{"id":5224,"date":"2015-12-04T20:07:11","date_gmt":"2015-12-04T20:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitederitreamedia.com\/blog12\/?p=5224"},"modified":"2015-12-04T20:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T20:07:11","slug":"activists-say-eritrean-refugees-forgotten-while-world-focuses-on-syria-by-cherise-seucharan-december-2-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitederitreamedia.com\/blog12\/2015\/12\/04\/activists-say-eritrean-refugees-forgotten-while-world-focuses-on-syria-by-cherise-seucharan-december-2-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Activists say Eritrean refugees forgotten while world focuses on Syria by Cherise Seucharan December 2, 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Daniel<\/p>\n

Refugees from other countries have been ignored while all eyes are on Syria, says a group of Vancouver activists who want to bring attention to the refugee crisis in Eritrea.<\/p>\n

Daniel Tseghay, the main organizer of the informal group, says that federal government\u2019s$1.2-billion plan<\/a> to expedite Syrian refugees highlights the attention paid to some refugees while other international crises have been forgotten.<\/p>\n

The group, mostly comprised of youth with roots in Eritrea, is planning a campaign to bring awareness to the situation in their home country.<\/p>\n

In Eritrea, tens of thousands have been fleeing the dictatorship\u2019s forced\u2013<\/strong>labour practices and human rights\u00a0<\/strong>abuses. Despite this,\u00a0Amnesty International recently reported that asylum applications from Eritrean refugees are increasingly being rejected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere obviously is some structure that privileges certain migrants over others and unfortunately,<\/strong> African migrants are at the very bottom of the hierarchy. Vancouver in general is walking in that path right now,\u201d said Tseghay.<\/p>\n

The Eritrean crisis also has connections to Vancouver, he said, as mining company Nevsun, which is\u00a0headquartered in the city, has been accused of using\u00a0forced labour<\/a> in Eritrea. (Nevsun has\u00a0denied<\/a> the allegations of forced labour in a recent independent report.)<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are Vancouver mining companies that are in Eritrea. They are a big reason that people are fleeing Eritrea,\u201d Tseghay said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a refugee crisis that is intimately connected with Vancouver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meron Habtom, a\u00a0<\/strong>member of the group and a student at British Columbia Institute of Technology, said that growing up in Canada he had little awareness of the struggles of people in his home country. He is now committed to bringing attention to the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cEritreans are facing some of the worst living conditions in the world, but it\u2019s as if their struggle doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d Habtom said.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_02082_edited-4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All refugee support is needed<\/strong><\/p>\n

But not everyone believes that having the federal government focus on one group of\u00a0refugees is a bad thing.<\/p>\n

Eyob Naizghi, the executive director of the immigrant settlement organization MOSAIC in east Vancouver, welcomes increased support for any refugees.<\/p>\n

Naizghi is intimately acquainted with the plight of refugees. As a young man,<\/strong> he escaped from Eritrea and came to Canada through the World University Service of Canada. He now helps immigrants and refugees settle in Vancouver.<\/p>\n

Naizghi said that the media\u2019s focus on Syria has drawn\u00a0attention to the larger story of refugee struggles. The coverage has\u00a0mobilized people to put\u00a0pressure on world leaders to act.<\/p>\n

\u201cPoliticians do tend to react to public outcries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Naizghi also mentioned that for years, refugees fleeing many countries have attempted to cross the Mediterranean, and Syrians are now in an especially dire situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Syrian refugee crisis has been in the making for the last five years, and, in the last two years, the crisis has been exacerbated,\u201d he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s commitment to refugees
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Syria is the latest country from which Canada has chosen to expedite large numbers of refugees, usually by providing special assistance in the form of faster processing or flights to Canada. In the early 1980s, Canada accepted 50,000 refugees fleeing Vietnam and, in 1999,<\/strong>accepted 5,000 escaping Kosovo.<\/p>\n

Of the approximately 23,000 refugees<\/a> accepted into Canada in 2014, almost half came through the government-assisted program, most from Iran or Iraq. Eritrean and Syrian refugees are at the top the list of privately\u00a0sponsored refugees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>But the private-sponsorship stream for refugees, in which individual citizens offer to take on the cost of resettlement, accounts for less than 20 per cent of all refugees accepted.<\/p>\n

Though Syrians will now be receiving priority, the federal government is still accepting refugees from around the world, said Theodora Jean, of the communications department at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. This includes plans to settle 4,000 Eritreans by 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cCanada is in fact responding to other crises in the world. In addition to the Syrian commitment, Canada has a multi-year resettlement program plan, which includes\u00a0an additional 3,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of 2015,\u201d Jean said in an email.<\/p>\n

Why Syria?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor Daniel Hiebert, a specialist in international migration at the University of British Columbia, says that there are \u201cno simple answers\u201d to why more refugees from some countries are accepted to Canada and not others.<\/p>\n

But he points out that Canadians are able to provide help to refugees from countries that that they think need more support. \u201cThere is a degree of choice enabled by the private refugee-sponsorship system,\u201d says Hiebert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Refugees from other countries have been ignored while all eyes are on Syria, says a group of Vancouver activists who want to bring attention to the refugee crisis in Eritrea. Daniel Tseghay, the main organizer of the informal group, says that federal government\u2019s$1.2-billion plan to expedite Syrian refugees highlights the attention paid to some refugees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.1359999999999998987476601541857235133647918701171875,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3000000000000000444089209850062616169452667236328125,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.67849999999999999200639422269887290894985198974609375,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92000000000000003996802888650563545525074005126953125,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.84999999999999997779553950749686919152736663818359375,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.1999999999999999555910790149937383830547332763671875,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.90000000000000002220446049250313080847263336181640625,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.270000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.020000000000000017763568394002504646778106689453125,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.4699999999999999733546474089962430298328399658203125,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nActivists say Eritrean refugees forgotten while world focuses on Syria by Cherise Seucharan December 2, 2015 - UNITED ERITREA MEDIA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Activists say Eritrean refugees forgotten while world focuses on Syria by Cherise Seucharan December 2, 2015 - UNITED ERITREA MEDIA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Refugees from other countries have been ignored while all eyes are on Syria, says a group of Vancouver activists who want to bring attention to the refugee crisis in Eritrea. 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