Europe Refugee Crisis

A man throws his baby in the air at Istanbul's Esenler Bus Terminal while waiting for buses to the Turkish-Greek border after authorities withheld tickets to Turkish border towns
Picture: Getty Images



A child looks on as Syrian refugees queue for food as they rest beside the highway on their way to the border between Turkey and Greece in Edirne, Turkey
Picture: Getty Images


Back to bottling my Grenache

Welcome to Finland.

Some asylum-seekers having come to Finland from Iraq are publishing messages on social media calling their move to Finland a "mistake". Some of them are publically considering returning to Iraq.

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Broccoli said:

Welcome to Finland.

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Hmmm...sounds like they are the ones with the problems, not the Finns.

Here's what they are saying:

"If you are thinking about coming here, seriously, don't! We are already considering coming back to Iraq. We regret coming here. We were wrong! We paid huge amounts for nothing," Ali, Kadar and Ali are heard saying in the video. "Coming here was a mistake."

The trio also bemoans a lack of clothing, high prices and small meal sizes in reception centres in addition to bad employment opportunities.

Another video on the page features a man called Mustafa standing outside the reception centre on Kaarlenkatu in Helsinki.

"It's much better to live in Iraq," he says in the video. "It is dangerous there, but so be it. I'm definitely going back. I'd rather die in my home country."

"It is just terrible here. It's safe and there are all kinds of things available, but we are suffocating."

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Seems a little ungrateful and spoiled to me.

Small meal sizes. Not enough work. Not enough new clothes. High prices. It's safe here but we are suffocating.

I mean, Jeez, what did they expect...a utopia set aside for them?

People outside the West tend to have a utopian view of it. They don't seem to realise we have our own problems too, and often get homesick once reality has sunk in. I tried to show one of my Chinese friends a documentary from a very reputable source about Chinese girls (mainland, HK, and Taiwan) who are tricked into coming to Australia to learn English, or get a good job, only to be forced into sexual slavery when they get here. She wouldn't believe such things happen here. She's innocent enough to fall for something like this.

This is part of the price the World pays for the supremacy of Western main stream media nearly everywhere. People outside get a very rose coloured view of Western society. That is called soft power.

Maybe we should define soft power as the ability to make a country look good no matter what.

Soft power is the ability to tell others "Do as I say, not as I do".

A group of 20 refugees in Austria put on hunger strikes, demanding for 2000 euros of spending money a month.





There was an old Chinese saying "Pitiful appearing people must have a side worth despising". I though that was quite harsh, but maybe they were referring to this type of situation?

These guys look able-bodied. They are not even skinny.

no_name said:

A group of 20 refugees in Austria put on hunger strikes, demanding for 2000 euros of spending money a month.

These guys look able-bodied. They are not even skinny.

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Unbelievable. That's pretty pathetic IMHO.

delft said:

This is part of the price the World pays for the supremacy of Western main stream media nearly everywhere. People outside get a very rose coloured view of Western society. That is called soft power.

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You mean that people in Iraq or Syria during the war have better life standard than you? That medias created that? I'm asking because I can't understand your logic. You mean like it's better to live in Bangladesh or Angola instead of Netherlands? And it's an image created by the mysterious 'West'? Because it looks like that.

Better life standard isn't an image created by media but by those who work hard everyday in many European countries for centuries. And many 'refugees' think that's a given once you're there. But we all know that you have to work hard for that being born here as well. That's because most of them can't work hard and want some social welfare share for themselves. And for many of them an idea of hard work is something that doesn't exist in their native societies.

That's what created those 'refugees' from Finland that we laugh at.

no_name said:

A group of 20 refugees in Austria put on hunger strikes, demanding for 2000 euros of spending money a month.

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There was an old Chinese saying "Pitiful appearing people must have a side worth despising". I though that was quite harsh, but maybe they were referring to this type of situation?

These guys look able-bodied. They are not even skinny.

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If they made it to Austria then they are already doing very well. It's one of the most scenic and beautiful countries in the world.

There must be some expectation with these refugees that employment and economic prosperity is readily available. It's likely that local news in places like Syria & Iraq would be very isolated to the immediate situation and violence going on in their country and region. Maybe they just don't know about the larger economic climate in the world...