From A World to Win News Service:
Refugee camp for Syrians in Cappadocia, Turkey, 2014. (Photo: Fabio Sola Penna)
About 3,500 people, mostly Afghan, have been living for months in the Elliniko camp in Athens, Greece, consisting of an old airport terminal and two Olympic stadiums which are no longer in use. (Photo: Pierre-Yves Bernard / Médecins sans Frontières)
An unauthorized camp for refugees trying to get to Britain has sprung up in Calais, France. It is called the "Jungle" by the authorities, who provide no services and frequently raid the camp and destroy dwellings. (Photo: Malachy Browne/Flickr)
Syrian Children: A Question That Answers Itself
October 10, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
October 3, 2016. A World to Win News Service. The U.S., UK and France have turned the horrible attacks on civilians in eastern Aleppo into an occasion to score a propaganda victory against their Russian rivals and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime. The bombings of civilians certainly is a war crime, as they claim, and even if this area is a stronghold of Islamic fundamentalist fighters, as Russia claims, such atrocities reveal that both sides are atrocious murderers. But for all the West’s talk about the children of Aleppo—with pictures of wounded and dismayed little children that should break anyone’s heart—what happens when these same children or others like them, in Syria or other countries where the suffering of children has reached massive proportions, try to flee to safety?
Does the West show concern for their treatment in abysmal refugee camps in Turkey and Greece, where refugees feel they are deliberately being made to suffer as punishment for leaving Syria, and to dissuade others from joining them?
Why do the NATO powers refuse to use their naval resources to conduct search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean? Why have they abandoned such operations, with the exception of the Italian Coast Guard, and a Greek Coast Guard that has been stripped of its efficacy by EU (European Union)-imposed cutbacks, so that lives depend on the efforts of fishermen and NGO volunteers?
What about the estimated one thousand unaccompanied children—children who have lost or become separated from their parents—trying to stay alive in Calais, France, in a camp the world’s barbarian authorities like to call “the jungle,” even though its inhabitants help each other out remarkably given the circumstances? So far the French authorities have refused to help even these children, let alone all the children and adults who desperately need it, in a flagrant violation of French and international law. The British government has washed its hands of their fate, even though many of these children have family in the UK and are therefore legally entitled to asylum there. For the U.S., it’s Europe’s problem.
Is the West’s fake “concern” for children anything but another weapon to be wielded in its clash with rival reactionaries?
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