Geneva – The United Nations has urged European countries not to reject or blame refugees that may come up as a result of Friday’s attacks in Paris.
It said that this had become imperative because vast majority of the refugees were fleeing persecution or conflict.
Melissa Fleming, UNHCR Chief Spokesperson, on Wednesday in Geneva expressed great concern about reactions by some states to end immigrants’ programmes being put in place.
She said that some of the countries were backtracking from commitments made to manage the refugee crisis.
“We are deeply disturbed by language that demonises refugees as a group.
“This is dangerous as it will contribute to xenophobia and fear,’’ Fleming said.
She said that UNHCR was deeply concerned by the “yet unconfirmed” report that one of the attackers in the Paris attack may have entered Europe as part of the influx of refugees.
She said that the best response would be to immediately improve arrival processing in Greece and Italy and implement EU’s plan to relocate 160,000 refugees.
“We believe that if this had been done from the beginning we never would have seen these images on our screens of people on the march through Europe.
“It may not have been a total solution but it will have gone a long way to managing it,” she said.
Fleming said that UNHCR had warned in general terms of the importance of proper screening, having foreseen the risk that the badly-managed refugee influx could allow militants to slip into Europe.
Meanwhile, Rupert Colville, UN Human Rights Spokesman, said the biggest group of people to suffer at the hands of Islamic State militants, also known as ISIL, were Muslims in Syria and Iraq.
“If this attack is allowed to feed discrimination and prejudice, it will be playing straight into the hands of ISIL.
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“Demonising already marginalised communities is clearly a stupid way to go,” he said.
Joel Millman, Spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration, said that out of about 1.1 million arrivals in Europe in the past few years, at most a handful had names that raised questions with respect to possible links to extremism.
He said that the organisation’s figures showed that 832,193 migrants and refugees had arrived in EU countries across the Mediterranean Sea so far this year.
Millman said that more than 3,505 died in the attempt. (Reuters/NAN)