Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Austria's Vice Chancellor said on Monday that Austria could not accept much more than the roughly 100,000 asylum seekers it expects to receive this year, following a pledge from its larger neighbor Germany to limit arrival numbers.

Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere, have entered Austria on their route northwest from the Balkans since early September.

Most have moved on to Germany, but Austria still expects to have received about 95,000 asylum applications this year, equivalent to more than 1 percent of its population, compared with the 28,000 registered in 2014. Of those, 38 percent were approved.

"Around 90-100,000 – a lot more will simply not be possible," Reinhold Mitterlehner, from the conservative OVP, junior partner in the coalition, told ORF radio, pointing to bottlenecks in available accommodation for asylum seekers.

"That's not the sum which comes in addition every year," he told reporters on Monday. "Those who leave, who get integrated...those who return to their countries – that's roughly the room for maneuver which we have for the next few years."

Chancellor Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has generally adopted a more compassionate tone on the issue than the conservatives, was quoted as saying on Saturday that Austria should step up deportations of migrants who do not qualify for asylum.

Faymann has also emphasized that policy decisions have been closely coordinated with his German counterpart Angela Merkel, who has pledged to "noticeably reduce the number of refugees", fending off a challenge from critics of her own.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35102320

"Some people see me crying on the road and they probably think I'm crazy. But I really want to cry it out, scream, get it out of my system."

Rafat Hazeema is a Syrian refugee who has been living in Germany for over a year. Originally from Damascus, he and his wife Ferial are glad of a warm of comfortable home for their son Anas.

But like many of the refugees arriving in Europe, the family need more than food and shelter.

Despite their new-found security, they are struggling with the psychological impact of what happened when they fled the conflict in Syria.

"We've lost all the hopes we had for Ahmed and Mohammed."

The Hazeemas lost their two youngest sons, Ahmed and Mohammed, while making the dangerous journey from Libya to Malta just over two years ago.

The crammed smuggler's boat they were travelling on capsized, and the two boys – aged 12 and 9 at the time – have been missing ever since.

Rafat is finding it difficult to cope.

"It's beyond me to be in control of my emotions, my mental well-being... It's impossible, impossible for me to forget my boys," he says.

"My wife hides the photos so that we can forget... But I can't. If she puts them away, I take out my mobile to see Ahmed and Mohammed."

Rafat has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and is taking medication as a result of his ordeal.

He has had some counselling sessions and German lessons but finds it hard to concentrate.

He tells me he is struggling to find an appropriate job and says moving on is difficult when you have got nothing to help you take your mind off things.

Limited services

Rafat's experience, however sad, is not unusual.

A recent report by Germany's chamber of psychotherapists found that half of refugees are experiencing psychological distress and mental illness resulting from trauma.

One fifth of refugee children are also suffering from PTSD, according to the same report.

But as more and more migrants and refugees arrive, support services are becoming increasingly stretched.

Alexander Glisoski is a manager in the Schnackenburgallee camp on the outskirts of Hamburg.

Kind and soft-spoken, he explains that the camp's long rows of tents and containers are home to about 2,400 people facing their first winter in Germany.

But for those suffering from serious psychological problems, treatment often has to wait.

"Dealing with people who have trauma is about stabilisation first. At the moment that's just possible with medication.

"It's not possible to cover everything here... You'll always have people who you don't see."

Although migrants are provided with basic healthcare in the camps, in lots of cases, they cannot access full psychological services until their asylum claims have been processed.

'Quite optimistic'

But some psychiatrists are trying to help. Dr Manoshi Pakrasi oversees a weekly outpatients clinic in the camp, set up just a few months ago.

She tells me it is the first of its kind in the whole of Germany.

In her work with people living there, the most common symptoms she sees range from sleep and mood disorders, to depression and more serious issues.

"I've seen one young man who has been hidden in a cave by the Taliban. He was tortured for three months without seeing any light."

Dr Pakrasi says that some have even attempted to take their own lives as they saw "no other solution" for their problems.

With such challenges ahead for many of those who have reached Germany, how does she view their long-term future in the country?

"I am quite optimistic because a lot of them are quite young, there are a lot of children.

"And if the children are going to school, if the people are getting work, or something to do... I think it's necessary to give them something to do.

"But I think we can integrate them. Not all of them."

'Grateful'

Back with the Hazeema family, I ask 18-year-old Anas whether he feels he can be happy in Germany.

"We need to be grateful and not look back. I want to study. I'm studying at the moment and I hope to become an engineer."

But his parents have a different outlook.

"I can't see any good in my life in Germany because I've lost my boys," his mother Ferial says.

"All I want is to see my kids again."
 

The number of refugees arriving in Germany in December has more than halved from the previous month, according to statistics from the German federal police obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The decline is probably due to bad weather in the Aegean Sea, the main crossing point for migrants to Europe, as well as tougher controls at Turkey's external borders.

With its relatively liberal asylum rules and generous social benefits, Germany has become a magnet for migrants fleeing to Europe from war and deprivation in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It expects to have taken in about one million this year.

From the start of the month until Dec. 20 some 73,500 migrants arrived in Germany, down from 170,000 in the same period in November, the police statistics showed.

Of the new arrivals, around 6,000 were traveling through Germany on their way to Scandinavia, bringing the net number of newcomers to some 68,000, police added.

The police statistics are based on sample checks in border areas. The number of new arrivals varied between 2,000 and 5,000 per day in December.

Data from Germany's 'Easy' system, which is used for the initial registration of migrants and refugees, showed 965,000 migrants had arrived in Germany in 2015 by the end of November. This means the one million figure has probably been surpassed.

Many local authorities are struggling to cope with the influx and some members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have called for a cap on the number of new arrivals, a measure she has so far resisted.

(Reporting by Thorsten Severin; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Gareth Jones)
 

OPINION

I recently read that criminality is on the rise in German towns that have accepted refugees. But it's not the refugees who are responsible for this crime wave: Germans in these towns have been committing arson, damaging property and attacking refugees. In other words, Germans have been making their own worst fears come true. Often the fear of loss leads to the very loss we fear – a principle that holds true not only for jealous lovers but also, it seems, for those who turn to violence out of fear that the refugees will cost them their safety and peace.

The refugees haven't even all been registered yet, but already they raise questions about who we are. Some Germans can imagine what it means to lose everything – hence their empathy; some can imagine what it means to lose everything – hence their fear.

We no longer have a universal frame of reference. Angela Merkel's declaration that refugees are fundamentally deserving of protection – hers was the only declaration of its kind in Europe – has two main sticking points in her own country. First, there's the free-market logic according to which the German government will prohibit neither the export of weapons by German companies to warring nations nor the ruthless exploitation of resources under corrupt systems in Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.

And then there's the ever-growing violence, both verbal and physical, from part of the German population: those who would like to see their country walled off with barbed wire – as is happening in Hungary – or, failing that, to at least have the Berlin government refuse to accept even the ridiculously low numbers of refugees mandated by the European Union – as Poland and the UK have done.

