From Syria to Sweden – 200 voices on escaping the war | Hacker News Reader

From Syria to Sweden – 200 voices on escaping the war

pejl.svt.se

31 pointsvienno80 comments

I am a Swede and can say that SVT is not a trustworthy source of news. Pretty much no swedish media is. SVT is a bit like Fox news but for the left and we have other news groups in Sweden that are like Fox news for the right. That is the state of the Swedish media.

SOURCE: 52% voted for the greens (left) and pretty much the overwhelming majority of what's left voted red (left) in a recent scientific poll.

http://jmg.gu.se/aktuellt/Nyheter/fulltext//journalist-11.ci...

And I am a Swede and would consider taking your comment with a huge grain of salt.

Of course, as long as the media report world views that confirm your political opinion it's probably the best media outlet in the country. Am I right?

I'm not sure what this argument is. It's equally likely that you dislike it because it doesn't conform to your views, regardless who's "right".

It is an argument that shows I care about the truth, not political opinion when reading about the world.

The "truth" in this case might just be based on your bias also, don't you agree? The parent comment could just as equally care about the truth in his own bias, who is the one who can judge what is objectively the truth or not?

I have relatives in Sweden and I find the disparity between what is reported by external (non-Swedish) media about events happening in Sweden and what the Swedish mainstream media itself reports is deeply disturbing.

I have relatives living in the USA and the news they see from Sweden seems to make them think Sweden is descending into chaos.

Their imagination had run quite wild.

Parts of Sweden are descending into chaos, some parts (Rosengård in Malmö. Biskopsgården in Göteborg, Järva in Stockholm, etc - these are the 'no-go zones') already have. The news you get to see in the US and elsewhere often comes from these areas. Elsewhere in Sweden things are more like they used to be, although the problem with 'utanförskapsområder' (areas where a parallel society takes shape, areas which are no longer part of Swedish society) is growing. This is caused in large part by the fact that migrants are allowed to choose where they want to live. They often choose to live with others from their home countries and/or cultures, which leads to areas becoming dominated by non-Swedish and for the largest part non-western culture, which in turn leads to the remaining native Swedes moving out either voluntarily or being harassed until they leave. It is these areas which can turn into no-go zones where gangs rule the streets, where police can not operate without being harassed or literally attacked, where both ambulances and fire trucks get bombarded with stones by 'angry youths'.

In other words, these areas end up in a spiral of violence and destruction, leading to an exodus of people - native Swedes as well as well-integrated migrants - who are fed up with the violence. The ones who remain are either those who cause the problems or those who can not afford to move for whatever reason.

My grandma actually lives in Biskopsgården, I go there often.

Would I let my children go to school in Sjumilaskolan? Not if I could avoid it. But I also don't worry that my grandma will be harassed by the youths or the niqab ladies. Because she hasn't been.

The failure in these areas is obviously a huge problem and the state has fallen short in dealing with the issues. Hopefully the court system will take the hint and start helping the police but that's for the future to tell...

But I also remember the same kind of areas from 20-30 years ago. Where the social services put the drug addicts and alcoholics, where several cars would randomly get trashed because someone had a party, where the local nazi gang would show up to beat up an immigrant because of some rumor etc. These areas are not a new problem. I guess the big difference is they've gone from knives to guns. These are the areas where the most vulnerable in society live and everyone who can leave.

There is also the difference of the scale of the problem, coupled with the polarisation in the media which has led to knee-jerk reactions when it comes to reporting on the issues - think of the way Dagens Nyheter (one of the bigger daily newspapers in Sweden) handled - or should I say covered up - the sexual abuse going on at the 'We are Sthlm' festivals. They sat on this news for 5 months until it was no longer tenable to do so due to the same kind of abuse happening in Cologne and elsewhere.

Think also of the infamous 'Code 291' used by the police for crimes where migrants are involved and the orders to keep these events out of the news 'because it might favour SD [1]'. This polarisation has led to an large reduction in trust in police and the justice department, as well as an all-time low trust level for journalists. The police should be politically neutral, just like the state media. Coloured reporting by the media is one thing, but a police force which acts out of political intent is an order of magnitude worse and something which is normally associated with failed states. Seen in that light the current police chief's clearly political stance is not just unfortunate but a real destabilising factor in Swedish society.

