Peter Bouckaert talking:
it’s both morally reprehensible and factually wrong to equate these people with terrorists. They’re actually fleeing from the terrorists, and they’ve faced horrors of war in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan. Many of them are coming with their families, trying to bring them to safety and a better future in Europe. And they should be welcomed. They will contribute to our society, and they have a right to asylum. They should not be having to risk their lives and face all of this humiliation on this journey just to get what is legally their right.
many of them have come directly from Syria. They’ve tried to stay in Syria for as long as possible. It’s not like this was their first choice. They really love their country. They’ve faced bombing from the West and from Russia, as well, especially by the Assad regime. And many of them have lost family members to those bombings. I’ve also met a lot of young men and women who have lost their legs and other limbs to these bombing raids and who have been carried this whole journey to safety in Europe.
there is a struggle to defeat ISIS, but that is not just a military struggle. It’s a struggle for the hearts and minds of the people of the Middle East. And that struggle for the hearts and minds is actually the most important component of what we have to accomplish. And by shutting the door on the refugees fleeing from ISIS and from the horrors of the war in Syria, we’re doing no favor in terms of winning the hearts and minds of these people.
The reality is that any Syrian refugee coming to the United States already goes through four different levels of security review by different U.S. agencies, so the danger of anybody coming in under the guise of refugee status and being actually a terrorist is absolutely minuscule. We admit 70,000 people already every year, many of them from Iraq and Somalia, and there has not been a single incident of a person turning out to be a terrorist.
I think one of the reasons why these two crises—the Paris attack and the refugee crisis—have become conflated is because Europe has not felt in charge of this crisis, because they have not had clear and coherent policies towards these refugees. It has been chaos in Europe. And it’s really important, instead of shutting the door on these people, that we come up with coherent policies which allow people to claim asylum in a way which is safe and legal and protects their rights.
the reality is that still on the beaches of Europe, two Alan Kurdis are still drowning every day. And many of the humanitarian needs of these desperate people are being met by volunteers and not by EU institutions, because there are no EU policies towards these people. The EU cannot agree to a common policy on how to accommodate these people, and that’s why we have chaos. It’s really important that Europe and the world takes charge of this crisis, or otherwise the crisis will take charge of Europe.
a lot of these men are fleeing because they do not want to fight for Assad. They do not want to be part of the killing machine. And a lot of Afghans are fleeing from Iran, because they do not want to be forced by Iran to go fight for Assad in Syria. I think that’s a noble reason to flee, to not want to be a killer. But it is important, on the other hand, that these people are accommodated, that their children can be educated. There are 400,000 children, Syrian children, out of school in Turkey alone. If we do not provide them with an education, there is no future for Syria, because nobody will be able to run the country in the future.
we are faced with a generational crisis in the Middle East. These conflicts really are a challenge to our generation. And we need a global response. We all need to do our part, including the U.S. and Canada and Australia, to accommodate these refugees, to provide them with safe refuge, to help educate their children, and ultimately to help resolve the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. it’s absolutely true that Afghanistan was invaded by the United States in 2001 and Iraq was invaded in 2003. Many mistakes were made in terms of the policies adopted. And so we do also have a moral responsibility towards these people fleeing the consequences of our actions, to some degree.
ISIS hate these refugees more than anybody in Europe, because these refugees are fleeing from their self-declared caliphate. They would love it if we shut the door on these refugees. It’s pure propaganda value for ISIS if we do so.
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Peter Bouckaert
Human Rights Watch’s emergencies director. He has spent the last few months in the Balkans and Greece speaking to refugees coming mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
— source democracynow.org