Free Republic

There is no civil war in Eritrea: its people flee because their isolated homeland could pass as an African version of North Korea. Like the Kim regime in Pyongyang, President Isaias Afewerki keeps Eritrea on a permanent war-footing. Most adults are conscripted into the army or forced to perform compulsory labour of some kind. Today, one Eritrean in every 20 serves in a bloated army with 320,000 soldiers. Mr Isaias justifies this eternal mass mobilisation by claiming that neighbouring Ethiopia is scheming to re-conquer Eritrea. Just as the fictional state of “Oceania” was always at war in George Orwell’s “1984”,...

The lull in the chemical weapon crisis offers a chance to divert attention to the huge flow of refugees leaving Syria and rethink some misguided assumptions about their future. About one-tenth of Syria's 22 million residents have fled across an international border, mostly to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Unable to cope, their governments are restricting entry, prompting international concern about the Syrians' plight. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, suggests that his agency (as the Guardian paraphrases him) "look to resettle tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in countries better able to afford to host them,"...

Sister Angélique Namaika is a familiar sight on her bicycle, which she uses to visit the girls she helps in Dungu and nearby villages in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Photo: UNHCR/B. Sokol 17 September 2013 – A Congolese nun known as ‘mother’ by women and girls displaced and abused by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is being honoured with a top prize from the United Nations refugee agency, it was announced today. Sister Angélique Namaika will receive the Nansen Refugee Prize for extraordinary humanitarian work on behalf of refugees, internally displaced or stateless people, as well...

Pope Francis urged members of religious orders on Tuesday to use empty convents and other structures to house refugees fleeing war and hardship, not as hotels. The pope spoke during a visit to refugees at a Jesuit-run center in Rome's historic center. Francis urged members of religious orders to welcome refugees "in the empty houses and convents. Dear religious men and women, the church does not need the empty convents to be turned into hotels to earn money....

Dozens of men with clubs and knives stormed a charity for Syrian refugees a few days after the Egyptian military ousted President Mohamed Morsi — making it clear they were no longer welcome in Egypt. “You Syrians — you’re setting the country on fire,” the attackers yelled in July as they beat Raqan Abulkheir, who is originally from Homs in central Syria. He runs the refugee center out of an apartment in a Cairo suburb where thousands of Syrians have settled. His 25-year-old son was bludgeoned over the head and left in a coma. During the two and a half...

Another week, another jaw-dropping development in Sweden. A couple of weeks ago it was the cockamamie “hijab solidarity” campaign, in which non-Muslim women all over the country donned head coverings in tribute to a Muslim woman who claimed a man had yanked hers off. This week, the eyebrow-raising news is that Sweden is offering instant permanent residency to any and all Syrian refugees who apply. These newly minted residents, moreover, will be entitled to bring over their spouses and kids. The reasoning behind this new policy is that the situation in Syria is extremely dangerous right now and not likely...

Syrians fleeing violence in their country wait to cross the border into the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq Aug. 25. (CNS photo/Azad Lashkari, Reuters) In a region that has seen increasing threats to ancient Christian communities, the Catholic Church is helping many of the two million refugees of Syria’s civil war. Besides physical aid, Church workers offer the Syrians the simple truth that they haven’t been forgotten—that they are loved and will be cared for. Most refugees are Muslim, children Sean Callahan, the Chief Operating Officer for Catholic Relief Services (CRS)—the humanitarian arm of the United States Conference of...

SPRINGFIELD — From a refugee camp in a war-torn area of Africa, to a stopover in Turkey to an apartment building near downtown Springfield, 21-year-old Hiboxasan Iyai found the challenges of her birthright were not yet over. Among hundreds of Somali Bantu refugees resettled here since 2003, Iyai – a mother of a 3- and 1-year-old, has been struggling to feed and clothe her children since she arrived two months ago – she said during an interview hobbled by communication barriers. With her limited English, Iyai attempted to sum up her plight through what amounted to an elaborate game of...

With conditions continuing to deteriorate in Syria, the Obama administration is making a major policy shift by agreeing for the first time to allow thousands of new Syrian refugees into the United States, The Cable has learned. The numbers are relatively small: just 2,000 refugees, compared to an estimated two million people who have fled Syria during the civil war. But it's a significant increase from the 90 or so Syrian refugees who have been permanently admitted to the U.S. in the last two years. And it's not entirely uncontroversial. The refugees, mostly women and children, will be screened for...

