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Since the war in Afghanistan commenced, we have heard of the casualties among US troops, and the enemy. We have heard stories of civilian casualties caused by US mishaps and the enemies desire for control. But in a refugee camp, 7 kilometers from the heart of Kabul, are uncounted civilian casualties.

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state. Yet in the two decades since...

Chinese police report finding bodies of 56 North Korean would-be refugees in Yalu river By Michael Rank Chinese police have reported how the bodies of 56 North Koreans attempting to flee to China, including seven children, were found floating in the Yalu river in 2003. An official notice issued by police in the border town of Baishan in Jilin province describes how 53 corpses were discovered by local people on the morning of October 3, 2003, followed by three more at 5 a.m. the following day. “An examination found that the dead were all citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic...

[[Page 6115]] Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza Memorandum for the Secretary of State By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration...

July 15, 2009 California is the biggest destination for those granted asylum Every year the federal government grants refugee and asylum status to "persons who have been persecuted or who have a well-founded fear of persecution" in their native countries. The legal difference between a "refugee" and an "asylee" is the former requests refuge outside the United States, while the latter requests it after entering this country. The U.S. Office of Immigration Statistics compiles data on these two groups. Its latest report indicates that 60,108 persons were admitted to the United States as refugees in 2008. The leading countries of...

Dictatorships Leave Millions Homeless by: Emily Kanyi, June 18, 2009 Antonio Guterres, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, has termed the drop in the number of refugees under the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) mandate as an “illusion.” According to a recent annual 2008 report released by the UN Refugee Agency on June 16, 2009, the global refugee statistics represent a drop of about 700,000 refugees from 2007. However, there are concerns that a surge of displacements in 2009 not reflected in the report have already offset the decline. “The numbers are growing again. In 2009, we...

1 million now displaced by fighting in Pakistan's northwest: UN Last Updated: Friday, May 8, 2009 | 7:39 AM ET CBC News The number of people displaced by fighting in Pakistan's turbulent northwest has doubled to one million in recent days, the United Nations' refugee agency said Friday. Up to 200,000 people have arrived in safe areas in the past few days and another 300,000 are on the move or are about to flee, Ron Redmond, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said Friday. The new numbers are in addition to the estimated 555,000 people displaced from the...

OTTAWA – The cause of gay refugees who flee persecution in Iran only to face harassment in Turkey has caught the attention of the federal immigration minister, who says Canada is willing to facilitate their resettlement here. Jason Kenney wrote the Canadian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to urge quick processing of their applications after a story appeared last month in the Toronto Star. That story centred on Iranian Arsham Parsi, now a Toronto-based advocate whose "Iranian Queer Railroad" project tries to help gay and lesbians in legal limbo in Turkey reach Canada or the United...

DAVOS, Switzerland — Are you looking for a little excitement in your life? Imagine what fun it would be to live through a rebel attack . . . to navigate a minefield … to negotiate with corrupt officials and border guards in a desperate effort to survive. Thanks to a U.N.-sponsored exhibition, visitors to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week got just that opportunity -- at a theme park with a name right out of Disney: "Refugee Run." Visitors were given the opportunity to experience the harsh conditions that millions of refugees and internally displaced people face daily...

Majority settle in east, which caters to growing Middle Eastern population San Diego County has long been a haven for Iraqi refugees, most recently for a record wave of new arrivals. The 2,356 Iraqis, mostly Chaldean Catholics and other Christian refugees, who arrived in the region last fiscal year are part of a nationwide program to resettle refugees from the war-torn country. It is the largest number of Iraqi refugees who have arrived in San Diego County during a single year. An additional 3,600 are expected this year. Many of the newcomers are refugees like Salah Saour, 45, an engineer...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq, Dec. 17, 2008 – A former war refugee traveled across countries and continents in search of a better life -- a remarkable journey that ended in the United States when he became a U.S. citizen and a soldier. Army Spc. Samuel Ladu, a translator with 4th Infantry Division’s Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, speaks with Iraqi soldiers in southern Baghdad’s Saydiyah community. Ladu, a former refugee of Sudan, became a U.S. citizen after joining the Army. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. David Hodge  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Army Spc....