[1] SD or Sweden Democrats is a political party which wants to change the Swedish stance on migration, this party is shunned by all other parties and by most of the media while it averages around 20% of all votes.

This is just conspiracy stuff.

'We are Sthlm' was not judged newsworthy until the Cologne stuff. Now every potential groping at every festival is newsworthy, to the point where it's getting ridiculous.

And are you telling me the police literally has a code that singles out EVERY migrant related incident in their system? And that this would supposedly hide it from someone? Obviously that has worked out swimmingly and they really thought it would be 'secret'. Heck, coverup central DN has the very story being quoted on the Norwegian wiki article for Kode 291. Reading your replies in this thread I can understand why they'd want to keep stuff back at least until the situation settles.

Code 291, the fighting at asylum seeker housing, migrants raping migrants, the high costs of taking care of the migrants and so on... all of it has been reported on extensively in the mainstream media, heck, it's even been reported on extensively by SVT and SR.

You can literally live in the SVT/SR media bubble and know about all this.

We are Sthlm was not judged newsworthy because the (Stockholm) redaction at DN thought it was a 'rumour kicked up by SD'. The police certainly thought it was newsworthy, as did those who reported the issue. Even the journalist who took the report initially thought it newsworthy.

I'm not telling you anything, I'll let the police (in this case through an article in DN (Dagens Nyheter) but a quick search on 'polisen kod 291' will give more pointers) do the talking. Since this is the Swedish police being discussed in a Swedish newspaper the article is in Swedish as well [1]. In this article (and elsewhere through $your_favourite_search_engine) you can read that 'every report where the plaintiff, the suspect or the person being interrogated is a migrant now has to be marked with the special code "291"' ('Varje anmälan där målsäganden, den misstänkte eller en förhörsperson är migrant måste nu märkas med den särskilda koden ”291”). A bit lower down in the same article you'll find that 'the code is used as working material for the daily situation report. The situation report has been declared secret and should not be made public' ('Koden används som arbetsmaterial för den dagliga lägesbilden. Den dagliga lägesbilden är hemligstämplad varför det som står där inte ska lämnas ut'), followed a bit further down by 'everything which relates to migrants has to be kept secret and my only conclusion is that due to some politically motivated reason they do not dare to show the truth as it is, according to a person working at the police communications department' ('Allt som snuddar vid invandringsfrågan ska hållas hemligt och min enda slutsats är att man av något slags politiska skäl inte vågar visa verkligheten som den är, säger en anställd på polisens kommunikationsavdelning.').

That the police was not that successful in keeping their secrets is another story altogether. This has nothing to do with [my] replies in this thread [2] and everything with the fact that censorship does not fit in a democratic society. All it does is create even more suspicion, as shown by the reactions to the recent gang rape on Gotland where the police refuse to give details on the suspects they apprehended.

In short, openness trumps censorship every time.

[1] http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/polisen-hemlighaller-fakta-... [2] ...and what exactly is wrong with my replies in this thread, please elaborate...

By Järva do you mean Järvastaden? Or some other part of Solna? I'm curious.

The area around 'Järvafältet'. Maybe I should have mentioned Tensta/Rinkeby/Husby et al as well but I don't think HN is interested in a detailed listing of Swedish problem-areas. Vivalla in Örebro, ... the list goes on and, unfortunately, is growing. Kronogården in Trollhättan might be next given the recent developments there.

I'm interested, actually, but only because the core parts of Stockholm are so immaculate that it's hard to imagine the city (or its suburbs) might have any "sketchy" parts. Though I'm sure it must have its soft underbellies, if you're willing to go out a bit.

So that list should give me enough to chew on ;)

The fact that central Stockholm is an oasis of order and prosperity is sometimes seen as a key factor in the developments in Sweden. Why? Because that is where a large majority of the politicians reside. Then they look out of their windows at the ordered world outside and think 'see, things are going just great in Sweden'. Meanwhile cars are burned every night just a few subway ('tunnelbana') stops away but since they never venture in these areas - which are known to be bad news - they do not see with their own eyes just what the result of some of their policies are.

