Month: October 2015

By Hannah Tong

Throughout history, refugees all around the world have traveled and sought asylum from other countries to escape the horrors of their life at home.

From 1915 to 1923, more than one million Armenians left Turkish Asian Mino due to a series of events now known as the Armenian Genocide.  The Ottoman Empire persecuted the minority of Armenians in present-day Turkey, forcing women, men and children to in death marches. About 1 to 1.5 million people were killed during this event due to religious differences between Islam and Christianity.

During World War II, almost 300 thousand Jews who were persecuted managed to escape the killings and concentration camps in Germany during Hitler’s reign of Nazism by fleeing to foreign countries.  Between 1933 and 1939, about 200 thousand Jews fled Nazism in France alone.

A few decades after that war, destruction and communist-controlled systems resulting from the Vietnam War led many people from Cambodia, Laos and especially Vietnam to flee from their homes and into America, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines and Hong Kong during the late 1970s and 1980s.

Just from 2007 to 2011, the United States had 278,850 asylum seekers alone.  In 2014, 19.5 million refugees traveled the world in hope for a better life.

As of today, one of the biggest groups of refugees is coming from Syria.  Since the outbreak of civil war in 2011, over nine million Syrians have taken refuge in neighboring countries, including the Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.

Controlled by a religious organization named ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), Syria suffers constant war and destruction, constant fear and constant killings.  These refugees left and sought asylum because they were following their friends and families, their homes were destroyed, they were threatened by other officials to leave and the high cost of food and necessities caused them to lose all their money.

It is only ideal that the citizens of these countries find somewhere where they know they can be with their families safely.  It takes courage for a refugee to escape and leave behind what they used to call home.

By Tiffany Lee

Millions of Syrians have been forced to leave their home countries due to the Syrian War since 2011.  When attempting to go across the Mediterranean Sea, the refugees take large risks, paying smugglers large amounts of money and forcing themselves into unreliable dinghies, to escape to other lands.

Before the refugees are even allowed inside the small, meager boats that can only be described as dinghies, they pay smugglers about a thousand euros so they can be crammed into a small vehicle with other desperate refugees.  The refugees, arriving at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, climb inside crowded rubber boats with over 30 people in each vessel.  Then, they attempt the trip.  They set off into the endless blue, throwing their life vests on, willing to escape.

The hope is Germany, or Greece, or just Europe in general.  However, the packed rubber boats must travel over an overwhelming 2500-km distance, which is almost unimaginable and definitely life-threatening.

The Syrian boy made international headlines, his washed-up body showing people around the world the dangers the sea poses to the Syrian refugees.  But the refugees already know the rubber boat can be easily overturned by the Mediterranean waves.  They already know that most refugees drown.  They already foresee their own deaths.

Many refugees also escape to Europe by land, which is not nearly as risky as the sea, but there is a higher risk of being caught by border guards.

Still, hundreds of thousands of Syrians choose to make the oversea journey.  When asked why he would choose such a lethal trip for him and his two children, a Syrian man responded, “In Syria, they are dead already.”  For the refugees, despite the oceanic dangers, sea is still safer than land.

By Walt Leung

For four years, the United States of America has remained indifferent to the refugee crisis happening in Syria.  Yet on Sept. 2, the viral image of dead three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying face down in the sand on the shoreline of a Turkish beach forced the US to come face to face with what has been dubbed the greatest humanitarian crisis in the decade.

However, US response to this exodus has been painfully slow.  Although it has provided nearly $3 billion in humanitarian aid since the start of the civil war in 2011, the US has only accepted around 1500 refugees applying for resettlement—paling in comparison with the European Union, which has already taken in hundreds of thousands.

Part of this lapse may be attributed to America’s complex refugee policy.  Those applying for relocation in the US must go through complex screening processes through multiple agencies such as Homeland Security and the State Department.  These screening processes deter potential extremists, but are time consuming, taking anywhere from six months to two years.

Furthermore, post-9/11 fears have set the annual refugee capacity to 70,000.  Consequently, refugees have become discouraged from applying to the US for resettlement; instead, many prefer to seek asylum in freer countries such as Germany.

Yet, in mid-August, Washington made a controversial decision by vowing to increase the Syrian refugee count to 2,000.  In mid-September, this number was increased to 10,000.  On Sept. 20, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US “will increase the number of refugees the US is willing to accept in 2017 to 100,000.”

These promises have sparked massive outrage within the political realm.  GOP frontrunners Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina have condemned these decisions, saying that increasing the number of refugees could bring in “a possible army of ISIS terrorists,” as Trump stated.

Many Americans also appear to share this fear, as shown by a Rasmussen Report in which 72% of voters believed that there would be a security risk in accepting more refugees.

By Angel Palomino

Since March 2011, Syrians have been fleeing their country due to a long civil war.  Throughout the war, the death toll is estimated to be around 200 thousand people.  The UN (United Nations) Refugee Agency approximates that over four million people have fled to surrounding countries.

The civil war began with the Regime soldiers shooting protesters who wanted to release children who had been imprisoned for drawing pro-democracy graffiti on a wall.  After the protesters were shot, rebels quickly retaliated, bringing the two forces to fight.

After four years, the Syrians still have to flee and hide in surrounding countries to escape the horrors of the Regime.  According to the Observer, the Regime has used chemical warfare, bombs, tanks, shootings and the destruction of cities to kill the Syrians.  As people flee from the Regime, they still have to evade the IS (Islamic State) terrorist group as it also kills the refugees fleeing Syria.

According to a survey by the Washington Post, some of the reasons the refugees are fleeing Syria are the following: 43% of the refugees said the main reason they left was because Assad government forces occupied their towns; 37% had their homes were destroyed; 35% were threatened if they didn’t leave; 48% left at the urging of their families; 38% were urged by their friends; 32% followed their neighbors to safety; 32% couldn’t find necessities, food and water; and lastly, 16% fled when they ran out of money.

As life in Syria gets increasingly more dangerous they have several challenges to go through.  As the dawn calls to prayer, many women and children move quietly and sneakily, trying to avoid meeting the explosion of the Assad bombardments.  Many civilians have tried to flee, but they are scared of dying while getting capped at.

Teachers, doctors, and even normal government workers are forced to line up on the street by rebel fighters and are asked to describe their religious belief and their jobs.  Fear grew among them as they witness brutality of the soldiers shooting others next to them if they give them a wrong answer and leaving them bleeding to death.

Peter Oborne, a British journalist, interviewed the citizens there. According to a principal there, the soldiers had banged on her door at 4am; they wanted her husband and children inside the house to go into the street, and she saw her neighbors also lining up outside.  Then, the people were divided into two groups: one for young men to join the jihadi fighters, and another to be questioned.  She then stated that the soldiers had shot a man, who was wearing a pro-government shirt, in front of the families that were lined up.

But as more and more Syrians flee, the surrounding countries can no longer take any more refugees and they have started rejecting them. Russia has brought itself into the civil war to end the fighting.