Yesterday’s Sunday Independent
Yesterday’s Sunday Independent reported how the Irish Red Cross has been contacted by 800 people in Ireland who wish to offer accommodation for refugees.
Further to this…
Independent TD Mick Wallace speaking in the Dáil on Thursday, following a recent trip to the makeshift refugee camp in Calais, France.
During his speech, he implored Ireland to do more for the people languishing in Calais and Dunkirk.
He said:
Last weekend, Deputy Clare Daly, a solicitor called Gary Daly from Dublin, and I went to Calais for the weekend and spent three days there – two days in the Jungle camp in Calais and a day in Dunkirk. It is hard to be well after what we witnessed.
It is hard to be well thinking about the role that the EU is playing in the issue of refugees at the moment. It is bad enough that Ireland has been complicit by allowing Shannon to be used as a US military base. We seem to be very comfortable with it – 2.5 million troops have gone through Shannon since 2001.
Anyone who pretends to think that this is nothing to do with the refugee problem is living in cuckoo land. We have been complicit in the destruction of the homes of millions of people.
We saw the end result of it in Calais and Dunkirk last weekend. It is just horrific where these people are today. It is horrific that the EU has played such a poor role in it. Last year, we had the release valve of Germany doing the right thing and taking close to 1 million people. They cannot do it again this year. There will be a serious problem.
The EU can block all the borders it likes but the refugees will come.
In terms of the Greece-Turkey situation it will be a bit more difficult for them now there but it means there will be more of them on the Mediterranean this summer.
The deal the EU did with Turkey and Greece is shameful. We met Kurds in Dunkirk. The notion that Turks will actually arrive on islands off Greece and be forced back to Turkey is beyond thinking about.
We talked to a guy called Beshwar Hassan who is the head of a refugee council in Dunkirk. These people are afraid of their life of the Turks because of what the Turks have been doing to them.
Today in Turkey it is possible for ISIS to get direct access to hospitals and there are special supermarkets that it can access. How in God’s name could the EU take the position of allowing Turkey to play this role? We pay them for doing it.
This is not the answer to the migrant problem. Turkey will make things worse for these people and it will not solve the problem that is arriving in Europe. We are still saying we will not take people who have arrived in Europe and that they will have to be assessed outside of Europe.
We met kids of 11, 14 and 15 years of age, a lot of whom were Afghan. Calais is dominated by Afghans. There is a fear in Ireland that a lot of these people are terrorists and could cause trouble here. Afghanistan is in bits.
The pretence that things are sorted in Afghanistan is total nonsense. We met a lot of Afghans over the weekend and most of them were running from the Taliban and from ISIS. This time last year, they reckon that there were 100 ISIS fighters in Afghanistan.
Last week, they claimed that there are 10,000 of them. The Afghans that we met were at pains to point out that ISIS is now more powerful in Afghanistan than the Taliban and that the Government is a sideshow.
Most of the people we met in Calais who had to run had nothing to do with the Government, the UN or the US army, but some of their cousins had. They are afraid of their life of the Taliban and ISIS, both of which said that their cousins would have to stop doing this, that or the other or that they had done this, that or the other in the past and will pay a price for it.
They have had no choice but to get out of the country. They told us of an Afghan who, after spending six months in Calais, just could not take it anymore. He had mentally had enough of it and decided that he was just going to hand himself in and go home. He went home and was dead in two weeks. It is not a safe country to return anyone who has run out of the place. It is out of the question.
I think the Irish Government should look at the camps in Calais and Dunkirk. We have met many good people there – people who have a lot to add to society here. It would be such a gesture to go over there, process people, take them from these camps and bring them to Ireland to settle them. It would mean so much and it would be a beautiful thing to do.
Transcript via Oireachtas.ie
We’re in the celtic tiger of sex?!
Thanks Dr Pixie. However did I miss this pulitzer winning piece.
“heading for Bust” indeed.
It is one of the worst articles ever. The analogy doesn’t work so the whole thing is gibberish!! Dr Pixie should stick to doctoring not writing!! For shame!
Going by the byline, I’d be blaming Niamh Horan more than the doctor.
I’m enduring a catastrophic recession. :)
The dizzying highs and the terrifying lows
A drought of Benteke proportions.
Insert long colourful joke here
Niamh Horan really going places with the auld journalistic career.
