Little Girl At Sea: A Sad, Sad Story

We Are Change

Facebook: Dear Little Girl at sea…

(Migrant Tales, under Enrique Tessieri and Tom Vandenbosch)
The picture above and the comment that follows on Facebook is dedicated to the all those anti-immigration parties and politicians throughout Europe. Since I live in Finland, I’ll dedicate this tragic picture of the girl to our most anti-immigration and anti-EU party in the country: the Perussuomalaiset (PS).*

Even if every party in Finland has their share of xenophobes, I will individually dedicate this picture to some of our most outspoken anti-immigration and anti-cultural diversity politicians that have built their political careers by spreading lies about migrants and refugees.

Who are they?

The list is long but I’ll name a few that I’ll dedicate this tragic picture below to:

Timo Soini, Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola, Laura Hauhtasaari, Maria Lohela, Teuvo Hakkarainen, Päivi Räsänen, Tom Pakaclén, Maria Tolppanen, Mika Niikko, Vesa-Matti Saarakkala, Kari Rajamäki, Pia Kauma, Wille Rydman, Simon Elo, Sampo Terho, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, Hanna Mäntylä and many, many others.

All it takes is a picture or an unespected spark to action that changes everything instantly. If it isn’t this picture below there will be other opportunities that will at the end of the day expose them for what they are.

Mark my words, all it takes is a picture, an action, that will spark their demise and force their lies to come down in flames.
The post below may contain a disturbing image and text to some. Viewer discretion is advised.
Näyttökuva 2015-5-2 kello 23.02.59

Migrant Tales writes: I don’t consider this picture disturbing. See the girl with the pink dress she is even considerate to your indifference. You can’t see her face. Ron Vandenbosch, who posted the story, told me that the original text in Dutch got similar reactions, even death threats.
Näyttökuva 2015-5-2 kello 23.47.18
Here she is. One of those gold-diggers. She travelled on a boat to steal our prosperity. She wanted to cause unrest in our society. Because that’s what they do, those refugees, they cause misery and destruction.

Look at her. She was probably planning to carry out a terrorist attack. Many people from those countries are Muslim, you know, so the danger is real.

But look at her!

This is about people. Not numbers. People. Real people! Young people, young children even. People with dreams, hopes and aspirations. With fears. And with the simple desire to pursue happiness.

Here she is. In our blue Mediterranean Sea. And she is not the only one.

A few hours earlier she was probably hugging her mother. Her mother would have said that all would be fine. Don’t worry, darling. A better life is waiting for you on the other side. The world will be a better place. For you and for me and the entire human race. There are people out there who care and who share. The world is not just about wars, violence and terror. No! There are some countries where people are rather lucky and happy, and they certainly wouldn’t mind sharing a bit of that luck and happiness with us!

Look at her. In her pink dress. Perhaps her favourite dress. Maybe the one she would wear on her first day to school.

Unfortunately, her mother was wrong. Apparently, nobody really cares. Nobody wants to share.

Sorry about Europe. Sorry we are doing so little. Sorry we are so late. Sorry we don’t have time for you. We are terribly ashamed. Sorry that our stupid politicians in their infantile and petty narrow-mindedness don’t even have the smallest decency to leave behind their shameful xenophobic thoughts. Even not just for a minute to make the right decisions. Sorry so many of us voted for them. Sorry that they are not able to show just a little respect for this big human tragedy happening in our beautiful Mediterranean sea. It is happening right here, right now, at our doorstep.

It’s a shame!  Another story on the desperate refugees:

IDOMENI, Greece — Clutching his son as he trudged through a field of sunflowers toward Greece’s border with Macedonia, Aladdin Shoumali’s eyes glistened with tears in the dim moonlight as he described why he fled his native Syria.

“My daughter dead, my father and brother dead, our home destroyed — we lost everyone, everything in this terrible war,” said Shoumali, 34, wincing as the toddler let out another piercing cry. “My son is sick and we have not slept in days, but there is nothing to do except keep walking.”

