Welcome the Refugees

The bombs keep falling and the barrels fall from the sky and burst with a massive boom and searing, burning flames consume the men, women and children.  The chlorine chemical poison spreads among the ruins of Allepo.

 

The people are dead, others are suffering in agony, the children are screaming. The White Helmet Rescuers rush to dig out the bodies of the dead and the wounded. The paramedics rush to wash them down, give them oxygen masks to breath, if they have any. Others half-buried in the collapsed ruins of their houses, far from help, choke to death, scarred or maimed.

 

They are starved, surrounded, killed one by one by the Assad snipers. The UN relief convoy of desperately needed food is bombed and burnt to ashes, seven more died. They flee the horror of violent death and hunger as the mayhem rained down on them. They are the Syrian refugees of war, and they flee the violence and indescribable cruelty. Who will give them welcome?  

 

In other parts of Syria, the towns and villages are reduced to ruins as Isis moves closer to take over the villages and towns and impose their cruel regime of torture. Soon the chopping off of hands, arms and heads, the summary execution will begin. The rape and abuse of children, boys and girls, men and women follows. The sex slavery of thousands of people of this Isis regime is well known and the people flee. They are the refugees begging for help, asking for a place of refuge and safety, non-violence and peace.

 

They drive anything to escape, when all vehicles are gone, they leave everything they owned, they run and exhausted they walk through deserts, over mountains and hills in a desperate effort to escape the vicious retaliation to come. 

 

They, once respectable, educated professional people are now the desperate refugees. They are the victims of the curse of Isis. They are the victims of Assad, of rebels, of jihadists, of soldiers of every nationality, color and creed and victims of apathy and indifference, selfishness and xenophobia.

 

They are the victims of rival nations fighting for influence and power. Can the nations so disunited meeting in New York pretending to be United Nations solve the greatest displacement of people since World War II?

 

There are 65 million people displaced in the world today. Eleven million people in Syria have been killed or forced to flee and where have they fled to and found welcome? Believe it or not, the truth is that the Middle-Eastern countries have sheltered most refugees. There are 4.7 million refugees in the countries neighboring Syria. Turkey has taken in almost 2.7 million. The tiny nation of Lebanon has welcomed more than one million. Europe has taken in 1.3 million and they call it a crisis and the refugees, according to the extremist right, must be stopped and deported. No welcome there.  

 

The children have suffered the most. Eleven thousand children lose their homes, schools and playgrounds every day. Half of all refugees are children under 18. They face the blasts and bullets, rockets and mortars and all consuming fires. They suffer burns all over their bodies from the napalm-like brimstone that is rained upon them from the gasoline-fueled barrel bombs. The black-hearted regime has unleashed a violence that is a horrific war crime. It is a regime of unfettered power and oppression that has, with its allies, poured out hatred and the fury of all-out war, suffering and death on thousands of children.

 

Many have fled to the European countries and found only a little welcome but more and more rejection and exclusion. The extremists on the political right are there to block and deny them help and relief, rest and peace.

 

The caring, welcoming and valiant people who make up the thousands of volunteers who have welcomed and reached out to help the refugees are the voice of justice and hope. But they are not winning the political ground. The far right groups are growing in political clout and are stirring up hatred against the refugees and asylum seekers. Some more extreme are burning down their shelters.

 

Is there really a refugee crisis in Europe? In fact, 86 percent of the world's refugees are being sheltered in low and middle income countries. In all of Europe only 1.8 million refugees made it across the borders. Most were accepted in Germany but the far right wants them excluded.

 

The numbers seeking asylum as per population tell the story. In every 100,000 Hungarians, only 1,800 refugees claimed asylum in 2015. Sweden followed close behind with 1,667 asylum applications per 100,000 Swedes.

 

The figure for Germany was 587 per 100,000 population and for the UK it was 60 applications only. They have a tightly closed door. The EU average was 260 asylum seekers in every 100,000  of the population. The population of Europe is 743.1 million people. The number of refugees seeking asylum are but a few drops in the ocean.