Niamh Horans tactics work. yea, she writes absolute codswallop and has awful out-dated views on everything .. but all the comments here are about her article, and not all the refugee/calais/wallace stuff .. i dont even know why her article is so much in shot, actually. theres a pic of it, and then everything is about the other article. yet people are talking about the sex doctor or whatever its about. you’re all as bad as her. titialtion seekers.
Feck off ya dry shite!
broadsheet why the main image given over to Niamh Horans rubbish? surely a screen of the side panel that this post is all about would have been better?
I suppose there is no chance Wallace would stay in Calais?
What are you doing to help refugees?
“Last week, they claimed that there are 10,000 of them. The Afghans that we met were at pains to point out that ISIS is now more powerful in Afghanistan than the Taliban and that the Government is a sideshow.”
So what does Mick suggest, military intervention there? How are the US going to get their troops there? Through Shannon? If Mick is not suggesting military intervention, does he believe we should rehouse their entire 30 million population within the EU?
From 10k to 30mil in the blink of an eye…
The Jamie Vardy Movie
Hold off on filming – he’s bound to do something silly that will make a great movie
Austria has taken in 100k refugees so far. And now, as a direct result, they’ve just voted in a far right government. So, whether right or wrong, it seems that there are a lot of people out there who do not want the refugees. Certainly enough to vote in far right parties that will try to put an end to it. Merkel could have handled this better. In fact I bet she knew damn well that this would result in more fragmentation in the EU and far right governments being formed in mainland Europe. Which really beggars the question, why did she just open the doors unilaterally and dictate to everyone else how many refugees thy HAD to take? Did nobody try to suggest a better way?
It isn’t Merkel’s fault that racists exist. Thays a pretty disgusting line that right wingers have been using for a while now.
“We saw the end result of it in Calais and Dunkirk last weekend. It is just horrific where these people are today”
– I’m sure it is; all the more reason that the migrants in Calais should apply for asylum in France; there is not much that the French authorities can do to better their situation until they do.
“They told us of an Afghan who, after spending six months in Calais, just could not take it anymore. He had mentally had enough of it and decided that he was just going to hand himself in and go home. He went home and was dead in two weeks.”
– that’s extremely sad; all the more reason that he should have applied for asylum in France (or any of the other countries that he crossed on the way to Calais) rather than trying to enter the UK illegally.
You realise he has to get to the UK to apply for asylum, right?
Oops.
Asylum should be applied for in the first country where it is safe to do so, not in the country where you would most like to live.
Both the Irish and British govts should accept more refugees, but the migrants at Calais provide a good illustration of people’s argument that “they’re not refugees, they’re migrants”, etc.
Yeah? So they should stay in Turkey? A country run by a wannabe dictator that suffers terrorist bombings relatively frequently? Or Greece? A country financially decimated where people eat out of bins? They should stay in tent cities for years while they wait for their applications to be processed and they can finally live freely in a country with no opportunities. You, of course, know exactly what it’s like to leave your home with just the shirt on your back because of war so you can judge them for behaving like “migrants”.
why don’t they apply for asylum in France, the country they are physically in right now?
“Yeah? So they should stay in Turkey? A country run by a wannabe dictator that suffers terrorist bombings relatively frequently? Or Greece? A country financially decimated where people eat out of bins? ”
– if they were in fear of their lives in either Afghanistan or Syria, Greece or Turkey are infinitely better options. Being an asylum seeker doesn’t allow to pick and choose where you get to live; it doesn’t work like that.
Lol! I can’t believe you actually said yes. I thought you’d athink least try and offer more convoluted reasoning but nope. ‘Well if *I* were fleeing war, I’d stop as soon as I got out of the country so if they’re both doing that, it *must* be because they’re dishonest foreigners looking to scrounge off my tax.’ You’d ate a parody.
*not doing that
*are a parody.
Fupping macs.
Ok – they’re in France, a safe country – why not apply for asylum there?
Maybe they speak English? Maybe they’re uncomfortable with France’s history of questionable laws when it comes to Muslims. Maybe they have family in the UK. Different people have different reasons. You think otherwise. What does that say about you?
so anyone with family in the UK or who doesn’t like some historic laws in another EU country or who speaks English should be allowed to look for asylum in the UK? Would make all the other EU migration laws somewhat redundant. As well as the long term UK position within the EU.
Owen, they’re allowed look for asylum anywhere. They just may not actually get it.
‘Refugees in trying to get as far away from war as possible scandal.’
