Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Opinion | Editorial

It's raining refugees. It has rained before.

Thanks to our Oct. 19 election, Canada is now taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees, despite initial — and very un-Canadian — opposition based on suspicion, racism and fear. Once again, I am jarred by our failure to learn from history. Have we not been through this before?

If Canadians could recall the last time the world saw such convulsion and mass flight, maybe they would be universally more generous. In 1945, the Second World War had just ended, millions of people were lost in Europe, and those who could not return to their home countries were begging for food, shelter and a plausible destination. Canada did not distinguish itself. Refugees were called DPs or "displaced persons." We took in very few. We plucked them from the masses to suit our own purposes. It's an ugly story and we can learn from it.

A begging letter arrived on my desk this morning from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) asking for donations to help refugees across Europe and the Mediterranean. So far in 2015, over 856,000 people have made their way to Europe, with thousands more arriving daily.

The UNHCR was set in motion decades ago. In 1943, the organization that was about to become the UN set up a group (UNRRA or United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) to deal with the human catastrophe that would follow Hitler's defeat. (How did they know the Nazis would be defeated? It was a given. They had to be finished off. You fought until the war was won, or you died, it was that simple.)

I am relying on British historian Ben Shephard's 2010 The Long Road HomeThe Long Road Home on the pale obscure exhausted years in Europe between 1945 and 1950. He writes ruefully that this story has since been overshadowed by surrounding events. Admit it, the Second World War has been glamourized. The Holocaust was the worst thing humans ever did. The Cold War took place at home.

One million refugees had what the great journalist Gitta Sereny called the "goody-goody" problem. Writes Shephard, "In our modern culture — where evil is sexy, goodness is dull, and organized goodness is dullest of all — can we find a way to make organized altruism interesting?"

So millions left in Europe with nowhere to go was a dull story without personality. But the DPs were "Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Yugoslavs" and others, many expecting a Soviet bullet for having survived outside Soviet borders at all. The Soviets wouldn't hand back Allied POWs unless the Allies returned the DPs in their European sector for Soviet misery, imprisonment or execution. (We returned many.)

Canada, a big country with a population of 12 million, was seen as a nation of plenty — the storage warehouses at Auschwitz-Birkenau, near two of the crematoria, were named "Canada" to reflect this — and was expected to step up. It did not.

A 1946 opinion poll showed only 37 per cent of Canadians willing to accept northern European DPs, with overwhelming hostility to Eastern and southern Europeans, Shephard reports. But the wartime economic boom had left us short of labour, and politicians understood that Canada had to help out if it were to maintain its position on the world stage. So why not cream off the best, an attitude described by Canadian historian Modris Eksteins.

In 1946, Canada offered space for 30,000 people who already had relatives here. In 1947, we invited the young and strong to mine, log, farm and clean house. The U.S. was hostile to DPs, England was poor, South America and Australia too distant and exotic. "Canada," writes Shephard, "was huge, empty and safe."

Canada didn't want intellectuals. DPs warned each other to say they had worked in the woods, Shephard writes, and to watch out for the handshake strength test when they were interviewed. "If a Canadian shakes your hand, then squeeze it so hard you crush it!"

The racism was extraordinary, one high official liking Latvians and Estonians but despising Poles, Lithuanians and Jews. (The cruelty shown to Jews who survived Hitler will leave you shaking, and I don't just mean American complaints that the Dachau survivors were criticized for being "apathetic or paranoid." )

Canada eventually admitted 35,000 Ukrainians, partly as an anti-communist force against communist-sympathizing Ukrainians already here, writes Shephard, referring to a 1949 explosion in a Ukrainian Labour Temple in Toronto that seemed to end the dispute. After that, Ottawa boosted DP cultures only — ethnic dance, say — and no longer backing DP political groups.

And then there were the blond Eastern European and Nordic children kidnapped by the Nazis for their alleged "Aryan" looks to be raised as Germans, part of the Lebensborn program. The story of the sometimes disastrous Child Search repatriation is one of the strangest of the postwar years, but some of them ended up in Canada, never to know who they truly were.

