From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases
The Great Indian Kitchen
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration
‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s underground refugee network
As thousands attempt to cross the Belarus-Poland border seeking asylum in Europe, local activists are trying to help
In the attic of a cottage in the woods near the Polish village of Narewka, a young Iraqi Kurd crouches, trembling with cold and fear. Through the skylight, the blue lights of police vans flash on the walls of his hiding place. Outside, dozens of border guards are searching for people like him in the snowstorm. Downstairs, the owner of the house sits in silence with his terrified wife and children.
The young Kurd is one of thousands of asylum seekers who entered Poland across the border with Belarus, where countless others have become trapped on their way to Europe. The Polish family have offered him shelter. But if the Polish police find him, he risks being sent back across the frontier into the sub-zero forests of Belarus, while his protectors risk being charged for aiding illegal immigration.
Continue reading...‘We need a new commons’: how city life can offer us the vital power of connection
The pandemic has seen borders close and divisions widened. But in almost all aspects of life, humanity will only thrive by coming together
During the pandemic, the nations of the world set about energetically strengthening borders around themselves, and within themselves, as states restricted entry. During the early lockdowns, according to the UNHCR, 168 of the world’s 195 countries partially or entirely closed their borders. This hit refugees particularly hard. “Movement is vital for people who are in flight,” said Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR. “They save their lives, by running.”
The virus knows no borders; it is the ultimate globalist. Covid-19 put an end to the idea that the 19th-century European nation state is the political arrangement we should all aspire to. The nation state is an outdated concept, and ill serves the present emergency. The rich countries have frozen immigration. But when people can’t move, they also can’t earn. Global remittances – money sent back to their families by people working abroad – which amount to four times all the foreign aid given by the rich countries to the poor ones – have gone down two years in a row. Poor countries will be poorer.
Continue reading...One dead and dozens feared missing after boat sinks off Greek island
Search and rescue operation under way near Folegandros as boat carrying as many as 50 people sinks
Greece’s coastguard says one person has died and dozens are feared missing after a boat sank off the coast of the island of Folegandros.
The body of the unidentified man was recovered during an ongoing search and rescue operation. The coastguard said 12 people, all believed to be from Iraq, had been rescued and transported to the nearby island of Santorini.
Continue reading...France formally identifies 26 of the 27 people who died in Channel tragedy
Authorities say mostly Iraqi Kurds drowned in the Channel dinghy incident, including a teenager and one child
French authorities have formally identified 26 out of 27 people who drowned last month in a Channel dinghy incident, with most of them being Kurds from Iraq.
A statement from the Paris prosecutor said that there were 17 men among the deceased aged 19-26, seven women aged 22-46, as well as a 16-year-old teenager and a child aged seven.
Continue reading...Dozens killed after truck packed with people crashes in Mexico
At least 53 people died and many were injured after the vehicle rolled over on a highway in Chiapas
A cargo truck jammed with more than 100 people thought to be migrants from Central America has rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge in southern Mexico, killing at least 53 people and injuring dozens more.
The crash on Thursday on a highway near Tuxtla Gutierrez, state capital of Chiapas, might have been triggered by the weight of the truck’s human cargo causing it to tip over on a bend, local officials said.
Continue reading...Macron accuses UK of not keeping its word on Brexit and fishing
France willing to re-engage on Channel crossings, but UK economy relies on illegal labour, says president
Relations between France and Britain are strained because the current UK government does not honour its word, president Emmanuel Macron has said.
Macron accused London of failing to keep its word on Brexit and fishing licences, but said France was willing to re-engage in good faith, and called for “British re-engagement” over the “humanitarian question” of dangerous Channel crossings, after at least 27 migrants drowned trying to reach the British coast.
Continue reading...Helping refugees starving in Poland’s icy border forests is illegal – but it’s not the real crime | Anna Alboth
The asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border are not aggressors: they are desperate pawns in a disgusting political struggle
One thought is a constant in my head: “I have kids at home, I cannot go to jail, I cannot go to jail.” The politics are beyond my reach or that of the victims on the Poland-Belarus border. It involves outgoing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, getting through to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. It’s ironic that this border has more than 50 media crews gathered, yet Poland is the only place in the EU where journalists cannot freely report.
Meanwhile, the harsh north European winter is closing in and my fingers are freezing in the dark snowy nights.
Continue reading...Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees
We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders
From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.
Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.
Continue reading...Lives lost at Europe’s borders and Afghan MPs in exile: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...Remain in Mexico: migrants face deadly peril as Biden restores Trump policy
The US has struck a deal with Mexico to make asylum seekers wait south side of the border while their applications are processed
The Biden administration’s move to revive Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy will subject thousands of people to “enormous suffering” and leave them vulnerable to kidnap and rape as they languish in dangerous Mexican border cities, migration advocates have warned.
