Brussels Is Under High Security Alert, but Will Europe Address Muslims in
"Marginalized Ghettos"?
Monday, 23 November 2015 00:00 By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video
Interview
Belgium's capital city of Brussels is on its highest alert as residents
remain on lockdown. People are being told to stay away from their windows,
and schools remain closed as police and soldiers carry out raids in the
search for suspects in the Paris attacks ten days ago that killed 130
people. Overnight raids resulted in 16 arrests. No guns or explosives were
found, and Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris attacks who drove
to Brussels afterward, remains at large. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister
Charles Michel says Brussels will remain under the country's highest level
of security threat, meaning the threat of an attack is "serious and
imminent." We speak with Belgian-born human rights activist Peter Bouckaert,
Human Rights Watch's emergencies director, who has spent the last few months
speaking to refugees coming to Europe mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and
Iraq. He also examines what he calls the "marginalized ghettos" in European
cities where many migrants live, including the Brussels suburb called
Molenbeek, where some of the Paris attackers lived. "Europe really should be
focusing more on the marginalized Muslim communities at home and try to
better meet their needs, make sure that young people are educated and have
jobs available, because the reality is that the majority of these people who
carried out the Paris attacks were French citizens - some of them resident
in Molenbeek - who have been living in France all of their lives," Bouckaert
says. He also notes Belgium has been a center for the illegal weapons trade
for decades.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Residents of the Belgian capitol of Brussels remain locked in
their homes as police and soldiers search the city for suspects linked to
the attacks on Paris ten days ago that killed 130 people. Overnight raids
resulted in sixteen arrests. No guns or explosives were found, and Salah
Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris attacks who drove to Brussels
afterwards, remains at large. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Charles
Michel says Brussels will remain under the country's highest level of
security threat, meaning the threat of an attack is serious and imminent.
Residents have been told to stay away from their windows, and authorities
have shut down the city's public transportation, schools, and museums.
Brussels is also capital of the European Union. Those offices will remain
open under increased security patrols. For more we turn to Peter Bouckaert,
Human Rights Watch's emergencies director. He's spent decades covering war.
Spent the last few months speaking to refugees coming to Europe mostly from
Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Posting messages on twitter, Bouckaert has
helped expose the realities of life for refugees fleeing violence at home.
He was one of the first people to share images of Alan Kurdi, the three-year
old Syrian boy who drowned off a Turkish beach. Bouckaert was in New York
last week for just a few days. We spoke to him about the refugee crisis. But
first he described his home country of Belgium and its capital, Brussels,
and what he called the city's marginalized ghettos in European cities where
many migrants live. He spoke in particular about the conditions in Brussels
of Molenbeek, where some of the attackers came from.
PETER BOUCKAERT Several of the attackers have come from a marginalized
suburb of Brussels, called Molenbeeck. Where the attack appears to have been
planned, and where many other prior terrorist attacks were also planned.
It's also a weapons shipment - a place where weapons are very easily
available. And I think there's two lessons to be drawn from this aspect. The
first is that it's - and that's an important lesson for the United States.
When we do take refugees - or migrants, for that matter - it's very
important to integrate them into our societies, to give them the language
skills and the support they need to become productive members of our
societies. And one of the gravest mistakes that Europe has made, several
decades ago, is to put people in these marginalized ghettos, basically,
where extremism has built. So that's why it's so dangerous, the policies
that US governors are adopting, because they cannot stop these refugees from
coming to their states - that's a federal decision - but they can stop them
from having the support they need to be integrated into their communities,
and that could actually present a threat in the future.
AMY GOODMAN:Talk more about Molenbeek.
PETER BOUCKAERTSo it is a neighborhood where weapons are easily available.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
PETER BOUCKAERT Because Belgium has been a center for the illegal weapons
trade for decades. It's where shipments to conflicts like Angola,
traditionally, have taken off. And that commerce has led to the easy
availability of weapons. And that is a very dangerous development, because
for just a few thousand dollars, you can buy Kalashnikovs and other weapons
of war on the black market in Belgium.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised when you heard about this connection between
the Paris attackers, some of them, and Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium?
PETER BOUCKAERTI was not really surprised, because I've been working on the
Syrian conflict for many years, and we have seen many people from these
areas of Belgium and France heading to fight in Syria. And, you know,
there's been this focus on this fake passport, when Europe really should be
focusing more on the marginalized Muslim communities at home and try to
better meet their needs, make sure that young people are educated and have
jobs available, because the reality is that the majority of these people who
carried out the Paris attacks were French citizens - some of them resident
in Molenbeek - who have been living in France all of their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the stories of people. I don't think people care about
refugees when you say one million, when say 1000, until you hear the story
of one person.
