Category Archives: Migration

Belarus threatens to cut gas deliveries to EU if sanctioned over border crisis

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Lukashenko responds to possible sanctions as thousands of migrants camp in freezing temperatures at Poland border

Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut deliveries of gas to Europe via a major pipeline as the Belarusian leader promised to retaliate against any new EU sanctions imposed in response to the crisis at the Poland-Belarus border.

Backed by the Kremlin, Lukashenko has struck a defiant note after inciting a migrant crisis at the border, where thousands of people, mainly from Middle Eastern countries, are camped out as temperatures plunge below freezing.

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Poland-Belarus crisis volunteers: ‘Border police can be very aggressive’

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Grupa Granica strives to bring supplies to stranded migrants and help them deal with border officers

The call came in at about 1.30pm in the afternoon. A group of 15 people, all Iraqi Kurds, had been found in the woods of Narewka after managing to cross the border from Belarus into Poland. One woman could barely walk. Others had early signs of hypothermia.

The young volunteer who answered the phone – one of about 40 members of Grupa Granica, a Polish network of NGOs monitoring the situation on the border – knew they had to act quickly.

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‘Unacceptable’: migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border

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Children and families among those being warned to ‘go back to Minsk’ as police hostility and humanitarian crisis worsens

For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: “Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings.”

The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries.

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Poland-Belarus border crisis: what is going on and who is to blame?

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Thousands of migrants are in the freezing region trying to get into Poland and aid is prevented from reaching them

More than 1,000 people, many fleeing dangerous conditions in Middle Eastern countries, arrived en masse at Poland’s border with Belarus this week, in a dramatic escalation of a simmering migration crisis on the edge of the EU. They had been escorted to the border by Belarusian authorities.

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Germany urges unity as crisis worsens for migrants at Poland-Belarus border

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German interior minister says Poland needs support to deal with ‘hybrid threat’ of politically organised migration

Germany needs to get the “whole of the democratic world” onboard to support orderly immigration to Europe, its interior minister has said, amid a worsening crisis at the Poland-Belarus border.

Horst Seehofer accused Belarus and Russia of exploiting refugees and migrants in an attempt to destabilise the west, and said EU countries must stand together in the face of a “hybrid threat” posed by “politically organised migration”.

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Belarus escorts hundreds of migrants towards Polish border

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Column of up to 500 people including children led by border guards in escalation of deadly crisis

Belarusian authorities have escorted as many as 500 people, most of whom are from the Middle East, to the Polish border in an escalation of a deadly crisis that has already left people desperate to reach the EU trapped between borders and at least seven dead due to exposure.

Videos published by Belarusian media on Monday showed armed Belarusian border guards in combat fatigues escorting the column of people, which included families with children, along a highway from the border town of Bruzgi and towards a forest that runs alongside Poland’s Podlaskie region.

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‘A moment in history’: making a perilous sea-crossing with refugees – photo essay

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Ahead of a UK exhibition of her photo series Journey in the Death Boat, Güliz Vural describes travelling with Syrians being smuggled to Greece from Turkey

Standing on a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, the photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the people traffickers organising the illegal crossing would not let her onboard.

If she had known that within a few hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of people trafficking herself, she would have thought twice about the journey.

The migrants carry the inflatable boat they will travel in down to the beach. They had to leave all their possessions as they crammed themselves in. Nearly 50 Syrians made the crossing in a boat designed to carry 12 people, adding to the anxiety felt by the children in particular.

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On the frozen frontiers of Europe with the migrants caught in a lethal game

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Asylum seekers are pawns in a conflict between Poland and Belarus

On the outskirts of the Białowieża forest – which bestrides the border between south-east Poland and Belarus – a group of seven Iraqi Kurds make their weary way towards the Polish hamlet of Grodzisk.

The latest miles of their journey have been from Belarus – crossing back and forth twice, deported after their first and second attempts. Now a third time: through sub-zero temperatures, across the primeval forest’s marshy terrain. Among them are two children: an eight-month-old girl and a two-year-old boy. When we came upon them, they were afraid to get up off the ground and begged us not to call the police, whispering: “They’ll kill us.”

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British woman wins legal battle against Australia’s ‘backpacker tax’

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Australia’s high court finds the higher rate of tax for working holiday makers is discriminatory and breaches treaty with UK

A British backpacker who worked as a waiter in Sydney has won a long-running legal dispute against Australia’s “backpacker tax” in its highest court.

On Wednesday the high court ruled in favour of Catherine Addy, finding the tax which slugged working holiday-makers thousands of dollars more than Australians discriminated against her on the basis of her nationality and infringed a treaty Australia signed with the UK.

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Life, death and limbo in the Calais ‘Jungle’ – five years after its demolition

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The refugee camp became notorious in 2015, as 1 million people fled war and danger to come to Europe. Years after it was demolished, 2,000 migrants are still waiting there, at the centre of a political storm

A small group of Ethiopian and Eritrean men stand shoeless and shivering in Calais. A few hours earlier, they almost drowned in the Channel, trying to cross to the UK. They got into difficulty when the motor on their boat failed. Their jeans are stiff and sodden with sand and seawater.

“We called the French coastguard to rescue us but they told us to call the English coastguard,” says one man. “Eventually, the French rescued us and brought us back to Calais.

Migrants and police at the ‘Old Lidl’ site in Calais. The police clear the site regularly, evicting anyone living there and seizing remaining belongings.