I knew little about DPs in Canada, but the Syrian refugee crisis made me recall a reference to "displaced persons" in the late 1940s in Margaret Atwood's 1993 novel The Robber Bride. "DPs meant Displaced Persons. They came from the east, across the ocean; what had displaced them was the war. Roz's mother said they should consider themselves lucky to be here. The grown-up DPs had odd clothes, dismal and shabby clothes, and strange accents, and a shuffling, defeated look to them."

Toronto was a boring city then, buttoned-up, censorious, Anglo-Saxon, religious, and of course the food was dreadful. It's hard to even imagine Canada before it was a multicultural nation but I recall my Great-Aunt Ida taking me to lunch at Murrays, an Anglo chain built in the 1920s. The pancakes were dusted with icing sugar. This was "ethnic food."

Arguments over refugees will seem absurd soon because humanity is on the move as climate change forces desperate people from their homes. Refugees flee tyranny, civil war, international war, invasion, sexual brutality, starvation, drought and other terrors.

At this point, I will mention news reports about Denmark that were initially thought to be a hoax. Denmark is searching the clothes and luggage of refugees to seize jewelry and cash to "make them pay for housing, health care and some education," the BBC reports. The ruling centre-right Venstre party and right-wing, anti-immigration Danish People's Party back the bill, which will pass by February. Refugees may keep wedding rings and watches, plus items of "sentimental value" if not too flashy. No word on gold fillings and the hair on their heads.

Danish Jews had the highest survival rate in Europe during the Second World War; they were rescued and protected by Danes.

See what happens when you don't remember history? The Danes don't recall how great they were, Canadians don't remember how equivocal. What caused this? The Danes elected a hard-right government. Canada just got rid of one.

I am so proud of a Canada that brought Syrian refugees here, the children shy, dark-haired and wide-eyed, being welcomed with stuffies and winter clothes by prime ministers, premiers, mayors and citizens (like torontoharbour.org, city professionals raising $35,000 for a family of five). Remember Germans clapping as refugees arrived in Munich?

It won't be easy for Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince Germans to remain welcoming, but she is altering how Germany has been viewed since the Second World War catastrophe it created. Change is possible.

It's a fight to welcome refugees and keep them warm and safe. History tells us that. Right now, history is giving us a slap.
 

There were no barriers, language or otherwise, between Regina's first Syrian refugees and a warm welcome. But there were plenty of hugs.

A crowd, many holding signs with "Welcome" written in English and Arabic, gathered at Regina International Airport on Monday night, waiting for Radi Hayal Al Bardan, his wife Safaa Saleh Khamees and their eight-month-old son Rida. The newcomers and the members of the informal welcome wagon were all smiles – with a few brushing aside tears.

The family, the first government-sponsored refugees to arrive in Regina as part of the federal government's plan to take in 25,000 Syrians by March, were quickly given Canadian and Saskatchewan flags. Al Bardan was wearing a Saskatchewan Roughriders toque in record time and was given a speedy tutorial on how to pronounce toque.

After three years in a Jordanian refugee camp, Al Bardan told reporters through a translator that his family was proud and happy to have arrived in their new home, despite a difficult journey.

"We are very happy to see the people of Canada. They are so respectful. They are so civilized. And we thank you very much, again and again," Al Bardan said of the reception.

For their son, travelling to Regina was Rida's first time outside of a refugee camp.

"I feel so happy because there is a chance for my child to be educated and to live peacefully. Life here definitely will be way better than what he experienced (at the camp)," Al Bardan said.

Reginans were on hand to greet a Syrian couple and their eight-month-old son at the Regina International Airport on Monday.

Aurora Elig, one of more than 900 members of the Regina-based "I will help" Facebook page, wanted to be at the airport to let the newcomers know they're entering a community that's happy to have them.

"I teared up. I was a big baby. I cried. It was really overwhelming and beautiful. They just looked so touched and so happy that people were here to welcome them," Elig said.

Members of all three levels of government were present at the airport. Mayor Michael Fougere went to greet the newcomers straight from a city council meeting. Regina-Wascana MP Ralph Goodale and Regina-Coronation Park MLA Mark Docherty both stood at the bottom of the escalator, gifts in hand.

