European Union (EU) officials and the German Chancellor have stepped up their attacks on President Donald J. Trump’s pause on immigration from terror-linked nations, publically accusing the president of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Angela Merkel’s unprompted remarks, made to reporters ahead of talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, came after she lectured Mr. Trump on the phone this weekend, including “explaining” the Geneva Refugee Convention to him.
“The essential and also resolute fight against terrorism in no way justifies general suspicion against people of a specific faith, in this case people of the Muslim faith or people of a certain background,” she told reporters.
She added: “This approach in my view contradicts the basic tenets of international aid to refugees and international cooperation.”
Margaritis Schinas, the official spokesman for European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, was just as direct, implying the U.S. wished to “discriminate” on the basis of race and religion.
“This is the European Union and in the European Union we do not discriminate on the basis of nationality, race or religion – not only when it comes to asylum, but in any of our other policies,” he said.
On Friday, Mr. Trump ordered a four-month pause on allowing immigrants into the U.S. from a list of countries linked to terror compiled by the Obama administration.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the German Green party are demanding Mr. Trump is banned from their respective countries in response to the policy, and more than a million people have signed a petition demanding Mr. Trump’s planned state visit to the UK is cancelled.
Mrs. Merkel’s own policy on migrants and asylum seekers from terror-linked countries has also been criticised.
Last year she promised “no upper limit” to the number of unchecked migrants to be admitted into Germany, which subsequently experienced a wave of suicide bombings, truck, knife, and axe attacks by asylum seekers and migrants.
Most recently, more than a dozen people died and around 50 were injured when a truck smashed its way through a Christmas market in Berlin. It was driven by a Tunisian asylum seeker pledging allegiance to Islamic State.
In other examples, a Syrian asylum seeker who pledged allegiance to Islamic State committed the first ever suicide bombing on German soil in July, just six days after an Afghan asylum seeker went on an axe-wielding rampage on a train, reportedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” and leaving four people injured.