Monday, 14 September 2015

[AfricaRealities.com] Germany’s Welcoming Miracle

ENLARGE

SAFE HAVEN: A German fireman takes the temperature of a young refugee girl. PHOTO: PATRICK PLEUL/ZUMA PRESS

JOSEF JOFFE

Sept. 10, 2015 3:53 p.m. ET

Contrary to the headlines, Europe is no novice in the migration business. After World War II, some 40 million refugees crisscrossed the Continent. They were soon absorbed, including some 12 million Germans flooding in from the East. But they were kin by bloodline, language or faith, as were the Poles driven from Ukraine by Stalin or, later, the French pieds-noirs kicked out of Algeria.

Today's intruder is The Other from Africa and Afghanistan, from the Middle East and the Balkans. Europe hasn't exactly been welcoming, as revealed by France's banlieues, those outer-city ghettos offering no future to African and Arab immigrants.

These tired and huddled masses still aren't really welcome, as the squabbling over quotas for asylum seekers shows. It's a classic case of buck-passing, with members of the European Union trying to shift the load to their neighbors. And Hungary's Viktor Orbánis out-Trumping them all by building a wall. Good luck, considering how well the Mediterranean has worked as a supposedly unbridgeable moat.

Hungary is merely a side-show. The starring country, of all places, is Germany. It's the new Promised Land, and it's taking in the largest number of refugees. Ironically, Germany doesn't even allow for legal immigration the way the U.S. and Canada do. A Syrian or Eritrean can't go to his nearby German consulate and fill out the forms, because they don't exist. Yet getting in is easy. Mindful of its Nazi past, Germany has the most liberal asylum law in Europe. Once you set foot on German soil, they have to take you in.

Processing takes about five months, and after that the risk of deportation approaches zero. Add to that the country's full employment, with half a million jobs begging to be filled. Add also the most munificent welfare state in Europe, which grants free housing, food, clothing, furniture and medical care, plus a €140 per month stipend for singles. After a few months, a family of four receives the same financial support as a German family on welfare.

Such magnanimous benefits may explain why the bulk of the refugees are set on Germany. But how to explain this summer's miraculous Willkommenskultur, or "culture of welcome"? In the past, it was more of a culture of rejection.

Recall that in the 1990s, Germany faced a similar influx. In the first half of the decade, it dealt with an annual average of almost 300,000 asylum applicants, with a peak of 430,000 in 1992, mainly escapees from the Balkan wars. Back then, the public growled "no." In the polls, almost two-thirds of Germans opposed more immigration, and almost as many wanted to tighten the asylum law.

Today's mood change is straight out of a fairy tale. Normally governments lead and the sullen populace follows. This time, civil society is marching out front. As is her style,Angela Merkel remained mum for a couple of weeks, testing the winds before joining the parade. Citing the 800,000 asylum applicants expected this year, she spoke of a "great national mission" and promised that "obstacles shall be overcome." Alluding to Germany's dark past, she added: "The world sees us as a land of opportunity, which wasn't always so."

Public opinion corroborates the turnaround. This year, six out of 10 Germans aren't afraid of "too many refugees." Almost 90% of those polled are "ashamed" of the violence against newcomers. A majority wants better protection for them, and fully 95% are cheering those "good citizens," as Ms. Merkel called them, offering jobs and donating clothes and medical supplies. Did the populace resent Germany's excessive generosity as an engine of attraction? Surprise: More than half of the respondents opposed welfare cuts. Open arms haven't yet turned into clenched fists.

How to explain this incredible shift? Germans have lately been confronted by heart-rending images of a drowned Syrian toddler lying on a beach, or news that 71 migrants suffocated to death in a truck stranded in Austria. This was a matter of life and death, not an inundation of "economic refugees," as a standard line had it in the 1990s.

There has also been a generational change. Today's Germans have lived with people of different colors and faiths long enough to see The Other as the new normal. Germany is no longer a country of lily-white Lutherans and Catholics. A subway in Berlin looks like the Metro in Washington, D.C.

Yet overload will inevitably set in. Thanks to the unending wars in Africa and the Middle East, the flood won't subside any time soon. Meanwhile, Germany continues to shoulder the largest burden by far. It may be the new America for those yearning to be free, but the country, and indeed all of the Continent, isn't designed to deal with the surging influx. It's one thing to provide shelter and clothing, another to turn foreigners into citizens.

The comparison with the U.S. is instructive. In a country peopled by immigrants, newcomers become American by an act of will. But in Europe, people are born as Germans, Italians or Spaniards. Nationality is grounded in faith, language and custom. Belonging is rooted in the soil and a nation's mythical past. Hundreds of thousands of would-be citizens are now tearing away at the centuries-old idea of the volk, as the Germans have it.

Willkommenskultur is just Europe's first step into a modernity where nationality doesn't depend on race or faith. Now the Continent will have to add opportunity to openness by shaking up sclerotic labor markets, restrictive housing laws and cozy insider networks. There is no better way to dignity and inclusion than "making it." The real test has just begun.

Mr. Joffe is editor of Die Zeit in Hamburg and a fellow at Standford's Hoover Institution and Institute for International Studies.