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Little Amal’s journey: the puppet that crossed Europe – in pictures

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Since leaving Turkey in July, Little Amal, a 3.5 metre (11ft 5in) tall puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl, and her entourage of about 25 people have navigated Covid border restrictions to walk across Europe to the UK. Amal, whose name means hope in Arabic, was created by Handspring, the company that made the equine puppets in War Horse. The puppet represents the millions of children forced to leave their homes in desperate situations. The global pandemic has made them more vulnerable than ever

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A nurse’s journey from treating Covid in Brazil to death in the US desert

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Lenilda dos Santos left her home in rural Amazonia, part of a South American exodus driven by a coronavirus-era depression

As coronavirus tore through the Valley of Paradise, a farm-flanked backwater in the Brazilian Amazon, Lenilda dos Santos, a nurse technician, stood on the frontline clutching hands most feared to touch.

“She was a warrior during the pandemic,” said Lucineide Oliveira, a friend and colleague at the town’s small, understaffed hospital. “She’d say: ‘If we have to die, we’ll die. But we must fight.’”

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Poland criticised over stranded migrants after seventh death at border

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Identity documents suggest latest person to die was 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in Belarus last month

Polish police have found another body near the border with Belarus amid fresh allegations that Warsaw is breaking international law in its treatment of migrants stranded in harrowing conditions on the EU’s eastern frontier.

The man’s body was spotted in a field by a helicopter crew, police said, bringing to seven the number of people reported by Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian and Belarusian authorities to have died trying to cross the border since the summer.

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‘He lives freely, I live in fear’: the plight of India’s abandoned wives

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Activists highlight the poverty, stigma and abuse faced by women deserted by spouses living abroad

Kamala Reddy*, 33, a software engineer from Andhra Pradesh, married Vijay Kumar* in a traditional Hindu wedding in 2012. Kumar, who was working in the UK, was chosen by Reddy’s family. “But he didn’t take me to the UK after our marriage. He made excuses such as problems with the visa and so on,” says Reddy.

In 2016, Reddy became pregnant. Under pressure from the family, Kumar brought her to England. On arrival, she was shocked to discover Kumar’s secret. He had a British partner, two children and a stepchild. Neither Kumar’s nor Reddy’s families knew about the other family. Kumar threatened to leave Reddy if she told anyone.

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Italy using anti-mafia laws to scapegoat migrant boat drivers, report finds

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A decades-long policy of criminalising asylum seekers is filling prisons with innocent men, according to analysis by rights groups

Italian police have arrested more than 2,500 migrants for smuggling or aiding illegal immigration since 2013, often using anti-mafia laws to bring charges, according to the first comprehensive analysis of official data on the criminalisation of refugees and asylum seekers in Italy.

The report by three migrant rights groups has collected police data and analysed more than 1,000 criminal cases brought by prosecutors against refugees accused of driving vessels carrying asylum seekers across the Mediterranean.

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Afghan refugees accuse Turkey of violent illegal pushbacks

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Migrants, many fleeing the Taliban regime, claim they are being beaten, harassed and turned back by Turkish border forces

As the sun sets over a dusty ravine on the outskirts of Van city in eastern Turkey, Muhammdullah Sangeen and dozens of other Afghans are preparing for another night sleeping rough.

The 22-year-old, who has a bruised left eye and fresh cuts all over his arms, arrived from Iran a few days earlier with the help of smugglers. “I am not OK,” said Sangeen, his legs trembling. “I’m not feeling human.”

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Eritreans of Italian descent demand Rome finally grant them citizenship

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Group of more than 300 descendants of people born under Italian rule accuse state of ‘crime of colonial racism’

Hundreds of Eritreans of Italian descent who trace their ancestry to the period of Italy’s colonial rule are demanding Italian citizenship, a right denied to them by Benito Mussolini’s racial laws.

A group of more than 300 grandchildren or great-grandchildren of people born to Italian fathers and Eritrean mothers have written to the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, and other government officials urging them to “finally examine and resolve an issue that has never really been addressed, a crime of colonial racism that marked the life of thousands of innocent women and men, and which continues to discriminate against generations of Italians”.

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‘Who wouldn’t want out?’: migrants deported to Haiti face challenge of survival

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Many returned to a country they had not seen for years, and many are already plotting another escape as gang violence has left Haiti on the brink of civil war

When Reynold Joseph was deported from the US back to Haiti after five years in South America, he was unprepared for just how bad things had become in his homeland.

Outside a ramshackle guesthouse near downtown Port-au-Prince, where he and a dozen other deportees are staying, some goats were grazing on burning piles of rubbish, while drivers honked and cursed in a queue for petrol that snaked round the block. Each night, Joseph’s three-year-old son stirs in the sweltering heat, and bursts of gunfire ring out in the distance.

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Mexico police intercept 652 Central American migrants in three cargo trucks

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Discovery is one of biggest of US-bound migrants, with 90% Guatemalans and nearly 200 unaccompanied minors

Police in northern Mexico have discovered more than 600 Central American migrants hiding in three long cargo trucks headed to the United States, in one of the biggest roundups of US-bound migrants by Mexican authorities in years.

Video released by police showed officers prying off a lock from a truck’s rear door late on Thursday, and opening it to find migrants in heavy coats and hoods huddled close together on the floor, nearly all of them wearing face masks.

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