Angela Markel Salute: For Rejecting The Dublin Protocol

One Facebook user wrote: "We will tell our children that Syrian migrants fled their country to come to Europe when Mecca and Muslim lands were closer to them"

Few weeks back the international left vilified Angela Merkel for imposing harsh austerity measures on Greece as the custodian of European Central Bank!It's to see how the Saturday Night Live lightens up this week's Angela Markel's government declaring Germany would welcome 800,000 refugees this year alone!Already the far right has started branding Markel as Europe's most dangerous leader for welcoming the Syrian refugees!

Germany is also the first European country to free Syrian refugees from a draconian bureaucratic “trap” known as Dublin Regulation or the Dublin Protocol!In 2003 the Protocol was designed to stop migrants travelling through Europe to countries with favourable regimes before claiming asylum.If people need asylum, the argument ran, they should be claiming it straight away and the state in which they do so should remain responsible for processing it.

Images such as this one were being shared widely on social media!Image caption A romantic poem superimposed on a photo of the German leader. The caption calls it a verse "for refugees"                

Image caption: "We love you". Arabic comment: "Merkel deserves thanks for suspending the Dublin Regulation. I would love to meet you some day"

Image caption Some users adapted a poster and slogan used by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hail Merkel instead. Others compared the German leader to the Christian king Negus, who sheltered Muslims during the Crusades.

Merkel's reception among Syrians contrasts with the one she received at a migrant centre near Dresden, where she was booed by far-right protesters. Germany expects to take in 800,000 asylum seekers this year. Although only a fraction of those were from Syria, that number is greater than the total number of applicants taken in by all 28 EU states last year: 626,000.

Many northern European countries have chosen to turn a blind eye to the geographical problem of the Dublin Protocol!Most people fleeing from the wars in Syria or Afghanistan, as well as those trying to get to Europe for economic reasons, come by land or by sea. The land route brings them through Turkey, which is not a member of the EU, to Greece and Bulgaria, which are.The sea routes, which are much more perilous and have led to thousands of deaths this year alone, lead migrants to Greece, to Italy, or to the islands of Lampedusa and Malta. Without the funds or paperwork necessary, most asylum claimants aren’t able to fly into the airports of northern European countries.Addressing the historical exodus Germany has said it will stop sending away refugees of the five-year war in Syria, to the country they first landed  and instead process their asylum claims in Germany.

A Syrian man and child disembarking in Greece. (Reuters/Yannis Behrakis

Though the French president has joined hands with the German chancellor to address the refugee issue as a concerted European effort England, France making one after another new protocol for so called border security!Shamefully the immigrants who made it across the channel in UK, France over the years are the most loyal voices against welcoming refugees!A lot of these immigrants ancestors came here as slaves!Indeed slave trade was making huge profit then and apparently the newer generations  of economical migrants are as happy as to be the human shield  against the current flow of refugees which is described as the era defining crisis for Europe!

How the rest of the continent defining the crisis!England's  David Cameron playing the populist nation state leader of a fortress island, Slovakia said it will take only Christian refugees, Hungary is building a fence along its border with Serbia,  Spain has done the same in Ceuta and Melilla. Bulgaria followed suit on the border with Turkey. More fencing is springing up in Anglo, French border in Calais.In Macedonia, which is not in the EU, they are deploying armoured vehicles against migrants.keep them away and leave them to ruthless human traffickers is the message coming from most of the European capital and ironically it's the German chancellor Markel saying ''Europe is facing a situation that’s unworthy of Europe,” Merkel added, “The federal government will need to strengthen its support for states and municipalities. We can’t just keep going in normal mode.” Friend in need is a friend indeed!

Though  Barack Obama publicly lauded German Chancellor's European leadership role in the Syrian refugee crisis still not that everything Markel saying is pleasing to everyone!A Palestinian teenager broke into tears in a TV show where Markel insensitively said 'Some people have to go back'!But when the post Berlin wall chancellor approached to comfort the tearful Palestinian girl one could see where the determination came from to reject the Dublin Regulation and why the Syrians sending love letters to Angela Merkel!

Choyon Khairul Habib

28/08/15
Brittany
France