Refugees Daily - Internal Global Press Review

Refugee

noun — A person seeking refuge in a foreign country to escape from the threat of war or persecution; often accused of being an economic migrant

The year 2015 was when the turmoil in the Middle East arrived on the EU's doorstep — in the form of more than 1m refugees.

A Syrian refugee crisis has been building ever since the onset of the civil war in 2011. By the start of 2015, there were said to be 4m Syrians living outside their country, with the largest group, 2m strong, resident in Turkey.

This year, however, large numbers of Syrians and other nationalities began to arrive in the EU.

By late April more than 1,700 would-be refugees, from all over the world, were thought to have drowned in the Mediterranean, including about 800 who died in a single incident when their boat capsized crossing from Libya to Italy.

By the summer, it was the "Balkan route" — involving a shorter sea-crossing from Turkey to Greece, and then through the Balkans to Germany or Sweden — that was making the news.

In the summer of 2015, as flows of refugees across the Balkans built up amid scenes of chaos and violence in Hungary, the German government announced that it would welcome all Syrian refugees.
Football crowds reinforced the message by holding up banners saying "refugees welcome". However, as the flows hit 10,000 a day, unease in the country mounted.

Unease was accompanied by scepticism and fear. Many of the would-be refugees, it became apparent, were not Syrians — but Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians, Eritreans and citizens of Balkan countries. These people, it was argued, were often "economic migrants" and so not entitled to claim refugee status.