Liberation's take on the matter:
http://www.liberation.fr/planete/2016/0 ... es_1449292" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Rough translation:
Migrant children: The Guilty Blindness of British MPs
Accommodate 3000 children left to themselves on the roads of Europe? When some of them have relatives settled in England?
A priori, the bill of MP Lord Alf Dubs seemed to stand up for the minimum humanitarian service in times of migration crisis.
Considered by the House of Commons in London, this proposal was, however, rejected on Monday by the vote of a majority of Conservative MPs. Who have made the excuse that such a gesture would have offered "incentives" and "a bad example" encouraging unaccompanied minors to leave their country. "A national disgrace" according to indignant Labour MPs and the British humanitarian.
But it is also the sign of a guilty blindness. Does anyone really deny that these children will be sufficient to "discourage" an Aleppo teenager fleeing the bombs? And above all, do you really think that just not welcoming them, and then closing our eyes will solve the obvious problem of the moment: the actual presence of these children on the roads of Europe, or in the camps in Calais or Greece?
In January, UNICEF had already mentioned the alarming figure of 10 000 minors which might have been lost track of since their arrival on European soil. Are they falling prey to traffickers? Have they simply slid early into the underground? Nobody knows. The decision of British MPs recalled "the dark days of the 30s," lamented his side the British newspaper The Guardian, Tuesday which evoked the ghost of the Evian Conference in 1938, when European countries invited to decide to host of Eastern European Jewish refugees, had departed ... without deciding anything. It is perhaps no coincidence that the proposer of the rejected motion on the reception of 3000 children, Lord Alf Dubs, is himself the product of this story: a child who arrived in London (with his parents ) fleeing Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II.
But the lessons of the past seem forgotten. In Austria, where the extreme right are favourites for the second round of presidential elections on 22 May, a new concept was invented: that of "migration emergency state", adopted on Wednesday by MEPs by a large majority. A principle that will block all border migrants without possibility of asylum if "the security of the state is threatened" and after a vote in Parliament, for a renewable period of six months for two years. Migrants are now openly considered a "threat" that can justify a massive rejection and without distinction. As well, asylum itself was restricted in scope: it will only be granted for three years, after which the lucky recipient will again be sent home.
This week, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-Moon has even worried about this escalation of anti-migrant measures in Europe. A bidding war started by the closure of the Balkan route and the agreement of 18 March with Turkey, which has certainly limited arrivals of migrants by sea, but not stopped, the price of a guilty silence on abuses of a careless country of human rights.
Disgusted by so much cynicism, thrown into despair by the plight of children in impoverished camps of northern Greece, a volunteer noted this week on his blog: "If we treat people like dogs, they will turn one day into wolves."
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- By youngian