KARMAH, Iraq, Dec. 15, 2008 – A deployed Marine lived through a war as a child, but he did not hesitate years later when it came time to defend the freedom he and his family almost lost. Marine Corps Cpl. Bajro Buzaljko, 21, an ammunition technician with Regimental Combat Team 1’s Task Force 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, performs a function test on a weapon to ensure its operability in Iraq. After fleeing war-torn Bosnia as a child, Buzaljko joined the Marines to defend the country that accepted him and his family with open arms. U.S. Marine Corps photo...

A fact sheet released this week from the U.S. State Department reported widespread fraud in the refugee program that has brought tens of thousands of people from Somalia and other African nations to the United States. The reported fraud spurred the State Department to suspend a humanitarian program in August which was supposed to reunite African "anchor" refugees already in the states with their family members who are still overseas. DNA testing conducted earlier this year by the government to verify blood ties between anchor refugees and their supposed family members revealed that fewer than 20 percent of those checked...

Thousands in Africa Lied about Families To Gain U.S. Entry The State Department has suspended a humanitarian program to reunite thousands of African refugees with relatives in the U.S. after unprecedented DNA testing by the government revealed widespread fraud. The freeze affects refugees in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea and Ghana, many of whom have been waiting years to emigrate. The State Department says it began DNA testing with a pilot program launched in February to verify blood ties among African refugees. Tests found some applicants lied about belonging to the same family to gain a better chance at legal entry....

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States chose former Sudanese refugee Lopez Lomong to carry their flag at Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony in a move that could embarrass Sudan and its ally China. Lomong, who spent 10 years in a refugee camp after fleeing his native Sudan as a child, was given the honor after a vote by the team captains of the entire U.S. Olympic squad. “This is the most exciting day ever in my life,” Lomong said in a statement by the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) on Wednesday. “It is a great honor for me that my team...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- More than 1,000 refugees from Iraq arrived in the United States in May, the most in recent months, bringing the fiscal-year total to 4,742 so far, the State Department reported June 3. But with just four months left in the fiscal year, the administration's objective of resettling 12,000 Iraqis in the U.S. by October is far from being reached, said Anastasia Brown, director of refugee programs for Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. She added that even that goal is an inadequate fraction of the estimated 4.9 million Iraqis who have been...

North Korea publicly executes 15 starving refugees fleeing to China in desperate search for foodLast updated at 00:05am on 6th March 2008 North Korea has publicly executed 15 starving people, mostly women, for illegally entering neighbouring China in search of food, an aid group said yesterday. The 13 women and two men were shot on a bridge in the north-eastern town of Onseong as local residents watched. It was the second mass execution to be reported this week. The group of 15 were sentenced to death for illegally crossing the border into China or for helping others to do so, to...

OTTAWA -- The backlog of cases waiting to be heard by the federal Immigration and Refugee Board is ballooning, but Mexicans are being pushed to the head of the queue as the government tries to manage the massive influx from that country. The number of all potential refugees in line to appear before the board was up by 66 per cent in the past year, to 34,094 late last month from 20,500 in October, 2006. It's a problem that can be traced, at least in part, to the number of IRB seats that are unfilled. Although the full complement of...

Refugee or Terrorist? by: Bethany Stotts, October 10, 2007 Following the devastating attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the Patriot Act and the REAL ID Act, an effort to prevent further terrorist invasion of U.S. soil. The Patriot Act extends the material support bar to include fundraising for terrorist groups, and is retroactive towards all aliens whatever their entry date. In addition, a 2001 Department of Justice memorandum states that the Patriot act requires the government to deport an alien for fundraising or recruitment on behalf of a terrorist organization “even if the alien did not intend to...

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world. The details of her story have been widely reported, but bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West. Hirsi Ali first fled to the Netherlands as a refugee from Somalia in 1992 after declining to submit to a...

The freedom they have long struggled for may soon be realized by thousands of persecuted Christian Karen and Karenni refugees from Burma who have been living in camps along the Thailand/Burma border. Many of these courageous, mostly Christian refugees are scheduled for resettlement in the United States, or other free nations. Christian Freedom International welcomes this news. For years CFI has been urging the U.S. government, Thailand, and the U.N. to allow the resettlement of these refugees from Burma. CFI has launched petition drives, sponsored U.S. Congressional staff delegations to the region, had conferences with U.S. Department of State officials...

