{"id":232722,"date":"2016-03-19T22:54:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T22:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/merkel-brave-for-accepting-refugees-un-migration-chief-tells-rt-video\/"},"modified":"2016-03-19T22:54:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T22:54:53","slug":"merkel-brave-for-accepting-refugees-un-migration-chief-tells-rt-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/merkel-brave-for-accepting-refugees-un-migration-chief-tells-rt-video\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Merkel brave for accepting refugees,\u2019 UN migration chief tells RT (VIDEO)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.03\/thumbnail\/56e961b4c461886d568b4567.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>        German Chancellor Angela Merkel is \u201ca heroine\u201d for opening her country\u2019s borders to refugees, UN Special Representative for International Migration Peter Sutherland told RT\u2019s Going Underground.&#13;<\/p>\n<div readability=\"92.337121212121\">\n<p>Sutherland, who works under Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, praised Merkel\u2019s \u201c<em>brave<\/em>\u201d stance in treating the refugee crisis as a humanitarian issue.<\/p>\n<p>The former businessman and barrister told RT\u2019s Afshin Rattansi the issue has been \u201c<em>traumatic<\/em>\u201d for the German people, but that Merkel has been brave in facing up to the challenge.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SaCvHgKqhMw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I totally disagree with that view and I think the UN as an institution would do so. It is my personal view that Angela Merkel has been a heroine in this disaster<\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>She has taken in, in the last year, over a million people who are claiming asylum. Imagine what the reaction in other societies would be, if they had taken on a similar proportion of their population to that one million in an election.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sutherland previously served as attorney general of Ireland, was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organization and a chairman of Goldman Sachs.<\/p>\n<p>He dismissed reports in the British media that recent German elections punished Merkel for her decision to open the country to 1.1 million refugees.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The [regional] elections which have just happened in Germany have been characterized as a devastating defeat by one British newspaper. This I think is absolute arrant nonsense<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>The reality is that 54 percent of the German people rate her as a popular [chancellor] now and the actual figures in the regions in question, in comparison to what is happening in some other European countries with far-right parties, are relatively low<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>This matter is difficult and traumatic no doubt, domestically, but she has viewed this as a humanitarian crisis, and she has said that, and she has been brave in my view in facing up to it<\/em>,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Merkel vowed to keep her course on the refugee crisis despite suffering defeats in two out of three states in major regional elections on Monday, in which a surprisingly large number of voters turned out for the anti-migrant Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>I am firmly convinced, and that wasn\u2019t questioned today, that we need a European solution and that this solution needs time<\/em>,\u201d the chancellor said.<\/p>\n<p>AfD chief Frauke Petry told RT the results were \u201c<em>even better<\/em>\u201d than she had anticipated and that the country \u201c<em>needs<\/em>\u201d her party.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>We have fundamental problems in Germany that led to this election result. In the months to come we\u2019ll show that the AfD needs to be here, that Germany needs a new alternative \u2013 and that\u2019s us<\/em>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/uk\/335795-merkel-refugee-sutherland-un\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=RSS\">RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel is \u201ca heroine\u201d for opening her country\u2019s borders to refugees, UN Special Representative for International Migration Peter Sutherland told RT\u2019s Going Underground.&#13; Sutherland, who works under Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, praised Merkel\u2019s \u201cbrave\u201d stance in treating the refugee crisis as a humanitarian issue. The former businessman and barrister told RT\u2019s Afshin [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":232723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-232722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}