But which "European values" are best upheld with barbed wire and fences, regulations, harassment and attacks? Liberté, égalité, fraternité? Or is this mainly about our own survival? In eastern Germany, you can once again hear people chanting Wir sind das Volk ("We are the people"). In 1989 that sentence opened a border; now it's being used to close a border, to insulate this finally unified Volk from the newcomers, who lack any unity since they are fleeing so many different wars. Are other countries' wars our responsibility? That's a question you hear a lot these days. But no one wants to hear the answer.

Refugees in Germany have been fighting for recognition for nearly 10 years now – people from western and eastern Africa, from Asia and eastern Europe. Syrian refugees have managed to make themselves visible because there are just too many of them to be overlooked. They file across our television screens during news bulletins. They arrive at rail stations in the middle of our cities. They camp in tents and emergency shelters.

Heartwarming numbers of individuals have stepped forward to offer help, and there is still moral support from an increasingly isolated Merkel. But the temporary exceptions to the rules of the Dublin III regulation, made to help the refugees from Syria, are already being revoked, and the chancellor herself vowed at her party conference last week to "tangibly reduce the number of refugees arriving".

There are other groups of refugees whose primary occupation for years has been waiting: either legal waiting in asylum-seekers' housing or illegal waiting in the makeshift shelters maintained by churches and private groups. These refugees go on waiting just as before. Under EU rules (the Dublin regulation again), they are forbidden from seeking employment in any European country other than the one they first set foot in. And that regulation is now being even more strictly enforced than it was in the past.

So more and more refugees whose applications for asylum Germany is not legally required to process – or who have not filed applications – are being deported to the countries where they first arrived inside the European Union: in most cases, Italy or Greece. This means they are knowingly being condemned to unemployment, homelessness and starvation, cynically advised by German bureaucrats to "show some initiative".

In practical terms, what is happening is that victims of war whose status as war victims is uncontested often find themselves with no other alternative than to resort to prostitution or criminal activity. And any among them who are found to have returned to Germany in violation of these rules are subject to up to three years' imprisonment, according to information being circulated by the foreigners registration office in Berlin.

The inability of the German agencies responsible for processing asylum requests to keep up with applications reflects a lack of vision common to all EU countries, each of which has been failing in its own way to help the refugees. There is still no general European position on refugees – no overarching, humane plan. Instead we have short-sighted, nationalistic haggling.

Can each problem be "solved" only by creating another one? Why is there no acknowledgment that these people – our fellow human beings – are already here, that all the laws and regulations in the world cannot make them disappear, that they must find places where they can live in peace if they have been fished from the Mediterranean, unloaded from traffickers' vans, or plucked from the undercarriages of lorries?

Sometimes I think about how the people in each of those boats are no different from the rest of us: men, women, and children, among them potential postal workers as well as potential Nobel laureates, plumbers and musicians, office and construction workers, teachers, cabinet-makers, scientists, assembly line workers, sales clerks.

Sometimes I am surprised at how little curiosity there is to meet these people and learn what they have experienced – what moves them, what their abilities, ideas and plans are – and how little interest we seem to take in sharing our world with them. If we find it acceptable to let people like this drown, suffocate or freeze to death, we are also accepting the loss of the infinite capacities that dwell in them just as much as in us. By failing to value them, we show disdain for ourselves as well. One person's deprivation is not another's gain. Or maybe there are gains to be had, in a limited, economic sense. But nothing real.

Sometimes I think we have forgotten that the movement described by these refugees across the Earth's surface is just a reaction to the movement of those who have been violently carving up the world's natural resources with no respect for borders, and that a lack of prospects in exploited countries risks giving rise to extremism. We share an inherent survival instinct, and there is a wealth gap in the world that, like all systems based on difference, seeks equilibrium.

Given these circumstances, our European indifference to the suffering of so many is becoming the frontline of a battlefield. We are waging war, with indifference as our weapon – indifference to those in flight from violence and war. If we in Europe can't share 70 years of peace with others, who in this world will? Even 70 years after the end of our war, we know how the fractured biography of an individual inscribes itself in the lives of the second and third generations – as do memories of comfort and help.

Perhaps we too will soon be among those who must flee from extremist attacks. Perhaps the fear felt by these refugees will soon be our own.

Translated by Susan Bernofsky
 

Nazar Al-lamy, originally from Iraq, wants to rebuild his life in a foreign country thousands of kilometres away from what was once home. Standing beside the two bunk beds his family calls home at an exhibition hall-turned-temporary shelter run by the charity Malteser Hilfdienst in Berlin, he held up his phone with a photo of him and his six-year-old son – killed by the militants in Baghdad in 2012.

The dream is to be accepted into German society, move into an apartment and find a job to support his family.

Tens of thousands of refugees like him fled war and devastation to land up in Germany, with the federal government estimating that the country would have taken in a million just this year.

While sources from the German Foreign Office indicated that the government is still in "crisis mode" in handling the refugee influx since August, the situation is relatively normal, with Germany's experience of migration after the two world wars, and during the East-West divide.

As wars in Syria and Iraq rage on, the tide of refugees may not wane. The German government indicated that there needs to be a better European Union-level response regarding borders and refugee distribution – something the countries have yet to achieve.

But officials admitted that the real challenge will come in the next decade, in the form of integration. When families like Al-lamy's settle into cities and towns that are predominantly of European ethnicities, would they be able to integrate?

The German government currently grapples with registering and screening its refugees due to the large numbers, yet at the same time is trying to plan longer-term measures to deal with the still-hidden problems of social discord if the new population fails to integrate and be accepted in mainstream society.

But much of the support is reliant on NGOs, and even more so on the German Willkommen-skultur – the welcome culture. In other words, it will depend on how accepting and proactive the German people themselves are towards the refugees.

"Integration is the biggest challenge of the future – the big task," said Norbert Seitz, director general of the Department of Migration, Integration, Refugees and European Harmonisation at the Ministry of the Interior.

The current number of refugees is roughly similar to the numbers after the second world war, he said, but this new group come from cultures and backgrounds very different from the general German population.

Seitz said that there are language and cultural classes for refugees upon registration, and schools for the children. The major hope is that some could take up jobs in three months after their status has been recognised.

The ministry will increase its federal office staff from 3,000 currently to 7,000 next year, to deal with the refugee situation.

"[The refugees] come with great cultural diversity and they are very diverse [among themselves] ... but we've seen a huge willingness to help [in the community] and a huge amount of volunteers."

There are nonetheless fears, said Seitz.

"When small municipalities of 1,000 people suddenly receive 1,000 refugees there is worry and fear," said Seitz, who warned that such insecurities could be manipulated. "These fears ... there are forces that try to exploit [the fears]."

Seitz admitted that the fears had been intensified after the Paris bombings.

The trick is to start integration as early as possible, said Seitz, which meant language and culture classes for refugees, as well as moving them into society and out of camps as soon as possible.

