Wanna be evacuated? That’ll be $300!

Details on what’s happening in Lebanon at the moment is all over the web, so I won’t bother going into it again here. But in my reading up on the situation, I came across this news story about a US student stuck there at the moment awaiting evacuation. I’m glad that the people being caught in the crossfire are being helped to get out, but this particular sentence shocked me:

Nucho said there was talk that Americans would have to pay a $300 evacuation fee and be left to sleep on the streets of Cyprus.

This is further confirmed in the article:

In statements e-mailed to Americans in Lebanon and posted on the embassy’s Web site, the State Department has stressed “that the U.S. government does not provide no-cost transportation but does have the authority to provide repatriation loans to those in financial need. For the portion of your trip directly handled by the U.S. Government we will ask you to sign a promissory note and we will bill you at a later date.”

This, to me, is horribly unacceptable. These are US citizens we’re talking about – you’re evacuating your own countrymen yet charging them to do so? The article goes on to say that once they’ve been evacuated to Cyprus, they’re on their own – no accommodation, no flights, no nothing will be paid for by the US government.

The US calls itself “the land of the free” – it seems freedom comes with a charge these days.