From The Independent:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's attempt to explain her country's asylum policy to a young Palestinian whose family is close to deportation reduced the girl to tears.
The girl, identified in news reports as Reem, tells Merkel in fluent German she wants to go to university. But, she says, her family, who came to Germany four years ago from a refugee camp in Lebanon, lives in fear of deportation.
[Merkel said] “You’re a very nice person but you know that there are thousands and thousands of people in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and if say 'you can all come,' and 'you can all come from Africa,' and 'you can all come,' we just can't manage that."
As upheavals triggered by climate change increase, this won't be the last "awkward encounter" a major political figure has with a refugee.
It does bring the global refugee crisis into sharp focus. The Palestinian situation has been allowed to continue for decades without any resolution and so it's emblematic of global impotence in the face of difficult refugee crises. The young Palestinian girl is also an appropriate face for the crisis. The UNHCR says 43 million people are currently displaced (many within their own countries):
Children constitute about 41 percent of the world’s refugees, and about half of all refugees are women.
There are many large displacements underway globally, including the
Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar,
Syrians fleeing their civil war, a
wave of Iraqis fleeing this year's conflict,
children fleeing violence in Central America, not to mention conflicts in
Sudan and the
Central African Republic among others.
Video of the encounter is below:
As Americans we should be proud that we run the largest refugee resettlement program in the world, accepting almost 70,000 people in 2014, most through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. A very small fraction of refugees ever resettle into a third country (not directly contiguous to their homeland). The Office of Refugee Resettlement and the volunteer organizations (many of them religious) who help refugees build new lives deserve our admiration. We can always do more. Oh yeah, and if you haven't seen The Good Lie yet, you might want to.
More below the orange checkpoint:
There's widespread coverage of the incident:
The Daily Mail covers the furore in characteristic style: 'You can't all come':
Palestinian immigrant girl bursts into tears after 'heartless' German leader Angela Merkel explains personally to her on TV exactly why she must be deported.
The tense exchange has been widely discussed on social media, with many using the hashtag #Merkelstreichelt (Merkel strokes) alongside their criticisms.
Jan Schnorrenberg, manager of the opposition Green party's youth wing, wrote: 'Explaining to a young girl on live camera that her fate doesn't matter to you - just shameful.'
A release sent out by Merkel's PR team may also have inflamed the situation after it claimed Reem was crying due to agitation at the government's plan to introduce a faster asylum process.
Reuters:
Angela Merkel Strokes Sobbing Palestinian Girl in Refugee Debate
Looking surprised, Merkel walked up to her and said: "Ah, you did a great job."
The moderator of the discussion intervened to say the young woman was crying more because of her difficult situation than over whether she had done a good job in presenting her views, Merkel retorted: "I know ... Still, I want to stroke her." She then stroked Reem on the back.
Tweets mocked Merkel, accusing her of looking clumsy and lacking empathy.
"With the chancellor in the zoo," tweeted Torsten Gaitzsch.
"#merkelstrokes with the cold hand of an ice queen" wrote Martina Wilczyniski.
NPR:
Merkel's Awkward Interaction With Tearful Palestinian Girl
But Felix Seibert-Daiker, who moderated the forum, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that Merkel's reaction was humane.
"Of course, we all would have liked Merkel to take Reem in her arms and say, 'You can stay,' but that is not the situation," he said, according to Reuters.
Germany is among the top destinations for refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. The Associated Press reports that figures released this week showed 179,037 asylum applications were filed in the first six months of 2015 — more than twice as many as in the same period last year.
Vox:
Angela Merkel should be ashamed of her response to this sobbing Palestinian girl
Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are hosting millions of refugees. This is a global problem and Germany is doing remarkably little to shoulder its share of burden, though it is far more capable of doing so than is, say, Lebanon. What Merkel is arguing isn't that she is incapable of doing more, but rather that her country — like other European countries — is somehow exempt from the responsibility of giving shelter to vulnerable people.
The Guardian:
Angela Merkel comforts sobbing refugee but says Germany can't help everyone
Rarely has Angela Merkel been so directly confronted with the consequences of her own politics. But an emotional encounter with a young Palestinian left her momentarily speechless and unable to adequately explain to the girl why she faces the threat of deportation.