Why Syrian refugees now fear deportation from Germany

 Germany is lifting an eight-year-long ban on deportations to Syria, creating a way to send people back to the devastated and dangerous country.

The Syrian girl who fled civil war for a new life in the UK

For the past few years we’ve been following the life of a Syrian refugee, Rouaa, who's now 9 years old.

She was born in the year the Syrian conflict started - a civil war that’s led to the world’s biggest refugee crisis.

Meet the Syrians: The Story of a Refugee Family in the US

We follow one of the last Syrian refugee families to be granted a US visa before Trump's travel ban began in 2017.

It is 2017. The Kalaji family - originally from the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo - seek a new life in the United States with dreams of owning a house and car.

They leave their temporary home in Jordan, saying goodbye to beloved family, and move to Philadelphia, where they must adjust to life in a new land.

Upon their arrival, the Kalajis seem lucky: They are among the last refugees to make it into the US before Donald Trump's travel ban is implemented.

Searching for Sanctuary in Germany

The remarkable story of two Syrian refugees and their journey to safety in Germany.

It's become one of the defining themes of our age - a tidal wave of humanity in search of sanctuary.

Whether refugees from war and repression or migrants escaping poverty, in recent years millions have taken to the road in the hope that safety and a better life lie elsewhere. 

Some manage it, some don't, but almost every journey is also a remarkable narrative; of hardship and loss, risk and endurance, of hurdles faced and sometimes - but not always - overcome.

Searching for Sanctuary in Germany

The remarkable story of two Syrian refugees and their journey to safety in Germany.

It's become one of the defining themes of our age - a tidal wave of humanity in search of sanctuary.

Whether refugees from war and repression or migrants escaping poverty, in recent years millions have taken to the road in the hope that safety and a better life lie elsewhere. 

Some manage it, some don't, but almost every journey is also a remarkable narrative; of hardship and loss, risk and endurance, of hurdles faced and sometimes - but not always - overcome.

Searching for Sanctuary

The remarkable story of two Syrian refugees and their journey to safety in Germany

It's become one of the defining themes of our age - a tidal wave of humanity in search of sanctuary.

Whether refugees from war and repression or migrants escaping poverty, in recent years millions have taken to the road in the hope that safety and a better life lie elsewhere. 

Some manage it, some don't, but almost every journey is also a remarkable narrative; of hardship and loss, risk and endurance, of hurdles faced and sometimes - but not always - overcome.

Lion Cubs of ISIL: Children of the Caliphate (video)

Teenagers and young boys as well as their relatives and guardians give testimonies of life and death under ISIL.

They are called "ashbal" - the lion cubs of the "caliphate".

"We were the 'cleaners' group," says Kasswara*, a 16-year-old boy from Raqqa. "Cleaning means slitting the throats of those who belong to the other side and are hiding."

Kasswara joined ISIL when he was 14 years old. He now lives in Greece after fleeing the group. 

"A guy from my area was decapitated by [ISIL] because of me. People had their hands chopped off because of me," he says. 

“These people couldn’t run a two-car funeral,” said Gov. Jay Inslee (D) at a press conference at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

A emergency meeting in federal court in brooklyn  according to VOX. 

MSNBC IS CONFIRMING:

Lawyers Emerging with hands raised high crowd outside the Court celebrating.

Seems that Stay is NATIONAL. 

www.theverge.com/…

The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay halting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries tonight, following widespread protests at airports around the country.

thehill.com/…

The court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of two Iraqi men who were detained at JFK airport Saturday following Trump's ban. Both men, Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshaw have been granted entry to the United States since. 

I am a Syrian Child (video)

The impact of the Syrian civil war seen through the eyes of refugee children at risk of becoming a lost generation.pact of the Syrian civil war seen through the eyes of refugee children at risk of becoming a lost generation.
In March 2011, protests broke out in Syria which have led to arguably the worst refugee crisis since World War Two. While millions of the Syrians affected by the uprising remain internally displaced, the majority have fled the country, seeking refuge in neighbouring Jordan and Lebanon.

