In Finland, Bassil Says Refugee Crisis an 'Existential Threat'
Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil warned Friday that the Syrian refugee crisis has started to pose an “existential threat” to Lebanon.
“The magnitude of the heavy refugee presence in Lebanon represents an existential threat for our country,” Bassil cautioned after talks with Finland's Foreign Minister Timo Soini in Helsinki.
“The latest arrests in Greece, Germany and France of terrorist cells consisted of individuals who entered the European Union as refugees are a blatant example of the correlation between migration and terrorism, which some traditional leaders are still refusing to acknowledge,” Bassil added.
“This migration is not aimed at securing the welfare of displaced or migrant individuals. There is an attempt to use this influx of aggrieved humans to allow the infiltration of terrorism, undermine Europe's diversity and tolerance, and dismantle the humanitarian values on which the EU was built,” the FM cautioned.
Turning to Lebanon, Bassil described it as “a fortress that is defending these values in the region while preserving this diversity and confronting terrorism and the refugee influx.”
Five years into the Syria conflict, Lebanon hosts more than one million refugees from the war-torn country, according to the United Nations.
At least two thirds of them live in extreme poverty, according to the U.N.
With more than 1.1 million Syrians and 450,000 Palestinians registered as refugees, Lebanon is home to the world's highest refugee-to-resident ratio.
Y.R.
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