I mean, they whine about us taking 10,000 but have no issue with the thought of Turkey taking 30 million of them if they stick to their ‘first country you get to’ “principle”.
Why do we rush to take in refugees but leave our own homeless on the street? Maybe it’s more glamourous to own a Syrian or an afghan than a ballymunner.
If only it were possible to do two things at the same time.
Maybe if all our homeless people went to Calais and pretended to be Syrians and Afghans they would get taken in by the Holy Saints in Eire who want to be seen publically to ‘do good’ and given somewhere to live and get a few bob every week – AND it’s unlikely that they would pose a security risk by becoming radicalised and blowing up the place
Those most at risk of being radicalised are 2nd generation Muslims. One of the drivers of radicalisation is, FUNNILY ENOUGH, people thinking all Muslims are terrorists.
So, well done Dolores.
What radicalised the terrorists who made us think they were all terrorists in the first place?
Gosh, can’t think what!
I’m not saying all of them are terrorists – but it only takes a few with suicide belts walking into a public place to cause the damage – and statistically there’ll be a couple at least – that’s all it will take. The apologists in Belgium said that the blokes who blew up the airport were ‘disenfranchised’ – not as disenfranchised as our own homeless though
None of the Paris attackers were refugees, none of the Brussels attackers were refugees. They were all second generation. Statistically, you are just making stuff up because you haven’t bothered to educate yourself beyond the pages of the gutter press. Maybe you should try it before you have a conversation with the grown ups?
Well I mean, let’s think about this for a second.
To have a second generation, first you must have a first generation.
So, why would we import a whole new first generation now? When we’re already dealing with the ramifications of letting in the first generation to this current second generation, who entered Europe on substantially better terms than this current, new first generation? Just to tide us over, invest in our future so we can count on a new generation of discontented radicals when this one grows up and out of it?
Your argument hinges entirely on the idea that it is inevitable that the next generation will be radicalised.
Well it didn’t take much to radicalise the current lads, did it. What are the odds that the next crop, having come into the EU in the face of abject rejection by a large and vocal portion of society, are going to have warmer feelings for European states and people than the ones we have now?
We’re dealing with the ramifications of treating an entire ethnicity as potential terrorists and your answer is to not grant asylum to the innocent people trying to escape already radicalised groups attempting to murder them? Because to me the answer is let them in and treat them with some respect.
“Don’t do A in case there is a tiny chance that B happens. Because A and B and definitely linked, it has nothing to do with this Pandora’s box of racism and crime and poverty and exclusion and a lack of opportunities and ghettos in Paris and poor foreign policy and greed and oil money and sucking up to the wrong people and killing off this lot and arming this lot and all of that stuff that is hard and too nuanced really have a good think about while scratching my balls on the drive home.”
This is the argument of an idiot and one I’m not interested in. If people are really interested in what is going on with these kids, there is an institute at King’s College in London that looks at radicalisation and has done some great research. The Guardian in the UK had been doing really interesting pieces as well, as are other papers surely. It’s out there, don’t be an idiot, go educate yourself.
It is a terrible argument; good thing I didn’t say that. Though A and B most definitely are causally linked; your own initial assertion was that the terrorists in question were second-generation migrants and that their radicalisation was the result of poor efforts at integration.
But I don’t know man, if you’re so romantically attached to this self-loathing “blame whitey, despite the fact that radicalisation would be a cul-de-sac if not for the grassroots efforts of members of the migrant community manipulating the youth by abusing existing Islamic dogma, a process afforded protection by the resistance of the Islamic community as a whole to external policing and a seeming refusal to police it themselves” argument I’ll just leave you to it. It’s no skin off my nose if you want to walk around with blinkers on. Just try not to vote, please.
Termagant – where nuanced understanding goes to die
You seem a bit hung up on ‘generations’
“Hung up on” or you know, read the facts. God, people like you are the worst. Back to the Mail with you, I’m done.
hello all im BESHWAR HASSAN the refugee in Dunkirk i was read all the comments
many thanks for this education about human being you have
just want to say remember when you wake up at the morning enjoy your breakfast and take a shower because you got a house dress nice clothes with nice hair style because you got a job
spend some time with you friend in some where because you got safety life
we had all of these before . no one want to be refugees if we are not under obligation forced by ISIS and brutality of Turkish army
take your time write in google about Kurdish nation in turkey make a research about kurdistan in 1916 and you will get all the answers