Save the kids, pleads activist
‘PROTECT CHILDREN AND ACCEPT REFUGEES’ Nobel Peace Laureate says US immigrants ‘are no danger to anyone’.
Nobel Peace Laureate and child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi appealed to President Donald Trump to protect the children of undocumented migrants living in the US and keep the door open to refugees fleeing wars.
Last week Trump issued an executive order suspending refugee admissions for 120 days, barring Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposing a 90-day suspension on citizens from seven majority-Muslim nations.
He has also threatened to deport the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants living in the US.
“I hope and wish and appeal to him that children of so-called illegal immigrants living in the US should be safe in any situation,” Satyarthi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Children are no danger for anyone anywhere in the world, and their protection will help in making the world better.
“The success story of America has been built by the people who reached there from all over the world,” he said on the sidelines of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Bogota. “I hope that this history will be kept in mind.”
Satyarthi, an Indian activist awarded the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, said children who have fled war are at heightened risk of forced labour, sexual exploitation and trafficking.
He cited the example of children of families from Syria who have fled the country’s nearly six-year-old war to seek refuge in neighbouring Turkey.
There are nearly three million Syrian refugees in Turkey.
“I have personally met a number of them and have found that they were working on the streets ... working as slaves,” Satyarthi said. “Somebody has paid some money and taken them to work as child labourers or as child bonded labourers.” –