torsdag 3 juni 2021

Danmark ger grönt ljus för kontroversiellt lagförslag: Asylsökande kan skickas till flyktingmottagningar i Afrika

https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-10001502
 
3 juni 2021
 
Folketinget i Danmark har godkänt regeringens förslag om ett nytt omstritt system för asylsökande. Lagförslaget innebär att personer som söker asyl i Danmark kommer att kunna flyttas till ett land utanför Europa, till exempel Rwanda.
 
Tanken är att asylsökande hädanefter ska kunna skickas till ett mottagningscenter i ett tredje land, och att även asylprocessen ska ske där.
 
Personer som sedan beviljas asyl ska inte få komma till Danmark, utan de ska integreras i värdlandet eller flyttas till FN:s flyktingläger.
 
Personer som sedan beviljas asyl ska inte få komma till Danmark, utan de ska integreras i värdlandet eller flyttas till FN:s flyktingläger.
 
- Om du ansöker om asyl i Danmark vet du att du kommer att skickas tillbaka till ett land utanför Europa, därför hoppas vi att människor kommer att sluta söka asyl i Danmark, säger regeringens talesperson i utlänningsfrågor, Rasmus Stoklund, till DR.
 
Enligt Jyllands-Posten har den danska regeringen fört diskussioner med flera afrikanska länder som tänkbara värdländer, bland annat Tunisien, Etiopien, Egypten och Rwanda.
 
Förslaget kan göra det farligare för asylsökande
 
Människorättsorganisationer samt FN och EU har tidigare riktat hård kritik mot det danska lagförslaget.
 
Anders Aalbu, som är talesperson för FN:s flyktingorgan UNHCR:s kontor i Norden, säger till Svenska Yle att den danska lagen kan leda till ett sämre skydd för utsatta personer.
 
- Det här riskerar att underminera hela fundamentet för det internationella flyktingskyddet.

Aalbu varnar för att Danmarks lagförlag riskerar att få en dominoeffekt i Europa, om andra länder tar modell av den danska politiken.
 
Källor: TV2, Reuters, Jyllands-Posten, DR

tisdag 1 juni 2021

70% of Russians Support Return of Gulags

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/06/01/poll-russians-support-return-gulags
 
June 1, 2021
 
A poll released by Russia’s state-funded VTsIOM polling agency on Tuesday found seven out of ten Russians supporting the return of gulag labor camps, a notorious Stalinist practice that used prisoners for slave labor on state construction projects. 
 
The Moscow Times explained that a Gulag 2.0 would supposedly be more humane than the notoriously brutal and deadly forced labor camps established by Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and fully exposed to the Western world by dissident writer Alexandr Solzhenitsyn in his landmark 1973 book The Gulag Archipelago.
 
Stalin’s gulags held millions of inmates at their peak, including political dissidents, purged Communist Party officials, and random unlucky Soviet citizens in addition to convicted criminals. Tens of thousands of those inmates died every year from accidents, starvation, summary execution, and simply being worked to death.
 
The new labor camp proposal polled by VTsIOM would involve “dispatching around 188,000 inmates to fill part of the shortage created by a coronavirus-driven exodus of Central Asian migrant workers,” as the Moscow Times put it. 
 
The idea has been floated by “several cabinet ministers, the state railway monopoly and the head of Russia’s penitentiary system.” 
 
None of these parties seems to enjoy comparisons between their labor camp idea and the Stalinist gulags, although the Moscow Times said they have been getting some cover from revisionist-history op-eds in state media that seek to minimize the horrors of the original gulags or even recast them as beneficial work programs for the poor, much like the way today’s Chinese Communist Party attempts to justify its labor camps for the Uyghur Muslims.
 
One of those whitewashing articles, penned by columnist Victoria Nikiforova of the RIA news service on May 26, gushed that Stalin’s gulags were a “social elevator” for the poor that only seemed “quite unpleasant” to elite prisoners accustomed to lodging in luxury hotels. Her comment about social elevators promptly became an unflattering viral sensation among skeptical Russian readers, who had a field day posting her quote alongside old photos of beaten, starving, bloodied gulag inmates.
 
Nikiforova predicted the new gulags would likewise be a boon to the poor and Russian society at large, since they would inculcate a “healthier attitude towards physical labor” and serve as “additional drivers of the labor market in Russia.” 
 
The aforementioned head of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), Alexander Kalashnikov, insisted last week that his proposed labor camps would not be gulags.
 
“The conditions there will be completely different because an individual will be working and living in a communal home, or rent an apartment and live with their family if they like. They will also be paid well,” he said.
 
Respondents to the VTsIOM poll tended to see labor camps as a reasonable use of prisoners for productive ends, a way for criminals to repay the Russian state for the expense of housing them, and even as a way for prisoners to earn money for the families while learning useful skills.
 
58 percent of respondents thought work camps would help ease the transition of prisoners back into normal life. 62 percent thought “prisoners themselves will prefer to serve their sentences” in correctional labor camps, a figure that jumped to 74 percent among respondents 18-24 years old.