PETER BOUCKAERT I have met so many people with their own tragic and at times
inspiring stories. I have met many Syrians who made this boat journey and
then actually stayed in Greece to help their fellow Syrians when they
arrived. But one person who touched me quite a bit is a doctor from Syria,
Dr. Ali Jabour [sp]. He made this journey and I met him about two months ago
in Hungary where he was sleeping on the streets. And just imagine you've
spent four years in Syria, digging people out of the rubble and saving their
lives at the hospital - your hero, really, and you end up on this journey of
utter humiliation. I wrote about him, and my last line of the piece I wrote
said he's now in Austria, one step closer to achieving his dream of
continuing his medical studies in Germany. And he contacted me from Germany
and said, actually, the last line is not right, because my dream is to be
back in Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the journey he took. Explain how people go from Syria.
PETER BOUCKAERT So for most of these people, they have to sell their land
and their house and borrow very heavily from neighbors and from family to
make this journey because they have to pay smugglers incredible amounts of
money. Then they have to cross the border into Turkey, often illegally, over
razor wire fences, and then they have to make their way to the smugglers,
who they pay about $1200 at least, sometimes much more, to be pushed onto
these boats. And all of them are being told the journey will be safe, there
will be 30, 35 people on the boat. But when they arrive on the coast, up to
55, 60 people are pushed onto these boats. And the smugglers have guns to
force people to take off. There's nobody to guide these boats. One of the
refugees is given the handle of the engine on this rubber boat, and then
they set out at sea. Many of the boats break down at sea and drift for
hours. We've talked to people who have been at sea for as long as two days.
Sometimes the boats are attacked by vigilantes.
AMY GOODMAN: And where do they go in this boat journey?
PETER BOUCKAERT They go from Turkey, from the Turkish coast to the Greek
islands. And the numbers have been growing exponentially. In July, 24,000
people arrived on the island of Lesbos. In August, it was up to 50,000. And
by September, it was 111,000.
AMY GOODMAN: So how many a day?
PETER BOUCKAERT It can be up to 5000, 8000 people a day. So that means 100
boats.
AMY GOODMAN: A hundred boats.
PETER BOUCKAERT And you just do the math. I did the math, and the smugglers
are making over $100 million off the plight of these people.
AMY GOODMAN: And then what happens when they end up in Lesbos? What happens
then?
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, for many, they think that their journey - the
worst part of their journey is over when they arrive in Lesbos. But
actually, their suffering is just about to begin. When they get on the
beach, wet and often cold, they're helped by the volunteers. They are given
dry clothes if dry clothes are available. And then they end up in these
horrible camps, completely overcrowded with very little shelter and food,
where they have to wait for days just to get a registration paper to get
onto the boat to Athens. And then they continue, sleeping out in the open
with their children - it's stunning to see how many babies are on this
journey, and toddlers - for day after day after day until they ultimately
reach Germany.
And, you know, I think the real scandal is that we're now five months, a
year into this crisis, that keeps growing, but there still is no organized
EU response, both in terms of coherent refugee policies, but also in terms
of saving lives at sea and meeting the humanitarian needs of these people.
This is not an insurmountable task. I mean, OK, we're talking about a
maximum of 8000 people a day, which seems like a huge number, but we handle
those kind of crowds every day at rock concerts, at soccer matches. We do
have the capacity to address these people's needs and to make this journey a
lot more humane, but we're not.
AMY GOODMAN: How have the Paris attacks complicated this whole situation,
the horror for refugees? I wanted to turn just in the United States to
Donald Trump, the repub - one of the leading presidential candidates,
Republican candidates, speaking Monday after the Paris attacks.
DONALD TRUMP: With all of the problems - and you probably heard that at
least one, and probably more, of the killers, the animals, that did what
they did in Paris, came out of the migration, right? They came out of the
migration. So we have a president that wants to take hundreds of thousands -
hundreds of thousands of people and move them into our country. And we don't
- no, think of it. And we don't even know who they are. There's no
paperwork. There's no anything.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Donald Trump. Peter Bouckaert?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, I normally make a policy not to respond to such
idiotic statements. But in reality, every Syrian refugee who reaches the
United States has gone through four levels of security review. These are the
most carefully screened refugees anywhere in the world. And there have been
no incidents with the hundreds of thousands of refugees that the US has
taken in over the years. The United States' values are built about being
welcoming to refugees. And it's our most powerful tool in the war against
Islamic extremism, are our values. It's not our military planes and our
bombs. The only way we can fight against this brutality, this barbarism, is
with our values. And if we're going to shut the door on these refugees,
we're giving a propaganda victory to ISIS. And I think that's exactly why
they left a fake Syrian passport at the scene of their attacks, because they
would love it if we shut the door on the people who are fleeing their
so-called Islamic caliphate.
