Temporary protection-status for Afghan refugees?

From: "Antti Rautiainen" <antti.rautiainen@kolumbus.fi>

Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2001 08:22:57 +0300

Dear friends,

most of the European Union countries granted special

"temporary protection" statuses to Kosova Albanians

1999, as well as to Bosnians in the beginning of the

nineties.

Basically this was a good thing, but also meant

to hide normal racist EU practices while treatment

of a a certain part of refugees was more in a

public scrutiny.

I think it should be very important to incorporate

demand to give "temporary protection" status to

Afghan refugees to other demands of the anti-war

movement, which many of you people are organising.

This although only few of the current

stream of refugees will reach EU - it is of political

importance for future conflicts, and will also help those few who

managed to get to EU. I think the same should have

been made also in regards to Chechen refugees,

but I think it is politically too late since no-one is following

massacring of chechenians anymore.

Soon public attention will turn away from Afghanistan,

and it will not be anymore possible to push through this kind

of demand.

More information about contents of "temporary protection" granted

in different EU countries may be found from

http://www.drc.dk/dk/publikationer/rapporter/legalandsocial/indh/index.php

Antti R.

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