Order and good living conditions is the norm in most of the country. Unless the politicians come specifically from these areas they will be accustomed to that version of Sweden regardless of where they lived most of their life. Even said areas are mostly calm except when the youths are on school breaks.

Plus, the areas you speak of vote for the left (S and V, not MP), aka the very politicians who supposedly don't understand those areas.

Tensta: http://www.val.se/val/val2014/slutresultat/R/valdistrikt/01/... Rinkeby: http://www.val.se/val/val2014/prelresultat/R/valdistrikt/01/... Husby: http://www.val.se/val/val2014/prelresultat/L/valdistrikt/01/... Vivalla: http://www.val.se/val/val2014/slutresultat/K/valdistrikt/18/...

Given the low employment and high dependence on government subsidies it is hardly surprising that the majority of votes in these areas goes to those parties which are least likely to reduce those subsidies. In that respect these areas do not differ from other areas with low employment, even though some of those who traditionally would have voted for S (social democratic party) now vote for SD (Sweden democrats). Even that is not really surprising, given that the party program for SD is in many ways comparable to that of the social democratic party in the '50s and '60s, including the rhetoric about the virtues of a homogeneous society.

What do your relatives in Sweden say about this?

The Media's complete silence on important issues is slowly undermining democracy in Sweden.

That is a gross mischaracterization.

I would describe it simply as a smaller BBC, with all that entails. It's more like NPR than FOX in regards to bias. And that is an immense difference.

Edit: As you deleted your comment, I'll edit here instead.

I know the party affiliations, and why I made a comparison to a left biased state sponsored radio network. I still strongly disagree with your comparison to FOX News. It's a huge difference between being biased and still do largely good reporting, and being biased and straight up lying daily.

Party affiliation does not inherently imply doctored news reporting or necessarily even biased reporting. I'm not disagreeing about a bias. I'm saying your comparison is way off on the magnitude.

NPR is polite cousin of MSNBC, but the politics and biases are not that different.

I disagree with your scale, but otherwise that was my point in the comparison.

"Ad hominem (Latin for "to the man" or "to the person"), short for argumentum ad hominem, is a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Does not apply to mainstream media. When the medium is the message, the line between attacking the message or the medium is blurred.

They don't deliver any arguments. The entire existence of SVT has one practical purpose: build political opinion. I am just saying that this is the case with them and pretty much every Swedish media outlet.

Thats standard in immigration discourse these days, with one side drumming the narrative that immigration enriches our societies and helps our economies with other going that they are criminals and uneducated slackers looking to leech on social programmes.

While i agree that SVT/state media has a very left leaning profile and are leaving facts and statistics unsaid/hidden, that does not mean that the article itself is untrue and uninteresting.

I think that's exactly what it means.

Have you actually ever watched Fox News?

While I'm not a Swede I do live in Sweden and I do follow Swedish news (both the 'official' as well as the 'alternative' sources). I do have to concede that SVT (and, more or less to the same extent, SR - Swedish Radio) has a problem with bias. Being a state-financed broadcaster (through a mandatory payment for anyone who has 'television reception equipment' in their residence, no matter whether that equipment is used to watch SVT) they are by law mandated to be politically neutral. This is something they (as an organisation) fail in, and rather miserably. If I were to place them somewhere in the political spectrum they would end up next to the (ruling) labour party, sometimes to the left of them, sometimes to the right. In this they mirror most of the 'official' media in Sweden which hover around the same area in their political orientation. As the previous poster indicated this can partly be explained by looking at the political orientation for the large majority of those employed in the 'media' and 'culture' sector.

This combination of left-oriented media and a left-wing government has led to a systematic failure of the media to keep check on the government, especially where it concerns Miljöpartiet (the green party). That party was recently shaken by a number of scandals, mostly related to the infiltration of islamist politicians - one of whom made it as far as a position as minister for housing in the current government, he stepped down when his position become untenable - with an agenda which diametrically opposed that of the party itself. Until a few months ago there was not a single (!) critical voice in the 'official' media where it concerned this party. Where all other parties - especially those which are in opposition against the current migration policy in Sweden - were targeted by the media (as they should be, this is part of their function, to keep check on the political establish ment) the green party sailed by without a single critical voice.