AMY GOODMAN: What happens to Afghan refugees?
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, I think a lot of the focus has been on the Syrian
refugees and their plight. But as one Afghan refugee told me, the Syrians
have had four years of war, now coming onto five. We've had 40. And we
should not ignore the plight of the people fleeing Afghanistan. The Taliban
is resurgent in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is also targeting people
there. And there's many abuses being committed by the Northern Alliance. But
the Afghan refugees also are fleeing from Iran. There's millions of Afghans
who live in Iran, and one of the reasons they're fleeing from Iran, which is
a very little-known fact, is that Iran is actually forcibly recruiting them
to go fight in Syria. They're rounding up Afghan refugees and giving them
the choice between being deported back to Afghanistan, a country many have
not lived in for decades and fear, or being forced to go fight for Assad in
Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to continue on this track, this idea of what has caused
people to flee and what our responsibility is, not just as human beings that
are not attached except that we're humans and care about other human beings,
but our responsibility for the cause of the refugee crisis.
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, I do think it's important for people to understand
that the 2003 Iraq invasion, and especially the very irresponsible policies
which were put in place by the Bush administration, played a very direct
role in creating the Islamic State. It ripped apart Iraqi state and allowed
for the rise of Islamic extremism. The only way we can respond to that is
not just with a military strategy, and certainly not with brutality. I mean,
we've seen that the kind of brutal policies pursued by the Bush
administration and Rumsfeld and Cheney utterly failed. They failed on the
ground. They achieved nothing in terms of stabilizing Iraq or dealing with
the threat of Islamic extremism. So, you know, I totally understand in the
aftermath of the Paris attacks people want to respond, they want to go
strike against the Islamic State, but we have to be smart and learn from our
own history. And actually, our values, respect for human rights and
welcoming refugees is an important part of fighting against the kind of
Islamic extremism that the Islamic State represents.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, you were one of the first to tweet the picture
of the three-year-old boy. Talk about his case, Alan Kurdi.
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, Alan Kurdi came from the city of Kobani, which is
completely destroyed, partly by the Islamic State, but also by US airstrikes
in response to their takeover of the city. He set off -
AMY GOODMAN: The city of Kobani -
PETER BOUCKAERT Of Kobani.
AMY GOODMAN: In Syria.
PETER BOUCKAERT In Syria. And he set off on one of these rubber boats and
drowned alongside his mother and his brother. Every day, two Alan Kurdis die
on this journey. And, you know, the picture of Alan Kurdi certainly drew a
lot of attention. It horrified us all. And for a brief moment, it united us
in a sense that we have to do something about this crisis. Well, we still
have to do something about this crisis. And part of what we need to do about
this crisis, the most important part, is making safe and legal ways for
people to seek asylum, to get out of the horrors of war, to provide them
with the opportunity to educate their children because those children
represent the future of Syria. And there - just in Turkey, there are 400,000
children, Syrian children, out of school -
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
PETER BOUCKAERT - missing out on an education, having fled from Syria. So we
need to address this real crisis in the region. You know, even with the
projections of the European Union for 2015, 2016 and 2017, the refugees
reaching Europe would represent 0.4% of the population of Europe. That's one
out of 250 people. You know, in Lebanon, one out of four people is a
refugee, a Syrian refugee. So Europe is not being flooded by refugees and
certainly the world is not being flooded by Syrian refugees. We can - this
is not a capacity problem. It's a political problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the US should do. What are the numbers of refugees
the US has taken and should take?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, the US takes 70,000 refugees a year, and many of them
come from places like Syria and Somalia and Iraq. President Obama has now
promised to take 10,000 more Syrian refugees a year. Those people will be
carefully screened, and I am certain that they will contribute to American
society. You know, I've been stunned by the number of doctors and engineers
and business leaders that I've met on this journey. These people are not
coming to take welfare. They want to come and contribute to our societies.
They want to build a new future for themselves and for their children. And
even in Germany today, the people in the camps, the one thing they ask me
for is language books. They want to learn the German language, get out of
these camps, and start their new lives.
AMY GOODMAN: More than two dozen US state governors have refused to accept
Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. This is one of them. This is Texas
Governor Greg Abbott.
GOV. GREGG ABBOTT: The database on the Syrian side simply does not exist. As
a result, to the extent any Syrian refugee is allowed into the country, we
are playing the same game of risk that Europe played with regard to the
individual who entered Europe, who then participated in the terroristic
bombing of Paris. As governor of the state of Texas, I will not roll the
dice and take the risk on allowing a few refugees in simply to expose Texans
to that danger.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Governor Abbott of Texas. Peter Bouckaert of Human
Rights Watch?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, I think the facts speak for themselves. There's 70,000
refugees coming to the United States every year, and not a single one has
been involved in a terrorist incident. The situation in Europe is different.