So they pressed on, part of an unrelenting tide of desperate people fleeing war-torn homelands to find refuge and better opportunities in Europe. More than 340,000 people have entered Europe so far this year — surpassing 100,000 in July alone — in what authorities describe as the worst refugee crisis since World War II. With unprecedented numbers of migrants making the long and perilous journey to reach European Union borders, countries are struggling to cope.

“This is the first time in history that the European Union is facing such a massive influx of refugees from outside the region, and Europe is very poorly prepared for that,” said Alexander Betts, a professor and director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford University. “What we are seeing is an absence of international cooperation and responsibility sharing.”

Three weeks ago, Shoumali slipped through Syria’s border into Turkey with his wife and son, where he said they paid a smuggler $2,400 to cross the choppy seas to the Greek island of Kos in an overcrowded rubber dinghy.

They spent nearly a week sleeping in the open as they waited for paperwork enabling them to travel to mainland Europe. They eventually reached the Greek port city of Thessaloniki and from there made the 48-mile journey on foot to the border with Macedonia.

“God willing, we will go to Germany or maybe Belgium,” Shoumali said. “I don’t know what life is waiting for us in Europe, but where we come from, there is only death.”

There is death along the journey, too.

Last week, authorities discovered the decomposing bodies of 71 refugees, including four children, inside a truck abandoned on a highway in Austria, while an estimated 200 people were feared drowned off Libya when two overloaded boats capsized. The International Office of Migration has recorded more than 2,600 deaths linked to Mediterranean crossings this year.

The influx of refugees has overwhelmed front-line countries like Greece, Italy and increasingly Hungary, as well as wealthier nations like Germany and Sweden, who have taken in a disproportionate number of asylum-seekers. Britain has a long-standing exemption from EU rules on border issues, along with Ireland and Denmark.

“While Europe squabbles, people die,” Betts said. “Dividing some 300,000 people among the 28 EU member states would be manageable, but that is not our reality. I think Europe is slowly starting to come to the conclusion that the status quo is leading only to tragedy and chaos.”

(The soulless O’Bama in his drive to unseat President Bashir Assad of Syria has created this crisis.)

In a widely hailed move, the German government last week announced that it would allow Syrian refugees, who normally would be sent back to where they first entered the European Union, to stay and apply for asylum.

As many as 800,000 people are expected to come to Germany seeking asylum this year, a fourfold increase from 2014. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday urged other European Union countries to take in a greater share of the refugees fleeing to the bloc.

“What is happening at the moment is not just,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin. “If Europe is a place of solidarity — and we have also often shown our solidarity — then we must on this question remain solidly united.”

Germany, Great Britain and France have called for a meeting Sept. 14 in Brussels to “strengthen the European response” to the escalating crisis. Proposals laid out by officials include the creation of reception centers in Greece and Italy to house, screen and feed new arrivals.

“This is a highly political issue that needs to be dealt at the European level, instead of depending on the willingness of one or two countries,” said Giorgos Tsarbopoulos, head of the United Nations refugee agency  in Greece.

While aid groups are stepping in to fill the gaps, help is limited as migrants make their way north through impoverished Balkan countries.

On a recent afternoon, several hundred refugees sat in a makeshift transit camp near the Macedonian border town of Gevgelija, sweating in the August sun after crossing the border from Greece.

There is no place to purchase food or supplies, and the only drinking water comes from a truck. Nearby, bulldozers were expanding the site as the U.N.’s refugee agency scrambled to make space for what it said were as many as 3,000 arrivals each day.

Following clashes earlier in August between migrants and baton-wielding policemen, Macedonian officials seem to have given up on attempting to halt the flow of people, adding extra trains and buses to take the migrants north to Serbia.

After people waited hours in the sweltering heat, a battered blue train pulled up to the makeshift platform at the edge of the camp. Armed border police tried to organize the mass of people into groups before allowing them rush on board.

A lucky few found seats while the rest crowded into the aisles for the five-hour journey to the Serbian border.

As the train began to move, Mohammed Hassan, 25, took out his cellphone to study a map of Serbia, planning his route into Hungary. His mother remained in Iraq’s volatile Diyala province, where his father was killed three months earlier.

“I will go to whichever country will take me, whichever place has the best situation,” Hassan said. “My life is in God’s hands now.”