Another problem lies in the fact that Swedish media often use supposedly objective but in truth politically activist research organisations as source for their material. The best example of this is 'Expo', an organisation which was set up to do research on anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia. This might have been their charter once but they do not live up to it, instead they are a political activist organisation with an agenda which resembles that of Vänsterpartiet ('the left party', formerly known as 'Vänsterpartiet Kommunisterna' or 'the left wing party communists', they changed their name after the demise of the Soviet Union) and Miljöpartiet. While in itself this is not a problem, they are still treated by the media as if they are an objective, politically neutral organisation. That is a problem.

Why do refugees need to go to as far as Sweden to escape war? Why wouldn't they stop at the nearest EU country, or even closer to Syria?

mainly welfare reasons, and also parts of their family are already in northern europe.

They actually explain this in some stories. For example, some people had friends and relatives in Sweden. Some choose it because Swedens track record in human rights.

Also, the nearest EU countries were Turkey and Greece then Italy and Hungary who don't seem to accept refugees at this point.

Greece and italy accept and house refugees. They just don't want to stay here.

A good analogy would be, if you were very thirsty, but there were no shops around and you had no money. You would walk up to the nearest house and ask for some water. But if they refuse, would you stand there and demand they give you water, or would you just go to the next house up the street and try again?

I feel like this is similar - refugees are met with animosity in good case and outright aggression in worst, so they just keep on moving until they get to the place that will accept them.

Not correct. Refugees stay in entry-point countries until their refugee application is processed, which can take months. Meanwhile, many of them seek to find illegal ways to move up north.

I don't see how what I said and what you said is mutually exclusive, or why what I said is incorrect. Refugees get to the entry-point countries, where they are met with squalid conditions in camps, aggression from locals and media, so they just pack their things and move somewhere else.

No they can't pack things and move elsewhere because they have no papers. Asylum applications are processed in the country of entry.

I'm sure that people who escaped war don't give a shit about having papers - they just want to be treated like people, not dogs, so if you put them in a camp with horrible conditions it's only natural that some of them will go somewhere else, whether they have papers or not. I still don't see how my original statement is incorrect.

If they want to be treated as people, maybe they should not try to forcefully and violently break through borders, throw away food they are offered by volunteers because it's "not halal", or set fires to their own camps. To be treated as a human being, you have to first behave like a human being.

So it's okay for them to break the rules because they have escaped the war and at the same time it's wrong for the countries obeying the rules and laws to protect the borders. Because....reasons...

I never said it's ok for them to break the rules or wrong for countries to protect their borders. The original question was "why do refugees go all the way to sweden, instead of staying in the first eu country". I've tried explaining why, not defending them.

Forcing all the refugees to stay in Greece or Bulgaria would just collapse those countries instead. You may remember that Greece had its own financial crisis, and Bulgaria is one of the poorest countries in the EU.

One of the contributory factors to the war in Syria was that 10% of the population were refugees from Iraq ...

Because they're very far from welcome in those countries (Turkey especially).

These sentimental pieces do not help. At this point it's fair to say that europeans know the struggle of (legitimate) refugees.

The actual solution is to end the war in Syria, instead of waiting for the rest of the country to flee, and then boast about how humane we are.

I've always considered moving populations was a crime against humanity because it stems so many problems. The UN and the UCJ (The Haye) doesn't assume this, but I wonder whether they've ever considered it. Whether it's Syrians, various places in Africa, Palestinians, it's often at the root of many wars.

Also, French people think it's our duty to "export peace" to Syria. It's costing us €10-15bn (source: Our defense cost is €32bn per year), on top of €6bn new policemen recruited after the attacks. It's €900 per year per person in age of working when our average yearly revenue is only €22k. We're just choked. I mean either the UN coordinates the attack and the cost against Syria, either we shouldn't be there.

It seems like the whole world is involved anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...

My take from the article:

1. the "Syrian refugees" are actually very different people with different backgrounds.

2. most lived the very calm lives until they lost home and family in the war

3. they seem to be trying to adjust to the new life and a new culture. but can you really do that without a job and some Swedish friends?

I read the other day that Sweden had to cancel the Earth Hour event where they turn of lights for an hour because the last time they did in 2015 many gang rapes occurred which were committed by refugees. (even 12 year olds were raped)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour#2016

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3499108/Earth-hour-c...