There is chaos right now in terms of the procedures, and Europe does need to
put together a coherent refugee policy to deal with these people and to
screen them for security reasons. But the reality is that the US has
screening procedures in place and a coherent refugee policy, and that these
people present no threat to the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Governor Bentley of Alabama.
GOV. ROBERT BENTLEY: And I think the thing that I want to do as governor is
to make sure the people of Alabama are safe. And if there is any - if
there's even the slightest risk that the people who are coming in from Syria
are not the types of people that we would want them to be, then we can't
take that chance.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. Peter Bouckaert?
PETER BOUCKAERT Look, I can assure the governor that the people who are
going to come from Syria to the United States are exactly the kind of people
that we will want to welcome to the United States. I've met many people on
this journey who I would have loved to have as neighbors. They're people who
are fleeing from conflict. And it's part of a long-standing US tradition to
welcome people who need refuge.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the solution to the conflict in Syria?
PETER BOUCKAERT The conflict in Syria is a very difficult conflict to
resolve. It ultimately needs a political solution. And one of the aspects
which is really important is to reassure various minority communities,
including the Christians and the Assyrians and the Yazidis, as well as the
Alawites, who are the power base of President Bashar al-Assad, that there is
a future for them in Syria because many of them are supporting the Syrian
government not because they like the policies of Assad, but because they're
fearful for the future. And they have every reason to be because if we look
at what happened in Iraq, many of these communities were wiped out. The
Yazidis and the Christians just in the last year lost most of their
villages.
But there's other aspects as well. You know, two years ago, I helped
organize a conference for women from Syria in Geneva, together with women's
rights activist Madeleine Rees. And it was really the first time that women
had had a voice in the peace process. You know, we brought this proposal to
the diplomats, and they were like, that's a great idea.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was the proposal?
PETER BOUCKAERT It was to have a conference of women to talk about what
their vision was for the future of -
AMY GOODMAN: And what was their vision?
PETER BOUCKAERT Their vision was that women had to be around the table, that
we could not just have men with guns around the table. But up to that stage,
50% of the population of Syria, their voice had been completely ignored in
the peace process for Syria. And that happens time and time again. We need
to make sure that not just the people with guns are around the table, that
they don't just buy their chair at the table with blood, but that the moral
voices from the community and women, civil society leaders who have such
much more of a vision for the future of Syria - and the Congo and all of
these other conflicts - are around the table with a voice.
AMY GOODMAN: You have said that you believe that this fake passport that was
planted next to one of the gunmen in Paris, that said they were from Syria
but in fact they weren't, was actually, you believe, a plan of ISIS to make
the link.
PETER BOUCKAERT Yes. You know, ISIS wants people to flock towards its
Islamic caliphate. So it really is a rejection of the ideology of ISIS when
people are fleeing from the Islamic caliphate. And I've met many people from
Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa and Mosul who are fleeing the terror of ISIS. So ISIS
does want to get Europe to shut the door in the face of these refugees. It
really helps ISIS a lot when Muslims are being seen humiliated on the
streets of Europe.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of France and the United States to bomb Raqqa
after the Paris attacks, the incessant now bombing, and now Russia is
joining in bombing, after the Russian jetliner, it's been shown, had a bomb
on board. Raqqa, hundreds of thousands of civilians live there still.
PETER BOUCKAERT Yes. You know, there certainly, unfortunately, has to be
probably a military component to confronting ISIS. But I think we constantly
need to remind ourselves that we have a lot more in our arsenal than just
planes and bombs. And it's very important to understand that our values as a
society, values which are radically opposed to the barbarity of ISIS, values
of human rights and respect for people's dignity and their lives, are our
most important tool to fight against this kind of extremism. And what
concerns me is that there's been so much focus on a military response, when
actually this is a fight for the hearts and minds of people. And respect for
human rights and dignity are fundamental to that.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's emergencies
director, came into this country for just two days then back to Europe where
he has been dealing with refugees. Millions of refugees are fleeing war in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. He is covering it and you can go to our first part
of our interview with him at democracynow.org. He is originally from
Belgium. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Mayor of New Jersey's
largest city joins us. Stay with us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
AMY GOODMAN
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a
national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over
1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named
Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's Meet the Press.
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Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Brussels Is Under High Security Alert, but Will Europe Address Muslims in
"Marginalized Ghettos"?
Monday, 23 November 2015 00:00 By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! | Video
Interview
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.
