Almost 200 children from the camp have been brought to the UK, some of them under the “Dubs” arrangement, according to UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd. The number includes 60 girls who were at high risk of sexual exploitation, she said. But the process of transferring some of the estimated 1,300 unaccompanied children from the camp was halted on Monday at the request of the French authority. The dismantling of the camp is expected to start on Tuesday.
Long queues formed earlier outside reception centres in the camp as the French authorities worked to determine whether individual migrants were with family members or travelling alone, and whether they were deemed to be vulnerable. After processing, they boarded buses to different parts of France where they will be given the opportunity to claim asylum, or face deportation.
Forty-five migrants, all young men from Afghanistan, are settling into the Miramar hotel, an empty holiday centre that looks out to sea. At the local pizzeria, residents have gathered to vent their discontent.
The reasons for which refugees are flowing into the Western nation have as their roots in the cruel actions of the Western nations against the nations of the refugees. The Syrian problem occurred due to the inability of the US and its Allies to integrate the remnants of Saddam Hussein’s army into productive life – this spawned ISIS. Recent reports stating that the CIA secretly made highly sophisticated terror videos only adds more fuel to the flame as it helped ISIS to continue its propaganda. Afghanistan suffered similarly from Western myopia as it too was subjected to the brunt of Western aggression without there being any clear roadmap of where Afghanistan would go from there.
So the policies of Western invasion and regime change, without any clear roadmaps of what would occur later, led to the situations in Syria and Iraq, among others. The need to throw out the Assad regime was so great that nothing else mattered – no matter those factions in Syria itself was being used as a pawn by Russia and the West. All of these make it imperative that the refugees who come to the West are treated humanely and not subjected to mass deportation and confinement. The problems created by the West must be also solved by them – it is neither mercy nor humanity, but simply cleaning up the mess they created in the first place.
We know in the Western countries, especially in America, the armed forces enjoy high prestige, but it is the US soldiers in particular, acted most brutally in Afghanistan and Iraq. The refugee problem is their creation and we expect them to treat the migrants issues humanely. It is their moral obligation and responsibility too.
