Što se događa u Latinskoj Americi dok u Europi je navala. 'Školski' primjer pero non pasaran señores!

Five Syrian Families in Uruguay Since 2014 Have Packed Their Bags and Want to ‘Get Out’

By Christian Müller
September 12, 2015 | 1:15 am


While countries in North and South America deliberate how to potentially absorb refugees from war-torn Syria, five Syrian families that were given asylum in Uruguay in 2014 are demanding they be taken somewhere else, complaining of conditions that "don't allow them to live."
The families, totaling more than 40 people, have been living in Uruguay for almost a year, after the government of former President Jose Mujica decided to take in Syrian refugees from a refugee camp in Lebanon.

But all this week, the families gathered at Independence Square in Montevideo, just outside the presidential offices, holding bags with all their belongings. Some slept in a tent until Wednesday, and called off their demonstration on Thursday after the refugees met with government officials.

'This is a difficult country to live in.'

The families' leaders improvised a press conference at the square with the help of Ali Jalil Ahmad, head of Uruguay's Islamic Center, who served as translator for the Arabic-speaking families. In essence, they said Uruguay is too expensive and too unsafe for them.

"They came here because they were promised things, and a better life. But they don't live better here, and it's very expensive. They don't want money, they don't want anything from this country. They want to go back," Ahmad said. "They are appealing to the United Nations, or any country in the world, to get them out of here."

In their statements, the Syrians said they'd like to return to Lebanon or "anywhere else" — they have permission to travel anywhere, but some place must agree to receive them. One report suggested a return to Lebanon would make it easier for them to attempt a crossing to Europe.

"Everyone wants to go to Germany, and so do them," Mujica said in a television interview this week.

"This is a difficult country to live in," the Syrians' translator said.



The families aren't the only asylum-seekers to feel uncomfortable in Uruguay.

Earlier this year, five former Guantanamo prisoners received during Mujica's government also expressed their desire to leave the country. Four of them eventually reached an agreement with the government to stay in Uruguay, while the fifth is still negotiating, although with no more Uruguayan aid.

The families fled from a country that has been torn by war since 2011 between opposition forces and the government of Bashar al-Assad. An estimated 200,000 people have died and 7.6 million have been displaced. In addition, more than 350,000 Syrians have fled the country, with many attempting to reach Europe through the Mediterranean.

Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina have launched programs to host refugees. Venezuela announced its intention to do so, and Mexico plans to welcome its first Syrian refugee next week through an education program.

"The government says that this is a trial experience. We are not here to be test subjects to see if their programs work or not. We are humans, we have rights," the Syrian families said through their translator.

They arrived in Uruguay in October 2014, after Mujica agreed with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to take in a group of Syrian refugees from a camp in Lebanon. Forty-two Syrians arrived, and Mujica even went to greet them at the airport.

The refugees were then accommodated in different spots around the country, and the children were enrolled in school. Two children have been born into the group, making them Uruguayan citizens.

A public opinion poll suggested that 69 percent of Uruguayans agreed with the refugees' presence upon their arrival. But things began to change this year, with some public figures speaking against the use of the hijab among women and girls, and after a case of domestic violence in one of the families became public.

One of the refugees, Ibrahim Alshebli, told VICE News that all five families want to leave, but that they've been told there's no "solution" for them.



Javier Miranda, Uruguay's human rights secretary, said the families receive approximately $1,000 dollars each month for their expenses.

Members of one of the families, using travel permits, attempted to arrive in Turkey last month, but were detained upon landing and deported back to Uruguay, a government statement said.

The country's current president, Tabaré Vazquez, said on Thursday that "the government made contact with Lebanon, to see if that country was willing to receive them [the refugees], since Uruguay cannot decide which country to send them to."

Lebanese authorities said they wouldn't take the refugees back, the president said.

Susana Mangana, an expert on Islam and a member of the commission that travelled to Lebanon to pick the Syrians, said that the refugees do not understand that "they are being helped," and that "they knew perfectly where they were being taken."

Mangana acknowledged, though, that the cultural assimilation process "could have been done differently."

Nonetheless, Uruguay's government is planning to accept at least 72 Syrians in the next months amid a global response to the current migrant crisis in Europe.

