A televised meeting between teenagers and Chancellor Angela Merkel has given a face to Germany’s immigration policies.
A young Palestinian girl named Reem addressed Merkel with the news that her family was soon to be deported after fleeing from a refugee camp in Lebanon four years earlier.
In the video, the young girl tells Merkel in fluent German: “I have goals like anyone else. I want to study like them … it’s very unpleasant to see how others can enjoy life, and I can’t myself.”
Merkel’s response was an attempt at offering sympathy but still left the young girl in tears.
“Politics is sometimes hard,” Merkel said. “You’re right in front of me now and you’re an extremely sympathetic person. But you also know in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are thousands and thousands and if we were to say you can all come … we just can’t manage it.”
The video has gone viral in Germany with the hashtag #merkelstreichelt (translation: Merkel strokes).
British daily the Independent reported: “Viewers slammed Ms Merkel’s administration as a ‘Regierung ohne Empathie’, meaning ‘government without empathy’ and claimed the Chancellor had ‘failed as a human on all fronts’.”
Current figures put the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Germany at around 450,000. With a population already hovering around 80 million, Germany has struggled to find room for everyone. “Just in this past week, we’ve had more than 5,000 people newly arrived, most of them from the Balkans and most of whom have just been dumped at the side of the road by people smugglers. We have to find suitable accommodation for all of them,” Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, told the Guardian.
Anti-immigrant movements have recently been gaining steam in Europe (examples: Germany, Italy, France, U.K.) and Australia as they deal with a major migrant crisis.
Meanwhile, Syria’s neighbors must be shaking their heads at Merkel’s comments. Turkey has a population slightly smaller than Germany at around 75 million inhabitants and hosts more than 1.5 million refugees. Jordan, with a population at over 6.5 million, hosts over 650,000 refugees.
And there is Lebanon. This tiny country wedged between Syria, Israel and the Mediterranean with a population of around 4.4 million people hosts over 1.15 million refugees, according to UNHCR, and that doesn’t include the unregistered refugees who amount to more than 300,000.
A young Palestinian girl named Reem addressed Merkel with the news that her family was soon to be deported after fleeing from a refugee camp in Lebanon four years earlier.
In the video, the young girl tells Merkel in fluent German: “I have goals like anyone else. I want to study like them … it’s very unpleasant to see how others can enjoy life, and I can’t myself.”
Merkel’s response was an attempt at offering sympathy but still left the young girl in tears.
“Politics is sometimes hard,” Merkel said. “You’re right in front of me now and you’re an extremely sympathetic person. But you also know in the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon are thousands and thousands and if we were to say you can all come … we just can’t manage it.”
The video has gone viral in Germany with the hashtag #merkelstreichelt (translation: Merkel strokes).
British daily the Independent reported: “Viewers slammed Ms Merkel’s administration as a ‘Regierung ohne Empathie’, meaning ‘government without empathy’ and claimed the Chancellor had ‘failed as a human on all fronts’.”
Current figures put the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Germany at around 450,000. With a population already hovering around 80 million, Germany has struggled to find room for everyone. “Just in this past week, we’ve had more than 5,000 people newly arrived, most of them from the Balkans and most of whom have just been dumped at the side of the road by people smugglers. We have to find suitable accommodation for all of them,” Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, told the Guardian.
Anti-immigrant movements have recently been gaining steam in Europe (examples: Germany, Italy, France, U.K.) and Australia as they deal with a major migrant crisis.
Meanwhile, Syria’s neighbors must be shaking their heads at Merkel’s comments. Turkey has a population slightly smaller than Germany at around 75 million inhabitants and hosts more than 1.5 million refugees. Jordan, with a population at over 6.5 million, hosts over 650,000 refugees.
And there is Lebanon. This tiny country wedged between Syria, Israel and the Mediterranean with a population of around 4.4 million people hosts over 1.15 million refugees, according to UNHCR, and that doesn’t include the unregistered refugees who amount to more than 300,000.
