EU Immigration Crisis Megathread

[The Brain]

The major parties in Sweden are now discussing the volume of immigrants. Even thinking about this was racism and fascism just a few months ago. I don't understand anymore!

Will Sweden start selling ball bearings to themselves now?

I can only hope.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The major parties in Sweden are now discussing the volume of immigrants. Even thinking about this was racism and fascism just a few months ago. I don't understand anymore!

We are living in the post-rational era 

[Tonitrus]

The major parties in Sweden are now discussing the volume of immigrants. Even thinking about this was racism and fascism just a few months ago. I don't understand anymore!

Will Sweden start selling ball bearings to themselves now?

I can only hope.

Wait, I thought Sweden just sold the iron ore?

[Valmy]

With the Hungarians fencing closing their border with Croatia, Slovenia is already ordering its army to its border with Croatia to be able to handle the influx. There was even use of teargas on the border yesterday, as Croatia and Slovenia are trying to keep the passage of refugees in a controlled and limited manner and said refugees get wary of waiting.

I guess it is worth noting that Hungary was putting up with this pressure longer than either Slovenia or Croatia without resorting to violence and army-sending, yet the two Balkan countries aren't receiving any bad press for it. I guess it comes down to the arrogant style of the Orban govenrment.

People are getting bored with the refugee crisis on Facebook and Twitter.

[Josquius]

So much for my long delayed Balkans trip I guess

[Liep]

So much for my long delayed Balkans trip I guess

I'm still planning on going for my Balkan cycling tour this spring. My current Ljubljana - Zagreb - Beograd route may be somewhat altered though.

[mongers]

So much for my long delayed Balkans trip I guess

I'm still planning on going for my Balkan cycling tour this spring. My current Ljubljana - Zagreb - Beograd route may be somewhat altered though.

[Syt]

Austria's Interior Minister has said that we must build Fortress Europe (Festung Europa). Didn't work out well when last we tried.

[Duque de Bragança]

Austria's Interior Minister has said that we must build Fortress Europe (Festung Europa). Didn't work out well when last we tried.

So the US armed forces and the Red Army, inter alii, were just peaceful refugees looking for asylum into the Third Reich (Fourth Reich now?!)? 


Meanwhile

Women Refugees Fleeing Through Europe Are Told Rape Is Not A Real Issue
Refugees are facing sexual assault as they traverse central and western Europe — but aid agencies claim this "is definitely not the problem." Jina Moore reports from Germany, Serbia, and Croatia.

Jina Moore
BuzzFeed News World Correspondent
posted on Oct. 21, 2015, at 9:58 p.m.
TweetTumblr
HEIDELBERG, Germany; BELGRADE, Serbia; and TOVARNIK, Croatia — Layan's thick, black hair is a waterfall. It zigzags down her back in frizzy waves. In normal life, in the better days back in Damascus, it was all smoothed out, closer to curls, but things haven't been normal for a while, and right now, in a Heidelberg refugee camp, her hair is the least of her problems.
It's her glasses that are driving her crazy. They snapped on both sides somewhere between Macedonia and Germany. She's wrapped them with white tape so thick it looks like gauze, but inevitably, they fall apart on her face while she's talking. Layan can't see much without them — people and places become shapes and shadows — but she just presses them back together and hopes for the best. It's the only way.
Layan is practical, focused, and no-nonsense. She's a fighter, which is not a thing you should have to be at 15.
These are traits that came in handy when a man tried to snatch Layan at a public restroom in Macedonia.
It was evening, around 8 p.m., and dark. Layan was waiting for the bathroom, in a mixed line, men and women all waiting for their turn. There was a bar nearby, and some of the men around were drunk. She felt someone grab her, just above her wrist, and then try to wrap a hand around her mouth. She was already screaming — shrieking her brother's name, pushing out any sound she could. Her screaming caught the man off guard, and her brother came running. The assailant — a man she thinks was a Macedonian — ran away.
She felt someone grab her ... and then try to wrap a hand around her mouth.
Layan and her mother think the man wanted to rape her, and it turned the brave teenager timid. "After that, I was always with my brother," she said.
Layan was lucky, but there are probably hundreds of moments like this on the dangerous journey that nearly half a million people have already made this year from Turkey to western Europe. It's a journey that seems safer than the alternative: Most are escaping Syria's nearly five-year civil war, which has killed an estimated 250,000 people and forced another 4 million to flee. Others are fleeing fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There's no official count of how many women are making this journey, and there's hardly any official acknowledgment of stories like Layan's, or those of other women who described to BuzzFeed News a danger that's so far been invisible on this journey — those moments where a man senses opportunity, or feels his circumstantial power, and tries to coerce or force sex, or otherwise uses violence on women.
In fact, the major authorities responding to the crisis will say that stories like these do not exist.
Over two weeks, BuzzFeed News interviewed more than a dozen officials in the major organizations responding to the refugee crisis, including the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and national offices of the Red Cross, in capitals and at border points spanning the common route from Greece to Germany. These officials said they had never heard of a case of sexual or gender-based violence along that route.
"I don't see how there's a gender issue here, honestly," said Melita Šunjić, the senior public information office for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) Serbia office. "I'm fully aware of what you're talking about, but these issues happen when you register women in refugee camps, when certain people get privileges and aid and others don't, things like that. There's not even time for that ... At the moment, this [sexual assault or exploitation] is definitely not the problem."
Except for when it is.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/women-refugees-fleeing-through-europe-are-told-rape-is-not-a#.rj0BDJNer

[Tamas]

Well what did you expect? If they acknowledge its existence they have to act on it, which is impossible, so to avoid failing at their job, they deny the problem even exists.

[The Larch]

Austria's Interior Minister has said that we must build Fortress Europe (Festung Europa). Didn't work out well when last we tried.

Fortress Europe is a term that has been used a lot in the last few years regarding all the measures that the EU has taken to prevent illegal inmigrants from getting there.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Austria's Interior Minister has said that we must build Fortress Europe (Festung Europa). Didn't work out well when last we tried.

Fortress Europe is a term that has been used a lot in the last few years regarding all the measures that the EU has taken to prevent illegal inmigrants from getting there.

I still have to see that fortress in action though. Currently, and for years, it is/has been "Sieve Europa"

[Tamas]

Austria's Interior Minister has said that we must build Fortress Europe (Festung Europa). Didn't work out well when last we tried.

Fortress Europe is a term that has been used a lot in the last few years regarding all the measures that the EU has taken to prevent illegal inmigrants from getting there.

I still have to see that fortress in action though. Currently, and for years, it is/has been "Sieve Europa"

As always, it is a matter of who is more desperate and determined.

Some refugees broke out of camps recently both in Slovenia and Austria, supposedly, and now marching on railroad tracks and roads. The article said "authorities are incapable to handle it"

No, they are not incapable, they are unwilling to handle it. Which may be the moral choice, but still that's all this is down to: the refugees/migrants are desperate enough that they are not accepting no for an answer. Only violently locking them up and deporting them will stop that.
Which isn't an easy decision - brutal police violence against civilians, whole families.

But Europe will either have to do that, or take them all in, because right now it seems that cooperation with local and EU laws will put the refugees into impossible situations and prevent them from reaching their goal, while disobeying those laws and refusing to cooperate with authorities gets them what they want/need. So they would be pretty stupid to play by our rules.

[Monoriu]

It is useless to prevent people from coming.  Either accept them or send them back on arrival. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

No, they are not incapable, they are unwilling to handle it.

basically the authorities abdicating the power of the state. Authorities who do that don't remain authorities for long. And states that don't maintain control over their borders get wiped of the map.