Over the past three weeks, 45 families and 31 individuals -- approximately 200 people -- entered Canada at the Detroit River crossings and applied in Windsor for shelter and social assistance after filing refugee claims with the Canada Border Services Agency. Municipal agencies dealing with the sudden influx of mainly Mexican refugee applicants are renting out hotel rooms and bracing for predicted thousands more to come. "I don't believe that Windsor's residents and taxpayers should have to foot the bill for U.S. immigration policy," Francis told The Star. He was referring to the suspected source of the problem -- a...

BALTIMORE -- Immigration officials intend to deport a Liberian man who avoided trial in a child-rape case this summer in Montgomery County primarily because of difficulty in finding him a court interpreter, authorities said Wednesday. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement senior attorney Christopher R. Coxe said the agency will seek to deport Mahamu Kanneh, who was in the U.S. legally after being granted refugee status as a teenager, regardless of the disposition of the rape case, which is under appeal. Kanneh was arrested in 2004 on charges of raping a 7-year-old relative and abusing another child. "There is no indication...

The Christians of Iraq are suffering daily under increasing imposition of Sharia law. Many have found some kind of refuge in Jordan, Syria, and elsewhere but need to get to the West where they will be safe. I believe there is no future in Iraq for these Christians. Pressure has to be put on Congress to allow refugee status for a higher number of these folks. American Christians have a duty to look out for fellow Christians in distress.

  How did I reject Islam and accepted Lord Jesus as my savior?25 year long persecution in Pakistan.  An Introduction:    I am a Pakistani lawyer belong to a fundamentalist Muslim clan of Pakistan. I was doing practice as an Advocate High Court in Pakistan. I belong to a radical Muslim clan of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. However, miraculously, I accepted Lord Jesus Christ as my savior in 1982, when I was 15 years old. Subsequently, in the year of 2005 we all family my wife and three sons, converted from Muslim to Christianity and were Baptized in Pakistan. We were living in...

Japanese authorities questioning crew of suspected N. Korean boat TOKYO, June 2 (Yonhap) -- Japanese authorities are questioning the crew of a small wooden boat that may have arrived from North Korea, media sources said Saturday. The open motor boat, measuring 7-8 meters long, arrived in the port of Kukaura in Aomori Prefecture 575 kilometers north of Tokyo, Kyodo News said.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Sporadic gunfire erupted Thursday inside the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp where Islamic militants are holed up after refusing an ultimatum by Lebanon's defense minister to surrender or face a military onslaught. Lebanon's leader vowed to uproot the fighters. Insurgents from the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam militant group barricaded in the Palestinian refugee camp vowed not to give up and to fight any Lebanese assault. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, in an address to the nation, said that his government would stamp out Fatah Islam. "We will work to root out and strike at terrorism, but we will embrace...

Iranian Refugee Who Lived at Moscow Airport for 9 Months is Free in Canada March 16, 2007 The Associated Press SignOnSanDiego.com VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- An Iranian refugee who had been living with her two children at Moscow's international airport for nine months was free in Canada on Friday. Zahra Kamalfar, a human rights activist who says she was jailed in Iran for demonstrating against the government, arrived at Vancouver International Airport on Thursday after a flight from Europe. She burst out sobbing, then fainted, after being reunited with her brother, Nader Kamalfar, whom she hadn't seen in nearly 14...

The US coast guard is staging a huge exercise in Florida in preparation for a possible mass exodus from Cuba in the event of the death of Fidel Castro.More than 300 agents and 85 law enforcement agencies are taking part in the two-day Operation Vigilant Sentry. Actors are playing imaginary Cuban migrants in mock interceptions. The operation has taken on a renewed urgency since President Castro fell ill and handed temporary power to his brother Raul last July. President Castro recently spoke in a live broadcast with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez, but has not been seen in public...

