Dramatic footage shows the moment a young girl was hauled to safety after a migrant boat capsized in the Mediterranean. The Italian coastguard says it rescued 149 people after the boat ran into trouble a mile off Lampedusa while transporting hundreds of migrants from Libya. At least 20 people are feared dead
Continue reading...Category Archives: Migration
Aid groups condemn Greece over ‘prison’ camps for migrants
Government’s announcement represents blatant disregard for human rights, says IRC
Greece is poised to create “prison” island camps, say aid groups amid growing criticism of government plans to overhaul refugee reception centres on Aegean outposts facing Turkey.
As the UN refugee agency’s top official, Filippo Grandi, prepared this week to fly to Lesbos, where almost 16,000 people are crammed into a single facility, Athens was criticised for adopting legislation in contravention of basic human rights.
Continue reading...‘They built it themselves’: how a slum became Albania’s fastest growing city
Money sent home by relatives working abroad has transformed Kamza over the past decade
Driving out of Albania’s capital, Tirana, into nearby Kamza, blocks of communist-era apartments give way to a chaotic jumble of houses of different colours, shapes and heights. Many are half-finished or being rebuilt. Some are just exposed brick, while others are painted near-fluorescent greens, oranges or yellows.
“People pay a lot of attention to the aesthetics of the houses,” says Njazi Murrja, who lives locally. “They show the culture and the wealth of the family.”
Continue reading...Migrants from Libya not driven by hope of being rescued at sea – study
No link found between number of Mediterranean crossings and level of NGO rescue ship activity
No valid statistical link exists between the likelihood that migrants will be rescued at sea and the number of attempted Mediterranean crossings, a study has found. The findings challenge the widespread claim in Europe that NGO search and rescue activity has been a pull factor for migrants.
Fear that the NGOs’ missions attract immigrants has been the basis for measures restricting humanitarian ships including requiring them to sign up to codes of conduct or simply blocking them from leaving port.
Continue reading...Behrouz Boochani, brutalised but not beaten by Manus, says simply: ‘I did my best’
After six hellish years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, Boochani reflects on the country that rejected him, his new-found freedom and the friends he left behind
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“One day,” Behrouz Boochani said, observing the bleakness of the abandoned Manus detention centre, its dark form illuminated by wood stripped from the buildings being burned for light, “we will meet in some other place, far away from here.”
That was two years ago, in the middle of a warm November night, when Boochani helped smuggle this reporter into the decommissioned Manus Island detention centre where 400 men were holding out against being forcibly removed: rationing their dwindling supply of food and medicine, guarding against the violent police crackdown they knew was coming, repairing the freshwater wells that had been deliberately spoiled by the retreating guards.
Continue reading...How immigration became Britain’s most toxic political issue
Over 20 years, the debate about freedom of movement has become skewed by a hostile narrative. By Rachel Shabi
Few chance encounters have had a greater political impact than Gordon Brown’s fateful meeting with Gillian Duffy on an April morning in Rochdale in 2010. When the then prime minister was caught on a hot mic calling the Labour-voting pensioner a “bigoted woman” – after she cornered him with complaints about immigrants “flocking” into Britain – it did not just sink his floundering campaign. It set the tone for the way immigration would become the most toxic issue in British politics for the decade to come.
When New Labour came to power in 1997, just 3% of the public cited immigration as a key issue. By the time of the EU referendum in 2016, that figure was 48%. During those intervening years, the issue came to dominate and distort British politics – exactly according to the script established by Bigotgate. Brown’s gaffe both consolidated and gave credence to a political coding that would shape everything that came after: the “hostile environment”, the Windrush scandal, the EU referendum and the revival of Britain’s far right – deploying a narrative in which sneering, out-of-touch, big-city politicians who favour foreigners and open borders are hopelessly oblivious to the struggles and the so-called “legitimate concerns” of ordinary working people (who, in this scenario, are always white).
Continue reading...Behrouz Boochani, voice of Manus Island refugees, is free in New Zealand
Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist – a multiple award-winner for documenting life in Australia’s offshore detention system – has left Papua New Guinea
•The story behind Behrouz Boochani’s flight to freedom
Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist who became the voice of those incarcerated on Manus Island, has landed in New Zealand and says he will never return to Papua New Guinea or Australia’s immigration regime.
“I will never go back to that place,” he told the Guardian, shortly after leaving PNG. “I just want to be free of the system, of the process. I just want to be somewhere where I am a person, not just a number, not just a label ‘refugee’.”