Currently when a refugee arrives in Germany, they are put into first-contact centres where they had to stay for three months. The regulations have recently changed to six months – criticised by some as unnecessary and detrimental to early integration.

"The lesson can be learnt that, in the long term, integration benefits the whole country," said Christoph Tometten, policy advisor of parliamentary group Alliance 90, also known as The Greens, which would mean giving the refugees the right to move, the right to work and equal treatment with nationals once their statuses are confirmed.

He had called the lengthened time at first-contact shelters to be "useless", and unconducive to integration policies.

In the northern German and former East Germany city of Schwerin, there are 2,000 to 3,000 refugees of which 90 per cent are Syrian.Half of them will be redistributed across the state of Meckelenburg-Vorpommern.

With a population of 100,000, Schwerin's inhabitants include roughly 7,000 from a migrant background, mainly from Vietnam, Ukraine and Russia.

"We are a little bit proud of our policy and our history. We can handle a million, or two million. But three or four million could be a problem," said Andreas Ruhl, second deputy of the Lord Mayor and head of the Department of Finance, Youth and Social Affairs.

Ruhl indicated that the possibility of finding a job would be crucial in whether refugees would stay in Schwerin, and whether they could integrate into society. Schwerin is facing the problem of a fast-ageing population, but the unemployment rate stayed at 9.9 per cent.

More than 90 per cent of the new arrivals will have problems getting jobs immediately, he added.

"This is a challenge for us, and we don't have any solutions yet," he said. "We're afraid that integration would take years."

He said that the flow really started in September, with the country still working on it.

But despite the anxiety, Schwerin has more than 5,000 volunteers helping refugees.

Ruhl said the strategy is to avoid camps and tents. The city has mobilised a network to put refugees in the 200 empty apartments across town – a decentralised accommodation system so to help refugees integrate. The city pays the flat-owners roughly &;500 (HK$4,213) a month as rent.

"We don't want a ghetto," added Ruhl.

At a "welcome cafe" – a meet-and-greet initiative by the community – volunteer Salim Belaroussi, an Algerian migrant who came to Germany 19 years ago, said townsfolk have split opinions towards receiving refugees.

"It's about half and half. There are fewer foreigners here because it was part of the former-East. It's more hostile to foreigners but it is already better than before," said Belaroussi. "I worry about [the refugees] fitting in of course, which is why I'm here ... I hope that with more people from different origins in Schwerin, people will get used to it."

Germany is not completely out of the woods yet, as the influx of people will likely continue in the next two to three years.

The government is trying to accelerate the registration and process times of applications. While the policy and mechanism is set by the federal government, implementation and on-the-ground situation differs across the 16 states.

NGOs and non-profits working to set up shelters are feeling the strain.

At the Malteser Hilfsdienst in Berlin, there are 1,000 people they call "guests" staying at their shelter. Of those, 30 per cent are Syrian and 30 per cent are Afghan, with others from Iraq, Iran and Pakistan as well as four Eritreans and two Vietnamese. There are 200 that are under 18 years old, and 460 men.

Apart from a communal space with a cafeteria, sleeping quarters are divided between families and single men.

"When we were told to start this shelter, we had just three hours [to set it up]," said Asia Afaneh-Zureiki, coordinator for emergency shelters. .

The shelter opened in mid-October. They have 40 employed staff and 100 volunteers.

There are issues among the asylum seekers, she said.

"They are living under stress. They are waiting [to be granted] asylum, and the process – from registration and so on – is frustrating," she said, adding that especially the long waits at the Landesamt fur Gesundheit und Soziales (LaGeSo) takes its toll on a lot of the asylum seekers. "They stick together – the Syrians with the Syrians ... we need to deal with clashes all the time."

"We see the potential of migrants and keeping migrants in the country," a source from the Foreign Office said, adding that in the long run they would need to implement a strategy to slow down the flow and control borders again.

German graduate student Susann Pham Thi, 22, believes in paying it forward.

Born to Vietnamese migrant parents, she grew up in Germany and is now attending Humboldt University in Berlin to get a masters in Southeast Asian studies.

But in the beginning of the summer, she started a football workshop and a dance workshop for refugee children, which took off and became popular.

"I see how the government has a lot of programmes for the grown-ups to help them settle in Germany, but there isn't a lot for the children. They are put into schools, and sometimes they are not taken care of," she said. "Which is why I started the workshops."

She wheeled her bike to a football pitch, and was immediately greeted by an Afghani boy with a huge smile on his face.

"I call her my mum," said the boy, 14. The two chattered away, while watching a group of boys play football.

Pham Thi then went to a side building to make the boys hot tea.

"We don't talk about [the boys'] stories here. I don't know most of their stories actually," she said, while pouring the tea into big plastic flasks.

"I think it's sometimes better this way, because everyone is on the same level – there is no pity. It's really about friendship."

However, she was able to account one story – a boy from Eritrea had to walk through the Sahara Desert as part of the two-year-journey to Germany. The boy worked in Syria washing clothes in order to get enough money to travel.

During the journey, the boy's best friend died from thirst, while he was caught and thrown into prison, with a pregnant woman travelling with the pair, who gave birth in prison. They eventually got to Berlin, and Pham Thi met them.

"This is one of the hardest stories I've ever heard," she said. "I just want to provide them with some perspective – to build up their own identity," she said. "Just... leading them. It's not me helping them... that is why I don't ask them about their private lives. I want to know, but it's for them to tell."

The number of boys that come to the football workshop fluctuates, sometimes a dozen or more, while at times more than 30, she said. There are 10 regular volunteers with the organisation she started, doing these workshops.

The issue of minors – some travelling alone – is a problem, officials indicated.

"The number of unaccompanied minors has increased tremendously," said Norbert Seitz, head of the department within the Federal Ministry of the Interior dealing with refugees, migration and integration. "They are often used by their families to make their way to Europe, to apply for reunification."

Seitz said in a special programme in collaboration with the UNHCR this year, the government received 20,000 Syrian nationals with states admitting an addition 17,000 nationals. Of those, 100,000 of them applied for family reunification.

Seitz said integrating the unaccompanied minors is a major problem.
 

Moroccans braving sea crossings and smugglers to join wave of refugees to Europe find impassable borders.

Idomeni, Greece – As the sun gradually dimmed into night, 20-year-old Hamza Chimawi hung off the side of a train car with one arm and swung himself down to the platform at the Idomeni crossing on the border of Greece and Macedonia.

Like thousands of other mostly young Moroccans, Hamza left his home town and took off for Europe. Lighting his cigarette and then another for his friend Mohamed, who is a year younger than him, he said that they risked their lives on boats and land to make it to any country in Europe.

"Anywhere, I'd go anywhere in Europe," he told Al Jazeera just days before Greek police forcibly evicted thousands of stranded refugees and migrants from a makeshift camp on the Greek side of the border.

"I left Casablanca, left my family behind, my home," he said, recalling taking a flimsy rubber dinghy with Syrians and Iraqis from Turkey to Greece.