 

In the United States, 10,000 refugees have been admitted and President Obama plans to admit another 10,000 refugees. Canada has accepted 30,000 and will take in more. 

 

It is the rich materialistic secular Europe that is growing more racist. It is a small but growing part of society living more in the lowest selfish strata of human existence. They cannot look and see the other and have dialogue and reach out and share their bounty with the needy refugees.  Unlike those in Europe with a welcome and that we need more of. 

  

The most immediate solution is to make peace in the Middle East and end the war. In the meantime, the refugees need  a home and have a right to a temporary place to stay and find peace and a welcome.  

Age of Disbelief

 

It is truly an age of disbelief. Respect for the values of human life has plunged. People of Christian faith who declare belief in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth that upholds  the dignity and rights of the human person, stands with the poor and the excluded, shares with the refugees and the homeless, is at an all time low.

 

Faith in serving one's suffering neighbor as a Good Samaritan, binding up the wounds of the stranger, reaching out to feed the hungry, working for peace and justice is lost in a world of materialism where the ideology is  "greed is good." Our prosperous world of money and power, wealth and possessions has created a generation of people that appears to be more interested in selfish satisfaction and glorification.

 

Much of the younger generation is absorbed with themselves, cut off in isolation by technology and gadgets and games from loving, serving human interaction. This is a lonely isolated generation. The selfie world is here with the internet of things.

 

They seem to retreat into silence and inaction rather than take an open stand for the victims of human rights, child abuse and exploitation. Few march for peace and against racism and war. Where indeed are the cries of those who believe in the love of neighbor and the service to the oppressed and the exploited poor? They are drowned out by the noisy blare of mindless revelry and the drug- dependent pleasure seeking people.

 

There are brave and courageous Christians sacrificing themselves but they are mostly unsupported and are voices crying in the wilderness. Pope Francis strives to revive the faith of Jesus, which is lived out through commitment for the oppressed and a true option to live and work for social and gospel justice and truth. We are in challenging times for our beliefs and values and facing great evils.

 

In Syria, Assad continues to drop horrendous barrel bombs from helicopters on civilians burning them  and consigning them to a  horrible painful death. An opposition rebel group supported by the coalition of western nations fighting Desh or Isis beheaded a 12-year old boy.

 

Europe has suicidal terrorists filled with extremist ideology, anger and hatred and feelings of exclusion drive tucks into crowds of people and attack civilians without mercy.

 

In the Philippines, the so-called war on illegal drugs is chalking up  ten killings of  drug dependents and suspected pushers a day for the past several weeks and there is no end in sight.  They are mostly poor slum-dwellers.

 

From the carnage of the Middle East, the millions of homeless and hungry displaced people are shunned by most of Europe. They flee the insane ruthless ISIS who kidnap and murder. The helpless families have nowhere to hide but tell their children to run away in the hope of survival in a friendly country. But they are blocked by the barbed-wire fences or abducted by abusers and traffickers and turned into sex slaves as a recent report has documented and revealed.

 

The United Kingdom has voted itself out of the unity of Europe, a unity that brought peace and economic progress and development. The European Union is a system of limited democratic shared governance that seeks to share the wealth of the richer to the poorer nations of the union. A slim majority voted to leave but still want the benefits of the common market but not the obligations. They voted to close the doors against the refugees and those fleeing torture, hunger and violence.

 

And now comes the figures and facts recently revealed that shows an embarrassing truth. The wealthiest countries in the world such as the US, China, Japan, Germany, France and the UK, which together make up 56.6 percent of global GDP, between them host just 2.1 million refugees: 8.9 percent of the world's total, according to the charity Oxfam as reported by The Guardian Newspaper.

 

The rich and super rich, the one percent of the population, control 60 percent of global wealth. They have only a miserable nine percent of the refugees in the world. The report says, "Of these 2.1 million people, roughly a third is hosted by Germany (736,740), while the remaining 1.4 million are split between the other five countries. The UK hosts 168,937 refugees, a figure Oxfam GB chief executive Mark Goldring has called shameful," the Guardian reports. That is less than one percent of all the refugees in the world.