Continue reading...Hundreds of migrants removed from makeshift camps in Paris – video
French police officers have begun clearing more than 1,000 migrants and refugees from a makeshift camp in northern Paris, where they had been sleeping rough in squalid conditions for months. The move comes after the country’s centrist government set out Emmanuel Macron’s tougher stance on immigration this week and vowed to clear the camps
Continue reading...French police begin clearing makeshift migrant camp in Paris
More than 1,000 people have been sleeping rough for months in squalid conditions
Hundreds of French police have begun clearing more than 1,000 migrants and refugees from a makeshift camp in northern Paris, where they had been sleeping rough for months in squalid conditions.
Police arrived at the site near Porte de La Chapelle before 6am local time (0500 GMT) on Thursday, after the country’s centrist government set out Emmanuel Macron’s tougher stance on immigration this week and vowed to clear the camps.
Continue reading...‘Make Spain great again’: does Melilla really need a Trump-style wall? – video
Everyone in Melilla has some connection to the city’s most visible and controversial feature: a huge barbed-wire fence, which separates this Spanish port city from the rest of north Africa. Asylum seekers like Aboubacar wait for months in hidden forest camps to scale the fence, populist politicians like Jesús want to strengthen it, and both the Moroccan and Melillan economy depend on the 30,000 Moroccans like Youssra who cross through it every day to work. Will Melilla embrace its fate as a city embedded in Africa – or will it succumb to populist Trump-style demands to build a wall?
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‘No hustle and bustle’: the only place in New Zealand where population is falling
The South Island’s beautiful and desolate west coast region suffers from a severe lack of jobs and people
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Driving up the west coast of the South Island, it’s possible to have the road to yourself; kilometre after kilometre of black-sand beaches, snow-covered southern Alps and towns that have barely changed since the gold rush.
The quiet, traditional lifestyle of the coast is prized by residents, many of whom say they are unfazed by decades of stagnant or declining growth – in fact, they prefer it that way.
Continue reading...New Zealand’s migrant boom is good news for Māori. It empowers us
As 5 million approaches, it’s thanks to the Treaty of Waitangi, that multiculturalism will succeed
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In April 2003, the year New Zealand’s population hit 4 million, statisticians were predicting the country would hit at 4.8 million people in 2046. As in Europe and North America the country’s birth rate was falling, and no one quite knew whether mass immigration would – or even could – continue at pace. Instead, the pressing concern at the time was how to reverse the brain drain.
In the mid-2000s almost 40,000 New Zealanders were upping sticks each year. Miners and truck drivers were packing their bags for Queensland’s mining boom. Bankers and lawyers were taking up plum jobs in London. Teachers, nurses, and other public servants were comparing what they made in Wellington with what they might make in Washington or Ottawa.
Continue reading...‘Our only aim is to go home’: Rohingya refugees face stark choice in Bangladesh
With citizenship in Myanmar still denied, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh must either live under severe restrictions or move to an isolated island
Life in the world’s largest refugee camp has grown harder in the past few months. Mohammad, a Rohingya farmer who lost his leg fleeing violence in Myanmar, does not understand why.
“We got a lot more before in terms of food and help, but now it feels like we are not getting enough support from the government and NGOs. We are also more restricted in our movement,” he says, sitting on a bench outside his house, surrounded by discarded plastic bottles and rotting food.
The Bangladeshi government has launched a crackdown in the camp, shutting shops run by refugees, blocking internet services, confiscating mobile phones, putting up fencing and setting an 8pm curfew, meaning people can’t leave their homes at night.
Bangladesh appears to be getting frustrated with its more than 1 million guests. Politics is turning and it has been reported that locals in Cox’s Bazar are running out of patience. The government is finalising plans to move 100,000 refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal and refugees wonder if it is all connected.
The state minister of foreign affairs, Shahriar Alam, said fencing was being put up for security reasons. “As far as the internet is concerned, 2G is still available. Due to the credible security concerns, [the] government has kept the internet access limited,” he says.
Continue reading...Tamba: Senegal’s migration starting point – photo essay
People of Tamba is a project by the Italian artist Giovanni Hänninen, consisting of 200 portraits taken across the Tambacounda region in Senegal and accompanied by Senegal/Sicily, a series of documentaries created with the film-maker Alberto Amoretti, courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa
- Exhibited at Also Known as Africa (AKAA) art and design fair, 8-11 November 2019, Paris
People of Tamba, inspired by German photographer August Sander’s seminal work, People of the 20th Century, was conceived as a catalogue of the society of Tambacounda, the largest city in the most remote and rural region of Senegal, and the point of departure for the majority of Senegalese migration.