"I want to live in dignity and respect like everyone else. Now we're stuck [in Greece]."

Hamza and Mohamed are among more than 968,000 refugees and migrants who have arrived in Europe by boat this year, according to the United Nations human rights agency (UNHCR). At least 3,625 people have died at sea or still cannot be accounted for.

For Moroccans, like several other nationalities, the Macedonian border is sealed shut. Last month, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov announced that only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans would be allowed to pass through his country en route to elsewhere in Europe.

Ivanov deemed potential asylum seekers from Morocco, Eritrea, Iran, Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere as "economic migrants", claiming that the presence of more than 2,000 refugees and migrants in Macedonia at any given time would result in "permanent and direct threats and risks for national security".

Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia imposed similar restrictions, while Hungary shut its borders completely. The string of border closures across Eastern and Central Europe resulted in a massive build-up of refugees and migrants in Greece.

'No future'

Mohamed said he left Morocco because those like him "don't have rights in Morocco. There is no future for young people. There is no work and no hope. We didn't risk our lives for no reason".

After sleeping for two weeks with three others in a tent made to fit two, Hamza and Mohamed left Idomeni the night before hundreds of heavily armed Greek police officers stormed the camp at dawn. They yanked people from their tents, pushing them and forcing them on to buses back to Athens.

Adnane Bennis, a political analyst and editor for Morocco World News website, explained that Moroccans have a long history of packing their bags for Europe. "People used to cross the sea to go to Spain. Now they saw an opportunity in Greece," he told Al Jazeera, referring to the huge influx of refugees and migrants passing through that country.

According to statistics by the International Monetary Fund, the overall unemployment rate in Morocco "remained high" at 9.7 percent in 2014, while youth unemployment sat at 20 percent.

"In Morocco and in other Arab countries, providing employment for the hundreds of thousands of youth who enter the job market every year requires huge investments in education, infrastructure and vocational training," Bennis said.

Driss Maghraoui, a politics professor at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, said that "the majority of people go for economic reasons", but that "the idea of political rights is also there".

A report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW) in November would suggest that there are ample political reasons, namely human rights violations, to accompany the economic drivers behind migration.

HRW accused the Moroccan monarchy and authorities of "barring international watchdogs, suppressing domestic dissent, and restricting free speech while maintaining a pro-democracy facade".

The more than 2,300 people who hadn't already voluntarily left the Macedonian border were placed in three former Olympic Games' stadiums which have been turned into government-run refugee facilities.

Mahmoud, 28, left Casablanca more than a month ago. He recalled thinking he had made it when he and 70 other Syrians and Moroccans landed on the shores of Lesbos in a dinghy boat. "I thought we were finally safe," he told Al Jazeera. "We survived the water and the armed smugglers."

He camped on Lesbos for two days while he waited for friends to make it to the island. Once reunited, they took a ferry to mainland Greece and got on the first bus to the Macedonian border. But it was only upon arriving in Idomeni that Mahmoud learned Moroccans, like so many others, were blocked from passing.

Still hoping to make it through and head to Italy, where he would live with his older brother and study, Mahmoud camped in Idomeni for 20 days.

"It was very cold outside and the tents kept filling up with smoke because people were burning fires," he remembered. "It rained for a few days – that's when I got sick."

He left Morocco because there was "no healthcare, no jobs, no studies, no housing," he said. "I want to get married and raise a family one day, and that seems impossible in Morocco."

Saying that Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans should be given priority, Mahmoud added: "Moroccans should still be allowed to go to Europe. People die from war, but they also die slowly without work or food." He is now waiting in limbo with more than 1,000 others in the Olympic Games' Taekwondo stadium on the outskirts of Athens.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, local municipal staff admitted that the facilities were only meant to house up to 300 people during emergency situations.

Explaining that European policies play a role in creating the conditions under which Moroccans leave, Maghraoui said: "This is a structural issue that involves the way Europe deals with Africa and other parts of the world.

"The IMF and World Bank policies encouraged [in Morocco] do not benefit the vast majority of people. Unless the policy-makers realise that this is the result of most of their rampant neoliberal policies, there will be more migration and more and more problems as a result."

Back in Athens, 23-year-old Ali waited outside in a queue of hundreds waiting for food. Speaking to Al Jazeera, he decried moves to prevent Moroccans and others from reaching Europe.

"What is the point in not letting us pass? No one from Macedonia came and asked where we are heading or why we need to get there. They just said no."

Declining to elaborate, he said: "We have legitimate reasons for leaving. Our government steals from us, and the law is only enforced on the poor."

Inside the Taekwondo stadium, blankets and clothes were spread out across the cold concrete floor because Greek authorities did not provide mattresses or cots.

Hussam, 20, complained of the dirty water leaking from the bathrooms into the hallways where families slept. "This is filthy. This place isn't humane," he told Al Jazeera as he walked through the stadium and pointed out large piles of rubbish.

"The trash, the trash... I'm suffocating from the trash. I sleep and there's trash next to my head; I sleep and there's trash in front of me. Shame. Shame."

The oldest brother in his family, Hussam left his mother and siblings behind in Marrakesh with hopes of being able to find a job and send money back to support them. "Now we're stuck here like animals. I don't have money to eat, let alone send home."
 

BUDAPEST, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) – Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Monday warned that "blindness" by the Council of Europe (CoE) and the UNHCR, or the UN refugee agency, could lead to the end of European civilization.

He was responding a request from these organizations which in a statement issued earlier the day urged Hungary to "refrain from policies and practices that promote intolerance, fear and fuel xenophobia against refugees and migrants."

Rejecting the allegation, Szijjarto said Hungary is talking about reality.

Hungary, now as in the past, offers protection to all people who are truly entitled to it, but it cannot accept tens or hundreds of thousands of economic immigrants, he said.

According to the organizations, the Hungarian government launched a new public campaign in December, "portraying those fleeing war and conflict as criminals, invaders and terrorists based on their religious beliefs and places of origin."

"We have never said that all immigrants were terrorists," Szijjarto said. "What we do say is that the uncontrolled inflow of illegal immigrants is increasing the hazard of terrorism in Europe," he continued.

Szijjarto was particularly vehement in rejecting the position of CoE and UNHCR that Hungary was tasked with helping these people begin a new life in Europe. That, he said, was the biggest mistake of the migration crisis.

Hungary's job is not to help millions or tens of millions of people in beginning a new life in Europe, he said, but to help them to get back their old lives.
 

Hungary was handed a stern warning by United Nations and European agencies over racism yesterday after the government's recent portrayal of refugees as "criminals, invaders and terrorists".

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the 47-member Council of Europe both urged Hungary "to refrain from policies and practices that promote intolerance, fear and fuel xenophobia against refugees and migrants".

Earlier this year, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban responded to Europe's refugee crisis by building a border fence to prevent any crossings into the country. He has since pushed through new laws that partially criminalise migration.

A new public campaign was launched earlier this month calling refugees fleeing war dangerous invaders, and is due to run for two months through Christmas and into the new year in 2016.