. Belgium's capital city of Brussels is on its highest alert as
residents remain on lockdown. People are being told to stay away from their
windows, and schools remain closed as police and soldiers carry out raids in
the search for suspects in the Paris attacks ten days ago that killed 130
people. Overnight raids resulted in 16 arrests. No guns or explosives were
found, and Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris attacks who drove
to Brussels afterward, remains at large. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister
Charles Michel says Brussels will remain under the country's highest level
of security threat, meaning the threat of an attack is "serious and
imminent." We speak with Belgian-born human rights activist Peter Bouckaert,
Human Rights Watch's emergencies director, who has spent the last few months
speaking to refugees coming to Europe mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and
Iraq. He also examines what he calls the "marginalized ghettos" in European
cities where many migrants live, including the Brussels suburb called
Molenbeek, where some of the Paris attackers lived. "Europe really should be
focusing more on the marginalized Muslim communities at home and try to
better meet their needs, make sure that young people are educated and have
jobs available, because the reality is that the majority of these people who
carried out the Paris attacks were French citizens - some of them resident
in Molenbeek - who have been living in France all of their lives," Bouckaert
says. He also notes Belgium has been a center for the illegal weapons trade
for decades.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Residents of the Belgian capitol of Brussels remain locked in
their homes as police and soldiers search the city for suspects linked to
the attacks on Paris ten days ago that killed 130 people. Overnight raids
resulted in sixteen arrests. No guns or explosives were found, and Salah
Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris attacks who drove to Brussels
afterwards, remains at large. Meanwhile, Belgian Prime Minister Charles
Michel says Brussels will remain under the country's highest level of
security threat, meaning the threat of an attack is serious and imminent.
Residents have been told to stay away from their windows, and authorities
have shut down the city's public transportation, schools, and museums.
Brussels is also capital of the European Union. Those offices will remain
open under increased security patrols. For more we turn to Peter Bouckaert,
Human Rights Watch's emergencies director. He's spent decades covering war.
Spent the last few months speaking to refugees coming to Europe mostly from
Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Posting messages on twitter, Bouckaert has
helped expose the realities of life for refugees fleeing violence at home.
He was one of the first people to share images of Alan Kurdi, the three-year
old Syrian boy who drowned off a Turkish beach. Bouckaert was in New York
last week for just a few days. We spoke to him about the refugee crisis. But
first he described his home country of Belgium and its capital, Brussels,
and what he called the city's marginalized ghettos in European cities where
many migrants live. He spoke in particular about the conditions in Brussels
of Molenbeek, where some of the attackers came from.
PETER BOUCKAERT Several of the attackers have come from a marginalized
suburb of Brussels, called Molenbeeck. Where the attack appears to have been
planned, and where many other prior terrorist attacks were also planned.
It's also a weapons shipment - a place where weapons are very easily
available. And I think there's two lessons to be drawn from this aspect. The
first is that it's - and that's an important lesson for the United States.
When we do take refugees - or migrants, for that matter - it's very
important to integrate them into our societies, to give them the language
skills and the support they need to become productive members of our
societies. And one of the gravest mistakes that Europe has made, several
decades ago, is to put people in these marginalized ghettos, basically,
where extremism has built. So that's why it's so dangerous, the policies
that US governors are adopting, because they cannot stop these refugees from
coming to their states - that's a federal decision - but they can stop them
from having the support they need to be integrated into their communities,
and that could actually present a threat in the future.
AMY GOODMAN:Talk more about Molenbeek.
PETER BOUCKAERTSo it is a neighborhood where weapons are easily available.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
PETER BOUCKAERT Because Belgium has been a center for the illegal weapons
trade for decades. It's where shipments to conflicts like Angola,
traditionally, have taken off. And that commerce has led to the easy
availability of weapons. And that is a very dangerous development, because
for just a few thousand dollars, you can buy Kalashnikovs and other weapons
of war on the black market in Belgium.
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised when you heard about this connection between
the Paris attackers, some of them, and Molenbeek in Brussels, Belgium?
PETER BOUCKAERTI was not really surprised, because I've been working on the
Syrian conflict for many years, and we have seen many people from these
areas of Belgium and France heading to fight in Syria. And, you know,
there's been this focus on this fake passport, when Europe really should be
focusing more on the marginalized Muslim communities at home and try to
better meet their needs, make sure that young people are educated and have
jobs available, because the reality is that the majority of these people who
carried out the Paris attacks were French citizens - some of them resident
in Molenbeek - who have been living in France all of their lives.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the stories of people. I don't think people care about
refugees when you say one million, when say 1000, until you hear the story
of one person.