Goodale, who is also minister of public safety and emergency preparedness, said it has been remarkable to see governments, agencies, community groups and volunteers come together to prepare for Syrian refugees.

"It's very, very satisfying to see the policy idea that was theoretical a few weeks ago really coming into fruition now," Goodale said, adding that he wanted to pass along to the newcomers that Regina is a warm and welcoming place, despite the presence of winter.

"It's even a milder winter than we would have expected," Goodale said.

The province is preparing to receive between 800 and 850 Syrian refugees, but more may be heading to Saskatchewan.

"We have our first family coming and we still don't know overall what the number will be coming to Regina and when they might come," said Darcy Dietrich, Regina Open Door Society executive director.

"We're actually fairly used to not knowing much before refugees arrive in Regina."

While he wishes Al Bardan and his family could sleep all day Tuesday, Dietrich said the process of getting accustomed to life in Canada must start. That means many assessments and forms are ahead.

"Lots is going to happen for them, especially over the next six weeks," Dietrich said.
 

Colombia's largest rebel group, the Farc, says it will not sign a final peace agreement with the government by 23 March 2016 as both sides had previously announced.

A Farc negotiator told Colombian broadcaster Noticias Uno "there won't be a signing of the final agreement on 23 March".

He blamed the government for the delay.

The two sides have been holding peace talks for three years to end more than 50 years of armed conflict.

Senior Farc negotiator Jesus Santrich told Noticias Uno that the delay had been caused by government negotiators "changing the rules of the game".

'Closed deal'

The deadline of 23 March 2016 for the signing of a final agreement had been set by President Juan Manuel Santos on 23 September.

That day, the president travelled to Cuba to announce that the two sides had reached agreement on the issue of transitional justice, one of the thorniest on the agenda.

He and Farc leader Timochenko shook hands at the conference centre in Havana, where the talks have been taking place since November 2012.

A day later, however, another Farc negotiator, Ivan Marquez, was already casting doubt on the viability of the six-month deadline to sign a final agreement.

On Sunday, Jesus Santrich re-iterated those doubts.

He blamed government negotiator for the delay saying they had gone back on points which had already been agreed.

"That was a closed deal," Jesus Santrich said of the agreement on transitional justice.

"And then we had to discuss it twice more, and they [the government] came up with this made-up theory that this was just a draft," he said.

The government maintains the deal on transitional justice reached on 23 September only covered some points and that a comprehensive deal was only reached on 15 December.

The next item on the agenda will be the disarmament of the rebels.

An estimated 220,000 people have been killed as a result of the 51-year-long conflict and more than six million have been internally displaced.
 

President Obama will host a major summit at next year's United Nation's General Assembly to press countries to do more to help more than 60 million refugees displaced by war and other crises, his U.N. ambassador said on Monday.

The announcement follows a year in which more than 1 million people have surged across the Mediterranean searching for safety and a better life in Europe. It also comes at a time when Obama's plans to take in some 10,000 Syrians fleeing civil war has provoked a political firestorm in the United States with all of the top Republican presidential candidates saying the threat posed by the Islamic State in Syria has made accepting refugees from that country too dangerous.

Next year's refugee summit will focus on the need to aid those fleeing the chaos in Syria as well as those trying to escape conflict and discrimination in Asia, Africa and South America, U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power said.

"The list of refugees in need unfortunately continues to grow — at the same time the international community has been utterly unable to keep up," Power said at the United Nations. "This year has shown with painful clarity that our existing systems, approaches, and funding are inadequate to the task at hand and to the amount of human suffering that is ongoing."

Prior to the planned summit, scheduled for September, the United States and its partners will press countries through the United Nations to do more to assist refugees by pledging aid and more opportunities for resettlement. "Every session we have in the chamber we are told that the U.N. appeal is filled usually at under 50 percent," Power said.

The United States has been the largest donor, providing $4.5 billion in humanitarian support to aid Syrian refugees, but it has taken in far fewer refugees than its European allies.