As an EU member state, Hungary is expected to help resolve the continent's largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
 

International agencies are condemning a new public campaign by Hungary they say promotes intolerance and fear, and fuels xenophobia against refugees and migrants. The U.N. refugee agency, the Council of Europe, and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, is urging the Hungarian government to end these policies.

Countries increasingly are closing their doors to asylum seekers and migrants. The U.N. refugee agency says it is extremely worried Hungary's newly launched anti-refugee campaign is stoking fear in the hearts of many and will encourage more governments to turn away people fleeing persecution and war.

UNHCR spokesman William Spindler said the campaign portrays those fleeing in fear of their lives as criminals, invaders and terrorists based on their religious beliefs and places of origin.

"This latest campaign, which graphically shows images that are designed to promote fear in the viewers, fear of foreigners and refugees is very worrying ... and, we fear that in many parts of Europe, the political debate tends to go to populist statements, to appeals to fear and to hatred of foreigners that are not constructive," said Spindler.

Most of the refugees arriving in Europe are from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, all primarily Muslim countries. Several European countries, including Hungary, have said they prefer to accept Christian refugees over Muslims.

Spindler says the Hungarian government also is using physical means to deter refugees from entering the country. These include building barbed wire fences and detaining people for lengthy periods of time.

He said Hungary is part of the common European system and, as such, it should uphold common European values of tolerance and respect for human rights. Spindler said the country's leaders should deal with refugees in a responsible, not punitive, way.

He said nearly 1 million people have arrived in Europe by sea this year. Spindler agreed that these numbers are putting a strain on the capacity of some countries to deal with this influx.

"But, in our view, the problem has been not so much the numbers of people arriving, but the chaotic way in which countries have responded to this situation, by unilaterally closing the borders or by not coordinating the response," he said.

Spindler said the UNHCR is advocating a fairer distribution of refugees and asylum seekers so the impact is shared equitably throughout the European Union. He said Hungary should join in this process.
 

UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) – The UN refugee agency, together with two European partners, on Monday urged Hungary to refrain from policies and practices that promote intolerance, fear and fuel xenophobia against refugees and migrants.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Council of Europe and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, joined other voices to make the call, Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here.

They called on "Hungarian leaders to adopt the true spirit of humanity in helping those who have been forced out of their countries against their own will and choice and are currently seeking safety in Europe," Haq said.

According to the UNHCR, the Hungarian government launched a new public campaign in December portraying those fleeing war and conflict as criminals, invaders and terrorists based on their religious beliefs and places of origin.

"Today's joint call stresses the need for the Hungarian government to acknowledge that refugees are coming to Europe after having endured trauma, tragedy and loss while searching for hope and dignity to start a new life far from the upheavals of war and conflict," Haq said.

"Not the first of its kind in the country, this campaign also targets migrants and plans to run for two months through Christmas and into the New Year in 2016," the joint press release said.

"The Organizations are collectively stressing the need for the Hungarian Government to acknowledge that refugees are coming to Europe, after having endured trauma, tragedy and loss while searching for hope and dignity to start a new life far from the upheavals of war and conflict," the joint release said.

As part of the common European system, Hungary is looked upon to contribute to the joint efforts in dealing with the continent's largest refugee crisis since the World War II and to meet its international legal commitments in this area under both International law and the European Convention on Human Rights, it said.
 

The UN's refugee agency and human rights groups urged Hungary on Monday to end policies that promote "intolerance and hatred" of migrants as Europe struggles to cope with its worst migration crisis since World War II.

In a joint statement, UNHCR, the Council of Europe and the OSCE's office of human rights called on Hungary's leaders to help "those who have been forced out of their countries against their own will and choice and are currently seeking safety in Europe".

They criticised a public campaign launched by the Hungarian government this month that they said portrayed refugees, most of them coming from war-torn Syria, as "criminals, invaders and terrorists based on their religious beliefs and places of origin".

The campaign has seen full-page messages in national newspapers appear with the headline: "The quota increases the terror threat!" against a black background.

It refers to EU plans to distribute 160,000 refugees and migrants across the bloc, with Slovakia and Hungary due to take in around 2,300 people each.

Other messages read: "An illegal immigrant arrives in Europe on average every 12 seconds"; "We don't know who they are, or what their intentions are" and "We don't know how many hidden terrorists are among them".

Hungary has taken a hardline stance on the refugee crisis, sealing off its southern borders with a barbed wire fence to stop the influx of migrants.

Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto reacted to the criticism, denying that the country was trying to sow fear of refugees and migrants, according to the Hungarian news agency MTI.

"Hungary is talking about reality... it offers, as before, protection to those who really need it, but it cannot welcome tens or hundreds of thousands of economic migrants," the agency quoted him as saying.

"Furthermore we have never claimed that all migrants were terrorists, but with the uncontrolled flow of migrants, the terrorist threat grows in Europe," he added.

The rights organisations said that Hungary needs to contribute to resolving the crisis and "acknowledge that refugees are coming to Europe, after having endured trauma, tragedy and loss... to start a new life far from the upheavals of war and conflict."

Since January nearly 970,000 refugees and migrants have flooded Europe, with most of them passing through Greece and its Aegean islands, according to UNHCR.
 

(Brussels) – The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has resumed the practice of arbitrarily detaining migrants and asylum seekers. The detentions are ostensibly to secure their testimony as witnesses in criminal proceedings against people suspected of smuggling migrants.

According to local nongovernmental organizations in Macedonia, the Macedonian Ombudsman's Office, and an international agency, as well as local media reports, Macedonian authorities are holding dozens of people, the majority of them from Iran and Morocco, in the Reception Center for Foreigners, a detention facility in Skopje. The center is known as Gazi Baba, after the municipality where it is located. Detainees have not been informed of the legal basis of their detention or how long they will be detained, nor do they have access to interpreters or to legal proceedings to contest the lawfulness of the detention, these sources reported.

"It is sad to see that Macedonia is again locking up asylum seekers and migrants without any opportunity to challenge their detention," said Emina Æerimoviæ, researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Macedonia is violating the law and should stop putting potential witnesses behind bars once and for all."

Open-ended detention, without any justification or meaningful ability to challenge the detention, constitutes arbitrary detention in violation of international law, Human Rights Watch said. Detention for the purpose of securing witnesses in criminal proceedings is also unlawful under national law and should end.

Earlier in 2015, Human Rights Watch documented arbitrary detention of migrants and asylum seekers in Gazi Baba, including children, to ensure their availability to testify in criminal proceedings against people suspected of migrant smuggling. Human Rights Watch found that police guards inside Gazi Baba routinely ill-treated the detainees, including through physical and verbal abuse, and that conditions in the center were inhuman and degrading. Some of the women detainees experienced gender-based violence by guards. None of those detained had access to legal proceedings to challenge their detention.

In July, following intervention by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, local organizations, and international groups, Macedonian authorities stopped detaining migrants and asylum seekers, and allowed them to travel through the country instead.

