The post Fortress Denmark wants to send its asylum seekers outside Europe first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Denmark Is Leading Europe’s Anti-Immigration Policies first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Europe’s migration crisis – Five years on first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In a separate move, it recently signed a migration agreement with Rwanda, leading to speculation that it intends to open an asylum-processing facility there.

Danish authorities notified Sara’s family in February that she, her parents, and younger siblings could no longer stay.

“All my life is here. How can I go back to Syria now?” says the 19-year-old, who speaks fluent Danish and is due to sit her final high-school exams next month. She dreams of becoming an architect, but after six years in Denmark her future in Denmark is now in doubt.

They are among more than 200 Syrian nationals who have had their residency withdrawn on the grounds that Damascus and the surrounding region are now considered safe.

Syrians who fled for Europe often left behind towns ruined by the conflict – EPA

---

Her father Mohammed was a lawyer in Syria but came to Denmark in 2014 when his life was endangered. The rest of the family fled the war a year later, travelling via Turkey and Greece.

Two weeks ago their appeal was rejected and they’ve been given 60 days to leave.

They fear arrest and torture under President Bashar al-Assad’s rule. “It’s risky for every single person who left Syria to go back,” she says.

Her father has been running a restaurant and said: “We stopped taking money from the [Danish] government four years ago.”

More than a decade after conflict broke out in Syria about 35,000 Syrian nationals live in Denmark.

Over the past year the immigration service has been reassessing the cases of more than 1,200 refugees from the wider Damascus region. “The conditions in Damascus in Syria are no longer so serious that there are grounds for granting or extending temporary residence permits,” it said.

Many of those with temporary refugee permits are women or elderly, as younger men who were at risk of military conscription were usually given different protection. The government says it has always been clear the protections it offered were temporary.

We are ready with a huge bag of travel money for those who have to go back and rebuild their lives in Syria

The post Denmark asylum: The Syrian refugees no longer welcome to stay first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

When Greece’s notorious Moria migrant camp burned to the ground in September, its thousands of desperate residents were rehoused in another site hastily erected on military-owned land nearby.

But while their new home offered an escape from the endemic violence and overcrowding of Moria, it has confronted asylum seekers with an entirely new hazard: potential lead poisoning.

Human Rights Watch warned Tuesday that the Mavrovouni migrants camp, erected on land including a former military firing range on the Greek island of Lesvos, could pose a serious risk of lead poisoning to its 7,500 residents.

“It’s very likely there is lead in the soil,” Eva Cossé, a Human Rights Watch researcher, told VICE World News.

Her group has been unable to conduct its own testing for lead contamination at the site. But it says that it is concerned due to the known risk of lead poisoning at former firing ranges, where highly toxic lead dust from bullets, shot and casings contaminate soil, and becomes airborne in dry, windy conditions.

“It’s well known across the globe that shooting ranges are contaminated with lead,” she said. “We say the government should have done testing before it put people there.”

The new camp was established on military land that includes a former firing range, where generations of Greek soldiers have carried out shooting drills since it was first opened in 1926. In the aftermath of the devastating fire at Moria camp, which made thousands of desperate asylum seekers homeless, the residents were rehoused there without any testing for lead contamination of the site having been carried out.

Lead poisoning can cause irreversible impairment of neurological, biological, and cognitive functions. Young children, who absorb four to five times as much lead as adults, and pregnant women are especially vulnerable. According to official data, one-third of the camp’s inhabitants are children — about 1,000 of them aged under 5 — and more than 1,600 are women, 118 of whom are pregnant.

Alastair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology at the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health, and Therapeutics told VICE World News that the concerns raised by Human Rights Watch were warranted, due to the site’s use as a firing range.

“Children are the most vulnerable to lead due to their developing nervous systems,” he said.

“Most people get exposed to lead through ingestion, and young kids eat a certain amount of soil every day just because they’re putting their hands in their mouths.”

Human Rights Watch is concerned that construction work being carried out to make improvements at the camp could be worsening the risk of lead poisoning, by disturbing lead deposits buried in the soil. It’s also concerned about unexploded mortars and bullets that have been found throughout the site by residents, including children, despite assurances from the government that it had been cleared of danger.

The Greek government did not respond to requests for comment but has denied there is any risk at the site.

In a letter to Human Rights Watch last month, Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarachi wrote that his ministry had been “assured that there is no lead contamination,” as only lead-free ammunition had been used on the firing range. Furthermore, the site had been covered in a layer of clay, which emitted low levels of dust, prior to being turned into a migrant camp.

But he acknowledged that lead testing had not been carried out on the site. Due to the concerns, he said he has arranged for soil testing to be carried out, although the results are not known.

However, Cossé said that an analysis of photographs of ammunition found by camp residents — which showed varieties that contained lead — cast doubts on the government’s assessment of the risks, and its assurances that the site had been cleared of bullets.

“This contradicts what the government said about the army only using lead-free bullets in the firing range,” she said.

Thousands of asylum seekers from countries like Afghanistan and Syria are stranded on Lesvos, sometimes also referred to as Lesbos, an island in the Aegean just a few miles from the Turkish coast. The island was once only a brief stopover for asylum seekers arriving by smuggler boats from Turkey before they made their way to the Greek mainland and onwards into Europe.

READ: Asylum seekers describe gang-style violence in Europe’s biggest migrant camp

But a March 2016 migration deal struck between the European Union and Turkey turned the Greek islands into de facto holding pens for migration into Europe, requiring migrants to remain there until their asylum applications could be processed.

The Greek government has faced criticism for the squalid conditions in the island camps, with regular calls for asylum seekers to be relocated into better-equipped accommodation on the Greek mainland. In response, it says it carries an unfair share of the burden of dealing with irregular migrants into Europe, who hope to travel onwards to wealthier northern European countries.

READ: Violence is exploding in Europe’s most notorious migrant camp

Human Rights Watch has called on the Greek government to carry out thorough testing of the levels of lead in the soil and dust at the camp and to publish the results. If lead is found, it says, residents should be tested, offered treatment, and relocated to a safe location.

“The Greek government could be putting at-risk families with young children, aid workers, and its own employees because it’s determined to hold asylum seekers on the island,” said Belkis Wille, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at the organization.

“If this is where the government is trying to force asylum seekers to live on Lesbos, then all the more reason to transfer people to the mainland.”

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8y9x/migrant-camp-built-on-army-firing-range-could-be-giving-asylum-seekers-lead-poisoning

The post Migrant Camp Built on Army Firing Range Could Be Giving Asylum Seekers Lead Poisoning first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.