Germany's Welcoming Miracle



				Germany's Welcoming Miracle Two decades after its last refugee crisis, the country's attitude toward foreign migrants is surprisingly positive—for now. An op-ed by Josef Joffe in The Wall Stre...

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[AfricaRealities.com] Rwanda: Supporters of scholar Léopold Munyakazi struggle to stop his deportation from the U.S. ( Includes audio).

http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/2015/09/12/591/rwanda-supporters-of-scholar-l-opold-munyakazi-struggle-to-stop-his-deportation

Rwanda: Supporters of scholar Léopold Munyakazi struggle to stop his deportation from the U.S.

Submitted by Ann Garrison on Sat, 09/12/2015 - 21:13

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KPFA Weekend News, 09.12.2015

French professor Léopold Munyakazi is in custody in Miami, on the verge of deportation, as friends, family, and a pro bono attorney struggle for his release.

Transcript:

KPFA Weekend News Anchor: Supporters of suspended Gaucher College French Professor Léopold Munyakazi are urgently trying to stop his deportation to Rwanda because they feel it would lead to his

Professor Léopold Munyakazi secured a job teaching French at Gaucher College with the help of an organization called 'Scholars in Danger,' but the college suspended him after the Rwandan government's allegations. imprisonment, torture and/or death. The Rwandan government accused Professor Munyakazi of genocide after he made several speeches in which he said that the Rwandan massacres that took place between 1990 and 1994 were not genocide. He said instead that Rwandans are one people sharing the same language and culture and that the war and massacres grew out of a long smoldering class conflict in which the social classes were labeled as Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa.

Professor Munyakazi's case is still pending in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but Department of Homeland Security professionals arrested him last week anyway. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to attorney Ofelia Calderón.

KPFA/Ann Garrison: Ofelia Calderón, what happened to Professor Léopold Munyakazi last week?

Ofelia Calderón: The DHS picked him up, or ICE, the police of the DHS, picked him up at his home on Friday, September 4th, at 3 pm and took him into custody, and moved him from Baltimore to Louisiana to Miami, which is the classic staging step for deportation. He's always reported, and he's been on an ankle bracelet, so there's really no other reason to pick him up except to deport.

KPFA: What do you think the underlying political context of this is?

OF: I believe that the Rwandan government has been negotiating with the U.S. government to extradite individuals that they want to charge with these types of crimes, with genocide.

KPFA: And, Professor Munyakazi has been critical of the Rwandan government and its official genocide narrative, right?

OF: That is true. That's completely accurate. The Rwandan government issued its warrants of arrest for Professor Munyakazi in 2008. It was because he had given two speeches about the genocide and had characterized it differently from the Rwandan regime.

KPFA: He characterized it as a class conflict rather than an ethnic conflict, right?

OF: That's correct. That's correct. And then coincidentally, they immediately and inbetween issued these warrants alleging that he had been involved in genocide, notwithstanding the fact that years prior evidence had been proffered specifically by witnesses who said that he hadn't been involved.

KPFA: Right, well they couldn't charge him with a speech crime, which seems to be what they're actually exercised about.

OF: To be fair, there was also a charge of genocide negation, and there was also a charge of divisionism.

KPFA: Oh, divisionism, OK.

OF: Having divisionist ideology.

KPFA: How did the U.S. courts deal with the speech crime issues?

OF: Well, I would say that in immigration court, I think that Judge Kessler certainly acknowledged that that was a motive for the Rwandan government to issue their warrants, but at the end of the day, she

Immigration attorney Ofelia Calderón, seen here speaking on CNN, so believes in Léopold Munyakazi's innocence that she has been working on it for six years pro bono.accepted the evidence that the Rwandan government had provided to the U.S. government and found that he was a human rights persecutor and, as a result, denied his application for asylum.

KPFA: There are lot of people working to try to stop this deportation. What are his chances?

OF: Right now his case is at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. So, what I have done as his attorney is I filed a motion for an emergency stay with the Fourth Circuit, asking that they stay his deportation pending the culmination of the appeal at the circuit court level. An administrative stay was filed with ICE as well by friends and family and individuals that are very supportive of Professor Munyakazi. And there's a lot of pressure, I think, from the public now at this point to, at a minimum, permit him to stay for purposes of completing the appeal.

KPFA: Well, he could appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, couldn't he?

OF: Absolutely, that's right, but we haven't finished the circuit court point. The opening brief is due September 21st,

KPFA: And you believe in this case so much that you've been working on it pro bono for four years, right?

OF: I've been working on it pro bono since 2009. Six years.

KPFA: OK. What do you think will happen to Professor Munyakazi if he is in fact deported to Rwanda?

OF: Well, there's no dispute that Professor Munyakazi will be detained upon his arrival in Rwanda. I believe that he will suffer torture. I absolutely believe that. And to some extent, I also believe that. . .I believe his very life is in danger. For purposes of the Rwandan government, he is someone that they do not want to continue speaking.

KPFA: And that was Ofelia Calderón, attorney for Professor Léopold Munyakazi.

In Berkeley, for Pacifica, KPFA, and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

A petition in support of Professor Léopold Munyakazi can be signed at this url.

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"Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate. Only Love Can Do That", Dr. Martin Luther King.

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Posted by: Nzinink <nzinink@yahoo.com>