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IMMIGRATION

‘Paris changes everything’ for migrants

The Paris attacks and the discovery of a Syrian passport near one of the assailant's bodies have revived the European debate on whether to take a harder line on migrants.

'Paris changes everything' for migrants
Refugee at Vienna's Westbahnhof station. Photo: Caritas

With the continent facing its biggest migration crisis since World War II, EU states have bickered for months on how to stem the flow and share out the new arrivals.

There have been steady calls from the right — and more emerged Sunday — for nations to be wary of the wave of people fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.

“Not every refugee is an Islamic State terrorist. But to believe that there is not a single fighter among the refugees is naive,” Markus Soeder, a politician with the conservative Bavarian party CSU told the German press on Sunday.

“Paris changed everything” and “this is no time for uncontrolled immigration,” said Soeder, whose party has been critical of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's accommodating stance on refugees.

Yet on Sunday European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker defended the line that “there is no need for an overall review of the European policy on refugees.”

The men made their comments days after a team of assailants launched coordinated attacks, claimed by the Islamic State group, in the French capital that killed at least 129 people.

The discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one attacker has raised fears that some of the assailants might have entered Europe as part of the huge influx of people fleeing Syria's civil war.

Greek and Serbian authorities have confirmed the passport belonged to a man who registered as a refugee in October on the island of Leros and applied for asylum in Serbia a few days later.

'It's a fairy tale'

Poland's incoming European Affairs Minister Konrad Szymanski said Saturday that Warsaw no longer considered an EU plan to redistribute refugees across Europe as a “political possibility” in light of the Paris attacks.

Dutch anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders weighed in on Twitter Sunday, writing “(Prime Minister Mark) Rutte will you listen at last: Close the borders!”

PEGIDA, the German Islamophobic movement, has predicted that attacks in Germany are inescapable “if we don't stop the avalanche of asylum seekers, if we do not properly secure our borders.”

More than 800,000 migrants have arrived in Europe by sea so far this year, mostly from the Middle East, with Germany alone expecting nearly a million migrants in 2015.

Other voices have called for calmer thinking. Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, has warned against any “swift links” between the Paris attacks and Europe's migrant crisis.

“Those who organised, who perpetrated the attacks are the very same people who the refugees are fleeing and not the opposite,” said Juncker.

“Those behind the attacks in Paris cannot be put on equal footing with refugees who are seeking asylum,” he said.

A source inside Juncker's entourage noted that his words do not mean there is flexibility to even partially review the 28-nation bloc's stance on refugees.

The Netherlands' Foreign Affairs Minister Bert Koenders noted that “closing the borders creates the illusion that we are safe. It's a fairy tale that does not help anyone.”

“We must not be naive. We have to check migrants so that we know who we are dealing with, but we need to be very careful when linking causes and effects,” he added.

“I understand this fear, and we cannot completely rule out” the presence of jihadists among the migrants, but “we are dealing with terrorism that took place both before and after the wave of migration,” Koenders said.

In Croatia, which has become the main Balkan country of transit for migrants, Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic reminded that “closing (borders) and barbed wire does not prevent these kind of tragedies.”

FAR-RIGHT

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Radical Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner has been banned from entering Germany, it emerged on Tuesday, days after he was deported from Switzerland.

Germany issues entry ban to Austrian far-right activist Sellner

Sellner, a leader of Austria’s white pride Identitarian Movement, posted a video of himself on X, formerly Twitter, reading out a letter he said was from the city of Potsdam.

A spokeswoman for the city authorities confirmed to AFP that an EU citizen had been served with a “ban on their freedom of movement in Germany”.

The person can no longer enter or stay in Germany “with immediate effect” and could be stopped by police or deported if they try to enter the country, the spokeswoman said, declining to name the individual for privacy reasons.

READ ALSO: Who is Austria’s far-right figurehead banned across Europe?

“We have to show that the state is not powerless and will use its legitimate means,” Mike Schubert, the mayor of Potsdam, said in a statement.

Sellner caused an uproar in Germany after allegedly discussing the Identitarian concept of “remigration” with members of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a meeting in Potsdam in November.

Reports of the meeting sparked a huge wave of protests against the AfD, with tens of thousands of Germans attending demonstrations across the country.

READ ALSO:

Swiss police said Sunday they had prevented a hundred-strong far-right gathering due to be addressed by Sellner, adding that he had been arrested and deported.

The Saturday meeting had been organised by the far-right Junge Tat group, known for its anti-immigration and anti-Islamic views.

The group is also a proponent of the far-right white nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by Sellner’s Identitarian Movement.

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