Is Common Sense Starting To Prevail?

[Immortality]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11780138

Muslim parents must send children to mixed swimming lessons in Switzerland, European court rules

The couple, who are of Turkish origin, had appealed after being fined for keeping their daughters out of mixed-gender. Photo / AP
Muslims girls in Switzerland must not be exempt from mixed swimming lessons, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has said, in a potentially groundbreaking ruling.

The court in Strasbourg threw out an appeal that had been brought by a Muslim couple who said they should be allowed to let their daughters sit out swimming lessons with boys.

It was not a violation of the pupils' human rights to make them take part in mixed swimming lessons, the court ruled, adding that schools has a "special role" in integrating young children, especially those from foreign backgrounds.

"The children's interest in a full education, thus facilitating their successful social integration according to local customs and mores, prevailed over the parents' wish to have their children exempted from mixed swimming lessons," the ECHR said in its ruling.

The couple, who are of Turkish origin, had appealed after being fined for keeping their daughters out of mixed-gender, mandatory public-school swimming lessons for reasons linked to their Muslim faith.

They were both "fervent practitioners of the Muslim religion," the ECHR said.

The ruling comes after Germany's highest court ruled in December that Muslim girls must take part in swimming lessons with boys.

The country's constitutional court said that girls who objected to the mixed lessons on religious grounds could wear the so-called "burkini."

The ECHR was set up to enforce the European Convention on Human Rights, and is not part of the European Union.

- Daily Telegraph UK

 

[Towcar]

here we go again...

In my opinion these people "escape" from the issues in their homeland but turn up all over the world and try to make their adopted country like their home land. They quite quickly forget why the wanted out of their home land in the first place.

Interestingly on that there has been recent comments from Asians visiting Auckland that they are upset that areas of Auckland are being turned into mini areas from China! The tourists want to visit NZ because it is NOT Asia and turn up to find large areas have been made to be like Asia.

I really don't know why immigrants move to a country and expect that country to panda to their wants.

 

[Immortality]

There is a reason I very rarely go into the Auckland CBD......

My point with linking the article is more about the courts deciding to effectively enforce integration rather then the standard pandering PC bullshit that has become the norm.

One day soon (just maybe) they will decide that Europe (and the wider Western World) isn't really for them. We just need to get our politicians to get there heads out of each others PC bullshit arses.....

The current issue is that our former PM and the minister for Oravida were trying to sell us out to the Chinese, we need to put a stop to it before it is to late. The only down side of the TPPa falling over with Trump in the White House is that we will probably end up going more with Asia with free trade (or rather selling ourselves out cheaply).

The next big issue will be the sub-standard building materials coming from Asia. It's been going on for years and with this so-called building boom it's only going to get worse. To add to it, they continue to bring in cheap workers because the National government did nothing to train skilled workers since 2011 and the rebuild of Chch which will maintain the high demand on housing and infrastructure as well as keeping wages down. It's a vicious circle really.

 

[Immortality]

And another interesting one, now a moderate Islamic country bans the Burqa.....

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11780483

Morocco bans production and sale of burqas
By AFP, News Corp Australia Network, Staff writer

• 

Morocco has reportedly banned the selling of the burqa full-face Muslim veils. Photo / 123RF
Morocco has banned the production and sale of burqa full-face Muslim veils, apparently for security reasons, media reports said on Tuesday.

While there was no official announcement by authorities in the North African nation, the reports said the interior ministry order would take effect this week.

"We have taken the step of completely banning the import, manufacture and marketing of this garment in all the cities and towns of the kingdom," the Le360 news site quoted a high-ranking interior ministry official as saying.

It said the measure appeared to be motivated by security concerns, "since bandits have repeatedly used this garment to perpetrate their crimes."

Shopkeepers have been told they must get rid of their stock of Islamic veils within 48 hours or they will be confiscated, Morocco World News reports.

Most women in Morocco, whose King Mohammed VI favours a moderate version of Islam, prefer the hijab headscarf that does not cover the face.

The niqab, which leaves the area around the eyes uncovered, is also worn in Salafist circles and in more conservative regions in the north, from where thousands of jihadists have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq.

In some commercial districts of Casablanca, the country's economic capital, interior ministry officials on Monday conducted "awareness-raising campaigns with traders to inform them of this new decision," the Media 24 website said.

In Taroudant in southern Morocco, authorities ordered traders to stop making and selling burqas and to liquidate their stock within 48 hours, the reports said.

Retailers in the northern town of Ouislane were said to have received similar instructions.


It was unclear if Morocco plans to follow in the footsteps of some European countries such as France and Belgium where it is illegal to wear full veils in public.

The reports were met with a muted response in the absence of official confirmation, though Salafists expressed concern that the measure could be expanded to include the niqab.

"Is Morocco moving towards banning the niqab that Muslim women have worn for five centuries?" Salafism sheik Hassan Kettani wrote on Facebook.

"If true it would be a disaster," he added.

Hammad Kabbaj, a preacher who was barred from standing in parliamentary elections in October over his alleged ties to "extremism", denounced the ban as "unacceptable".

In comments on Facebook, he mocked the "Morocco of freedom and human rights" which "considers the wearing of the Western swimsuit on the beaches an untouchable right".

Oussama Boutaher, a co-ordinator that defends Islamist prisoners, said the burqa ban amounted to "discrimination".