PETER BOUCKAERT I have met so many people with their own tragic and at times
inspiring stories. I have met many Syrians who made this boat journey and
then actually stayed in Greece to help their fellow Syrians when they
arrived. But one person who touched me quite a bit is a doctor from Syria,
Dr. Ali Jabour [sp]. He made this journey and I met him about two months ago
in Hungary where he was sleeping on the streets. And just imagine you've
spent four years in Syria, digging people out of the rubble and saving their
lives at the hospital - your hero, really, and you end up on this journey of
utter humiliation. I wrote about him, and my last line of the piece I wrote
said he's now in Austria, one step closer to achieving his dream of
continuing his medical studies in Germany. And he contacted me from Germany
and said, actually, the last line is not right, because my dream is to be
back in Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us the journey he took. Explain how people go from Syria.
PETER BOUCKAERT So for most of these people, they have to sell their land
and their house and borrow very heavily from neighbors and from family to
make this journey because they have to pay smugglers incredible amounts of
money. Then they have to cross the border into Turkey, often illegally, over
razor wire fences, and then they have to make their way to the smugglers,
who they pay about $1200 at least, sometimes much more, to be pushed onto
these boats. And all of them are being told the journey will be safe, there
will be 30, 35 people on the boat. But when they arrive on the coast, up to
55, 60 people are pushed onto these boats. And the smugglers have guns to
force people to take off. There's nobody to guide these boats. One of the
refugees is given the handle of the engine on this rubber boat, and then
they set out at sea. Many of the boats break down at sea and drift for
hours. We've talked to people who have been at sea for as long as two days.
Sometimes the boats are attacked by vigilantes.
AMY GOODMAN: And where do they go in this boat journey?
PETER BOUCKAERT They go from Turkey, from the Turkish coast to the Greek
islands. And the numbers have been growing exponentially. In July, 24,000
people arrived on the island of Lesbos. In August, it was up to 50,000. And
by September, it was 111,000.
AMY GOODMAN: So how many a day?
PETER BOUCKAERT It can be up to 5000, 8000 people a day. So that means 100
boats.
AMY GOODMAN: A hundred boats.
PETER BOUCKAERT And you just do the math. I did the math, and the smugglers
are making over $100 million off the plight of these people.
AMY GOODMAN: And then what happens when they end up in Lesbos? What happens
then?
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, for many, they think that their journey - the
worst part of their journey is over when they arrive in Lesbos. But
actually, their suffering is just about to begin. When they get on the
beach, wet and often cold, they're helped by the volunteers. They are given
dry clothes if dry clothes are available. And then they end up in these
horrible camps, completely overcrowded with very little shelter and food,
where they have to wait for days just to get a registration paper to get
onto the boat to Athens. And then they continue, sleeping out in the open
with their children - it's stunning to see how many babies are on this
journey, and toddlers - for day after day after day until they ultimately
reach Germany.
And, you know, I think the real scandal is that we're now five months, a
year into this crisis, that keeps growing, but there still is no organized
EU response, both in terms of coherent refugee policies, but also in terms
of saving lives at sea and meeting the humanitarian needs of these people.
This is not an insurmountable task. I mean, OK, we're talking about a
maximum of 8000 people a day, which seems like a huge number, but we handle
those kind of crowds every day at rock concerts, at soccer matches. We do
have the capacity to address these people's needs and to make this journey a
lot more humane, but we're not.
AMY GOODMAN: How have the Paris attacks complicated this whole situation,
the horror for refugees? I wanted to turn just in the United States to
Donald Trump, the repub - one of the leading presidential candidates,
Republican candidates, speaking Monday after the Paris attacks.
DONALD TRUMP: With all of the problems - and you probably heard that at
least one, and probably more, of the killers, the animals, that did what
they did in Paris, came out of the migration, right? They came out of the
migration. So we have a president that wants to take hundreds of thousands -
hundreds of thousands of people and move them into our country. And we don't
- no, think of it. And we don't even know who they are. There's no
paperwork. There's no anything.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Donald Trump. Peter Bouckaert?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, I normally make a policy not to respond to such
idiotic statements. But in reality, every Syrian refugee who reaches the
United States has gone through four levels of security review. These are the
most carefully screened refugees anywhere in the world. And there have been
no incidents with the hundreds of thousands of refugees that the US has
taken in over the years. The United States' values are built about being
welcoming to refugees. And it's our most powerful tool in the war against
Islamic extremism, are our values. It's not our military planes and our
bombs. The only way we can fight against this brutality, this barbarism, is
with our values. And if we're going to shut the door on these refugees,
we're giving a propaganda victory to ISIS. And I think that's exactly why
they left a fake Syrian passport at the scene of their attacks, because they
would love it if we shut the door on the people who are fleeing their
so-called Islamic caliphate.
