unrelated men.

However the  EU worked out a deal with Turkey aimed at discouraging migration. Just before the deal was sealed, European Commission President Donald Tusk hinted that anyone who didn’t qualify for asylum would be swiftly deported.

“Do not come to Europe,” Tusk warned would-be migrants. “Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing.”

The EU paid Turkey roughly $3 billion to accept deportees and better patrol its coast to prevent more migrants from entering Europe. It also promised to fast-track EU visas for Turks and expedite Turkey’s EU membership process. And the EU said it would accept Syrians in refugee camps after they’d been vetted in Turkey.

Europe has a history of treating refugees badly .Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in 1974. 200 000 Greek-Cypriots were expelled from their land by the Turkish army in 1974, as part of Turkey’s plan of ethnic cleansing in the northern part of Cyprus, which has been occupied ever since. There were agonised appeals of those thousands of Cypriot  refugees for the restoration of their inalienable right to return to their lands and properties in safety, as provided by resolutions of European courts and the relevant UN resolution 3212, also endorsed by Turkey. No progress has been made on this track up till now.

 In 1915 almost a whole population turned refugee  due to the Turks.

The deportations and the attempted extermination of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were widely written about, discussed, and protested in the United States and Europe during and following the First World War. After the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 attention in the United States and the world community shifted to other matters, and the Armenian Genocide was relegated to the memory hole. For years only survivors, some Armenian intellectuals, and a few historians of the Ottoman Empire raised the topic. Among the latter were some who denied that there ever had been a genocide, or claimed that the Armenians had provoked their own destruction!!.It is only recently that Europe   recognized that the age of genocide is by no means over and  scholarly and human rights interest in the Armenian Genocide has revived.

What is it that Ukrainian refugees have that the other refugees didn’t have….?

Editor In Chief

Reem Haddad