During their improvised press conference, the demonstrators told the crowd that Uruguay "is not a country for refugees. Uruguayans are good, but they have problems, and they need more help than us."



https://news.vice.com/article/five-syrian-families-in-uruguay-since-2014-have-packed-their-bags-and-want-to-get-out

Dakle potpuno ista priča i u Latinskoj Americi, bezobrazluk čim su kročili. No u Urugvaju, Brazilu, Venezueli i drugim zemljama neće spavati mirno niti sisati socijalu, uživati u povlasticama.

Ali opet... Teški idiotizam je u Latinsku Ameriku uvoziti imigrante kad su i oni sami imigrantski narodi. Dakle, demokracija i usred multirasnog društva uzima danak. Pas mater ako je itko normalan više na ovom planetu.

Domestic Violence Surge Leads Uruguay to Reject Male Syrian Refugees



by Frances Martel6 Feb 2015

The government of Uruguay received international acclaim for its decision last year to accept a high number of refugees from the Syrian Civil War, citing the need for countries across the world to participate in saving the lives of those attempting to escape. It is now reneging on its promise, at least in part: only women and children will be allowed to relocate to Syria, with the government citing a need to quell domestic violence.

“Simply: in Uruguay, we are not willing to remain with our arms crossed if men hit women,” said President José Mujica, the architect of the project through which Uruguay would slowly begin to take in Syrian refugee families, to ease the strain on neighboring countries like Lebanon and Turkey, which have taken in millions of refugees in the past two years. According to Uruguayan newspaper El Observador, the government claims that the incidents of domestic violence in the new Syrian refugee community of Uruguay are simply too high to ignore.
While President Mujica said in a public statement relayed by the newspaper that the government does not have “concrete charges or anything like that” against individuals engaging in domestic abuse, he described the problem as a cultural issue: “what exists is a global information of cultural forms that they have in other parts of the world– among them, Syria– regarding relations between men and women.”
Pablo Abdala, a Uruguayan attorney, told newspaper El Pais that he had been approached with a number of individual cases, including a woman who was beaten in public and a seven-year-old child whose Syrian refugee father fractured his arm.
The stunning turnaround will likely mean that only widows and their children will be allowed to enter Uruguay, though the new policy may also include orphans and single women.
Leftist President Mujica has received international praise for turning Uruguay into a dumping ground of sorts for all varieties of individuals caught in the War on Terror. Last year, Mujica received six Guantánamo detainees, which would be free to reconstruct their lives in the Latin American nation.
The United Nations has stated, according to another report in El Observador, that the negative incidents regarding resettlement of Syrian refugees were below their expectations. Raúl Rosende, the head of the UN office of Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, responded to the domestic abuse claims by saying: “It is surprising that, after the tragedy that these refugees have lived and the short time in which they have been in Uruguay, there have not been more problems or graver ones than those mentioned in the press.”



http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/06/domestic-violence-surge-leads-uruguay-to-reject-syrian-refugee-men/

A long way from home: Syrians find unlikely refuge in Brazil

Since 2013 Brazil has resettled more Syrian refugees than any other country in the region, but Latin America can come as a culture shock after life in a war zone

Brazil did not loom large in the life of Humam Debas before the war in Syria. As a business manager from the city of Hama with a comfortable income, he had thought about taking his wife to Rio de Janeiro for a holiday. But all he really knew about the distant country was that it had beautiful beaches and a great football team. He assumed everyone there spoke English because it was close to the US.

Today, however, he is taking his first Portuguese class in São Paulo, where he and his family are trying to make a new start as refugees after being wrenched out of their homes by conflict and forced across the world by the reluctance of closer nations to take them in.

The move from a suburban neighbourhood of fellow Muslims to a teeming Latin American megalopolis in the world’s biggest Catholic nation has inevitably been traumatic, but Debas is grateful to be taken in by anyone.

“No other country would give Syrians a visa,” he recalls over a cup of Syrian coffee in the one-room apartment he shares with wife, two-year-old son and brother-in-law, in the Cambuci district of the city. “We could have tried to get to Europe illegally by boat, but that was too dangerous for my family. So Brazil was the only safe choice.”