AMY GOODMAN: What happens to Afghan refugees?
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, I think a lot of the focus has been on the Syrian
refugees and their plight. But as one Afghan refugee told me, the Syrians
have had four years of war, now coming onto five. We've had 40. And we
should not ignore the plight of the people fleeing Afghanistan. The Taliban
is resurgent in Afghanistan. The Islamic State is also targeting people
there. And there's many abuses being committed by the Northern Alliance. But
the Afghan refugees also are fleeing from Iran. There's millions of Afghans
who live in Iran, and one of the reasons they're fleeing from Iran, which is
a very little-known fact, is that Iran is actually forcibly recruiting them
to go fight in Syria. They're rounding up Afghan refugees and giving them
the choice between being deported back to Afghanistan, a country many have
not lived in for decades and fear, or being forced to go fight for Assad in
Syria.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to continue on this track, this idea of what has caused
people to flee and what our responsibility is, not just as human beings that
are not attached except that we're humans and care about other human beings,
but our responsibility for the cause of the refugee crisis.
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, I do think it's important for people to understand
that the 2003 Iraq invasion, and especially the very irresponsible policies
which were put in place by the Bush administration, played a very direct
role in creating the Islamic State. It ripped apart Iraqi state and allowed
for the rise of Islamic extremism. The only way we can respond to that is
not just with a military strategy, and certainly not with brutality. I mean,
we've seen that the kind of brutal policies pursued by the Bush
administration and Rumsfeld and Cheney utterly failed. They failed on the
ground. They achieved nothing in terms of stabilizing Iraq or dealing with
the threat of Islamic extremism. So, you know, I totally understand in the
aftermath of the Paris attacks people want to respond, they want to go
strike against the Islamic State, but we have to be smart and learn from our
own history. And actually, our values, respect for human rights and
welcoming refugees is an important part of fighting against the kind of
Islamic extremism that the Islamic State represents.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Bouckaert, you were one of the first to tweet the picture
of the three-year-old boy. Talk about his case, Alan Kurdi.
PETER BOUCKAERT You know, Alan Kurdi came from the city of Kobani, which is
completely destroyed, partly by the Islamic State, but also by US airstrikes
in response to their takeover of the city. He set off -
AMY GOODMAN: The city of Kobani -
PETER BOUCKAERT Of Kobani.
AMY GOODMAN: In Syria.
PETER BOUCKAERT In Syria. And he set off on one of these rubber boats and
drowned alongside his mother and his brother. Every day, two Alan Kurdis die
on this journey. And, you know, the picture of Alan Kurdi certainly drew a
lot of attention. It horrified us all. And for a brief moment, it united us
in a sense that we have to do something about this crisis. Well, we still
have to do something about this crisis. And part of what we need to do about
this crisis, the most important part, is making safe and legal ways for
people to seek asylum, to get out of the horrors of war, to provide them
with the opportunity to educate their children because those children
represent the future of Syria. And there - just in Turkey, there are 400,000
children, Syrian children, out of school -
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
PETER BOUCKAERT - missing out on an education, having fled from Syria. So we
need to address this real crisis in the region. You know, even with the
projections of the European Union for 2015, 2016 and 2017, the refugees
reaching Europe would represent 0.4% of the population of Europe. That's one
out of 250 people. You know, in Lebanon, one out of four people is a
refugee, a Syrian refugee. So Europe is not being flooded by refugees and
certainly the world is not being flooded by Syrian refugees. We can - this
is not a capacity problem. It's a political problem.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what the US should do. What are the numbers of refugees
the US has taken and should take?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, the US takes 70,000 refugees a year, and many of them
come from places like Syria and Somalia and Iraq. President Obama has now
promised to take 10,000 more Syrian refugees a year. Those people will be
carefully screened, and I am certain that they will contribute to American
society. You know, I've been stunned by the number of doctors and engineers
and business leaders that I've met on this journey. These people are not
coming to take welfare. They want to come and contribute to our societies.
They want to build a new future for themselves and for their children. And
even in Germany today, the people in the camps, the one thing they ask me
for is language books. They want to learn the German language, get out of
these camps, and start their new lives.
AMY GOODMAN: More than two dozen US state governors have refused to accept
Syrian refugees after the Paris attacks. This is one of them. This is Texas
Governor Greg Abbott.
GOV. GREGG ABBOTT: The database on the Syrian side simply does not exist. As
a result, to the extent any Syrian refugee is allowed into the country, we
are playing the same game of risk that Europe played with regard to the
individual who entered Europe, who then participated in the terroristic
bombing of Paris. As governor of the state of Texas, I will not roll the
dice and take the risk on allowing a few refugees in simply to expose Texans
to that danger.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Governor Abbott of Texas. Peter Bouckaert of Human
Rights Watch?
