Off the wire
• Spanish stock market falls 1.22 pct, closes at 8,194 points  • China reveals consumer price basket changes  • No new arrivals as Austria starts asylum seeker intake limit for first day: media  • Update: 3 Palestinians killed in flaring day of Mideast violence: medics  • More than 90% of Beijing's grain supply produced elsewhere  • Too little money spent on Slovak education system: OECD  • People's Daily stresses guiding public opinion for Party  • Kurdish group TAK claims Ankara car bomb attack  • China's moon lander Chang'e-3 enters 28th lunar day  • U.S. launches airstrikes against IS targets in Libya  
You are here: 　 Home

Third group of Iraqi Christian refugees arrives in Czech Republic

Xinhua, February 20, 2016 Adjust font size:

A third group of 41 Iraqi Christian refugees arrived in the Czech Republic on Friday afternoon, said Jan Talafant, director of the Generation 21 Foundation which is organizing the project.

Out of the 41 refugees, 33 of them arrived by plane directly from Erbil, Iraq, and eight from Lebanon.

Four refugee families with children departed from the Prague airport by bus to Brno, where some of them will be temporarily accommodated. The rest are to stay at recreation centers in Smilovice and Okrouhlik, where they will temporarily reside to get acquainted with the new environment and learn Czech.

The refugees are to undergo an integration process and, after they have gained asylum, they will be able to look for jobs. Before their departure to Czech, these refugees were subjected to security checks by Czech intelligence services and interviews with the Czech authorities.

The relocation in the Czech Republic of 37 Iraqi Christian families, a total of about 150 people was previously approved by the Czech government. Currently, Christians are one of the groups that face the greatest persecution from the so-called Islamic State.

The first two Christian families arrived at the Okrouhlik recreation center on Jan. 24, the second group of about four families arrived on Feb. 5.

The cost of resettling the Iraqi Christian refugees was set at around 15 million crowns (about 620,000 U.S. dollars). The project is organized and financed with the help of Generation 21's partners and supporters. (1 U.S. dollar = 24.3 crowns) Endit