Since 2013 when Brazil opened its doors, 1,740 Syrian refugees have been registered in the country - far more than in the US.

Most are clustered around São Paulo’s main mosques in the Brás and Cambuci districts. Debas (whose name has been changed because he is concerned about family members still in Syria) has been in the latter for four months.

“Oh my God, it was a shock when we arrived,” he says, speaking almost flawless English. Language and money have been the biggest difficulties.

He and his wife, Lara – graduates of prestigious universities in Damascus – came with about $4,500 (£3,000), most of which was eaten up by hotel bills in the first couple of months. Although the municipal government offered free shelters, Debas did not want his wife and child to share accommodation with street dwellers and crack addicts. Finding their own place was difficult because most landlords in Brazil require a guarantor with property.

Brazil is home to 15 million people of Arabic descent, including 3 million of Syrian heritage, but Debas found few people willing to provide support to this latest wave of arrivals. “There are Lebanese who have been here for generations, but unfortunately most of them don’t offer help. There must be good people here, but we haven’t met them yet.”

Debas makes a little money from teaching English for seven hours a week, but it is not enough to pay the R$750 (£160) rent, so they are desperate to find a more stable income. They are thinking of starting an import business or a restaurant, though the obvious source of start-up capital or loan collateral is gone: “We can’t sell our home in Syria because it has been bombed,” he says.

Their lives were shattered on 1 August 2012 when their home in Hama was caught in crossfire between rebels and government troops. “The first attack started without warning at 2am. The windows were smashed and bullets came through the walls,” recalls Lara. “We tried to shelter by lying on the floor of the corridor. I was pregnant. It was the worst day of my life.”

Many friends and neighbours were killed in the attack. The following afternoon, soldiers ordered everyone to evacuate. In the months and years that followed, they tried living elsewhere in Syria, but it was too dangerous, then moved to Jordan, which was unwelcoming, so last September, they decided to move to Brazil.

“At first, we thought we could go back to our home, that our refugee situation was temporary. ‘Just a couple of months,’ we said. But then it was four months, then a year. Now it looks impossible to go back to Syria. I’ve lost hope of that. The war will continue,” says Lara.

“We are planning to make a new life here in Brazil,” her husband says. “I recommend it to my family and friends in Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Brazil is better than other countries. It is safe and you can build a new life here, even though it is expensive … No other country wants us, not even Jordan, where we used to go for day-trip picnics. War destroys everything. It destroys culture, buildings and people. If you haven’t experienced it, you cannot imagine.”

Other refugees – almost all of whom are highly educated and skilled – tell of similar tough decisions. Until 2013, Hassan Salman, a 36-year-old computer programmer, had lived all his life in Yarmouk, the Palestinian district of Damascus. “It was wonderful,” he says, “until the Mig fighters attacked.” The government was punishing the community for offering refuge to rebels. Rockets destroyed a mosque and a school.

“I was a kilometre away. The explosions made a terrible noise and killed many people, including children and old people,” says Salman. “Then the police came into Yarmouk and grabbed people off the streets. They killed many of my friends for helping the refugees. I had also helped them. That was enough for me to be killed. So I fled.”

He took his family to Lebanon. They had to use a taxi because his car had been destroyed in a rocket attack. For more than a year, they lived in Baddawi refugee camp in Tripoli, but life was difficult. There was little work and when their visas expired they feared they would be sent back to Syria, so they started to look at other possible refuges. It was an soul-crushing and expensive experience.

“I tried the German and French embassies. They took my money – $200 each for me, my wife, two sons and mother – and I had to pay $500 to get my documents translated, but they refused to take us. Lebanese agents promised they could get us into Europe. I paid them $3,000 but they just stole the money,” he recalls.

Then Brazil announced it was opening its doors. Salman was hesitant at first. It was far away and he knew almost nothing about the country. But having already overstayed his visa by six months, it was the only way to avoid repatriation.

“There was nothing else I could do. It was my last chance,” he recalls. “So I went to the Brazilian consulate. They were very kind. It was very different from the other embassies.”