PETER BOUCKAERT Well, I think the facts speak for themselves. There's 70,000
refugees coming to the United States every year, and not a single one has
been involved in a terrorist incident. The situation in Europe is different.
There is chaos right now in terms of the procedures, and Europe does need to
put together a coherent refugee policy to deal with these people and to
screen them for security reasons. But the reality is that the US has
screening procedures in place and a coherent refugee policy, and that these
people present no threat to the United States.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Governor Bentley of Alabama.
GOV. ROBERT BENTLEY: And I think the thing that I want to do as governor is
to make sure the people of Alabama are safe. And if there is any - if
there's even the slightest risk that the people who are coming in from Syria
are not the types of people that we would want them to be, then we can't
take that chance.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. Peter Bouckaert?
PETER BOUCKAERT Look, I can assure the governor that the people who are
going to come from Syria to the United States are exactly the kind of people
that we will want to welcome to the United States. I've met many people on
this journey who I would have loved to have as neighbors. They're people who
are fleeing from conflict. And it's part of a long-standing US tradition to
welcome people who need refuge.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think is the solution to the conflict in Syria?
PETER BOUCKAERT The conflict in Syria is a very difficult conflict to
resolve. It ultimately needs a political solution. And one of the aspects
which is really important is to reassure various minority communities,
including the Christians and the Assyrians and the Yazidis, as well as the
Alawites, who are the power base of President Bashar al-Assad, that there is
a future for them in Syria because many of them are supporting the Syrian
government not because they like the policies of Assad, but because they're
fearful for the future. And they have every reason to be because if we look
at what happened in Iraq, many of these communities were wiped out. The
Yazidis and the Christians just in the last year lost most of their
villages.
But there's other aspects as well. You know, two years ago, I helped
organize a conference for women from Syria in Geneva, together with women's
rights activist Madeleine Rees. And it was really the first time that women
had had a voice in the peace process. You know, we brought this proposal to
the diplomats, and they were like, that's a great idea.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was the proposal?
PETER BOUCKAERT It was to have a conference of women to talk about what
their vision was for the future of -
AMY GOODMAN: And what was their vision?
PETER BOUCKAERT Their vision was that women had to be around the table, that
we could not just have men with guns around the table. But up to that stage,
50% of the population of Syria, their voice had been completely ignored in
the peace process for Syria. And that happens time and time again. We need
to make sure that not just the people with guns are around the table, that
they don't just buy their chair at the table with blood, but that the moral
voices from the community and women, civil society leaders who have such
much more of a vision for the future of Syria - and the Congo and all of
these other conflicts - are around the table with a voice.
AMY GOODMAN: You have said that you believe that this fake passport that was
planted next to one of the gunmen in Paris, that said they were from Syria
but in fact they weren't, was actually, you believe, a plan of ISIS to make
the link.
PETER BOUCKAERT Yes. You know, ISIS wants people to flock towards its
Islamic caliphate. So it really is a rejection of the ideology of ISIS when
people are fleeing from the Islamic caliphate. And I've met many people from
Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa and Mosul who are fleeing the terror of ISIS. So ISIS
does want to get Europe to shut the door in the face of these refugees. It
really helps ISIS a lot when Muslims are being seen humiliated on the
streets of Europe.
AMY GOODMAN: And the response of France and the United States to bomb Raqqa
after the Paris attacks, the incessant now bombing, and now Russia is
joining in bombing, after the Russian jetliner, it's been shown, had a bomb
on board. Raqqa, hundreds of thousands of civilians live there still.
PETER BOUCKAERT Yes. You know, there certainly, unfortunately, has to be
probably a military component to confronting ISIS. But I think we constantly
need to remind ourselves that we have a lot more in our arsenal than just
planes and bombs. And it's very important to understand that our values as a
society, values which are radically opposed to the barbarity of ISIS, values
of human rights and respect for people's dignity and their lives, are our
most important tool to fight against this kind of extremism. And what
concerns me is that there's been so much focus on a military response, when
actually this is a fight for the hearts and minds of people. And respect for
human rights and dignity are fundamental to that.
AMY GOODMAN: That's Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch's emergencies
director, came into this country for just two days then back to Europe where
he has been dealing with refugees. Millions of refugees are fleeing war in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria. He is covering it and you can go to our first part
of our interview with him at democracynow.org. He is originally from
Belgium. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Mayor of New Jersey's
largest city joins us. Stay with us.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not
be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a
national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over
1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named
Democracy Now! its "Pick of the Podcasts," along with NBC's Meet the Press.
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