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Europe avoids to take in refugees for political reasons: Commentator

Unaccompanied migrant minors from the demolished "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, wait to board a bus to be transferred to reception centers around France on November 2, 2016 in Calais, northern France. (Photo by AFP)

Europe is facing an unprecedented influx of refugees, most of whom are fleeing conflict-ridden zones in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria. Many experts believe Western intervention and policies are largely to blame for the refugee crisis crippling the continent.

An author and commentator believes the refugee crisis in Europe is the result of the wars which members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have waged in different countries around the world.

“These refugees are fleeing war zones, conflict zones. They do not want to be in this kind of vulnerable situation. They are desperate people and they are completely unprotected. So they are fleeing into Europe, into NATO countries and NATO is complicit in these wars,” John Steppling told Press TV in an interview on Thursday.

He also opined that Europe is “perfectly capable” of taking in the refugees that have fled to the continent but it is avoiding to do so for “purely political reasons.”

The commentator went on to say some European governments are afraid to help the refugees due to the rise of right-wing political parties in their countries.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Steppling stated it is completely the responsibility of France that the refugee camps are in such “dire straits.”

This comes as French authorities have started evacuating some 1,500 unaccompanied children living near the notorious Calais refugee camp in northern France, known as “The Jungle.”

“France’s treatment has been brutal and none of the refugees want to stay in France because of the treatment they receive in France, the impossibility of getting work. It is a little better in Britain or anywhere else, and these refugee camps, I mean for the French authorities to refer to them as lawless slums is pretty ironic,” he said.


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