Double standards anger Arab refugees

• Published date: 03 March 2022
• Publication title: Shanghai Daily

Syrian refugee Ahmad al-Hariri, who fled the war in his country for neighboring Lebanon 10 years ago, has spent the last decade hoping in vain to escape to a new life in Europe.

Watching European nations open their arms to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in less than a week, the father of three can't help but compare their fates.

"We are wondering, why are Ukrainians welcome in all countries while we, Syrian refugees, are still in tents and remain under the snow, facing death, and no one is looking to us?" he said in a refugee center where 25 families are sheltered on the edge of the Mediterranean port city of Sidon.

In the Arab world, where 12 million Syrians have been uprooted by war, critics ranging from Hariri to activists and cartoonists contrast the Western reaction to the refugee crisis triggered by the conflict in Ukraine with the way Europe sought to hold back Syrian and other refugees in 2015.

Some recalled images of refugees walking for days in harsh weather, or losing lives in perilous sea crossings as they tried to breach Europe's borders.

On Monday, four days after Russia launched its attack, the European Union said at least 400,000 refugees had entered the bloc from Ukraine, which has land borders with four EU states.

Millions more are expected and the EU is preparing measures which would offer temporary residence permits as well as access to employment and social welfare -- a swift opening of its doors at odds with its response to wars in Syria and elsewhere.

By early 2021, 10 years after Syria's conflict erupted, EU states had taken in 1 million Syrian refugees and asylum seekers, of which Germany alone took more than half. Most arrived before a 2016 deal in which the EU paid billions of euros for Turkey to continue hosting 3.7 million Syrians.

This time the welcome has been immediate.

"We have here not the refugee wave which we are accustomed to and we do not know what to do with -- people with an unclear...