Andras Corban-Arthen re-elected as president to ECER

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA – Andras Corban-Arthen, current President of the European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER) has been re-elected to serve another five year term as President. Mr. Corban-Arthen has served as president since 2011 when its first president became ill and could no longer serve out his term. ECER was founded in 1998 to preserve and revitalize the indigenous, ethnic religious traditions of Europe and to “oppose discrimination against such groups.”  

Corbin-Arthen says he has been honored to serve as president is proud of the re-organizational plan which called for greater involvement from the members, the development and procurement of necessary resources, and for ECER to increase its activism in pursuing its mission. “I convened a steering committee which met monthly for well over a year, and we proposed a number of changes to the statutes governing the ECER, which were adopted at last year’s Congress in Prague,” explained Corban-Arthen.

Column: The Migration Crisis

The world is currently witnessing human migration on a massive scale, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Europe. According to The New York Times, the population of asylum seekers in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan will rise to an estimated 4.7 million by the end of 2015. 1.3 million asylum applications are expected by the end of the year for the following six European countries alone: Germany, Austria, Hungary, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland. And so far this year, some 549,000 asylum seekers have already traveled to Hungary, Greece, and Italy. Hungary has closed its border with Serbia, using water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and batons against migrants seeking to travel through to the country to Northern and Western Europe.