Wednesday, September 9, 2015

The INVASION OF EUROPE via the Arctic Route

A Norwegian policeman approaches two Syrian asylum 
seekers arriving on bicycles at Norway’s Arctic border
 with Russia. Photo: Mattis Lindblad/VG/Scanpix
More than 150 refugees have entered Norway from Arctic Russia this year
After several failed attempts to reach Europe from Turkey, a 31-year-old Syrian asylum seeker found refuge in Norway’s capital last week after riding a bicycle across Russia’s Arctic border with Norway.
A first endeavor to cross the border by car was unsuccessful: Russian drivers no longer take refugees into Norway since it threatened to prosecute them for people trafficking. After learning he wouldn’t be allowed to walk through the checkpoint at Storskog, some 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Syrian teacher from Hamah bought a bike for $150 and cycled a 20-mile stretch of gravel road to the border.
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“I had my laptop on my chest and a bag on my back,” he said at the Refstad refugee shelter in Oslo. “I was wearing two jackets and two sets of underwear under my pants. North is cold.”
The teacher’s Arctic path illustrates the extraordinary scope of Europe’s migration crisis, as the continent grapples with the biggest groundswell of asylum seekers since World War II.
As more European countries erect walls and deploy barbed-wire fences in a bid to stop the irrepressible flow, the circuitous northern route via Russia has emerged as a safer option than the often deadly passage thousands undertake packed into ships across the Mediterranean Sea or into trucks across Eastern Europe.
The Al-Salim brothers here in Oslo, each fled separately
 from Syria through Russia to Norway. 
Photo: Kjetil Malkenes Hovland/WSJ
Though 2,300 miles north of Syria and often freezing cold, the border between Russia and Norway is an attractive alternate route, providing a direct gateway into the Schengen Area, within which there are no border controls. Although Norway isn’t a European Union member, it is part of the visa-free zone.
Stein Kristian Hansen, the head of Norway’s Storskog 
border-crossing station at the Russian border, poses with 
some of the bicycles left there by asylum seekers. 
Photo: Mattis Lindblad/VG/Scanpix
The more than 150 migrants recorded at Norway’s Storskog border post so far this year represent a fraction of the estimated half-million people who have applied for asylum in Europe during the period. But Norwegian authorities say the Arctic flow is growing fast as Syrians and other migrants appear to be sharing the tip.
“Some have discovered a fast track to Europe,” said Hans Møllebakken, chief of the police station guarding the Norwegian side of the border with Russia.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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