"This shows that we are considered second-class citizens. It attacks individual freedoms even though Morocco has signed a number of international protocols on human rights," he told AFP.

"Our example isn't Afghanistan, but the prophet and his followers," added Boutaher, who also rubbished the idea that curbing the sale of the burqa would improve security.

But politician Nouzha Skalli, a former family and social development minister, welcomed the ban as "an important step in the fight against religious extremism".

The High Council of Oulemas, the country's top religious authority, has yet to comment on the issue of banning full-face veils.

- news.com.au

 

[Immortality]

And,

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11780234

Germany weighs tough changes to asylum system
By Anthony Faiola

A unit of the German federal police near Berlin. Photo / AP
Germany became an asylum seeker's utopia, a beacon of hope for the war torn and desperate.

But following a string of terrorist attacks including last month's strike on a Christmas market here, this nation is weighing tough changes to an asylum system that critics say has exposed millions of Germans to risk.

At a time when the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump has pledged a migrant crackdown in the United States, the moves in Western Europe's most populous nation signal a harder line also brewing on this side of the Atlantic.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, sniped at by Trump for welcoming the mostly Muslim migrants, remains opposed to some of the strictest measures, including renewed pressure to set a firm cap on new asylum seekers who are still arriving at a rate of several hundred per day. But in an election year in which her refugee stance has become Merkel's Achilles' heel, she and her top allies are accelerating a push for reform.

"You cannot apodictically separate security and asylum policy," said Stephan Mayer, a senior German lawmaker from the centre-right Christian Social Union. Referring to the Christmas market attacker Anis Amri, a 24-year old Tunisian asylum seeker, Mayer added: "Amri came to Germany disguised as a refugee. The more people come here, the more likely it is that there is going to be a villain among them."

Proposals being discussed by Merkel's Cabinet could give German authorities more power to detain or slap ankle brackets on rejected asylum seekers who are deemed security threats. New "repatriation centres" could also corral rejected asylum seekers in clearinghouses near airports to better ensure their ejection from Germany.

Developing nations that refuse to take their nationals back could also face cuts in foreign aid. Among the most radical proposals: a massive effort to re-examine the backgrounds of the roughly 1.2 million asylum seekers who arrived in Germany since 2015 - a large number of whom, critics say, were never thoroughly vetted.

The proposals are in response to three terrorist attacks last year in Germany involving militants who posed as asylum seekers, as well as the arrest of more than a dozen asylum seekers linked to suspected plots. But refugee advocates are deeply alarmed, arguing that new proposals like nationwide deportation centres could violate the human rights of innocent refugees.

"The question is, who do they want to send there?" said Stephan Dünnwald, spokesman of Bavarian Refugee Council. "We currently have 160,000 people in Germany whose asylum request have been rejected. . . . Do they want to build camps for 160,000 people? They should consider whether putting 160,000 people in camps doesn't mean taking big steps towards a Nazi state again."

Most of the reforms still require political deals before being set down into draft bills, as well as parliamentary approval. Still others, analysts warn, may be hard to impose even if consensus is reached.

Yet the clamour for change is growing, and Merkel has indicated a willingness to back a number of them.

"Those who do not have a right to stay must be returned to their home countries," she said this week.

Her conservative allies in Bavaria have been pressing the Chancellor especially to curb new arrivals. They ramped up calls today, unveiling a new proposal including a higher bar for family reunions that could make it significantly harder for war-torn families to reunite.

Yet the question in Germany now is not only how to manage migrants, but how and whether to improve domestic security. Two days after the December 19 Berlin Christmas market attack, the German Government backed a new bill aimed at expanding video surveillance in public spaces, including shopping centres, stadiums, parking lots and public transport. The bill also gives federal police expanded power to use body cameras and automatic systems for reading license plates and to record emergency calls.

The plan had been in the pipeline for months, but the Government pushed through an announcement of the measure shortly after the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a tough re-election battle. Photo / AP
In an article for Frankfurter Allgemeine, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière called for a stronger centralisation of German security agencies and an expansion of powers for federal police. It is raising the prospect of a beefed-up state security apparatus in Germany, a notion long considered anathema in a nation with dark memories of the Cold War and Nazi eras.

"We owe it to the victims, those affected and the entire population to rethink our entire migration and security policy," Bavaria's Governor, Horst Seehofer, recently said.

In 2015, Merkel famously declared the right to asylum in Germany had "no limit," prompting, critics say, an even greater number of migrants to race to Germany or die trying.

Yet the Germans have since sought to stem the tide. In early 2016, Merkel brokered a deal with Turkey to block migrants attempting to enter Europe. German authorities are also working with neighbouring nations to make it harder for irregular migrants to cross into Germany, where generous refugee benefits serve as a magnet for hundreds of thousands of would-be refugees.

Once here, laws and policies protecting migrant rights make it relatively hard for the Germans to expel those rejected. Several of the new measures being discussed now are meant to plug what critics see as dangerous holes in the system.

The Berlin Christmas market attacker, for instance, was a rejected Tunisian asylum seeker with deportation orders who was long suspected by authorities of being a terrorism threat. Efforts to deport him, however, were stalled for months because Tunisia refused to take him back. Meanwhile, officials say, they never had enough evidence to detain him under current German law.

- Washington Post