'Group hug' for refugees

RESIDENTS from over 30 towns and cities in Spain gathered in Madrid yesterday (Sunday) evening to join in a 'Europe-wide group hug' for refugees, calling for national governments across the continent to fulfil their promises to resettle war victims – or, in some cases, to promise to resettle them in the first place.

Spain has agreed to take in 18,000 in total by the end of 2017 from refugee camps in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon and other sites in south-eastern Europe and the Middle East, but has so far only given shelter to just over 1,000.

Even then, the promised 18,000 is still higher than many other EU countries are prepared to take in, with some refusing to do so altogether.

Sweden is the most generous to date, with 143,000 refugees, mainly from Syria and Iraq, being given homes in the Scandinavian country in two years, and the door still open to more this year and beyond – despite its population and land mass being among the smallest in Europe.

All across the continent yesterday, residents convened in major cities for the international 'refugee group hug', which was organised in each country by a number of nationally-based charities and associations.

In Spain, over 70 of them were involved, and those who could not get to Madrid staged 'group hugs' in Valencia, Alicante, Barcelona, Córdoba, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Salamanca, Oviedo and the Spanish-owned city-province of Ceuta just across the water from Gibraltar on the northern Moroccan coast.

“People are saying that, if we have resettlement agreements in place already for refugees, can we please put them into action now and stop the cold calculations and policies, because these are human beings who have the right to a decent life,” said Andrés Rodríguez from the international refugee charity ONGD, an umbrella organisation for the main Spanish humanitarian societies.

Spain's logo for its 'group hug' was 'No to the European Fortress, resettlement now', and the main Madrid gathering took place outside the ministry of foreign affairs' head office.