German Lawmaker: At the Root of Refugee Crisis are Wars Led by the United States in the Middle East

[polly7]

Published on Sep 9, 2015

The United Nations is now estimating at least 850,000 people are expected to cross the Mediterranean this year and next, seeking refuge in Europe to escape violence and unrest in Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, sub-Saharan Africa and other regions. Already 366,000 people have arrived in Europe this year. Earlier today, the president of the European Commission called on European Union member states to accept a total of 160,000 asylum seekers from war-torn countries. We speak to Annette Groth, member of the German Parliament and spokeswoman for human rights for the Left Party. She just returned last week from a trip to Hungary, where she saw thousands of migrants stranded at the Budapest train station. "What is the root for this massive migration?" Groth asks. "It is war, it is terror, and it is the former U.S. government who is accountable for it."

Speaking to Democracy Now from Stuttgart, Germany, Groth outlines the ways in which Western governments are to blame for the crisis.

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Well, today we’ll spend much of the hour discussing the migrant crisis with policymakers, volunteers and organizers. We’re going first to Stuttgart, Germany, where we’re joined by Democracy Now! video stream by Annette Groth. She is a member of the German Parliament, spokesperson for human rights for the Left Party. Annette just returned last week from a trip to Hungary, where she saw thousands of migrants stranded at the Budapest train station.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about what you saw and what, Annette Groth, you think needs to happen?

ANNETTE GROTH: Well, I saw really horrible pictures—I mean, families, many, many families, lying there on the ground, babies on the ground, hardly any water, hardly no toilets, no sanitation, no medical service. It was really appalling. And I’m glad that some of the people I met there made it to Germany. I am in contact with several of them. And I hope that every German, you know, will warmly welcome them, because they deserve it. They have such a horror story behind them. And so, I only appeal to every person in the world: Please welcome refugees.

The thing is, I listen carefully to the news. I mean, what is the root for this massive migration? It is war, it is terror, and it is the former U.S. government who is accountable for it, and the NATO state governments. I’m very sorry to say so, but it is the truth. It was Bush who invaded Iraq. It was Bush—then Libya, destroying Libya, then Syria. Now Saudi Arabia, with the help of German weapons, is invading Yemen. This is the next country, you know, where we will receive refugees. The whole area of the Middle East is a zone by war and terror, so therefore people are leaving their countries.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/9/german_lawmaker_at_the_root_of

I don't discount Canada and many other nations' participation in all of this. We have a moral responsibility to take many, many of these people in. It's just horrific.

World Refugees

Blowback on a NATO beach

By Pepe Escobar
RT.com
Monday, Sep 7, 2015


A man holds a poster with a drawing depicting drowned Syrian toddlers during a demonstration for refugee rights in Istanbul, Turkey, September 3, 2015. © Osman Orsal

We’ve had it coming. And when it came, virtually the whole planet reacted with stunned silence. Sometimes it takes just a photograph to put a noxiously complex version of hell in perspective.

So to put hell in perspective we must retrace some steps of the arc:

Aylan was also one refugee among millions fleeing “liberation” bombing and the convoluted ramifications/unintended consequences of GWOT – the global war on terror – in the “arc of instability”, from Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Mali.

These refugees are poor but they are also middle-class, like Aylan’s family. Thousands of them die in the Mediterranean, the Mare Nostrum of Roman times now converted into Cemetery Nostrum; 3,500 dead in 2014, over 2,000 since early 2015.

UNHCR detailed fifteen ongoing wars since 2010; eight in Africa (including Libya, Mali, northern Nigeria and South Sudan); three in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq and Yemen); one in Europe (Ukraine – with refugees absorbed by Russia); and three in Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar and Pakistan).

The absolute majority of refugees are from Syria. By early 2015, UNHCR was already cataloguing no less than an astounding 11.7 million displaced Syrians – from an initial population of 23 million. The situation that European public opinion now seems to be awakening to is so dramatic that UNHCR automatically recognizes as a “refugee” every single person fleeing Syria.

The “West” also seems to have forgotten, but still 4.1 million refugees are Iraqis; 1.5 million of them are internally displaced.

Full article: http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_71513.shtml


The Migrant Crisis: Arms That Welcome, Arms That Kill

Posted on Sep 9, 2015

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan


Syrian refugees request help from Germany at the Keleti Palyudvar train station in Budapest, Hungary, on Friday. (Spectral-Design / Shutterstock)

The flood of people fleeing war and misery is swelling daily, reaching the shores and borders of Europe in a desperate bid for safety. They come from Syria, where a brutal civil war during the past half-decade has killed well over 200,000, and caused the displacement of 12 million people, both inside and outside the country’s borders—half of Syria’s population.

Other migrants come from sub-Saharan Africa, fleeing poverty and conflict. Like many Syrians, these people make their way to Libya, a country now in a state of near anarchy, to venture across the Mediterranean Sea in dangerous, overcrowded boats. Thousands have drowned. Ironically, many of these migrants are running toward the very countries that sold the weapons that are fueling the warfare they are fleeing.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, speaking of the migrant crisis, said this week at the State of the European Union speech in Strasbourg, France: “I’m not talking about 40,000. I’m not talking about 120,000. It’s 160,000. That’s the number Europeans have to take in charge and have to take in their arms.” Junker, of course, meant by “arms” a protective embrace. But another European with firsthand knowledge of the plight of the refugees takes the word in its other sense:

“It is our arms which are also killing and destroying these countries,” Annette Groth told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. She is a member of the German Parliament and spokeswoman for human rights for Germany’s Left Party. She just returned from a trip to Hungary, where she witnessed thousands of migrants stranded at the Budapest train station. “Germany is the third-biggest weapons exporter, and we have very good relations with, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, despite massive protest,” she said. “Our government is still delivering arms to Saudi Arabia, [which] is also supporting ISIS, the jihadists”

Full article: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_migrant_crisis_arms_that_welcome_arms_that_kill_20150909

[Warpy]

1. Partly, but the Syrian crisis is fueled by Russian support

of Assad and his father before him.

The whole region is now reaping the rewards sown by Saudi radicals within the royal family, funding Wahab madrassas throughout the region for decades, exporting their extremist, mediaeval form of Islam to formerly secular nations.

Also, don't forget the national boundaries drawn without regard to family, tribe, sect, or other divisions within the area by ignorant European colonialists.

Yeah, our hands are bloody, but we had a lot of help getting them that way.

[FlatBaroque]

2. Those crazy Russians

are starting to become very annoying. It seems that last few countries that America chooses to destabilize, there stand the Russians! Have they earned the right to install puppets in their sphere of influence? Hell no. That's our right.

[Warpy]

3. Nice straw man

You made him, you play with him.

[polly7]

4. THIS would be an actual good action for NATO.

These refugees are begging for 'humanitarian intervention'. Get shiploads of them out and bring them to the prosperous nations that have made life for them there intolerable.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

5. Most of it is from the lack of support for the Arab Spring....

The young people who rose up to overthrow these long term dictators didn't do it to install a theocracy or a new dictator. They did it to elect a leader who would bring the Middle East into the 21st Century. Not the 12th. Egypt didn't need to go through years of military, then theocratic, then military rule. Syria didn't need to bomb itself just because it's leader didn't want to step aside. All of these outcomes could have been handled better if the United Nations had the willingness of it's members to uphold it's charter.

Then again, maybe I missed the German Peacekeepers in Libya stopping the mob from dragging Gaddafi out of a ditch to be beaten stabbed and repeatedly shot.