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| Truck abandoned by side of road contained 71 corpses 27/08/15 |
We now know that the 71 dead bodies found in the back of a truck on a road in Austria were refugees from Syria. They left Syria, not for economic reasons, as with so many migrants from Africa and the Middle East; they fled Syria as refugees because for four years now
Syrian President Bashat al-Assad has responded to the popular demand that he step down my making
war on civilians. I think these deaths, like a growing number, are the result of what I am beginning to call Assad's holocaust.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon must be feeling the much same. He
said the Syrian war had
“just been manifested on a roadside in the heart of Europe.” AFP is
reporting:
Four held over Austria truck tragedy as migrant deaths mount
Simon Sturdee with Mohamad Ali Harissi
29 August 2015
Vienna (AFP) - Hungary said Friday it had arrested four people over the discovery of the decomposing bodies of 71 migrants, believed to be Syrian, in an abandoned truck in Austria.
...
Austrian police said the truck victims were likely fleeing the war in Syria and included a toddler and three young boys.
"Among these 71 people, there were 59 men, eight women and four children including a young girl one or two years old and three boys aged eight, nine or 10," police spokesman Hans Peter Doskozil told a news conference.
He said the time and cause of death still had to be determined but there was a "certain probability" they had suffocated.
Doskozil said those arrested included the owner of the vehicle and two drivers, and were likely "low-ranking members... of a Bulgarian-Hungarian human-trafficking gang".
...
On Friday evening, Hungarians held a vigil for the victims outside Budapest's main train station, where thousands of migrants have been sheltering for weeks.
Austrian motorway maintenance workers alerted police after noticing "decomposing body fluids" dripping from the truck, Doskozil said.
The police were confronted by an overpowering stench and a mass of tangled limbs and forensics experts worked all night to clear out the vehicle.
Television images showed flies buzzing around the back of the vehicle in the baking sun.
- 'Who will stop this madness?' -
Austrian newspaper Kurier carried a black front page with the headline: "Who will stop this madness?" More...
Almost certainly, those responsible for their transport are guilty of murder, but so too are those who forced them to flee their homes in the first place. When the Assad regime decided to make war on civilians and made barrel-bombs its weapon of choice, it gave thousands of Syrian families the grim choice of fleeing their homes for parts unknown or waiting to be murdered in their beds. There will always be those, like these traffickers, looking to profit from such misery, but those that die like this are as much victims of the barrel-bomber as those burnt alive in their beds.
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| A group of migrant women and children escorted by police wait at a collector point near Roszke village at the Hungarian-Serbian border on August 28, 2015 (AFP Photo/Attila Kisbenedek) |
When we hear about what is euphemistically being called the
"migrant" crisis, we hear that the migrants are coming from a great many countries. For example, Macedonia has registered migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Bangladesh, DR of Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ertirea, Ethiopia and more. But such a long list of countries helps to hide the fact that this co-called
"migrant crisis" is largely a refugee crisis caused by Bashar al-Assad. Of the total of 47,994 migrants registered from 19 June to 27 August in Macedonia, 39,164 or 81% were not
"migrants" at all, they were refugees from Syria according to
International Organization on Migration.
More migrants are coming from Syria than any other country.
"The largest migrant group by nationality in 2015 is Syrians, as people flee the country's brutal civil war." reports the
BBC today. Even from North Africa, 78,190 Syrians attempted the perilous Mediterranean crossing this year. The second largest group taking that route are from Afghanistan, where they also face war. Their number was 32,581.
The movement of Africans towards Europe is a long standing fact. When Qaffadi ran Libya, the
EU paid him billions of euros to keep those Africans from their shores. He kept them locked up in
inhumane detection facilities or dumped them
out in the desert to die with no media attention. The current
"migrant" crisis is being taken to new levels because of the Syrians fleeing Assad's war against civilians. This is especially true in the past few months because as Assad has been continually losing ground, he has dramatically stepped up his campaign of
"Death from Above." According to
Wikipedia:
On July 9, 2015, the UNHCR reported that the number of Syrian refugees has surged to over 4,000,000 people, mostly residing in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan.
During the first half of 2015, large numbers of Syrian refugees crossed into Europe, reaching 313 thousands UNHCP applications across Europe by early August 2015.[115] The largest numbers were recorded in Germany with over 89 thousand and Sweden with over 62 thousands in early August.
The
UN Information Service held a
press briefing today:
Responding to a question about the root causes for the increase in refugees coming to Europe, Ms. Fleming said there were two new trends stemming from the Syria conflict. The first trend was that of worsening conditions for refugees in the neighbouring countries.
...
The second trend was that people continued to flee Syria to save their lives.
The European "migrant" crisis can't be solved without a no-fly zone over Syria
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| Syrian refugees wait to cross the border from Greece to Macedonia, in the border town of Idomeni , northern Greece, Friday, Aug. 28, 2015. Greece has been overwhelmed by more than 160,000 refugees and migrants so far this year. The vast majority arrive in Lesbos. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos) |
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
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