That's what you get when you let young women decide on anything related to the nations security. They are the one's who were holding the "refugees are welcome" signs, they are the ones who overwhelmingly vote for Socialists.

I live by the way in the EU so I'm also affected by all of this. Some might say it's heartless but if I saw today a women getting raped or beaten by a refugee on the streets I wouldn't even help her. A year ago she was likely one of those who was calling people like me (I'm against inviting millions to come to the EU like Merkel did) a racist in order to shut us up. Now live with the consequences.

No offence, but dailymail links should be banned on HN. It's just a vile website that is full of BS on literally any topic it touches. Whatever gets them most clicks/sold newspapers, basically.

Okay, let's just censor news that you don't like. I on the other hand live in a EU country that is the main target for these refugees and I can tell you this stuff (in particular rapes) is real and you calling it BS isn't going to change the reality of what is going on here.

Daily Mail isn't news, it's poorly researched clickbait.

Rape is horrible and I'm certain immigrants also rape, just as the natives do. But let's not kid ourselves, at least in my home country Sweden the number of sexual offences (including rape) have not increased significantly over time despite decades of scaremongering news about them, including on swedish state tv.

I base this on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden#Victim_surveys And in Swedish more recent: https://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/valdtakt-och-sexu...

We'll see what the numbers for 2015 and 2016 say, but I somehow doubt they'll show a country in free fall despite 163k asylum seekers in 2015.

Statistics is easily tweaked or faked. There are already many cases of police in Germany and Sweden miss-reporting or covering up sexual offences by immigrants.

1. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-03/german-coverup-scan...

2. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/its-not-only-germany-that...

3. http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/08/german-cops-we-were-ordere...

Statistics can never simply be read from a police database or similar. It takes serious work by good researchers to compile the data and interpret it. This is also why you can't compare many crime statistics between countries, rape being a fairly typical one.

The simple truth is that up until now no one actually cared and that is why it went unreported. Heck, the new years eve sexual offences will probably disappear among all the other sexual offences that go on every day that no one apparently cares about.

Festival groping is hardly a new phenomenon, maybe the new years eve thing is new but was it a temporary problem or is it a long term issue? No one actually knows yet.

>It takes serious work by good researchers to compile the data and interpret it

Ah, yes. The data need to be "seasonally adjusted" by high priests of the state, so that we, uneducated peons get the "appropriate" message.

Do you even realize how elitist your statement is? Sexual offence data is not rocket science, a lot of people can understand it quite well.

In Sweden's case, it would also help if the race/nationality of the attacker was disclosed (which, I heard, is not allowed in Sweden).

>>Sexual offence data is not rocket science

It is though. The definition of sexual offence changes between countries. Simplest example being that in some places public urination is a sexual offence, despite not having anything to do with sex. And because that definition is not consistent between countries, it cannot be reasonably compared.

>>n Sweden's case, it would also help if the race/nationality of the attacker was disclosed

And why would it be? What for? A rapist is a rapist, regardless of their nationality.

You sound like a tinfoil hat aficionado to me, sorry.

>public urination is a sexual offence

You think people are idiots and can't distinguish between urination and groping?

>And why would it be? What for? A rapist is a rapist, regardless of their nationality

In the context of countries which accepted a lot of immigrants, it is to either confirm or dispel the claims that the attackers are mostly refugees from the Middle East.

>You sound like a tinfoil hat aficionado to me, sorry.

Please refrain from ad hominem attacks - it is against HN rules.

I simply want to learn what has caused the increase of rapes. The fact the the police (and the press) in Sweden were, in many cases, instructed not to report the race/nationality of attackers - to me - constitutes censorship.

>>You think people are idiots and can't distinguish between urination and groping?

Well clearly so, because that's exactly how sex offender lists work in some countries, where there is no distinction made whatsoever.

>>In the context of countries which accepted a lot of immigrants, it is to either confirm or dispel the claims that the attackers are mostly refugees from the Middle East.

And my point is, what good does it do to anyone? Criminals should be persecuted with the same severity, regardless of where they are from.

Let's say that data shows that middle eastern refugees don't rape more than native citizens. I'm almost certain such raport would be dismissed by some(look two comments above) as "doctored" or "prepared" by the government that doesn't want people to know the "truth".

