Amnesty hypocritical on Syrian refugees: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Mimi al-Laham, a Syrian activist and political commentator from Australia, about Amnesty International’s criticism of the European Union over pushing refugees back to Turkey.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of this when Amnesty International is saying that basically Turkey is not fit for this deal in dealing with these asylum seekers? How do you see it?

Laham: Well, I think the knee-jerk reaction is to assume that this is a violation of human rights and that the refugees are being mistreated and to get emotional about this. But we really need to put emotion aside and look at the agenda behind these words coming out of Amnesty International.

Amnesty International, in the first place, is not a rights organization as it claims to be. It has always been drenched in agenda and many of its members, its leading members, are part of the US State Department.  

The fact that thousands of Syrian refugees are heading to Europe out of the four-million that are in the camps in Jordan and Turkey and Lebanon  doesn’t make sense that the entire Syrian refugee population of 13 million people be airlifted to Europe.

So, how do we help the greatest number of people is not by allowing them to Europe but to put funding into the camps and to improve the situation of the people in the camps.

And unfortunately Turkey is unlikely to use that six billion of EU funding to help the refugees. However, I find it quite hypocritical of Amnesty International to be pushing for Europe to accept Syrian refugees while not pushing for Europe to stop the sanctions on Syria that are crippling the Syrian economy and creating the refugees in the first place and not pushing for Israel or Saudi Arabia to accept Syrian refugees. And of course even though Israel borders Syria, they have accepted zero Syrian refugees.

Press TV: Well, what do you make of it at this point in time because this is a very complex issue when we look at the refugee situation and we saw from last year the amount of kick-back, if you want to say, as far as the refugees who finally made it to Europe? And how many of them were not accepted and the whole regime has basically turned more towards the right or someone even say some countries more of a fascist ideology is part of all of this basically just to keep them from event thinking about coming to Europe? Or how do you see that side of things, the humanitarian side of this issue is it even important for the Europeans?  

Laham: I’m afraid the point is being missed by both sides in Europe, by the Left and the Right. The Left think they’re doing good by inviting Syrians into Europe. Meanwhile, Germany is basically poaching Syrian doctors; they’re accepting – basically fast-tracking - thousands of Syrian doctors into Germany while they’re really needed in Syria.

Meanwhile, the people on the Right are assuming that their jobs and the economy are going to be crushed by the refugee crisis and they’re directing all their hatred towards the Syrian refugees, when they should be directing their hatred towards their governments specially the ones in the NATO that caused the refugee crisis in the first place by supporting terrorism in Syria.

And the refugee crisis is not specifically a Syrian thing. The minority of refugees going to Europe are actually from Syria. Many of them are from the states all over the world. Some have suffered wars. Some have suffered NATO wars as well in Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and some are there also for their own economic purposes. And all of these issues are being conflated.

It’s a very complex issue, but there is not a clear answer and it’s definitely not as clear as Europe should just open all its borders to all refugees, because the reality is the Syrian people want to stay in Syria. And everything of our resources should be put towards helping Syrians get back to Syria and get back to their lives.

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