Leaving his family behind until he was settled, he arrived in São Paulo on 5 October 2014. “I thanked God I had left Lebanon,” he recalls. “But it felt very strange. I spent my first night sleeping on a mattress on a factory floor and asked myself ‘Why am I here?’”

Consulate officials had explained that Brazil offered residency and travel documents, but no government support to find a home or work. Mosques and Caritas (a Catholic NGO) provide help with language lessons and documentation, but refugees are largely on their own. His funds are already running low. Although he can still do some work online, he also needs to sell clothes on the street to cover the $600 monthly rent that he and three friends share for a two-room apartment in Brás, an area with a high crime rate. Three friends were robbed after visiting him recently.


For this reason, Salman is hoping he can move on to Germany, Sweden or another country. “Brazil is a wonderful country if you have a job. People treat us as Brazilians. Nobody asks about religion. But the problem is money. Life here is expensive,” he says. “Europe would be better.”

Brazil has won kudos for assisting in the world’s worst refugee disaster. It has accepted far more Syrian refugees than any other country in Latin America, according to the UN high commissioner for refugees, and 6,300 more have been granted visas. But Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, says this humanitarian support needs to be put in context. In total, Brazil still has only about 8,000 refugees, compared with half a million in Germany and 200,000 in the US.

“Despite its size, Brazil takes very few refugees,” he said. “This is not a country that receives many foreigners, mainly because the bureaucracy makes things difficult. Only 0.3% of the population were not born in Brazil and that proportion is declining. Compare that to Germany, England and France, where one in 10 people were born overseas.”

Culturally open, but bureaucratically closed and very expensive, Brazil is not an easy county to assimilate into. One of those who appears to have managed is Dana al-Balkhi, who was among the first Syrian refugees to reach Brazil.

Three years before she arrived in December 2013 the young English literature graduate had been looking forward to a bright career, but her home in Deraa –where many of the initial protests took place – quickly became a battleground. For two years, she heard rockets flying over the roof of the house. When family members started disappearing, her father sent Balkhi and her sister away for safety. They went to Lebanon, then Turkey and tried to go to Europe, but their efforts were futile.

“I went to all the embassies, but no one would open the door for Syrians,” she recalls. While other refugees paid agents to smuggle them across the borders illegally, Balkhi knew enough about human trafficking to know the risks. “I wanted to go legally. For two girls on their own, it would not have been safe to go illegally.”

That left Brazil as the only option, but it divided the siblings.

“My sister thought it was too far away, so she went back to Syria. I thought it was an opportunity so I decided to come,” says Balkhi. “I was alone. I knew nobody in Brazil.”

She researched the country online and made contacts through the Sunni mosque of Pari, who helped with accommodation and language lessons. Within a month, she had found a job at a clothes shop despite speaking no Portuguese. Today, she is fluent and works as an administrative assistant.

Sipping on a cola at a restaurant on São Paulo’s swanky Avenida Paulista, Balkhi appears to have made a rapid and successful adjustment. In this extremely cosmopolitan city, nobody pays attention to her hijab, her religion or her refugee status.

“I like the people here,” she says. “They are really nice, really welcoming. They love strangers.”

But there are still difficulties posed by cultural differences, particularly the openness of Brazilians and their tendency to hug everyone. “They don’t know much about Islam. They just think it’s strange. They see I have a scarf so most people don’t try to hug me, but sometimes I have to explain why I don’t shake hands or people might be upset.”

Today, her greatest lament is loneliness, but compared with what she and other have endured it is manageable.

“War degraded our dreams. Before it, my hope was for a bright career. Then I wanted peace. Then just fewer problems. Now, just to survive.”

• This article was amended on 7 September 2015 to correct a picture caption. Humam Debas and his family were photographed in São Paulo, not Rio de Janeiro as an earlier version said.


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/syrians-refuge-brazil-latin-america-war-refugees

Migrant crisis: Middle East refugees who chose Brazil over Europe

• 16 September 2015
  
• From the section Latin America & Caribbean
  

Ibrahim fled to Brazil to avoid being drafted into the Syrian army




When Ibrahim landed in Brazil he spent three days sleeping on the floor and wandering around aimlessly at Sao Paulo's Guarulhos airport.

