Category Archives: Migration

US was ‘certain’ Rwandan pair in Australia were members of banned ‘terror group’

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Former prosecutor says US was confident when charges were brought that the two men were part of a Hutu rebel group

The attorney who brought charges against two Rwandan men recently resettled in Australia says the United States was “certain” they were members of a Hutu rebel group that was later designated a terror group by the US government.

The comments again raise questions about how the pair managed to pass Australia’s tough and vigorously applied character and security checks, under which others have been deported for minor offences or historical associations with criminal groups.

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Resettlement of Rwandan rebels labelled a ‘frustrating’ hypocrisy

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‘There never seems to be any consistent rule or fairness,’ specialist migration lawyer

A 28-year veteran of migration law whose Rwandan clients have all been denied Australia’s protection says the resettlement of two members of a violent Hutu rebel group shows a “frustrating” double standard.

Australia’s deal with the US to take in two former members of the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, once designated a terrorist group by the US, has prompted consternation among some experts and lawyers. The pair were languishing in US detention after the collapse of a case against them for the slaughter of tourists in Uganda in 1999.

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‘When Franco was alive, it was safer’: inside Spain’s far-right battleground – video

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Vox became the first far-right party to enter Spain's parliament since the Franco era when it won 24 seats in the general election. Last week, the party fought its first mayoral campaign in El Ejido, a town in Andalucia with a population of 90,000 people, 30% of whom are migrants, often working in the 150 sq miles of fruit and vegetable greenhouses that surround the town. We follow the campaign and talk to Spaniards and migrants to find out why this socialist stronghold of 40 years is turning to the right

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Refugee swap Rwandans: how did they pass Australia’s ‘character test’?

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Two men accused of killing tourists were resettled despite being members of a group on a terrorist exclusion list, as judge in their case brands them ‘dangerous’

Two Rwandans who were let into Australia under a secret US aslyum deal could have been rejected under Australia’s strict and vigorously enforced character test, a migration law expert has said.

The assessment comes as an American judge who heard their US asylum case insisted they were “dangerous” and had posed a threat to the safety of the US.

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Transfer of vulnerable child refugees from France to UK to end, charities say

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Home Office refuses to confirm plans, but campaigners warn Dubs scheme closure would leave minors facing ‘daily risk’ of abuse

The scheme to transfer vulnerable child refugees from France to Britain is being ended, the Guardian has learned, leaving hundreds of lone children facing a “daily risk” of exploitation in Dunkirk and Calais.

Charities in France say they have been told by French authorities that only nine more children, who have already been identified, will be transferred to the UK under the Dubs scheme for unaccompanied child refugees.

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How Australia ended up taking in Rwandans accused of killing tourists

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Australia’s government faces questions over secret deal with US in which the men were granted humanitarian visas

Just hours out from a federal election, the Australian government is facing questions over its decision to grant humanitarian visas to two Rwandan men accused of the brutal 1999 murder of tourists in Uganda.

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said that the men were subject to – and cleared – security checks, and on Friday distanced himself further by suggesting the approvals occurred when his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister.

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Morrison knew in 2016 of Australia’s resettlement of Rwandans accused of killings

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Exclusive: US advice was that the men, who have refugee status and were accused of murdering tourists in Uganda in 1999, presented no security threat

The national security committee of cabinet was briefed about all aspects of the American refugee swap deal in late 2016, including the resettlement of two Rwandan men accused of murdering tourists in Uganda.

Guardian Australian understands the NSC was briefed, and the then treasurer, Scott Morrison, the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, and the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, were aware of all the elements of the agreement signed by Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama in 2016.

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I have seen the tragedy of Mediterranean migrants. This ‘art’ makes me feel uneasy

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The vessel that became a coffin for hundreds has gone on display at the Venice Biennale. It intends to stir our conscience – but is it a spectacle that exploits disaster?

On the night of 18 April 2015, about 180 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, a fishing boat capsized with hundreds of migrants on board. Among the waves and beneath the ship’s 23-metre hull, 700 passengers who had dreamed of a better life drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean.

Last week that giant, rusty vessel arrived in Venice on the occasion of the city’s Biennale art festival, where it went on display on Saturday in an installation designed by the artist Christoph Büchel.

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Up to 70 dead after boat capsizes trying to reach Europe from Libya

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Survivors report fishing vessel coming to their rescue 40 miles of coast of Tunisia

As many as 70 people trying to reach Europe from Libya have drowned after their vessel capsized in the deadliest such incident in the Mediterranean since January.

According to survivors, at least 16 of whom were rescued, the boat left Zuwara in Libya, where renewed warfare between rival factions has gripped the capital, Tripoli, in the past five weeks. The vessel capsized 40 miles off the coast of Sfax, south of Tunis, as it headed towards Italy.

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Footage shows refugees hiding as Libyan militia attack detention centre

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At least two people reportedly killed in shooting at Qasr bin Ghashir facility near Tripoli

Young refugees held in a detention centre in Libya have described being shot at indiscriminately by militias advancing on Tripoli, in an attack that reportedly left at least two people dead and up to 20 injured.

