links for march 26, 2008

The first deportation was March 11th-short report from NPR on Sweden's decision to deport failed Iraqi asylum seekers.

Kristele Younes of Refugees International answers questions on Iraqi refugees for Washington post. She recently came back from Syria and has reported back on her findings.

Iraqi Student Project-initiative to help Iraqis study in the US that would otherwise not be able to.

Canada to increase number of Iraqis taken in this year-to 2000.

Letter from Human Rights Watch to Lebanese authorities.

Leave or starve: chances of an Iraqi getting asylum in Britain are slim if they were not employed by UK forces.

Corruption fills passport offices-via Alive in Baghdad.

AUC page dedicated to the stories of Iraqi refugees in Egypt.

food for thought

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) argued that with the military troop buildup having bolstered security in Iraq, "I don't think it's the time that we should be accelerating our refugee efforts. . . . Now is the time that we should be calling on the refugees from Iraq to go home."

Referring to funds the State Department is sending to Jordan to support refugees, Rohrabacher said: "It is not the job of the people of the United States to subsidize the existence and living standards of refugees in Jordan or anywhere else if they have the option of going home."
...
The Baghdad government encouraged 46,000 refugees in Syria to return in November and December, offering free transportation and $800 for resettlement. But 70 percent of those who responded could not return to their homes, which had been destroyed or occupied by others or lacked basic services.

It's interesting for the purposes of this blog to note the shift in the media's attention on the issues as of late, supposedly 3% of the stories filed in the American press were about Iraq so far this year. It's a little funny that as we're told we're sick of talking about Iraq now and one of the most pressing issues relating to the war is the millions of Iraqis looking for refuge being kept out of the US, the issue that has been dominating the American press is...immigration. Much of the coverage, unfortunately, comes at the subject from a negative angle. According to Al Jazeera (eng) a study late last year found that it was the most discussed issue in the election campaigns: 26% of campaign coverage was about illegal immigration, and discussion about it took up 15% of the debates, more than any other issue. However, in polling immigration actually ranked 4th in Americans' list of priorities, following the economy, health, and the Iraq war which actually ranked highest among voter concerns at the time.

silence equals death

[Paulos Faraj Rahho's] death is the latest in a string of attacks on churches, priests and lay Christians.

In January, bombs exploded outside three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk and four in Baghdad.

The attacks seem to have been co-ordinated all over the country to occur at roughly the same time. And this was not the first time violence had come close to Archbishop Rahho.

Last June, his secretary, a priest called Ragheed Ganni, was shot dead in his church along with three of his companions.

If this is news to you, you are not alone. Last January you would be very hardpressed to find any mention of these church attacks amongst all the debate about how great the surge was going, when you could find any Iraq coverage at all. Unsurprisingly they weren't mentioned in LA Times' article on the Archbishop's death either. However Iraq's minorities continue to be persecuted, and it's clear from these bombings and now the kidnapping and murder that it not simply a matter of the general insecurity in the country (just ask a Mandean, if you can find one.) It's incredibly tragic that something like this had to happen for the world to finally pay attention.

you forgot poland sweden

On PBS the other day, Nir Rosen was adamant that the civil war would restart, but this time when it did, new refugees would have nowhere to flee to.

It's often forgotten that a factor affecting the reduction of the numbers of newly displaced is also a symptom of a reduction in the number of choices Iraqis have of places to flee to. As neighbouring countries have closed their borders to Iraqis, so has Kurdistan, numerous other Iraqi provinces, and now Sweden has had enough of the Iraqi invasion. Iraqis and Swedes had a good run for a while, Sweden has had by far the biggest influx of Iraqi refugees outside of the Middle Eastsince the war began, they (a country with a total population of nine million) took in 18,600 Iraqis last year alone, ten times the number the US did last year.

That era has come to an end as the Swedish government has recently decided that Iraqis entering Sweden will now have to prove their case for personally being in danger to qualify for asylum, and that being from central or southern Iraq alone is not enough of a reason. This means that in January of 2008 42% of asylum applicants were allowed to stay in Sweden, as opposed to 93% in January 2007. Not only that, but the Swedish and Iraqi governments have signed a deal stating that Sweden can forcibly send back failed asylum seekers.

As an aside, there was an interesting line in that article from a US homeland security official who was quoted as saying that the majority of Iraqis rejected for aslyum there were for "security, medical or other reasons," I'd be very curious to know what exactly those medical reasons are.