 

"In contrast, more than half of the world's refugees – almost 12 million people – live in Jordan, Turkey, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, despite the fact these places make up less than two percent of the world's economy". The report revealed.

 

So, it is the poor, mostly Muslim countries who are helping the refugees and the displaced  poor. If we think we are going to gain eternal life without passing the test that Jesus of Nazareth gives- to end hunger, release innocent prisoners, clothe the naked and feed the hungry (Matthew 25)  and work for justice and love of  neighbor- we are mistaken. What greater way is there to live than to live  for others and not for self.

A Home for the Refugees

BERLIN, GERMANY. I met Alamid here in Germany and he told me he was a refugee from Syria. Their house was partly destroyed by the barrel bombs of Assad, the tyrannical Syrian dictator who is being supported by Russian forces and warplanes.

Alamid is one of the hundreds of non-combatant families bombed out and who lost all their possessions. They are surviving the bombs by hiding in building and basements . He was with his whole family including cousins and uncles.

His male cousin Jambal, 25 years old, volunteered to go out into the danger zone and get food and water but he was caught by the Isis or Dash killers. Alamid later learned that he was taken to a camp and forced to wear a suicide vest and blow himself up at an army checkpoint. Otherwise his entire family would be killed. This is a regular tactic used by the detested Isis.

The Isis fighters were grabbing any one they could catch in the ruins of the town where Alamid lives. They took away any women and girls they caught to another town and sold them into sex slavery to other fighters of the Isis.

The young girls are commodities sold in exchange for money, guns or ammunition.

When Jamal did not return, Alamid and his family feared the worst and they hid for weeks surviving on the meager supplies that they had stored up. After the counterattack by rebel forces, the Isis withdrew and Alamid and his family survived.

Alamid told his story to the generous and kind Germany family that had given him a welcome in their house and he was given a room and was learning to speak and write German. He was treated like a member of their family. There are many thousands of German families doing just that. Communities are taking in refugees from this horrific war and without media attention or fanfare they share and protect them. This is largely unknown to the world.

This is going on all over Germany. It puts to shame those few who drive out the refugees. A German lady working with Caritas Germany told me, “The German people will prevail over the neo-Nazis.” An anti-refugee and anti-migrant party won a considerable number of seats in a recent regional election.

Alamid explained the terrible fears and suffering the people in Syria endure. Some other families feared they would be captured by Isis so they as a family had made a suicide pack. They had surrounded themselves with explosives ready to blow themselves up and die together rather than suffer rape and murder. The Isis fighters rape mothers and girls in front of their husbands, fathers or brothers and then they would be shot. For some families, mass suicide is the only solution.

A German woman, 90 years old, said during a parish meeting, “We were all refugees after the war, with nothing to eat and nowhere to go. Our houses were all destroyed. We know what it feels like to be like them.”

The love, care and compassion that is being shown is exemplary. Filipinos living here have expressed their support of the refugees and they shared the happy experience about the welcome into Germany they got as migrant workers. Many are settled, well-employed and married.

A charity worker told me that she doesn’t believe that the so-called Cologne New Year’s night sexual assaults were as widespread as reported or even happened. It is now emerging, according to some, that it was a right-wing neo-Nazi plot to disparage the refugees and turn public opinion against them. If it was such a plot, then it worked.

The hard-hearted politicians and anti-migrant groups are the dark side of human nature, the side that wants to keep their place of the planet entirely for themselves. Many of these right-wing anti-migrants are living in the false fear spread by racists who whip up mobs to attack the buildings housing refugees.

They do not know what hardship and suffering the refugees have to endure. Families send the young boys and youth on the migrant trail to save them from being forced to join Isis as warriors .Video has been seen showing as many as fifty children, some as young a ten, being brainwashed so as they would become killers. The Isis is a force for evil and exploitation. It has nothing to do with true Islam.

What is needed in this situation above all is compassion, understanding and knowledge. We need to respect the dignity of the people, reach out and help end the terrible suffering of the refugees caught on the Greek border and not add to their hardship but give them freedom and a chance for a better life.