According to official figures from UNICEF, children currently account for just over half of the total number of refugees. These children are now at the real risk of becoming a 'lost generation'

"If we don't provide them with education, they're lost. This is the generation that's going to re-build their country in a few years. They are the future. The children feel that they can't dream, that they can't hope. They are the future generation who are supposed to re-build. The children feel their horizons and hopes are limited," says Soha Bsat El Boustany, UNICEF, Lebanon.

Syria: The Reckoning Episode 1

A history of modern Syria offering an intriguing and incisive perspective on the ongoing war in the country.


Since its independence from France in 1946, Syria has been rocked by periods of political instability.

As the colonial hold of the great powers began to fade and the region witnessed a wave of Arab nationalism, Syria shifted through a succession of military coups.

But in 1970, Hafez al-Assad, an ambitious minister of defence, seized control. Rising from a humble background in western Syria, he was to rule the country for 30 years.

His was an autocratic one-party state in which any dissent was ruthlessly suppressed. Following the death of Hafez in 2000, father was succeeded by son - Bashar al-Assad took the reigns and a dynasty was born.

Japan Grants Refugee Status To 27 People Up From Last Years 11

Japan isn't exactly a welcoming country where refugees are concerd.  It's criteria for granting refugee status excludes things like war, religious discrimination and ethnic mistreatment.  For example refugees from Syria's civil war are classified as economically displaced rather than fleeing an active war zone.  Even though countries in Europe and the United States classify them as armed conflict refugees allowing them to legally reside within their borders.  

Further the government lives in fear of upsetting the homogeneous status quo which is 98% coming from the Yamato ethnic group the original inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago with the next largest ethnic group being Chinese.      

The justice ministry said it received a record 7,586 refugee applications in 2015, meaning more than 99% of requests were rejected.
Other accepted applicants included six from Afghanistan, three Ethiopians and three Sri Lankans.
The ministry said number of refugees accepted last year was a jump from 11 in 2014 and six in 2013.
Human rights activists, lawyers and migrant communities in Japan have complained for years about harsh treatment by immigration officials and about conditions at detention centers.The U.N. refugee agency says Japan is home to 2,419 refugees, compared to its Group of Seven ally the United States with 267,222 and Turkey, which has 1.8 million refugees.

Charlie Hebdo Crosses The Line Into Ethnic Racism and Sterotyping

Following the afwal attacks on Charlie Hebdo which left 12 staff members dead the world stood by the magazine.  When Charlie Hebdo reappeared with its first issue following those terrible events millions of magazines were sold. Bought in support of the right to freely express one's self  through wit and satire.  This week however Charlie Hebdo has crossed a line, one which should been left alone.  A cartoon published this week asks the question: What would Alan Kurdi have become once he'd reached adulthood?  The answer; An ass groper in Germany.  Alan Kurdi is the Syrian refugee boy who was found drowned on a beach in Turkey. A picture of his lifeless body being carried by a policeman appeared in newspapers around the world and sparking outrage at how these people who were fleeing a civil war were being treated by European Union nations.

Charlie Hebdo decided that a dead child should be depicted as a man who sexually assaulted women  in Germany.  How sick is that? How disrespectful to Alan Kurdi and his family.  Charlie Hebdo is like Donald Trump demonizing refugees simply because they aren't like them.
An insert at the top the cartoon contains the famous image of the three-year-old Syrian boy laying face down dead in the sand. The question at the top of the drawing “What would little Aylan have grown up to be?” is answered at the bottom by “Ass groper in Germany”.
The implication that all refugees grow up to be gropers has outraged many, but some people have defended the cartoon and interpreted it as a satire on tabloid perceptions of refugees.
Kurdi’s death on a beach in Turkey last year galvanised public opinion, and the widespread sympathy for the humanitarian crisis put pressure on European governments.

   

U.S. Senator and Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio Is One Transparent Fool

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida today condemned the Chinese government over the prosecution of Pu Zhiqiang a well respected human rights lawyer in China.  Anyone with an ounce of humanity would rightly criticize the Communist Party over their treatment of those who advocate for or defend the rights of others. Except that Senator Rubio in making these statements isn't too concerned with the rights of the accused. He's trying to prove he has a firm grasp of foreign policy.

