Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration
The making of a megacity: how Dhaka transformed in 50 years of Bangladesh
In the half century since independence, the capital has grown from peaceful town to economic hub. But does it live up to the dreams of those still flocking to work there?
On the banks of the Buriganga, Old Dhaka’s boatmen only ever rest a moment before making their return journey, endlessly ferrying passengers back and forth across the river.
They pick them up at the Sadarghat docks, the historical trading hub that helped build the city, and row them towards the sprawling suburbs that have crept across what used to be open farmland two decades ago.
Continue reading...‘They can see us in the dark’: migrants grapple with hi-tech fortress EU
A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers
Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.
But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.
Continue reading...Chariots of steel: Barcelona’s hidden army of scrap recyclers
Thousands of migrants play a key role in collecting Catalonia’s waste but must live on the margins
They are everywhere and yet they are almost invisible, living below the social radar as they crisscross the city pushing supermarket trolleys piled with metal tubing, old microwaves and empty beer cans.
The chatarreros are Barcelona’s itinerant scrap-metal collectors, and there are thousands of them. Most are undocumented migrants and so there is no official census, but Federico Demaria, a social scientist at the University of Barcelona who is conducting a study of the informal recyclers in Catalonia, believes there are between 50,000 and 100,000 in the region. About half are from sub-Saharan Africa; the rest are from eastern Europe, elsewhere in Africa and Spain.
Continue reading...Girl, two, dies after being rescued from migrant boat in Canaries
Toddler from Mali has died in hospital after being resuscitated on a dock last week
A two-year-old girl from Mali who was rescued from a migrant boat and resuscitated on a dock in the Canary Islands last week has died in hospital, becoming the latest victim of the perilous Atlantic route from Africa to Europe.
The girl was one of 52 people travelling on a boat that had left the city of Dakhla in Western Sahara bound for the Spanish archipelago.
Continue reading...EU’s southern states step up calls for ‘solidarity’ in managing mass migration
Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Malta say burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners
Europe’s southern states have stepped up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration to the bloc saying the burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners.
Highlighting the deep divisions over the issue, politicians from countries along Europe’s Mediterranean rim said a proposed migration pact fell far short of resolving the crisis equitably.
Continue reading...‘We were left in the sea’: asylum seekers forced off Lesbos
One refugee’s terrifying story illustrates how ‘pushbacks’ are creating a crisis for the right to asylum at Europe’s borders
“We were all forced on to the boat. If we looked up they shouted at us and hit us in the head. Then they stopped at a place in the sea where there were no other boats, they left us.”
Mustafa, his wife and two young children had only been on the Greek island of Lesbos a few hours when, they say, they were driven in a van to the coast, beaten by masked men and then taken out to sea on a raft and abandoned there.
Continue reading...Clot theory curdles into junkets for migrants on Isle of Man
PM welcomes vaccine safety vow, then spots new offshore home for folk trafficked here under false pretence – of getting a welcome
After a morning spent painting flowers at a primary school in his Uxbridge constituency, Britain’s prize clot returned to Downing Street to lead a press conference on clots. Blood clots to be precise.
Following the decision of some countries to suspend their Oxford AstraZeneca vaccination programmes over concerns of blood clot side-effects, Boris Johnson was happy to report that the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency had declared the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine to be absolutely safe.
Continue reading...‘I woke up, he was gone’: Senegal suffers as young men risk all to reach Europe
As tourism plummets and fishing nets go empty, more are attempting the treacherous 1,000 mile journey to the Canaries
In the old Senegalese port city of Saint Louis, 12 women step off the sun-baked street and through a doorway draped with pink silk into a dim room beyond.
After greetings are over, one by one they recount their stories. Recent memories of husbands, sons and brothers they have lost at sea, revealing precious pictures on smartphones of moments when they last cradled children or kissed their families.
Continue reading...Moroccan police accused of burning migrant shelters near Spanish enclave
Refugees and migrants camped along border to Melilla say there have been repeated raids following 150 people attempting to cross
Migrants in northern Morocco said they had been forced to sleep out in the open after repeated raids by police, who allegedly burned down their shelters in camps near the Spanish enclave Melilla.
Those camped along the border said Moroccan forces returned for a fourth day on Friday despite having already torched most of their tents.