"I couldn't speak the language and I didn't know where I could find help. I was alone," says Ibrahim, who asks me not to use his family name because of fears for the safety of his relatives still in Syria.

But the 20 year old has no regrets and is glad that rather than facing a perilous journey by sea, as many Syrian refugees are forced to undertake, he chose the safer option of flying to Brazil.

It was also probably a lot cheaper.

"When I found out that the Brazilian Embassy in Beirut was offering 'laissez-passer' (right of passage) to refugees of the war in Syria, it was the best option for me. Why pay $3,000 or $4,000 (£1,955-£2,607) to get smuggled across the sea and risk drowning, when for half of that price I can fly to Brazil?"

'Obliged to act'

Ibrahim fled to Brazil to avoid being drafted into the Syrian army, a country where conscription is compulsory.

His older brother, Mohammad, was less fortunate. Indeed, it's a miracle that he is still alive and was able to escape to Brazil to be with his brother.

Showing me at least 20 shrapnel scars and bullet wounds on his arms and legs, Mohammad doesn't care much for who is on which "side" in the war - just that it is tearing the country apart.

That's not to say that life for Ibrahim, Mohammad - and more than 7,000 other Syrian refugees now in Brazil - is easy when they get here - far from it.

Brazil has a long tradition of accepting refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East, Africa and other countries.

Those seeking asylum can request it on arrival in the country and, as Brazil's economy grew over the last decade, work permits were readily available for those wanting a job.

Last week Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff wrote a newspaper editorial saying that while European nations prevaricated and argued over how many refugees to take in, Brazil was proud to play its part in alleviating what has become a global crisis.

"More than 10 million of us (Brazilians) are descendants of Syrians and Lebanese immigrants, so we are obliged to act in this way," wrote the president.

She concluded: "Brazil has its arms open to take in these refugees… who want to come to live and work here. And we want to offer them this hope".

Tough life

Ibrahim and Mohammed now run a popular and busy little stall in Rio de Janeiro, selling home-made humus, kibbe and other Middle Eastern pastries. The money they earn helps to look after their elderly parents and their two younger siblings.

The boys agree with Ms Rousseff's assertion that Brazilians have been overwhelmingly kind and receptive to the new incomers but, they say, there's almost a vacuum of official assistance once they enter Brazil.

The Hafir family, too, have few home comforts but they try to make visitors feel welcome. Amina, 23, makes coffee on a small stove as I take my shoes off and enter the small, single room they now live in together.

Jamal Hafir has been a refugee for his entire life, as a Palestinian whose parents fled to Syria in 1948.

Forced out of his Damascus home two years ago, as the neighbourhood was destroyed by the civil war, Jamal has now brought his own family half way around the world to Brazil.

"There's more help for refugees in Europe," Jamal tells me. "But we knew it would be dangerous to go by sea. So when we heard Brazil's embassy in Lebanon was offering visas, we thought it's better to come to a country that accepts you."

Syria's war has robbed the family of their home and the children of their education.

While the two boys are out looking for work, the family's four girls, who haven't been to school for three years, sit in the corner of the room on mattresses that double up as sofas and study some basic Portuguese.

They've escaped the war but life in Brazil is still tough.

A local pro-Palestinian charity, not the Brazilian government, is housing the Hafir family at an abandoned office block in Sao Paulo.

The charity pays for electricity and water, but this is still essentially a squat, and like most informal housing, the family don't know how long they'll be able to remain.
But it's not just the Brazilian federal government and individual states who are being urged to do more.

Established communities should also, arguably, play their part. In the last century thousands of Syrians were among the many immigrants who helped to build modern Brazil and other South American countries like Argentina.

Their descendants have been criticised in some sections of the media for not organising and coming forward with practical help for those now fleeing the Middle East.

Back in the Sao Paulo squat, Abdul Salam Sayed plays a lament for his distant, broken homeland on his oud.

Another refugee, forced to leave his Damascus home, Abdul Salam is grateful for the shelter Brazil has afforded him.

But surviving and perhaps even settling here will be a huge challenge for people who have already gone through so much.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34264937

Pitanje glasi hoće li se te izbjeglice nakon prestanka paljbe biti deportirani i vraćeni u svoje domovine...