Conflict victims in many ‘far away’ countries yet to reach our shores
HELL is a place on earth. Just ask the peope living in Raqqa where US backed bombing is taking place, or Yazidi refugees from Northern Iraq who have witnessed rape, torture and murder, as we sip our tea and whine over first world woes.
Former British prime Minister Neville Chamberlain once said in a speech in 1938 at a time when he was negotiating a deal with Adolf Hitler, ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far away country between people of whom we know nothing.’
In September 2015, Taoiseach Enda Kenny committed to housing more than 4,000 refugees from ‘far away’ war torn Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is carrying out a Holocaust of his own.
In an interview last week al-Assad laughed and said he sleeps fine when he was asked about all the children killed every day in Syria.
Mr Assad also said the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians is ‘the fault of terrorists’ and said ‘we are talking about war, not charity’.
To date no refugees have been given sanctuary or refuge in many counties along the east coast including Wexford and Wicklow, and yet Mr Kenny is insisting Ireland will meet its targets for resettling refugees before the end of the year.
To date this year Ireland has accepted 69 refugees, having agreed to relocate 353.
In total 486 refugees who have fled Syrian conflict have found refuge in Ireland.
‘There has been good progress in the resettlement of refugees from outside the Union to date,’ he says, adding that Ireland will also meet its targets for Lebanon.
In September 2015 following the biggest migrant crisis since World War II, Mr Kenny committed to integrating 4,000 refugees. Reunification of families was to be a priority. In late October he spoke in more sober tones about how this will be a real challenge.
A plan was concocted to open a series of reception and accommodation centres around the country but to date very few centres have been opened while the conflict rages in Syria, leading to thousands of people fleeing into Europe.
In 2014 a German state, Baden-Wurttemberg, undertook a unique rescue prpgramme called the Special Quota Project, whereby 1,100 Yazidi women and children who escaped Isis were flown to the town and accommodated in 23 secret shlters. They too were fleeing unimaginable terror.
The German state committed huge resources to accommodating refugees and welcomed more than one million in 2015 alone. Meanwhile Ireland has turned a blind eye in the hope that someone else will deal with the ‘problem’.
This week the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces coalition launched a long-awaited offensive to drive Islamic State from its self-proclaimed capital at Raqqa in Syria thereby destroying its caliphate and lessening its appeal to new recruits. This operation is meant to open a second front against Islamic State, also known as Isis, doubling the challenge mounted by the Iraqi army’s advance on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
‘The major battle to liberate Raqqa and its surroundings has begun,’ proclaimed Jihad Shaikh Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Kurdish-Arab alliance as forces began their two-stage offensive, dubbed “The Wrath of the Euphrates’, from locations 50km north of Raqqa. What peace in the land of a thousand welcomes for the victims and refugees?