Continue reading...What is Joe Biden doing to cope with a rise in unaccompanied child migrants?
As the administration tackles Trump’s legacy February saw more minors arriving alone at the southern border than since May 2019
Joe Biden’s promise of a more “fair, safe and orderly” immigration system is facing an early test as the number of children seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border has increased this year.
Related: Surge in migrants seeking to cross Mexico border poses challenge for Biden
Continue reading...Rescuers find 39 bodies off Tunisia after two boats sink
Coastguards were able to save 165 people before rescue called off due to bad weather and nightfall
At least 39 migrants have drowned off Tunisia when two boats capsized, the defence ministry has said, as numbers risking the dangerous crossing to Europe continued to rise.
Rescuers pulled 165 survivors from the foundering boats to safety on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Humanitarian crisis looms on Chile-Bolivia border as migrants cross on foot
Chile closed land borders last year due to Covid but authorities report surge in crossings, mostly Venezuelan migrants
Activists are warning of a looming humanitarian crisis on the border between Chile and Bolivia as growing numbers of migrants brave the harsh terrain of the Chilean altiplano to cross the frontier on foot.
Chile closed its land borders last year as a preventive measure during the Covid-19 pandemic, but authorities have reported a surge in irregular crossings, mostly caused by Venezuelan migrants fleeing economic instability and political turmoil in their home country.
Continue reading...Croatia: landmine from 1990s Balkan wars kills asylum seeker
Device explodes near border with Bosnia, killing one man and injuring at least four others
A landmine from the 1990s Balkan wars has exploded, killing a migrant and injured several others in an area of central Croatia littered with unexploded ordnance.
The blast occurred on Thursday in woodland near Saborsko, close to the Bosnian border where a group of asylum seekers were attempting to traverse the country, Croatian authorities said in a statement.
Continue reading...Refugee rescuers charged in Italy with complicity in people smuggling
Staff of charities including Save the Children and MSF among dozens facing sentences of up to 20 years over humanitarian work
After an investigation lasting almost four years, Italian prosecutors have charged dozens of rescuers, from charities including Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières, who were accused of collaborating with people smugglers after saving thousands of people from drowning in the Mediterranean.
Investigators in Trapani, Sicily, formally closed the inquiry on Monday and charged more than 20 people, including boat captains, heads of mission and legal representatives, with crimes carrying sentences of up to 20 years.
Continue reading...‘Help and you are a criminal’: the fight to defend refugee rights at Europe’s borders
As illegal, and often violent, pushbacks of asylum seekers continue – human rights groups also report growing hostility
At the offices of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group in Budapest, András Léderer and his colleagues have a map on which they track every asylum seeker – man, woman or child – who has been physically pushed back by police from the Hungarian border and into the forests of Serbia.
The pushbacks are illegal under international law. Yet it is Léderer and his fellow human rights activists who could face arrest and a jail sentence if they went to the border to witness what is happening there.
Continue reading...Pro-choice protests in Warsaw and Myanmar coup: 20 photos on human rights this week
A roundup of the best photography on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Algeria to Uganda
Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup
Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue
More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.
The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.
Continue reading...Spanish police rescue migrants hidden in waste containers – video
Spanish authorities have rescued several people who had been hiding in recycling containers in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the tip of Morocco, where each year thousands of migrants attempt to reach the Spanish mainland from northern Africa. Footage released by Spain’s Guardia Civil shows individuals partially buried in a container of glass bottles and another inside a bag of toxic ash
Continue reading...‘I won’t go back’: why Libyans are joining the boats leaving their shores
Libya, a transit stop for migrants trying to reach Europe, is now facing an exodus of its own people
After witnessing abuse and discrimination, Sherif Targi*, 21, decided to leave Libya for Europe.
“I saw killing and massacres because of the conflicts between Tuaregs and the Tebu [ethnic minorities],” he says.
Targi is a Tuareg from the desert city of Ubari in Libya’s south-west. Under Muammar Gaddafi, Tuareg people were marginalised – not issued government IDs, and restricted from getting work and public services. Things didn’t improve after the dictator was ousted.
In October 2019, Targi left home, travelling more than 600 miles (1,000km) to the coastal city of Zuwara. From there, he and about 200 other people, mainly Syrians, Moroccans and Sudanese, crammed themselves on board an overloaded wooden boat, and set off on a dangerous 18-hour journey.