Globalresearch.ca: The Migration Crisis: Victims of Western Wars Forced to Flee Their Countries

The ‘immigration crisis’ in Europe continues to worsen as a result of Western-instigated chaos in the Middle East and African countries. Several EU nations are facing a drastic influx of desperate people, with little resources available to help them. 

Approximately 39,000 migrants, mostly Syrians, passed through Macedonia in July – twice June’s figures. This is an alarming number and Macedonia is running out of trains to transport these people onward to the European Union. Not that they will fare much better there.

On Thursday the country declared a state of emergency and Macedonian police used tear gas and stun grenades against these desperate people, injuring several. The border has been sealed with razor wire around the town of Gevgelija, where approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people, including children, are stranded. Is this how desperate men, women and children from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq – countries that have been ravaged by NATO’s wars of aggression – should be treated by NATO member states?

Several people were injured when hundreds of men, women and children tried to board a train to Serbia, the nearest country to the European Union (EU) member-state of Hungary, at the station of Gevgelija in Macedonia, Friday.

The number of refugees trying to cross through Macedonia is expected to increase as the number entering Greece continues to grow. Around 21,000 refugees arrived in Greece just last week, that’s 50% of all migrants who entered the country in 2014. Since the beginning of the year, Greece has received 160,000 migrants, according to the UN Refugee Agency, a 750% increase compared to the same period in 2014.

In response to this human deluge, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras asked the EU for help. “Now is the time to see if the EU is the EU of solidarity or an EU that has everyone trying to protect their borders,” the Greek PM said after a meeting at the Interior Ministry in Athens on Friday 7th August. “The immigrant flow to Greece is beyond what our state infrastructure can handle … We have significant problems and that’s why we have asked for help from EU” he added.

But no serious help for Greece is forthcoming from the EU. The UN appears to be following suit, with the UN Refugee Agency spokesman William Spindler saying: “The government of Greece has responsibility for what happens on its territory. We are ready to help them… but they need to show much more leadership,”

But Greece refuses to follow the official EU ‘fencing’ and anti-migration policy. In response to the above call from the UN, PM Tsipras said: “Greekswill do what we can to meet our humanistic obligation, by giving what little we have.” Greece, a country recently economically crippled by the greed of the psychopaths running the EU, is doing more with less than the rest of the EU combined, and shames them all.

The crisis we are seeing unfold is just the tip of the iceberg, because the vast majority of Syrian refugees are still in the Middle East. 1.2 million are currently stuck in Lebanon, a country with a total population of 4.5 million. As Patrick Kingsley of The Guardian noted: “To put that in context, a country that is more than 100 times smaller than the EU has already taken in more than 50 times as many refugees as the EU will even consider resettling in the future.“

With Lebanon buckling under the strain, the UN has taken the same approach to refugees there as it has in Greece; ‘the Lebanese are responsible’. This feckless policy virtually assures that many of those 1.2 million refugees in Lebanon will try to make their way to Greece, at which point the UN will no doubt still expect the Greeks to deal with them. Filmmaker and investigative journalist, Andre Vltchek, of the New Eastern Outlook journal had the following to say about the UN’s Syrian refugee policy in the Middle East:

Periodically, I drive to Bekaa Valley to talk to Syrian refugees. I do it simply because it appears that almost no one else does. The UN docks its battle ships at Beirut port and it pampers thousands of its staff members on the entire territory of Lebanon. But the refugees, the victims of the war, are often neglected, even abandoned.

These are no hard-core anti-al-Assad warriors. Most of them crossed the border into Lebanon because of the dire hardship in their country, hardship provoked by the West, by its allies and by its offshoots - the most terrible terrorist organizations money can buy. [...]

Lebanon is not in a position to offer much more than its solidarity and its land to suffering Syrian neighbors. It is understood thathelp should come from those who are fueling the war and consequently turning millions of Syrian people into refugees, or internally displaced persons (IDPs). But it doesn’t, or it is not sufficient. [...]