Phone footage smuggled out of the camp and passed to the Guardian highlights the deepening humanitarian crisis in the centres set up to prevent refugees and migrants from making the sea crossing from the north African coast to Europe.

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Non-EEA migrants on Irish trawlers gain new immigration rights

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Move comes after union took Irish government to court for facilitating modern slavery

African and Asian migrants working on Irish fishing trawlers are to be given new immigration rights to protect them from trafficking and modern slavery.

Non-EEA fishing workers will no longer be tied to employers and will be able to leave a boat to find other work without fear of deportation under a new immigration agreement between the Irish government and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the Guardian has learned.

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Tony Blair: migrants should be forced to integrate more to combat far right

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Former PM claims that ‘failure’ of multiculturalism has led to rise in bigotry

Migrant communities must be compelled to do more to integrate to help combat the rise of “far-right bigotry”, Tony Blair has warned.

The former prime minister said that successive governments had “failed to find the right balance between diversity and integration”, while the concept of multiculturalism has been misused as a way to justify a “refusal to integrate”.

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‘A whole generation has gone’: Ukrainians seek better life in Poland

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As Ukraine prepares to elect a new president, millions of its citizens have moved across the border

When the small business run by Kristina Melnytska’s father began to struggle in 2014 he did what hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians were doing and moved his family to Poland.

Melnytska, then 19, enrolled in a university in the eastern city of Lublin. She worked long nights in a kebab shop, where she was paid about £1 an hour. Five years later she is still here and one of an estimated 2 million Ukrainians working and living in Poland.

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Fighting in Libya will create huge number of refugees, PM warns

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Fayez al-Sarraj says Khalifa Haftar’s attack on Tripoli ‘will spread its cancer through Mediterranean’

Hundreds of thousands of refugees could flee the fighting caused by Khalifa Haftar’s attempt to seize the Libyan capital, Tripoli, the prime minister of the country’s UN-recognised government has warned.

The warnings by Fayez al-Sarraj – who also claimed Haftar had betrayed the people of Libya – echo those given privately to the Italian government by its intelligence services, and are clearly designed to alert EU states to the possible consequences for European migration of a prolonged civil war in the country.

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Fear and despair engulf refugees in Libya’s ‘market of human beings’

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Long the target of reported abuses, refugees in Libya now claim they are being recruited by militias – a potential war crime

On the roofs of the highest buildings in Tajoura, a military complex and migrant detention centre in southern Tripoli, snipers are taking position.

“Tonight nobody will sleep because of fear,” said a refugee locked up there. “We can hear the sound of guns and explosion of bombs very close to the detention centre.”

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Have we, Australia, become a country that breeds mass murderers with our words? | Richard Flanagan

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We are better than our politicians’ dark fears. We are not their hate. We are optimistic about a country built on openness

I have only ever heard Behrouz Boochani’s voice through speakers. One day, he will stand here before us, and we will hear and see him in the flesh. As a free human being. And I am here today to say that day is coming.

Because change is coming. You can feel it, you sense it. It is coming and it will not be denied. But it needs us to fight for it and to keep fighting for it, and we need to fight for it, not only for the refugees of Manus and Nauru, but for our own salvation.

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Steve Bannon ‘told Italy’s populist leader: Pope Francis is the enemy’

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Trump’s ex-strategist advised Matteo Salvini ‘to target pontiff’s stance on plight of refugees’

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon advised Italy’s interior minister Matteo Salvini to attack the pope over the issue of migration, according to sources close to the Italian far right.

During a meeting in Washington in April 2016, Bannon – who would within a few months take up his role as head of Trump’s presidential campaign – suggested the leader of Italy’s anti-immigration League party should start openly targeting Pope Francis, who has made the plight of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy.

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‘Shameful’: Italian town bans asylum centres near schools

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Mayor for Calolziocorte claims welcome centres can be havens for drug dealing

An Italian town has been called “shameful” and “unconstitutional” after banning reception centres for asylum seekers from being placed near schools.

The urban plan approved by the council of Calolziocorte, Lombardy, this week asserts that “welcome centres for migrants must not be located within 150 metres of schools”. The small town of 15,000 is currently home to about 20 asylum seekers.

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Fears grow over migrant rescue boat stranded for a week

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Vessel barred from entering Italy or Malta since picking up dozens of refugees on 3 April

Concerns are rising for the wellbeing of 64 people stranded on a migrant rescue vessel in the Mediterranean for a week because neither Italy nor Malta will allow the boat to dock.

The migrants and refugees were rescued from a dinghy off Libya on 3 April by a rescue boat operated by the German NGO Sea-Eye and named Alan Kurdi after the Syrian boy who drowned in 2015.

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Only one person has been transferred under medevac law, refugee advocates say

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As the new process for bringing sick refugees to Australia faces unexplained delays, others who have come are being held under guard in hotels

More than a month after the medevac bill passed the Australian parliament, just one person is believed to have been transferred under the law.

The Department of Home Affairs and Australian Border Force refuse to say how many transfers have occurred, but according to advocates and detainees only one of more than 25 people brought to Australia for treatment in recent weeks has been under the new law.

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