OFFBEAT MAIL

A CCTV catches footage of a killing in Paris. The discovery by French police of a foreign passport reportedly belonging to a Syrian reinforces notions that the suspects in Friday's killing of at least 120 people, including a CSU student, may have planned it prior to the mass exodus of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Libya. What's my perception on this prior to the killing spree that took place the second time around in France is that the killings were properly planned. After the botched attempt by a lone gunman using an AK47 rifle aboard a train, which led to the suspect being toppled down by three American servicemen, the killing in Paris graced newspaper headlines, thus shocking the international communities. According to an Los Angeles Times report (Nov. 15): "The document raised the possibility that Islamic State militants have made good on their threat to enter and attack Europe from within the wave of Syrian refugees." If they (suspects) indeed had infil...

The People's Republic of China should be thanked for releasing at least six North Korean refugees to South Korea. Of course, the action did not come easy for the international community to prod China to do its share for international humanitarian reason. The six refugees are now doing well in South Korea, and it won't be long when all of them would be resettled in the United States, where they have expressed interest to go. However, more are languising in Chinese detention cells at this hour. And the United Nations doesn't seem to work seriously so that their immediate release could be expedited soonest. Most of these refugees are North Koreans, who had crossed into China because life under Kim Jong Il's government is lousy and unbearable. Perhaps, the United Nations, along with the U.S government should do something about the dilemma of many North Korean refugees now being held in China so that they could immigrate somewhere else, rather than returning them to North K...

A sad reality, indeed, to know that some four million Iraqi refugees have yet to find a better place to migrate. And the question always boils down as to who caused these refugees to go astray? Isn't it the unrest and wars now going on in some countries in Africa and the Middle East? Most popular among them are the on-going chaos in Darfur, Iraq and Palestine, which already displaced millions of families and at most, killed tens of thousands more innocent people. These refugees are the victims of politics and greed. While the politicians in the U.S. Congress are debating as to whether to cut funding for the soldiers or not; and the illegal immigration issues, between 30,000 to 50,000 Iraqi refugees are driven out of their homes for fear of being killed, a Los Angeles Times editorial said in today's issue. Darfur, in south Sudan, is another place that was transformed from a lethargic to what is now a chaotic killing field caused by the in-fighting between the Janjaweed militias ...