After the tragic attack in Paris, some are turning their backs on refugees out of misplaced fear. Syrians are fleeing the same terrorists who killed people in Paris. What happened there is a common occurrance in Syria. We must stand strong against fear and Islamophobia and support innocent people in desperate need of sanctuary. We must not turn refugees away.
Refugees are risking their lives, and many are drowning in attempts to reach safety. Men, women and children who arrive in Italy, Greece, Spain and Hungary are left on the streets or are forced to stay in unsanitary refugee camps with very little support. The EU and all individual European countries must take immediate action to help these people. There are 11 million empty homes in Europe. We have space and we have the resources. We now need European governments to act.
We demand:
- Fair, ongoing distribution of refugees throughout Europe based on a country's capacity to help.
- More humanitarian aid for refugees in Europe.
- Stop building fences to keep people out.
- No imprisonment of innocent people in immigration detention centres.
Please sign this petition to show all European governments that the world is watching, and history will remember how they responded to this humanitarian crisis. If enough people sign, they will see that they must work together on global problems caused by war and famine.
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Update October 2015: Some mixed news - European governments last week agreed a deal to share 120,000 refugees already in Europe. This is a step in the right direction, but doesn't address the ongoing large numbers of refugees entering Europe every day.
Britain has refused to take part in this scheme but has agreed to take 20,000 refugees from Syrian border camps. The UK has made no promise to help the hundreds of thousands of refugees who are already in Europe.
Further explanations to the above demands:
- Drop the Dublin regulation which requires the first EU country a refugee reaches to process their asylum application, which causes an unfair imbalance of refugee distribution. Germany has already done this.
- The whole EU should fund emergency humanitarian aid to all refugee camps in Europe immediately. Currently refugees are in very poor living conditions in European countries.
- Hungary started removing parts of its razor wire border fence in September but plans to put it back after consultation with other countries.
- Whilst people's papers are being processed, many countries effectively imprison asylum seeking refugees. People can be detained for many months.
The world was touched when we saw photos of the body of three year old Aylan Kurdi on the beach. He is not the only child to die so far, and more will die without immediate action.