Or let's say that they rape more - What do you want to do in that case? Write special laws for them? In US, most criminals are black, but you should know very well that it's both because the are marginalized by the society and punished harder by the law enforcement, and not because they are black.

That's why I insist that we treat all criminals as criminals, not as "native criminals" and "middle eastern" criminals etc. There's just no benefit, except maybe feeding fear against them.

>>Please refrain from ad hominem attacks - it is against HN rules.

You are right, my apologies.

>There's just no benefit, except maybe feeding fear against them.

There is already enough fear (justified or not). No data -> no diagnosis -> no remedy -> even more tensions, fear/hate, etc.

> And my point is, what good does it do to anyone?

If it is found that people from the Middle East rape much more than native citizens or engage more in certain types of criminal activity that is destabilising the society then there is something that we as a society can do.

We can send them all back. We can send our soldiers to guard the borders and not let anyone of them in. That's a simple solution that would work.

I would even approve of forcing those who committed crimes to work until they fully repaid their victims for all the damage they caused. After that put them on a plane send them home.

But this is not about equal treatment, the elite and the media feel the need to obfuscate because they know that people are not going to tolerate this if they knew the full extent of what is happening.

So....you would basically write special laws for a group of people. There's plenty of examples how well this approach worked throughout history(it didn't, or it worked temporarily).

Besides, I find the idea of punishing a whole group of people for the actions of the few disgusting. I don't know where you are from, but I'm from Poland originally, and especially in the 90s there was a lot of car theft in Western Europe done by Polish criminal groups - so Poles got a reputation as car thieves.

But you would have to be an absolute brainless idiot to say that all Poles are car thieves. And yet, you are proposing such solution here - assuming that "middle eastern refugee" group has more rapes - and you want to literally "send them all back". If you don't see how wrong this approach is, then I don't think I can help.

No, there's no need to write specific laws.

If we follow the already existing laws strictly then not a single refugee would qualify for refugee status because they passed through plenty of countries in which their lives are not threatened.

After that we can decide to financially help support refugees that are stranded in Turkey and other neighbouring countries to Syria or we can take in a certain amount that we have carefully vetted to not be dangerous to our society.

There is nothing inhumane about this approach, for each refugee we house and feed here we can house and feed 10 in the Middle East. On top of that we wouldn't have thousands of them drowning every year in the Mediterranean Sea, because very few would try if they knew that there's no chance that they'll be able to stay.

Also we would end human trafficking by enforcing our borders. To me this seems like a win-win for every side.

Regarding the Poles are thieves issue: Stealing cars and rape/murder are not even remotely comparable issues. One of them is annoying and leads to racist jokes, the other one can lead to Germans organising/revolting and starting to indiscriminately kill off anything non German on their territory.

If the government doesn't protect their citizens right to not have their wive's and children raped then people will get rid of them one way or another, usually through uncontrolled violence. I'd prefer the government to do this in a humane way by putting them on a plane and sending them home.

But it wouldn't even have been a problem to restrict the entry of those Poles who are likely to steal cars. It's just a matter of asking them on the border: "What are you planning to do here and how are you going to support your self?" If they can show that they have a job here that can sustain them then you'd have immediately filtered out many of those that just came to steal.

This is by the way allowed in the EU framework. Each EU country can send you back to your origin EU country if you cannot prove that you'll be able to sustain yourself here. Most people do not know this because it's only been used in a few cases.

One more thing: Why is it that you seem incapable of discussing an issue without using insults in every other sentence? This doesn't reflect well on your character.

And at what point some time ago did you decide it's vile or do you check it out everyday to ensure your assessment is up-to-date? Get down to specifics and your statement ('it's just a vile ...) falls to bits.

So, I wonder, which articles from today's Mail go into your 'vile' category? Aside from the human interest stories (I have a surprise for you. It's not a mainline news source!) there are a few articles by agenda-driven columnists and you don't have to read them in either the right-leaning Mail or similar pieces in the left-leaning Guardian. Are those columnists the irritating source of your vitriol?

It is hard to understand the hard situation that this people has, and is still, living.