After reaching a deal with Mexico, the US will by 6 December start returning asylum seekers from other Latin American countries to Mexico where they will be obliged to wait while their case is assessed.
Continue reading...The most unsafe passage to Europe has claimed 18,000 victims. Who speaks for them? | Lorenzo Tondo
As Europe outsources its border policing to Libya, rescue operations by NGOs are hampered by criminal inquiries in Italy
In the early hours of 21 June, somewhere in the vast expanse of the central Mediterranean, a Médecins Sans Frontières team on board a rescue vessel received a distress call. The motor of a small boat carrying asylum seekers from Libya had broken down, and the vessel was taking in water.
These are the first dramatic scenes in Unsafe Passage – a Guardian Documentaries film by Ed Ou for the Outlaw Ocean Project, released today – but they are also the first moments in a race against time that repeats itself again and again in the stretch of sea separating Europe from Africa.
Continue reading...Unsafe Passage: on board a refugee rescue ship racing for Europe – video
An overcrowded ship with asylum seekers leaves Libya bound for Europe – triggering a high-stakes showdown between a Doctors Without Borders vessel wanting to escort it to safety and the Libyan Coast Guard fighting to turn it back. As the Libyans issue armed threats the tension grows below deck. With European countries' responsibilities toward refugees once again in the spotlight, here is an inside view of the desperate hope that is the deadly race for Europe
Continue reading...People onboard sinking Channel dinghy ‘tried to contact UK authorities’
Home Office acknowledges people involved in tragedy may have tried to call for help as investigations continue
The occupants of a boat that sank last week in the Channel causing the deaths of at least 27 people may have tried to contact the UK authorities, the Home Office has acknowledged.
Dan O’Mahoney – the clandestine channel threat commander – said he could not say with any certainty if those onboard had rung the UK for help. Speaking to parliament’s human rights committee, O’Mahoney said HM Coastguard was now investigating.
Continue reading...Covid limits migration despite more people displaced by war and disasters
IOM report finds 9m more people displaced globally but mobility restricted due to pandemic, with vaccination proving a key factor
The coronavirus pandemic had a radical effect on migration, limiting movement despite increasing levels of internal displacement from conflict and climate disasters, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said in a report on Wednesday.
Though the number of people who migrated internationally increased to 281 million in 2020 – 9 million more than before Covid-19 – the number was 2 million lower than expected without a pandemic, according to the report.
Continue reading...Refugees forced to claim asylum in ‘jail-like’ camps as Greece tightens system
Aid agencies fear plans to scrap applications via Skype are an attempt to control and contain rather than help asylum seekers
When Hadi Karam*, a soft-spoken Syrian, decided to leave the war-stricken city of Raqqa, he knew the journey to Europe would be risky. What he had not factored in was how technology would be a stumbling block once he reached Greece.
“I never thought Skype would be the problem,” says the young professional, recounting his family’s ordeal trying to contact asylum officers in the country. “You ring and ring and ring. Weeks and weeks go by, and there is never any answer.”
Continue reading...‘She defined modern Germany’: Blair, Barroso and Prodi on Angela Merkel
When she first took office her fellow leaders included Blair, Chirac and Bush. Three of those at her first G8 summit look back on her legacy
European Commission president, 2004-14
Continue reading...The rising cost of the climate crisis in flooded South Sudan – in pictures
Families facing severe hunger are wading through crocodile-infested waters in search of water lilies to eat. Susan Martinez and photographer Peter Caton return with Action Against Hunger to find that the dire situation they reported on in March has only worsened
Desperate families in flood-ravaged villages in South Sudan are spending hours searching for water lilies to eat after another summer of intense rainfall worsened an already dire situation.
People have no food and no land to cultivate after three years of floods. Fields are submerged in last year’s flood water and higher ground is overcrowded with hungry people, in what is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis.
Nyanyang Tong, 39, on her way to the Action Against Hunger centre with her one-year-old son, Mamuch Gatkuoth, in Paguir
Continue reading...Channel crossings are an English issue, says French minister
UK accused of having a labour market akin to modern slavery that encourages people to make risky crossings
Senior French ministers have accused the UK of operating a labour market akin to slavery and called on London to open safe routes for migrants, as the two governments continued to deflect blame for last week’s drownings in the Channel.
The criticism came hours after France’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, held a crisis meeting with European ministers and border agencies to discuss the migrant emergency around the Channel ports.
Continue reading...‘I feel inspired here’: refugees find business success in Naples
From designing homewares to recording music, many who fled to Europe are building independent lives against the odds
Pieces of fabric of various vibrant shades fill the Naples studio where Paboy Bojang and his team of four are working around the clock to stitch together 250 cushions for their next customer, The Conran Shop.
They are not long from dispatching their first orders to Selfridges and Paul Smith, and with requests for the distinctive cotton cushions with ruffled borders flooding in from around the world, they will be busy for months to come.
Continue reading...