Europe Waging War on Refugees and Asylum Seekers

by Stephen Lendman

A previous article said calling them "migrants" irresponsibly denigrates their humanity, mocks their suffering and need for help.

They're desperate people, fleeing countries ravaged by US-led aggression, seeking safe havens to stay alive. 

Most are Muslims, easy targets for vilification. Islamophobia rages across Europe and America, people threatening no one demonized for their faith and ethnicity, used as pretexts for US-led wars of aggression.

EU countries increasingly consider them unwanted intruders, enemies, fifth column threats, treating them deplorably. 

Denmark intends confiscating their valuables. Switzerland seized assets from scores of arrivals last year. Southern German states implemented similar measures - racist, criminal persecution.

On Wednesday, Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said up to 80,000 refugees will be deported, sent back to their home countries or perhaps elsewhere. 

Desperate people are irresponsibly blamed for violent incidents they either had nothing to do with, reflect a few bad apples among hundreds of thousands of decent people seeking help to stay alive, or maybe state-sponsored incidents were staged to vilify them.

Refugees in other European countries are being demonized the same way to stem their flow, close state borders, erect razor-wire fences, and in the case of Sweden, expel large numbers. 

Maybe other EU countries plan the same thing. Human Rights Watch (HRW) director Kenneth Roth blasted what he called "(b)latant Islamophobia and shameless demonizing of refugees…(revealing) assertive politics of intolerance" when desperate people most need help.

"To a large extent, Europe's preoccupation with the new refugees as a possible terrorist threat is a dangerous distraction from its own (over-hyped, exaggerated) homegrown violent extremism…" 

They're pretexts for enacting police state laws, abolishing fundamental freedoms, substituting tyranny for democratic rights, along with irresponsibly blaming desperate people for conditions they had nothing to do with.

They're victims of US-led imperial lawlessness, endless wars of aggression, merciless ones, civilians most affected. 

Muslim countries are prime targets, EU nations complicit with Washington's high crimes - blaming victims for the fallout of imperial aggression.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

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