Since November 18, however, Macedonia has employed the discriminatory practice of screening asylum seekers and migrants at their border by their nationality, regardless of any claims for protection they might have. It has allowed only those who could prove their citizenship from Syria, Afghanistan, or Iraq to enter the country or to lodge asylum claims. Others were blocked and left stranded at the border with Greece. Other Western Balkan countries, including EU member states Slovenia and Croatia, have imposed similar restrictions.

According to local organizations and the Macedonian Ombudsman Office, the people detained in Gazi Baba were apprehended for allegedly trying to cross the border irregularly with the help of a smuggler, after they were denied entry on the basis of their nationality. It is not clear how many people are detained.

On December 17, up to 55 men and women were in Gazi Baba, the majority from Iran and Morocco. On December 19, 13 were released and transferred to the asylum reception center upon filing an asylum claim. The Macedonian Ombudsman's Office visited Gazi Baba on the week of December 14. A representative told Human Rights Watch that they found that detainees were held in dirty rooms without access to adequate beds, mattresses, or pillows, and were not given sufficient food.

Detainees have access to lawyers from the Macedonian Young Lawyers Association (MYLA), the group told Human Rights Watch. However, lawyers from MYLA are allowed only to inform and counsel detainees on the asylum procedure, not to contest their detention.

The Macedonian Interior Ministry did not respond to a December 11 inquiry from Human Rights Watch on why Macedonia is not allowing people of certain nationalities to enter the country and the legal basis for and conditions of the detention of migrants and asylum seekers in Gazi Baba.

Prolonged administrative custody without justification or the possibility of meaningful review violates the prohibition on arbitrary detention in article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Systematic detention in Gazi Baba for the purpose of securing witnesses in criminal proceedings is not prescribed in national law.

Segregation based on nationality and summary rejection of claims without individual determination run counter to the right to seek asylum set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the principle of non-discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights; and the right to asylum under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

"Macedonia, as an aspiring member of the European Union, should immediately stop detaining migrants and asylum seekers without any lawful justification," Æerimoviæ said. "The European Union should push Skopje to end its discriminatory border practices and ensure that people are treated humanely and that their right to seek asylum is respected."
 

Sweden's state-owned railway operator SJ said on Monday it would halt its passenger services to and from Denmark because it was unable to carry out the identity checks demanded by the government to stem an influx of refugees.

Sweden has received 150,000 asylum seekers so far this year, mostly from the Middle East, prompting the government to secure an exemption from the European Union's open-border Schengen agreement and pass a law requiring identity checks on all public transport entering the country.

From Jan. 4, transport companies will be fined if they carry passengers into Sweden without photo ID, to the consternation of local businesses as well as transport operators.

SJ said in a statement that it did not have the capacity to carry out checks fast enough on passengers, many of them daily commuters, entering Sweden from Denmark across the Oresund bridge, and "chooses to cancel its departures until there is a working solution in place".

Oresundstag, the operator of a commuter railway service linking the two countries, said it would remain in operation after Jan. 4 but scale back rush-hour traffic to allow time for the identity checks.

(Reporting by Daniel Dickson; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
 

A desperate Syrian refugee has revealed how he braved massive waves and deadly currents to swim for seven hours to reach Greece from Turkey.

Ameer Mehtr explained he did not have enough money to pay smugglers to transport him to Europe after his family lost their home and were left penniless as a result of the five-year civil war ravaging his homeland.

Having previously trained with the Syrian national swimming team in the capital Damascus, Mr Mehtr realised his only chance of starting a new life in the EU was to take his chances swimming the four miles across the Aegan Sea from Turkey to the Greek island of Samos.

The refugee, whose age was not clear, spent several months preparing for the perilous crossing, training nearly every day with a swimming coach in the sea off the coast of Lebanese capital Beirut, where he had been living after fleeing Syria in May.

It was not until September that he felt ready to attempt the crossing, having spent time studying maps of the Aegan to work out the shortest route between Turkey and Samos.

I'm far from the only one who has made this journey – there are many more who have been swimming
On the night he finally took to the water near the town of Guzelcamli, Mr Mehtr said he had to run for more than an hour to evade Turkish police officers who line the beach looking for people smugglers.

Already exhausted, the risk of being caught meant Mr Mehtr was forced to start swimming as soon as he entered the water wearing only swimming trunks, a swimming cap, goggles and a nose clip.

A handful of personal possessions, including a telephone and several computer chips filled with old photographs of his family and homeland, were tied to his waist. Mr Mehtr also carried a handful of ginger-flavoured dates wrapped in cling film – his only source of energy and nutrition on the journey.

"Every second of the way I thought I was going to die," he told The Sunday Times, who he spoke to from an asylum centre in Sweden.

"But I kept going. I just kept looking at the cliffs in front of me and thinking 'Here is my future'," he said.

Against all odds, Mr Mehtr eventually made it to Samos, where he was photographed standing triumphantly on the shore with his arms outstretched and a large smile on his face.

His ordeal was far from over, however, as he had to walk for seven miles before reaching a port where he could be officially registered with EU officials as a refugee.

He then spent a month living in European refugee camps and travelling on trains packed with migrants to reach Sweden.

Mr Mehtr is now living in an asylum centre in the Scandinavian nation, where he claimed his story was certainly not unique.

"I'm far from the only one who has made this journey – there are many more who have been swimming," he said.

"We have a Facebook group and from my bed in Sweden, I have told several how to pack and how to think in order to make the transition... But right now, no one swims, it's too cold in the water."
 

Updated | For several years, the White House has watched with mounting frustration as Turkey—supposedly an American ally in the war against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS)—has left a crucial portion of its southern border thinly guarded. Behind closed doors, U.S. officials have urged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to do something to stop foreign fighters who fly into Istanbul, then slip across the border into Syria to replenish the ranks of the jihadi group. They also want Erdogan to block the trucks loaded with ammunition and explosives that rumble across the border and to crack down on Turkish middlemen taking part in the oil-smuggling trade, which nets the self-declared caliphate roughly $1.5 million a day.

All to no avail.

But in the wake of last month's ISIS attacks in Paris, in which one of the attackers traveled from Syria to Europe through Turkey, the U.S. is now making its misgivings public, all but accusing the Turkish leader of playing a double game. "I have had repeated conversations with President Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and Syria," President Barack Obama said on December 1 in the French capital. "If you've got foreign fighters...returning to their home countries, they're likely candidates for engaging in the kind of terrorist attacks that we saw here."

U.S. ties with Turkey have long been troubled, going as far back as the 2003 Iraq War, when Ankara refused to let U.S. troops invade from Turkish territory. But with the rise of ISIS and the war in Syria, the relationship has worsened considerably. Turkish officials have repeatedly denied they support the jihadi group, despite allegations to the contrary: Roughly six months ago, a U.S. raid against ISIS in Syria reportedly produced documents that revealed strong links between Turkey and the Islamist militants in Raqqa. Either way, analysts say Ankara regards ISIS and other Syrian rebel groups as useful enemies in the war against its main adversaries: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Kurdish militants on the other side of the border. But because Turkey, with its close proximity to the Middle East, is such a critical NATO ally, the White House has been unable to get Erdogan to bend. "Turkey shares a 500-mile border with Syria and is the NATO outpost closest to the conflict," wroteSteven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "[That's] Erdogan's get-out-of-jail card."

