It is difficult to look at limp bodies of dead children lying on beaches and not feel something deep inside you.
It is difficult to see the anguish of humans suffering as they flee war zones we in the West are helping fuel and from droughts exacerbated by climate change that our Government seem unwilling to do anything serious about.
It is almost unbelievable to hear people explain we won’t be taking in refugees because Islamic radicals may be in the mix.
Crypto-fascist and good friend of the Prime Minister, Cameron Slater, is arguing we should be weary that all those pictured (other than the limp dead babies) are young men who may be radicalised. In what must surely be one of his stupidest blog postings ever, Cameron is leading the charge in NZ to deny sanctuary to these desperate survivors because some might be radicalised terrorists. ‘
Let’s deal with how stupid this is. The reason why a lot of the survivors are young men is because the elderly, the children and the women tend to die during these extreme and desperate migrations. The young and strong survive, and even if we accept that there may be amongst them some damaged and radicalised young men – so what? Of course there will be, some by experience and maybe even a few by design, but to hold up that possible threat as the reason for us to turn our back on the wider suffering is breath taking in its callousness.
We are fuelling the conflicts these survivors are fleeing from and climate change is exacerbating those conflicts.
To use radical Islam as an excuse not to act is a justification for Islamophobia that’s as putrid as it is empty.
Pointing to the lack of refugees fleeing to other Muslim countries instead of heading for the West as some sort of excuse is beneath us. Beside the cultural issues, local schisms, the legal problems, and the brutal authoritative regimes, trying to pick holes in the desperation of survivors fleeing a living hell by demanding why they haven’t tried other places first is a vile pettiness that has no place in a debate as urgent as this.
We must not allow the voices of Islamophobia to deny our humanity in this crisis.
These people are human beings in need and we are a land of plenty. We can’t save all 350 000, but we can save thousands. To turn away makes an obscenity of everything we strive to be as a country.
We are much better nation than John Key and National are allowing us to be.
I have read similar comments in response to articles on stuff and nz herald sites… possibly it was Slater or some of his supporters. But the point was clear, and I couldn’t believe what I was reading. That we would let our fear of “foreigners”: the other, ‘terrorism’, arabs, islamic extremists, call them what you will, get in the way of our basic humane responses to other human beings in desperate need. This is not the New Zealand that I grew up in. We can and must do better.
When the Soviets invaded our country, we fled for our lives. My late brother did not survive.
I will always be eternally grateful for the kindness shown by New Zealanders when we arrived in 1957.
I believe most New Zealanders still have that generosity deep in their hearts.
Who and what radicalized Islam would be the question the odious slater would be asked. Perhaps he should txt John and ask him WHAT Wahabbists are – who the Saudi are in conjunction, just to see if there is any live spark in other wise dead brain matter.
I see that FOX is picking up on the USAMO coup d’état in Libya by way of attacking H. Clinton. Also, by virtue of that fact, proving USAMO actually caused the genocide in Liya causing this refugee crises.
Let’s call up a world court on US foreign policy shall we. See if we can get any response to laying the charge against those behind this crazed epoch the PNAC NEOCONS brought into the world.
And keep looking at 911 Martyn. You might be getting somewhere.
There are millions of refugees in neighbouring Muslim countries to Syria ie Turkey and Jordan. While it will probably be mostly younger men taking the asylum seeking route to Europe within these camps will be their female relatives and children. It is from these camps we should be looking to take more refugee families for resettlement.
Over time we have bought many of the younger men who made up the bulk of the people on the Tampa into NZ but we allowed their families to join them. This is an important stabilizing factor for long term resettlement of asylum seekers and refugees.
Of course Australia currently has many refugee families currently locked up in off shore detention centres. These people braved the same kind of journey that the Syrian people we see nightly on television have but we have no idea how many don’t make it and end up drowning like that little boy.
For these local refugees their journey has ended in permanent detention. This information relating to death by drowning and what happens in these detention camps off shore from Australia is not all over the media, in fact it is secret but it is just as real and just as harrowing. We should not forget them in all of this they are close to here and they to need our help.
What about the Petrol dollar scenario that was introduced in the early 70s through the OPEC arrangement that OIL prices can only be sold in American dollars quite a neat little arrangement going on their with the petrol dollar scenario I wonder if that has anything to do with these events and I believe that the Islamaphobia is a smokescreen to further bury the truth of the petrol dollar!!
No Martyn, it is not Islamophobia. It is simply observing the impact of Muslim migration on countries such as the UK, and even closer to home. We need to tread very warily indeed.
No, we need to act compassionately and with humanity. That is how we should tread.
If you’ve learned anything from history, Barn, it is that if you treat people badly, they will eventually fight back. Treat them well, and you get a better response. Our own refugees have contributed mightily to our society – a fact you seem willing to ignore.
I am specifically singling out muslim refugees, Frank. I realise that is not PC, but I have lived amongst them, and have seen the impact of muslim refugees on western culture, and it isn’t pretty. The compassion and humanity I want shown is to my own nation and my own culture.
Really? And we should believe you, why? Especially coming from an anonymous person whose credibility is unknown.
You’ll have to do better than that.
No Frank, I won’t. Because I’m not here to please you, or anyone else for that matter. Even a cursory understanding of Islam would make any reasonable person be concerned at the possibility of its exerting influence on NZ. It is an ideology of repression, a belief system that has been spread by the sword, and one utterly foreign to values of liberty and freedom.
Borninabarn, what are you afraid of? Shadows? We’ve had terrorism in this country, and it wasn’t done by muslims.
“Let’s deal with how stupid this is. The reason why a lot of the survivors are young men is because the elderly, the children and the women tend to die during these extreme and desperate migrations. The young and strong survive, ”
What source have you got for this? I’ve never heard this theory.
“and even if we accept that there may be amongst them some damaged and radicalised young men – so what?”
The so what? is that we have to be able to identify them and refuse them asylum.
I’m sorry (no, I’m not actually, but it’s an opening…) but fuck that image you used with the biggest fucking fuckstick that ever fucked and then fuck it some more.
Every fucking year, it gets trotted out that ‘2,996 Americans’ died on 11/09/01.
That’s bullshit and you know it – 2,996 people died that day, the majority of whom, yes, we’re Americans, but many weren’t.
A former colleague of mine is among that number and she was most assuredly English.
By repeating the ‘2,996 Americans’ lie, every bloody year, we diminish the memory of those who were not American but died nonetheless.
Just fucking stop it.
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