Those who get their news from the mainstream media (or the Guardian) could be forgiven for believing that there are nearly 5 million Palestinian refugees from the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli War. So often is that figure bandied around that most don’t understand that it only reflects the number of Palestinians qualifying for “refugee” benefits under the bizarre formula of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency by which the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren (ad infinitum) of actual refugees continue to inherit this status. This designation is even bestowed upon those Palestinians who are already citizens of other countries. (Using such demographic...

Thirty-one migrants, including nine women, drowned off the coast of Libya during an attempted crossing to Italy on a dinghy according to survivors who managed to complete the journey. A dinghy carrying 53 migrants capsized on Friday evening, and witnesses said 31 of those who had been thrown off it drowned in the accident. The twenty-two survivors, who come from Nigeria, Gambia, Benin and Senegal, said the dinghy had capsized after three days at sea. They were rescued by a passing merchant ship and taken to Lampedusa island, the reports said.

One of the first things he did upon his arrival on the Island of Lampedusa, Pope Francis laid a wreath in the waters in memory of the tens of thousands of migrants who have died trying to reach Europe in unsafe and overcrowded boats. Most of them have no names. We do not know their personal stories, their hopes and certainly not their faces. But almost 20.000 people are thought to have died during their journey of hope, across the Mediterranean sea, in the past 25 years. The migrants are all illegal so of course there are no official...

All the “POPS!” and “BANGS!” from fireworks had my single (for the time) mother edgy. Firing-squads had been murdering thousands of Cubans ‘round the clock. Other thousands of Cubans waged a lonely and hopeless guerrilla war against the massively-armed forces of Soviet proxies Che Guevara and the Castro brothers. (All this 90 miles from U.S. shores.) All those bombs and gunshots were only months distant on July 4th 1962--the Fontova family’s first Fourth in the U.S. We landed in south Louisiana, deepest darkest Dixie. Castro’s propaganda constantly hammered that such areas of the U.S. were infested by "gun and religion-clinging...

The Obama administration is considering resettling thousands of refugees who left Syria during the country's ongoing civil war to multiple towns and cities across the United States, the L.A. Times reports.

WASHINGTON — Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families. The State Department is "ready to consider the idea," an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office...

'Palestinian' refugees from Syria who are staying in the Ain el-Hilweh 'refugee camp' near Sidon have burned aid that was provided to them by Hezbullah, and told Hezbullah to stay out of Syrian affairs. The refugees at the Palestinian Ain el-Hilweh camp in Sidon called on Hizbullah to withdraw its fighters from Syria and not to interfere in Syrian affairs, NNA said. The military support of Hizbullah has helped Syrian regime forces gain the upper hand in the battle for control of Qusayr, a key town for both the regime and the insurgents, where a fierce army assault began 12...

The Washington Times reported Sunday that “the Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama’s new non-deportation policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday.” It’s another giant middle finger to the American people by the Obama administration, endangering national security and guaranteeing higher unemployment. Supporters of this policy, according to the Times, “say the high rate makes sense given the motivated pool of youngsters, known as ‘Dreamers’ because of the Dream Act legislation that would give them full citizenship rights.” Yes, the motivated pool...

Snip: We have been importing jihadists for years now with Muslim immigration programs under the Refugee Resettlement program, diversity visas and religious visas. The Refugee Council USA says: “The U.S. has historically maintained a policy of admitting refugees of special humanitarian concern into the country.” Yet what that means in practice is very different from what most Americans would expect. It’s always a shock to people when they first find out how Refugee Resettlement works. Instead of giving refuge to the religious minorities that are persecuted, oppressed and subjugated under the Shariah, we are opening the floodgates to Islamic supremacists...

(JNS.org) A small Massachusetts town has become a growing refuge for Egyptian Christians fleeing persecution in their homeland. Milford, located approximately 40 miles from Boston, has been drawing increasing numbers of Christians from Egypt, bolstering an existing community of Egyptians who settled in the area in the 1980s and founded St. Mark’s Church in nearby Natick, Mass. “Milford is one of the most famous cities that has a lot of Egyptians,” Maged Saad told the Boston Globe. “It is just by luck. We have no experience in USA, but we just asked one friend. He is here also.” As a...

So once again, no good deed goes unpunished. Uncle Sam lets another bunch of leeching future terrorists into the country who have absolutely no business being here, gives them “asylum,” making them immediately eligible for welfare, and this is the thanks we get? They turn into mass murderers. We bring in thousands of Muslims from a primitive society that has been battling Christians for centuries, and put them into a peaceful Christian society — what could possible go wrong? This is what I was thinking about yesterday, with much of the city under what amounted to martial law. Once more,...