The Bush administration said Wednesday it plans to accept at least 7,000 Iraqi refugees for resettlement in the United States this year, and to step up funding to the U.N. refugee agency. The announcement followed a meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department. Iraqi refugees in Syria (file photo) The Iraqis to be admitted represent a big increase for the United States, which has resettled fewer than 500 Iraqi refugees since the Iraq war began in 2003. But both Commissioner Guterres and Bush...

It seems sometimes that there is violence between Christians and Muslims in almost every corner of the world. Sadly, Civil Wars, tribal feuding and other strife creates migrations and refugees seeking safety and freedom. In Israel, ninety refugees from war torn Liberia that have been living in safety there for seventeen years are being told by the United nations that they must return to their African home. These people truly stand out in Israel: they are Muslims, refugees, Liberians and Black Africans of the Mandingo tribe. War torn Liberia has suffered through more than 15 years of Civil War since...

The State Department said yesterday it will re-examine U.S. policy on the admission of Iraqi refugees, likely leading to a sharp increase in the number it admits each year.

PA columnist: Arab leaders initiated departure and made false promises of a speedy return PMW has documented yet another corroboration in the official Palestinian Authority (PA) paper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that it was Arab leaders who were responsible for the flight of Arabs from the new State of Israel in 1948. A backbone of PA ideology, and indeed of anti-Israel propagandists worldwide, is the myth that Israel expelled hundreds of thousands of Arabs from Israel and created the Palestinian "refugee" situation. However, a regular writer for the official PA paper, Mahmud Al-Habbash, writes in a recent column that in 1948 the...

North Korean crisis risks refugee disaster: report Thu Oct 26, 5:13 AM ET North Korea's flow of refugees to China and the world could become a torrent fed by isolation and starvation, an international think-tank warned on Thursday in a new report urging governments to avoid a catastrophe. The North's nuclear test, the revival of inflexible controls on farming and trade, and its rejection of aid meant "the perfect storm may be brewing for a return to famine in the North," said the International Crisis Group (ICG). "Concerned governments can and must do more to improve the situation of the...

A BRITISH climber told today how he watched in disbelief as Chinese soldiers shot dead at least one Tibetan refugee trying to enter Nepal via a Himalayan pass. "I was incredulous at first, but I have never been to this part of the world, so did not know if this was the norm," said Steve Marsh, a police officer from Bristol. Marsh, who was preparing to climb the 8201m Cho Oyu peak, said he saw three Chinese soldiers fire shots. They were aiming at a group of 20-25 Tibetans who were attempting to enter Nepal through the Nang Pa La...

The Sunday Times October 08, 2006 China on alert over a nuclear neighbour Michael Sheridan, North Korean/Chinese border THE North Korean refugee had one request for her captors before the young Chinese soldiers led her back across the steel-girdered bridge on the Yalu River that divides two “socialist allies”. “She asked for a comb and some water because she said that if she was going to die she could not face going to heaven looking as dirty and dishevelled as this,” recounted a relative of one soldier who was there. What happened next is testimony to the rising disgust in...

He's the last man standing on refugee island and costs Australia £8m a year By Nick Squires in Sydney (Filed: 06/10/2006) He is possibly the loneliest refugee in the world and he is being maintained at a cost of £8 million a year. Mohammed Sagar has spent the past five years living in a detention camp on Nauru, a sun-baked rock in the middle of the south Pacific. He was one of 1,500 refugees from the Middle East and Afghanistan sent to the near-bankrupt republic under Australia's so-called Pacific Solution to boatloads of people fleeing their homelands. They were intercepted...

As bedtime approached, reality set back in: Some of the older children began to cry, expressing fear that “the soldiers” were going to come and kill them in their sleep. Consequently, the younger ones became frightened and started crying.

A top Eritrean AIDS activist is among some 150 delegates of last month's international AIDS conference in Toronto who stayed behind and filed refugee claims in a bid to remain in Canada, immigration officials confirm. Amanuel Tesfamichael, 32, had to sprint to a waiting car at Pearson airport to escape Eritrean agents as he arrived for the AIDS 2006 conference. Most of the claimants have the deadly disease and include a large group of women from hardest-hit South Africa and citizens of El Salvador, Eritrea, Uganda and Zimbabwe. "It feels good to be free," said Tesfamichael, who has the disease....