But Obama may now have some leverage. In late November, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane as it bombed Ankara-backed rebels operating near the Turkish-Syrian border. In response, an angry Russian President Vladimir Putin banned Turkish agricultural imports, halted a $10 billion pipeline to bring Russian gas into Europe through Turkey and demanded an apology. Erdogan defended the shoot-down and called an emergency meeting of NATO, where he reminded member countries of their obligations to protect Turkey in case the confrontation escalates.

Though Obama has publicly affirmed American support for Turkey, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing administration rules, tells Newsweek the shoot-down has made Ankara concerned about Russian retaliation. As a result, the official said, "they're looking to us to calm things down" between them.

Doing so won't be easy. While a direct Russian military confrontation with Turkey appears unlikely, the strong-willed Putin appears in no mood to reconcile. "They will regret what they did more than once," Putin vowed in his December 3 state of the nation speech at the Kremlin.

Some analysts believe Putin will exact his revenge in Syria, where Erdogan has been supporting Turkmen militants fighting against Assad. As long as Putin props up Assad militarily, they say, there is little chance he will be completely pushed from power. So the only way Erdogan can have a say in Syria's future is by securing a place at the negotiation table. Yet Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says Turkey's seat at that table is assured only if its Turkmen proxies can maintain their hold on territory in northwestern Syria. And since the shoot-down, Russian warplanes have stepped up airstrikes against those fighters.

"Putin's dream now is to drive these rebels out of Syria, a scenario that would mean complete defeat of Ankara's Syria policy," Cagaptay wrote for War on the Rocks, a website that focuses on national security issues. The more the Russians bomb, he added, the more likely it is that another wave of refugees will flood into Turkey, adding to the estimated 2 million Syrians who already have fled across the border.

If his feud with Turkey persists, analysts say, Putin also could provide arms to Kurdish militants in Syria to help them seize the 60-mile strip of land Obama has been complaining about. That would give the Syrian Kurds control of the entire border with Turkey—a nightmare scenario for Erdogan, who fears Turkey's Kurds might join their brethren and form a breakaway state.

Erdogan has options too. He could retaliate by closing off the Bosporus, the narrow channel that separates Europe and Asia and provides Russia's Black Sea fleet with its only outlet to the Mediterranean. He could even allow Muslim fighters from Turkey's Chechen and North Caucasus communities to cross into Syria to fight the Russians.

But so long as the Putin-Erdogan feud continues, the White House thinks it can pressure its Turkish allies to better secure the border with Syria. U.S. officials say the administration now wants Turkey to deploy as many as 30,000 soldiers to plug the flow of fighters and oil once and for all.

Turkey seems to be listening. On December 3, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara would do everything it could to control the border with Syria, including building "physical barriers" to close it off. But he also cautioned critics to not expect quick results. Any border arrangement would have to allow for the transit of Syrian refugees, he said, adding that ISIS fighters in the area would still try to cross back and forth. "There is nothing more difficult than protecting a border on the other side of which there is no political authority," Davutoglu said.

In what appeared to be a move to mollify the Americans, Ankara recently sent several hundred Turkish troops to northern Iraq to train Kurdish soldiers for an eventual counteroffensive to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS militants, who seized it in June 2014. "This is part of the fight against Daesh," a senior Turkish official told Reuters on December 4, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

U.S. officials welcome Turkey's contribution, but the Obama administration is still concerned about its follow-through. The last time Turkey made such a promise, it broke it. In July, after months of discussions, Erdogan and Obama agreed to a plan that called for U.S. and Turkish forces to bombard ISIS, paving the way for U.S.-backed Syrian rebels to seize control of the border strip. But Erdogan apparently had second thoughts, worrying that removing ISIS would only benefit Turkey's enemies—Assad and the Syrian Kurds. Days later, Turkish intelligence reportedly tipped off Islamist rebels, allowing them to kidnap a group of U.S.-trained fighters only minutes after they entered the country. Not surprisingly, Ankara denies the report. But either way, administration officials say Turkey's double game continues.

The U.S. now hopes it will soon come to an end.
 

Traumatised arrivals are given help with language and cultural issues, as well as hot water bottles and umbrellasDonate to our refugee appeal

Amer Masri recalls the overwhelming relief of one Syrian refugee who arrived in Scotland a few weeks ago.

"He was so grateful. He kept repeating 'Thank you Scotland! Thank you Nicola Sturgeon!' after every phrase I translated for him."

Masri is himself a refugee, who fled the Assad regime in 2011 and now works as a research scientist in Edinburgh, where he lives with his wife and two young children.

Over the past month, Masri and a group of other local Syrians have been visiting their newly arrived country-folk, helping where they can with the inevitable stresses and strangeness of negotiating a foreign land in the middle of winter.

"It's to show them we are here, that this country gave us dignity and freedom, and that encourages them," explains Masri.

Their initial anxieties have not been so banal as the weather, he adds. "We try to emphasise that the police in Scotland are here to help them, that they are not in danger from them. We've also tried to explain that this is an equal country, whether between those with education or no education, and importantly that women have the same rights as men."

On 17 November, the first charter flight carrying families mainly from camps bordering Syria touched down at Glasgow airport during a relentless downpour. Since then, more than 300 men, women and children have been settled across the country by half of Scotland's 32 local authorities.

In a reflection of the country's readiness in comparison to other parts of the UK, Scotland has welcomed one in three of the thousand refugees David Cameron agreed to take before the end of the year, although the Scottish government's proportionate commitment was to take 10% of the total number over five years.

With the first plane-load landing days after the Paris attacks in November, concerns were raised that some people would conflate the refugees' arrival with the terrorist threat. There was a suspected arson attack on a mosque to the north of Glasgow and Police Scotland confirmed an immediate spike in hate crimes later that week.

The day before the first arrivals, Humza Yousaf, the chair of the refugee taskforce which has coordinated the resettlement programme, and the Scottish government's only Muslim minister, confirmed that he had informed the police of the Islamophobic abuse he received on social media.

But a month later, Yousaf praised the public's response to the refugee crisis, saying: "I am deeply proud of the Scottish people who have extended the warmest possible hand of friendship to our newest neighbours."

Speaking before the final refugee taskforce meeting of the year, he added: "I've heard heartwarming tales – people walking up to refugees in the street and giving them hugs of welcome, offers of friendship, support and practical help, from arranging special community film screenings for refugees to giving them welcome gifts of food hampers, warm clothes and hot water bottles."

Meanwhile, local communities have responded in their own, sometimes ambivalent, ways. As the Guardian reported, a Scottish Defence League protest in Ayrshire was countered by refugee rights activists, while in Renfrewshire a number of internet trolls posting bile about the resettlement plans were exposed by the Paisley Daily Express with a front page headline that read: "Shame on you."

