Footage captured on Idomeni refugee camp the 14th and 15th of March 2016
Published on Mar 15, 2016
Footage captured on Idomeni refugee camp the 17th of March 2016
Published on Mar 17, 2016
Month: March 2016
Syria Torture Machine
Syria’s Torture Machine
Published on Jan 21, 2015
ch4 Syria Torture bashar assad Mukhabarat secret service
Greece Idomeni – Syrian Single Mother
Published on Mar 11, 2016
In the refugee and migrant crisis, more children and women are on the move than men – they make up 60% of recent arrivals to Greece, compared o less than 30% in June 2015.
Forced to make the dangerous trek into Europe on their own after their husbands, fathers or brothers were killed or otherwise separated. Thousands of women with children are now at Greece’s northern border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, some waiting for weeks, hoping to be allowed northwards. Life in the makeshift Idomeni camp is a daily struggle.
Nisrine is here with her five children. Her husband was killed by a bomb in Aleppo 3 years ago. Her family’s flight from war came to a halt here.
“I feel it is impossible to live here with my children. I can’t bear it. I have been here for ten days. I haven’t had a single night’s rest. They sleep, I don’t.“
SAC Hails House Vote Calling for Assad War Crimes Tribunal
Published on Mar 14, 2016
March 2011, in the south of Syria, four coffins for four Syrians protesting peacefully against their government – the first to die in a conflict that has taken as many 400,000 lives.
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The Syrian American Council, the largest and oldest grassroots Syrian-American organization in the United States, hailed the decision by the U.S. House of Representatives tonight to approve H. Con Res. 121 which condemned the Assad regime’s war crimes in Syria and called for President Obama to direct his Ambassador to the United Nations to promote the establishment of a War Crimes Tribunal for Syria. The resolution passed on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Syrian revolution which began on March 15th 2011.
SAC thanks Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) for sponsoring this resolution, as well as Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA), and Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) for co-sponsoring. The resolution passed resoundingly with a vote of 392 to 3. SAC urges the Senate to follow suit and move quickly to pass the measure.
The text of the resolution can be found here, and a summary can be found here. SAC would like to thank the Syrian American community and other fellow Americans for their mobilization in support of the measure.
SAC expresses its extreme disappointment with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) for their shameful vote against holding the Assad regime accountable for war crimes that have created the greatest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Although these three representatives have consistently voted against American support of the Syrian revolution, today’s vote represents a new low.
Syrian American Council
http://www.sacouncil.com/
Idomeni refugees push to cross into Macedonia despite border closure
Hundreds of refugees at the Idomeni camp have been stopped by Macedonian troops after walking through mud and forging a river to cross the border. Idomeni has become the latest flashpoint in the refugee crisis.
Hundreds of desperate refugees on Monday marched out of the water-logged Idonemi camp in Greece, seeking an alternative route across the sealed border of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
The mainly Syrian and Iraqi refugees, including children, trudged through mud carrying their belongings towards a river about 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the west of Idomeni, where some 12,000 refugees are stranded.
The refugees forded a swollen river that crosses into Macedonia, putting them closer to the sealed border as they searched for holes in a newly built barbed wire fence.
Highlighting the dangers, Macedonian state TV MRT on Monday reported three Afghans were found dead in the river, apparently having drowned the previous day as part of a group of more than 20 refugees trying to cross the swollen Suva Reka river.
Hours after setting out from the camp, several hundred refugees were able cross into Macedonia, where they were detained by border police and the army for illegally entering the country. Around 30 journalists following the refugees were also arrested.
Macedonia’s interior ministry said it was “taking steps” to return more than 700 illegal migrants back to Greece and would improve security where migrants crossed.
After Austria last month put caps on the number of migrants it would allow to cross its border, in a domino effect Balkan nations first restricted, then last week completely sealed border crossings to anybody without EU visas, effectively trapping more than 40,000 refugees and migrants in Greece.
After crossing the Aegean from Turkey to Greece, most migrants and refugees had moved to richer EU countries like Germany through the so-called Balkan route through Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is pushing a European solution to the refugee crisis and a controversial deal with Turkey, has come out against the border closures while recognizing they have helped reduce the influx of migrants into Germany.
“It is unquestionable that Germany benefits from [the route closure, but] we can see from pictures out of Greece that that is not a sustainable solution,” Merkel said Monday, a day after her party suffered in regional elections that were viewed as litmus test of her open-door refugee policy.
EU leaders and Turkey are set to meet on Thursday to hammer out a deal to stem the disorganized influx of migrants and refugees coming to Europe.
The border closures have raised concern that desperate and frustrated refugees will seek more dangerous ways to make their way north. So far, the closure of the Balkan route appears to have done little to stop migrants and refugees from crossing the Aegean.
According the UNHCR, more than 8,500 refugees and migrants crossed the Aegean last week, putting an even greater burden on Greece.
Article from: http://www.dw.com/en/idomeni-refugees-push-to-cross-into-macedonia-despite-border-closure/a-19116022
Syrian Refugee crisis: Every shoe has a story
470,000 dead,
1,500,000 injured,
11,000,000 displaced
Welcome to Syria after 5yrs of Assad’s genocide!
Refugees brave rain surging river to flee teeming Idomeni camp
Defying E.U., Hundreds of Migrants Enter Macedonia From Greece
SKOPJE, Macedonia — Hundreds of migrants braved a fast-moving river to cross from Greece into Macedonia on Monday, defying efforts by European officials to stop people fleeing war and desperation from traveling through the Balkans to Germany and other destinations.
At least three people — two women and a man, all around 20 — drowned when trying to cross the border, and four people traveling with them were hospitalized, according to humanitarian groups in the area.
The border had been effectively sealed since last week, when Macedonia, along with Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia, said it would no longer allow migrants to pass through on their way north.
The result has been growing pressure at the Greek-Macedonian border, where an estimated 12,000 to 14,000 migrants have been stuck in increasingly desperate conditions, including an outbreak of hepatitis A.
On Monday, the border finally gave way, at least temporarily. Hundreds of asylum seekers marched west from a squalid camp near the Greek village of Idomeni and waded into the Suva Reka, forming human chains to pass infants and toddlers over the rushing river to Macedonia.
The three people who drowned were Afghans, humanitarian groups working in the area said. Although Afghanistan is a poor and war-ravaged country, many Afghans are considered to have only a slim chance of being granted asylum after the European Union categorized them last month as economic migrants. Syrians and many Iraqis who are fleeing civil war and the threat of Islamic extremists have an easier case for asylum in Europe.
European Union officials, determined to avoid a repeat of last year, when the asylum system all but collapsed, agreed to a political deal with Turkey last week to stop migrants from pouring into southeastern Europe.
Under the deal, Turkey would receive financial aid and political consideration in exchange for preventing migrants, mostly Syrian, from risking their lives to cross the Aegean Sea. European officials would assess the asylum applications of Syrian refugees — and directly resettle those whose applications are approved — from refugee camps in Turkey.
The terms of the deal are to be hashed out in Brussels this week.
The authorities in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, did not provide an official comment on the situation Monday, but they were said to be considering forcing the migrants back to Idomeni, across the Greek border. Doing so could be politically damaging for Macedonia, a tiny country that was part of the former Yugoslavia and that has been trying since 2005 to join the European Union.
Article from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/world/europe/european-refugee-crisis.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur&_r=0
Collateral Damage 