“Slovakia has said it will accept only non-Muslim refugees. "Slovakia as a Christian country can really help Christians from Syria to find a new home in Slovakia," said government spokesman Ivan Netik.
Hungarian Prime Minister Orban was more candid, speaking in Brussels Thursday.
"All countries have a right to decide whether they want to live with large numbers of Muslims in their countries," he said. "If they want to, they can. We don't want to, and we have a right to decide we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country."
Britain, which had pledged to admit only 1,000 refugees, is now revisiting its policy. Prime Minister David Cameron spoke of being moved by the image of a drowned Syrian toddler on a Turkish beach and declared Thursday: "Britain is a moral nation and we will fulfill our moral responsibilities."
That photograph - of the lifeless body of two-year old Aylan Kurdi -- has moved tens of thousands of people, including Presidents and Prime Ministers. It may yet help move Europe to action.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/09/04/europe/lister-europe-divided-migrant-crisis/index.html
Why does it take a picture of the body of a two year old on a desolate beach to move people to take action for those trying to escape a crisis? What is it about being part of a certain religion that means that a country has the right to keep you out? If we’re part of involving ourselves in the internal politics in another country, why can’t we help to make things better?
It’s not the two year old lying dead on a beach that has moved me to write about this situation, although how can one ignore this? After seeing the drawings of Murat Sayin in this article, I felt a wave of anger rising up in my body, and I know that there are tears of grief behind. Are all Muslims to be feared; what about Christians and their crusades, or the Jews and their problems with Palestinians, as well as, vice versa or the Myanmar Buddhists; is it really about how we choose to believe in God or other unworldly matters? Yes, it is about how we choose to separate ourselves from others, because we know what is “right” while others know only what is “wrong”. Even in my own country Nepal, which is now debating a constitution and whether or not to use the world secular in this document, how can it be?
Yes, the west, Europe, the US does have a responsibility as in some sense trying to spread democracy without much of an understanding of history has possibly caused a great deal of the suffering that is now taking place in the world. But it also boils down to tribal hatred, if for no other reason, than to control resources, maintain power and a host of other characteristics of insanity.
The human race has always been blood thirsty with individuals wanting power and stop at nothing to maintain this, no matter how many innocents die or are maimed, no matter how many barrel bombs are used on their brethren, no matter how much unrest it causes in a country to the point of people abandoning sense to try to make it to the shores of another country where they are met with hatred, clubs and sticks and walls.
Close to 60 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced. “There were 19.5 million refugees worldwide at the end of 2014, 14.4 million under the mandate of UNHCR, around 2.9 million more than in 2013. About 38.2 million people were forcibly uprooted people and displaced within their own country and are known as internally displaced people (IDPs).
Continued fighting in the Syrian Arab Republic brought the number of IDPs in that country to 7.6 million, the highest number anywhere in the world. With 6 million internally displaced persons registered by the Government by the end of 2013, Colombia too continued to face a large displacement situation.”
I understand that none of this is “black and white”, that each country has its own internal religious historical conflicts that have shaped such statements as highlighted above. But isn’t it time to put irrational, non-humanistic behavior aside, whether or not others do this and open our doors to those who are afflicted, without hassles? Yes it will overtax budgets and create hate and tensions, but isn’t it better to try than to let people die only for the reason that they were born in a specific country? We create our own messes but we can certainly clean them up.
True humanitarian responses are what is needed, if only to say that human beings are one. We must show this and help those fleeing battle torn areas. These people are not migrants they are refugees, this is not their choice but something which has been chosen for them because of their leaders and the hatred of many others. Do something; help, we must because at some point we could be the refugee.
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