People speak over each other: “The UN gave us their cash cards so we could buy at least some fuel and food. But the cards are either empty, with no credit or with only partial credit of US $18 per month, instead of US $30. However, the worst thing is that many of us never even made it to the refugee list; some of us are not registered at all.“

France’s and Britain’s fascistic measures against a “swarm of marauding people”

Approximately 5,000 immigrants – a five-fold increase since April this year – are in a refugee camp named the “Jungle” near the French port town of Calais. Hundreds of refugees have tried to enter Britain by boarding trains at the Eurotunnel terminal near the town.

5,000 may sound like a lot, but it’s just 2.5% of the number of immigrants that have arrived in Greece and Italy this year alone. Despite this, the hysterical British government reacts as if these unfortunate souls will turn into “marauding millions” and destroy Europe’s “social order”. British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, for example, said:

The gap in standards of living between Europe and Africa means there will always be millions of Africans with the economic motivation to try to get to Europe.

So long as there are large numbers of pretty desperate migrants maraudingaround the area, there always will be a threat to the tunnel security. We’ve got to resolve this problem ultimately by being able to return those who are not entitled to claim asylum back to their countries of origin. …

Now that is not a sustainable situation because Europe can’t protect itself, preserve its standard of living and social infrastructure if it has to absorb millions of migrants from Africa.

Kingsley of The Guardian had the following to say on Hammond’s last comment:

Hammond said that the migrants would speed the collapse of the European social order. In reality, the number of migrants to have arrived so far this year (200,000) is so minuscule that it constitutes just 0.027% of Europe’s total population of 740 million. The world’s wealthiest continent can easily handle such a comparatively small influx.

Indeed, Hammond’s demeaning comments and ‘warning’ amounts to nothing more than political fear-mongering. Singing from the same psycho hymn sheet, UK Prime Minister David Cameron told ITV: “This is very testing, I accept that, because you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs, it’s got a growing economy, it’s an incredible place to live. But we need to protect our borders by working hand in glove with our neighbours the French and that is exactly what we are doing.”

The pusillanimous Cameron also promised British holiday-makers that they will have a “safe and secure” holiday, because as everyone knows, starving and homeless immigrants forced out of their countries by British bombs are a clear threat to slovenly, drunken Brits languishing on Southern European beaches. Notice also the despicable hubris from Cameron and other British and EU politicians who try to spin the situation into one where the refugees are sitting in squalid camps in the North of France because the UK is such a wonderful place to live. The reality, however, is that these people would be only too happy to go back to their homelands and families. But they can’t, because psychopaths like David Cameron destroyed them.

But the British and French criminal elite have a solution: instead of helping the refugees, 1,000 extra border guards will be stationed near Calais and a new fence complete with CCTV and infrared detectors will be erected. In total, Britain has pledged £22 million towards these security measures. That’s over £4,000 for each refugee spent on military equipment and personnel. The goal, it seems, is to keep refugees living in conditions not very different from those they fled.

A sincere helping hand

While most Western countries spend much time and effort on the pretense of being helpful, Russia has taken a more practical and productive approach, in particular towards the migration crisis in Serbia. Refugees travel through Serbia on their way to Western Europe, with approximately 2,000 migrants crossing the Serbian border every day. Russia has helped with setting up camps and has delivered equipment for accommodation for the migrants, including: diesel power stations, stoves, blankets and beds, enough equipment for around 1,000 people. Yet again, this illustrates that, while Western countries’ use stone-walling and aggression to ‘help solve’ the refugee crisis that they created, Russia helps by providing direct humanitarian aid to the people in need.

Another rare, sincere helping hand is found in the west German town of Goslar. While Germany plans to ban re-entry permits for 94,000 migrants, Mayor Oliver Junk of Goslar is welcoming refugees, hoping that his town’s economy and population will increase and benefit as a result. As Mayor Junk said: “We have plenty of empty housing, and rather than see it decay we could give new homes to immigrants, helping them, and so give our town a future.” According to Mayor Junk, Germany is a “rich country, and we have a duty to help those in need.” 

These are genuine words that are rarely spoken, and much less often acted on, by the majority of the supposed leaders of the free and democratic world.