Continue reading...Italy to renew anti-migration deal with Libya
Foreign minister says deal has reduced number of arrivals and deaths at sea
Italy is to renew its deal with the UN-backed government in Libya under which the Libyan coastguard stops migrant boats at sea and sends their passengers back to the north African country, where aid agencies say they face torture and abuse.
The foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, told the lower house of parliament that it would be “unwise for Italy to break off its agreement with Libya on handling asylum seekers and combating human trafficking”.
Continue reading...Belgian police find 12 people ‘safe and well’ in refrigerated lorry
Migrants were found a week after UK police launched murder investigation into death of 39 people in Essex
Belgian police say they have found 12 people “safe and well” in a refrigerated lorry, one week after 39 people lost their lives in a similar vehicle that had travelled to Essex via continental Europe.
The migrants were discovered in the back of a fruit and vegetable lorry on the motorway, near the Flemish town of Oud-Turnhout, in the early hours of Wednesday. Police said they found 12 adult men: 11 Syrians and one Sudanese citizen.
Continue reading...Libya orders arrest of alleged trafficker who attended Italy migration talks
Arrest warrant issued for Abd al-Rahman Milad, suspected of drowning dozens of people
The UN-backed government in Libya has ordered the arrest of a man described as one of the world’s most notorious human traffickers who was this month revealed to have attended meetings between Italian officials and a Libyan delegation to discuss controls on migration flows from north Africa.
In a note released on Monday by the interior ministry in Tripoli, authorities said Abd al-Rahman Milad, described by the UN security council as a ruthless human trafficker suspected of drowning dozens of people, was “a wanted man and an arrest warrant was issued against him”.
Continue reading...Rescued at sea: how did refugees’ lives in Europe turn out?
In June 2018, Italian photographer Nicoló Lanfranchi joined the last ship patrolling the Mediterranean to save refugees. Then, over many months, he tracked them down to their new homes
• Life aboard the Aquarius: a photographic diary
• Photo diary part two: the Aquarius arrives in Malta
In early 2018 Italian-born photographer Nicoló Lanfranchi was living in Berlin combining reportage work with commercial projects. He travelled the world for German media, producing stark images of the slow death of Brazilian rivers and the dignity of survivors of the Haiti earthquake.
But he began watching with growing horror as a crisis unfolded closer to home. In his native Italy he could see an increasingly rightwing government cracking down on the rescue ships that patrolled the Mediterranean, particularly off the coast of Libya, threatening fines of tens of thousands of euros for bringing ashore people who were risking their lives trying to reach Europe in flimsy boats. By June, when the country’s hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini began closing Italy’s ports to the rescue ships, 45,000 migrants had already crossed the Mediterranean that year, with more than 1,000 deaths. Salvini’s crackdown worked. Ships began to vanish, until there was only one left: the Aquarius, run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and SOS Méditerranée.
Continue reading...We must not ignore children who seek sanctuary in the UK | Alf Dubs
Offering safe and legal routes into Britain must be at heart of efforts to tackle trafficking
The plight of people who arrive in the UK in refrigerated lorries, or rubber dinghies, or between wheel caps, rarely makes the news. But last week, the discovery of 39 dead people in a container lorry in Essex was a story that made headlines across the world. While their individual stories remain unknown, we can be certain that they have left behind families and friends, who even now may not know the fate of their loved ones.
The deaths of these 39 victims lay bare the perilous dangers facing those who travel to the UK via dangerous routes. I do not know why these 39 people were in that lorry. I do not know if they had climbed inside hoping to reach a place of safety, in this country or elsewhere, or whether they were forced into that journey against their will.
Continue reading...Number of Britons leaving for Europe hits a 10-year high
Britons in Europe spoke of the importance of an actively European identity to them
The number of British citizens leaving for European Union countries is at a 10-year high, with the rate of departure accelerating since the referendum, new research has revealed.
According to initial findings of a report on the migration of UK citizens, 84,000 people are expected to leave Britain for another EU nation this year, compared with 59,000 in 2008. It found that about 11,500 people moved from the UK to Germany in 2018, compared with more than 8,500 in 2008.
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