Gauck calls for common solution for refugee crisis
February 26, 2016
Joachim Gauck has pleaded with members of the EU to come up with a common solution to the refugee crisis. His comments come shortly after Austria and several Balkan countries decided to restrict entry to migrants.
Image: Reuters/A. Konstantinidis
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"It cannot be that the European Union dismantles itself, and the decades-long project of European integration shatters because of the refugee problem," German President Joachim Gauck said on Friday in Berlin.
"A Europe that does not unify its political weight will not be able to contribute effectively in reducing and fighting against the reasons why people are fleeing," Gauck said.
The president, who traditionally serves as a moral compass in a largely ceremonial position, also referred to EU member states like Austria and Balkan countries including Macedonia, that blocked the entry of refugees into their territories. Hundreds of migrants were stranded in Greece (pictured above) as a result.
He warned government against anti-migrant propaganda and urged them to take decisive steps against xenophobia.
"Do not direct your dissatisfaction and your anger against those who are much weaker and vulnerable than you are. Isolate hate mongers, violent criminals and incendiaries. If you want to protest, follow the rules," Gauck told the audience.
He also said citizens could raise their voices against town mayors, members of parliament and ministers, "but then also listen to what they have to tell you," he said.
Gauck's speech at an international forum comes shortly after a video emerged showing anti-migrant protestors angrily demonstrating in front of a bus full of refugees in the Saxon town of Clausnitz. Two days later, a planned refugee shelter was caught fire in Bautzen, also in Saxony. Police reported a group of onlookers cheering on as the building burnt and blocking firefighters from extinguishing the blaze.
mg/sms (AFP, Reuters)
Life in a refugee camp
As the current refugee crisis unfolds new challenges for global leaders, DW looks at what life is like in refugee camps across the world.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/R, Adayleh
France’s first 'humanitarian-standard' shelter
Migrants and refugees arrive in a refugee camp with humanitarian-standard shelters in Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk, in northern France. France's first-ever refugee camp to meet international humanitarian standards opened in early March. So far, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has built roughly 200 of the 375 planned cabins at the site to house approximately 2,500 people.
Image: Reuters/P. Rossignol
The face of hope
Tina, a 3-year-old Kurdish girl from Iraq, sits in a wooden shelter in Grande-Synthe. Most of these migrants, mainly Kurds from Iraq, had been living in terrible conditions in the camps of Grande-Synthe and Calais. Among them are 60 women and 74 children.
Image: Reuters/P. Rossignol
Laying the foundations
An indigenous Sahrawi teacher attends a class at a school in a desert refugee camp of Boujdour in Tindouf, located in southern Algeria. The five camps there are home to an estimated 165,000 Sahrawi refugees. A mural painted on a wall of the National Union of Sahrawi Women headquarters of the camp reads, "If the present is a struggle, the future is ours."
Image: Reuters/Z. Bensemra
Life in a Sahrawi refugee camp
An indigenous Sahrawi man rebuilds his house, which was damaged by floods last October, in a refugee camp located in the Al Samra refugee camp. Residents use car batteries for electricity at night and depend on humanitarian aid to survive.
Image: Reuters/Z. Bensemra
Fear and despair
A girl looks out from a tent at a relocation camp where stranded refugees and migrants wait to cross the Greek-Macedonian border, near the Greek village of Idomeni.
Image: Reuters/A. Avramidis
Temporary relief
Children are entertained by a performer at the Idomeni refugee camp. Doctors warn that conditions at the camp are becoming dangerous for children, with medics dealing with a range of illnesses, including hypothermia. The transit camp at the border is becoming increasingly overcrowded as thousands of refugees continue to arrive from Athens and the Greek Islands.
Image: Getty Images/D. Kitwood
Hoping for a change
A Syrian man walks between tents in a refugee camp in Suruc, Turkey, which is hosting almost 2.7 Million refugees. Despite Ankara government's reassurances, Syrians are still not allowed to work in Turkey, adding to hopelessness among men of working age.
Image: Getty Images/C. Court
'An unwanted burden'
Children of Afghan refugees attend a class in their school at an Afghan refugee camp in Kalabat, Pakistan. U.N. officials have called on Pakistan to resolve the status of more than 2.5 million Afghan refugees living there.
Image: Reuters/C. Firouz
Living a lost life
In northeastern Sudan, Eritrean asylum seekers rest inside a new arrival center in Wad Sharifey refugee camp during a visit by European Union ambassadors.
Image: Reuters/M. N. Abdallah
'Make do with what you have'
A Syrian refugee boy plays with a tire at Zaatari refugee camp, in Mafraq, Jordan. This camp was first opened in 2012 to host Syrians fleeing the violence in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted the year before. Currently, the camp's population is estimated to be over 83,000.