“Even by China’s standards, the spectacle both inside and outside the court surrounding the trial of Pu Zhiqiang … was a mockery of justice and rule of law,” Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said.
    
Except that the good senator had a completely different assessment of the current Syrian refugee crisis and what should be done to help them.

“It’s not that we don’t want to,” Rubio said in an interview with ABC. “It’s that we can’t.”

“You can have a thousand people come in and 999 of them are just poor people fleeing oppression and violence,” Rubio said. “But one of them is an Isis fighter – if that’s the case, you have a problem.

“There’s no way to vet that out. There’s no background check system in the world that allows us to find that out because who do you call in Syria to background check them?”

Senator Rubio fails to mention is that it takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months before anyone is granted refugee status.  The entire process takes place outside of the U.S.

What's Donald Trump Campaigning For? Dictator In Chief

When Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign it wasn't with a patriotic flourish or story about how America helped him to fulfill his dreams of success.  Instead he offered a highly racist and bombastic screed against undocumented Mexicans living in the U.S. accusing them of being drug smugglers, murderers, rapists and being unintelligent.  Continuing down that same line of reasoning and without any empirical evidence to backup his stated that the Mexican government was pushing its recently released criminals to immigrate to America.

This type of rhetoric plays well within the Republican party's activist base as shown by his popularity in the polling following his announcement.

On the CBS News program Sixty Minutes he told presenter Scott Pelley that he would round up the 11 million undocumented Mexicans currently in America and deport them. According to him it would all be "very humain."  Those comments and what they imply reminds one of Stalin's forced internal exile programs when he was Premier of the Soviet Union. 

What has really brought forth his authoritarian ambitions is the issue of Syrian refugees following the attacks in Paris.  His rhetoric on the refugee issue and on Muslims in general have reached a point where you are reminded of Hitler's rise to power in 1930's Germany. Where he demonized those he saw as beneath the German people.

Here are some examples:

He would monitor mosques as believes that's where and how Muslims become radicalized.  Even though there is no clear evidence of this. What's next? Closing them all down because he, Donald Trump is a religious bigot.

Creating a database on Muslims. Gee if that doesn't sound like something straight out the 1930's dictators guide book what does?

Wouldn't rule out warrantless searches.  Which is a complete violation the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Thinks special ID cards for Muslims would be great.  What's next sewing a green M on to their clothing?


Would bring back waterboarding.  According to the United Nations waterboarding is torture. Just ask those the United States prosecuted following World War II.


This type of political rhetoric helps to inflame those prone to bigotry, hatred and learned biases  against those considered to be others.  What Donald Trump is doing is reminiscent of those who have sought dictatorial powers. By demonizing a particular minority or minorities thus making them your enemy justifying the need to imprison them or for their forced removable from the lands where they live because you, the demagogue as created a nonexistent enemy.  

The Racist Governor Of Indiana Doesn't Like Syrian Refugees

Mike Pence the Republican governor of the U.S. state of Indiana using all his powers of hate and racism forced a Syrian family of 3 who'd been waiting 3 years to resettle in the U.S. to change their plans after his state's division of Family Resources sent a letter to   Exodus Refugee Immigration which is working to help the family resettle was told the state would offer no assistance to the family in question.   Like 28 other Republican and 1 Democratic governor they've decided that racism, hatred and fear trump humanitarian assistance to those feeling the terror of not only ISIS but of President Bashar Assad's government.

These Republican politicians are fueling the hatred, racism and physical attacks on those they view as terrorist simply for being Muslims.   

 A family of Syrian refugees destined for resettlement in Indiana was denied entry to the state and instead began a new life in Connecticut on Wednesday.
The family of three – a mother, father and their five-year-old son – had been waiting three years to move to Indiana before their placement was changed, a consequence of the growing tensions in the wake of the Paris attacks that Syrian refugees could pose a threat to national security.The governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, is one of at least 30 governors who have said they do not want to resettle Syrian refugees in their state even though they do not have the authority to refuse to do so.
Rather than starting a new life in Indianapolis, the family will settle in New Haven, Connecticut.

The Red States Are Afraid Of The Monster Under Their Beds

Bravo, Tucker FitzGerald. Bravo.