But when I read about how this guy says "As a child, I used to watch a cartoon on TV. The show featured the main character Nils and his friend Mårten the goose." I can feel totally related to him. It is just a TV cartoon, but it is also a treasured memory of Sweden that I had as a kid.

It is worth reading the stories of this people and thanks to this article it is easier to truly feel their humanity.

Why should Europe feel responsible for these people ? Europe has a ton of problems with roma people and the poor. Why should a newly integrated Syrian cook should earn more than a middle aged women in Romania ?

> Why should Europe feel responsible for these people?

Because they are human beings. I think than that's more than enough.

BTW Europe has a lot of really big problems with Banks. And that has a lot bigger impact that anything else in our economy. That's also something interesting to talk about.

"Because they are human beings" is a naive answer.

My parents have worked 45 years as teachers in Romania, and now they get the equivalent of 300$ monthly combined in pension money. Romania is also not such a cheap country as you'd think.

Now, seeing as how even non-refugee migrants from typical holiday countries in North Africa get lots more money than that per month in the German welfare system, we have two options for thinking about the situation:

1) Conclude that my parents are not human beings, so it is right that they should receive less money than the migrants in richer countries

2) My parents should also be entitled to the same money, and Europe should feel responsible for them, too

Which one do you pick?

According to these people your parents are at fault :-). They should have either 1) worked in the German factories in Romania and get +200$ more 2) immigrate to Germany to work in the German factories and earn +2000$ more 3) immigrate to Germany and raise you as a German

My point is. Romania should not feel responsible and should not do as Germany dictates.

Romania is trying hard to overcome its corrupt post-communist past but they have a lot of problems to deal with in the first place.

"Romania should not feel responsible and should not do as Germany dictates." Yes, I agree, and that should be the case for the rest of Europe. The problem is, when the rest of Europe does not do what Merkel wants (=accept tons of refugees without any security checks or plan how to deal with them), they are accused of "inhumanity" and "lack of solidarity" ;-)

Germany is free to spend their own money how they see fit. For example, by sending money to Romania via the EU budget.

Perhaps Germany should instead focus on the pensioners in their country who have worked hard for 45 years and now live on the minimum pension.

"Perhaps Germany should instead focus on the pensioners in their country who have worked hard for 45 years and now live on the minimum pension."

Yeah, I agree -- that's exactly what should be done! :-) A great part of the Germans' anger at the way politics is dealing with the refugee crisis is the fact that, for decades, they were told that there was no money for schools / infrastructure / pensions / child rearing / etc. Now, suddenly, there's BILLIONS of € available for people who have never (and probably will never) paid into the social state money pot.

It's totally understandable that this creates resentment, even without taking into account the other issues surrounding the situation (culture clash, religious beliefs seen as a "higher law", slowly creeping no-go areas -- which don't exist, according to the government :P, etc.).

So your fellow europeans are not human beings ? So we save one and let the other starve because we do not hear about it or we do not want to ? Are not you a bit hypocritical ?

In which European country do citizens starve because of immigration?

> Because they are human beings. I think than that's more than enough.

No it is not. Everyone is responsible for him or herself.

Why should I give up my resources to feed people that have been indoctrinated by an aggressive, violent and fundamentally dysfunctional culture whose only export seems to be either oil or terrorism.

We often had refugees coming in here but I've never seen a group of refugees that hates us so much and disregards all our laws. They must literally think we are subhumans or stupid because they didn't seem to deal drugs and rape at will in their own countries.

Someone please explain to me what on earth they must be thinking to come here as guests, be fed and housed by us for free just to then go out and rape local women and children.

We had a case here where a "refugee" raped a 10 year old boy and later claimed in court (with a smirk on his face) that it was a sexual emergency. He didn't have sex for 6 months. In his mind this was a valid excuse.

The Swedish press and government will publish anything positive about Syrians in Sweden. But they will not publish anything about the massive increase in rapes.

references?

"On Monday, police in the Swedish city of Östersund advised women not to go outdoors alone following a string of public assaults and sex attacks in the past three weeks"[1]. Crime increase is huge, just google for independent news sources that were not silenced by governments.

http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/cologne...

Please be careful with so called independent news sources. There is a lot of noise around Sweden by the foreign state controlled media manipulation organizations.

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