【有文稿】战争结束后难民们能回家吗

Guest: Feng Zhongping, Director of Institute of European Studies, China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. BK: So first of all, Angela Merkel has said that she expects most of these refugees, as we just heard, to return to their countries of origin, namely, in particular, Iraq and Syria, once peace has returned to the Middle East. How realistic is this kind of expectation, this plan she’s putting forward? FZP: Well I think, you know, the most important thing for the German leader, Chancellor Merkel, is to reduce the popular fear, or in other words you could say the pressure from all kinds of political forces. I think, to be frank, in theory this is something that can be done – you could send back people to where they are from, if the circumstances were different. In terms of the Middle East, as Chancellor Merkel herself said, when peace has returned, you can go home – but in reality, I don’t think this is going to be a very short period of time. This temporary resettlement in Germany, or in other countries in Europe, I’m afraid it will become permanent. I’m not optimistic about peace in the Middle East – in fact, a lot of people like me are pessimistic about the conflict in the Middle East. LK: Talking about returning the refugees to the Middle East, Merkel cited the refugees from the former Yugoslavia as an example, saying that 70% of those who arrived in Germany in the 1990s returned home once it was safe to do so. Do you think it is accurate to draw a comparison between 1990s Yugoslavia and the current situation in Syria and Iraq? FZP: It is not, actually. You know, first of all, the number of migrants or refugees is hugely different. In the early 1990s, the migration of refugees from Yugoslavia to Germany or other European countries, the size was much smaller than this one. Secondly, a more important factor is that the people in the former Yugoslavian countries expected that sooner or later they would become part of the European Union, and some countries already have done so today. So this entire environment of the countries involved, their future, is different. I don’t think that any Middle Eastern countries will one day become part of the European Union! So this is a big difference: people who left the former Yugoslavia for Germany knew one day their country would become part of the European Union like Germany, so that helped them, when peace returned, to go back to their country.