GROTON, Conn. -- The man accused of murdering a woman found in a shoreline hotel room remains on suicide watch Monday night. Channel 3 Eyewitness News reporter Kevin Hogan reported Jose Torres, 45, faced a judge Monday, during which time investigators said the victim was strangled. When asked if he had anything to say, Torres responded while leaving court, "Give me the death penalty."

Omar Abdi Mohamed, a Somali community leader who successfully battled allegations that he was a conduit for terrorist funds but ultimately was convicted of immigration crimes, is back in Somalia. Mohamed was escorted by three armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on a commercial flight from San Diego to Mogadishu, with stops in several countries, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. He arrived yesterday and was immediately released, she said. Mohamed came to San Diego 11 years ago as a tortured refugee from war-torn Somalia. He was arrested during crackdowns on possible...

White House Puts Face on North Korean Human Rights By Peter Baker Wednesday, April 19, 2006; A01 She showed up at a school in a coastal city in China nearly five months ago and begged for help. Instead, she was deported to her native North Korea and never seen again. Now the case of Kim Chun Hee has made its way to the desk of President Bush, threatening to complicate the first White House visit of China's leader tomorrow and further irritate an irritable relationship. Urged on by evangelical supporters from his home town and other activists elsewhere, Bush has...

Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Håkon Hanssen and former Directorate of Immigration (UDI) director Trygve Nordby disagree on a letter that may have a crucial role in an asylum scandal. The high-profile case involves the UDI granting asylum to 182 Kurds, in conflict with established policy. Hanssen has decided that an independent commission shall now investigate the matter in detail.The letter currently at the center of the argument was sent from the UDI to the Ministry of Local Government on Nov. 28 of last year. The UDI wrote that the majority of Iraqis would be granted residency on...

The increasingly popular leader of Norway's most conservative party has had enough of would-be refugees who commit murder and other serious crimes in Norway. Siv Jensen wants much better control over people seeking asylum."Enough's enough," Jensen told newspaper VG. People whom she called "ticking time bombs" shouldn't be allowed to wander around freely in Norway.Jensen, whose party now ranks as Norway's largest, according to public opinion polls, wants asylum seekers to be detained in asylum centers until their applications are processed. She also wants the processing time dramatically reduced.Asylum seekers have committed eight murders and a hijacking since 2000. Most...

The Burma Army has displaced more than 1,200 people in attacks against villages and hiding places of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Southern Karenni State.  Troops from Burma carried out their attacks against villagers on December 23. Soldiers burned down 26 houses in Gee Gaw Ber village, forcing all 610 residents of the village into hiding.  A further 341 people from the nearby village of Toe Ka Htoo fled in fear, while 255 people from Pah Poe are also in hiding. Those newly displaced are now in hiding without shelter and the temperatures in the area are very low....

BERLIN - Blunt questions posed to Muslims seeking German citizenship in a Christian Democratic-ruled federal state are fuelling anger and the threat of discrimination lawsuits from Islamic groups. "Where do you stand on the statement that a wife should obey her husband and that he can hit her if she fails to do so?" is among 30 questions which can be asked by officials to Muslims seeking a German passport in southern Baden-Wuerttemberg state since January 1.

A brawl that began in the Westbury High School cafeteria Wednesday and spilled outdoors capped weeks of growing tension between Houston students and Hurricane Katrina evacuees and resulted in the arrest of 27 students. The fight was one of about a dozen such on-campus clashes that have roiled Houston and surrounding areas since thousands of students from New Orleans began attending local schools in September. In response, Westbury students can expect more police at the school beginning today, a school district spokesman said. Houston Independent School District Board President Dianne Johnson said the efforts would not end there and sought...

GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- The U.N. refugee agency says a new European Union policy on asylum could lead to violations of international law. The 25 EU member countries adopted the directive this week without discussion. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is especially concerned about a change that allows EU countries to turn asylum seekers back to "safe third countries" without any hearing. "This could have wider implications, eroding international standards of refugee protection far beyond the EU," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond said in Geneva. The directive was aimed at harmonizing laws between the member nations....

As bedtime approached, some of the children began to cry, fearful that "the soldiers" were going to come and kill them in their sleep.