Local welcome campaigns have sprung up across the country, like Glasgow's Refuweegee project, which takes its name from the slang term for a Glaswegian – Weegee. It is the brainchild of Selina Hales, a city native who was prompted by news coverage of Syrians travelling across Europe seeking shelter. Its volunteers are putting together welcome packs, which include a handwritten letter from a local as well as Glasgow-appropriate items including obligatory umbrellas. "I wanted to capture that real Glasgow welcome," says Hales. "People don't just want to welcome people but to embrace them and make them feel like a local."

Scottish authorities are aware that those listed by the UNHCR for immediate resettlement include some of the most vulnerable and traumatised individuals, and have protected their privacy as they begin their new lives in Scotland.

As Masri confirms: "A lot of them have been through tragic and traumatic experiences, some were detained and tortured, and there is a big problem with post-traumatic stress. On top of that is the stress that moving to another continent and culture imposes, so their psychological situation is very sensitive."

But the Syrians he is in contact with have more workaday concerns, too. "There is the weather and the culture shock at the beginning, the short days in winter and the temperature. The pattern of daily life is different too, when the shops close and when life on the streets stops. In Syria we have cafes that are open late at night, but here there are only pubs and bars."

The language barrier is an immediate problem, says Masri, particularly because many of the new arrivals come from rural parts of Syria where access to education is scant. "How can they learn a different language when they don't know how to read and write in Arabic? So we are trying to teach them in parallel Arabic and English."

On the Isle of Bute, where 12 Syrian families arrived in the seaside town of Rothesay in early December, the council has hired two dedicated translators to work with the new arrivals.

Related: 'People want to help': Scottish town prepares to host Syrian refugees

Locals hope the setting will suit their new guests. As Clellan Sneddon, executive director of community services for Argyll and Bute council, explains: "We have got people who are from smaller towns or rural backgrounds and therefore we think the transition, the match, is a little better."

Volunteers on Bute are quick to point out that their refugees don't actually know one another. A pop-up community centre, based in a church hall and staffed by locals, has proved essential, allowing women with small babies to support each other as well as providing a focus for visits from education and social workers.

The centre has also allowed the refugees access to donated clothing in a more dignified environment: the items are displayed on rails so that the Syrians can choose themselves as though in a shop, with private changing areas for men and women. There is an ongoing difficulty that, while huge amounts of clothing have been collected, the one thing that people don't donate secondhand is underwear, especially thermals.

There is no mosque on Bute so the possibility of a city imam travelling along the coast to conduct Friday prayers was discussed, while local supermarkets made inquiries about stocking halal meat. Concerns about lack of pulses in the Co-op were solved when Yotam Ottolenghi got in touch, offering to send chickpeas, spices and juices. A large donation of halal products was made soon after the refugees arrived and now the community centre hosts prayers every Friday from 11am to 1pm.

Over Christmas, volunteers will continue to staff the centre. Most recently there was a call for multiple car seats to transport the younger family members to a showing of the local Christmas pantomime, Puss In Boots. The children found the concept of a dame hilarious.

As Masri observes: "It's the children who adapt the quickest. They are like sponges."
 

BRUSSELS – The European Union on Monday extended sanctions against Russia for six months, achieving consensus among the bloc's 28 member nations despite rising divisions over how long to press a major trading partner over its annexation of Crimea and its role in Ukraine's separatist war.

The decision, given preliminary approval by E.U. leaders last week and due to take effect Tuesday, lengthens until next year a laundry list of economic measures against Russia. In tandem with U.S. sanctions, the effort has contributed to a painful economic slowdown in Russia.

But amid growing grumbling from some European countries about the sanctions, the future of the punitive measures beyond this renewal remains unclear.

The decision to extend the sanctions comes at the end of a difficult year for the E.U., which has had to contend with terrorist attacks in Paris, the near-exit of Greece from the euro zone in July and a refugee influx that is forcing nations to make difficult choices about their values. None of the problems seems likely to abate next year, leaving open the question of whether European nations will continue to hold together on the sanctions.

The measures were imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014. They were strengthened after separatists in eastern Ukraine, backed by Russian firepower, downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014 as it was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, killing all 298 people aboard. The United States and the European Union have linked any rollback of the sanctions to the implementation of a peace plan reached in Minsk, Belarus, that would hand full control of Ukraine's border with Russia back to Kiev, a step that has not been taken.

"Since the Minsk agreements will not be fully implemented by 31 December 2015, the duration of the sanctions has been prolonged whilst the Council continues its assessment of progress in implementation," the European Council announced in a statement Monday.

The sanctions will now be in place until the end of July.

But there is growing fatigue with the sanctions campaign among some E.U. countries, including Italy and France, which have long-standing trade ties to Russia in the energy sector. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last week delayed the extension of the sanctions until he could confront German Chancellor Angela Merkel about what he sees as a double standard. Germany and Russia this year announced plans to build a natural gas pipeline between them through the Baltic Sea, bypassing Eastern Europe.

Renzi has complained that Merkel has forced other E.U. nations to agree to the sanctions even though Germany has engaged in projects that contravene the spirit of the effort, if not the letter of the law. Italy, in particular, is bitter that the new German-Russian project, known as Nord Stream-2, comes after the cancellation of a different pipeline project, South Stream, that would have been constructed in partnership with Italy's Eni energy company. Bulgaria, another country that was poised to gain from the South Stream project, also has complained about the sanctions.

"I have some different ideas with Angela about a lot of dossiers. First about Nord Stream. Because I think it's incredible to stop South Stream just one year ago and then accept the Nord Stream," Renzi said after meeting with E.U. leaders last week. He said that "for the first time," Germany was not in a majority on the issue in the closed-door meetings.

Merkel has tried to play down the differences, as well as the political implications of the German-Russian energy project.

"This is first and foremost a business proposition," Merkel said of Nord Stream-2, speaking to reporters after the E.U. meetings. "Italy would have loved to participate in South Stream, which is very clear. Bulgaria also raised its voice."

Battered by an influx of refugees from the conflict in Syria, European leaders have sought to make Russia a partner in the effort to stop the civil war there after it began bombing rebel and militant positions in September. Some leaders have sought to link progress in Syria with a rollback of the sanctions over Ukraine, diplomats say, an effort that the United States strenuously opposes.

The sanctions have drawn complaints from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said Sunday that Europe was simply acting as an extra arm of the United States.

Europe "does not pursue an independent foreign policy at all. It has essentially abandoned it," he said in a documentary broadcast Sunday on the state-run Rossiya-1 channel.

Russia's economy has been flagging, hit by the combined wallop of sagging oil prices and sanctions. Inflation has soared, hitting the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens and prompting rising complaints about the direction of the country. Putin's popularity remains high, though, with 85 percent of Russians holding a favorable opinion of him, according to the latest figures from the independent Levada Center.