Category Archives: Migration

Johnson warns against Channel crossings after dozens intercepted

Posted on by

People arriving illegally will be sent back to France, says prime minister

Boris Johnson has warned those thinking of crossing the Channel illegally that they will be sent back to France after dozens of people, including children, were intercepted on Thursday in several incidents at sea and on the south coast.

The prime minister’s comments came as the home secretary, Priti Patel, prepared to hold talks with her French counterpart about the crossings, which have sometimes been linked to fairer weather conditions.

Continue reading...

Greek NGO helping child refugees wins $2m humanitarian prize

Posted on by

Metadrasi provides translators, transport and helps find homes for unaccompanied minors

An NGO helping migrant and refugee children in Greece has won the world’s biggest annual humanitarian award.

Metadrasi received the $2m (£1.6m) Hilton humanitarian prize for its “innovative approach to welcoming refugees and protecting unaccompanied minors”, the Conrad N Hilton Foundation said.

Continue reading...

People on rescue ship off Italy at breaking point, say doctors

Posted on by

Ship carrying 107 people rescued from sea has been refused permission to dock

The medical and psychological condition of people onboard a rescue boat anchored off the Italian island of Lampedusa for 18 days has reached breaking point, doctors have said.

The vessel operated by the Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms has been refused permission to dock by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini. On Monday Open Arms suggested chartering a plane to fly the 107 migrants onboard to Spain.

Continue reading...

Book charting grim life at offshore refugee ‘prison’ sweeps Australia’s literary prizes

Posted on by

The Kurdish-Iranian author, who wrote using a smuggled phone, receives awards by Skype because he remains in detention

Behrouz Boochani is one of Australia’s most-celebrated contemporary writers. Last week, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist won a A$25,000 (£14,000) national biography award for No Friend but the Mountains, a book judges described as “profoundly important”. It wasn’t the first prize the book had received in Australia: it has now won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary award and the Australian Book Industry’s non-fiction book of the year.

One critic described it as a “masterpiece,” another called it “the standout book of the year” and another, novelist Michelle de Kretser, said it was “lucid, poetic and devastating”.

Continue reading...

Migrant ship heads for Italy’s waters after judge overrules Salvini

Posted on by

Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms has 147 rescued people on board

The Spanish humanitarian ship Open Arms was headed for the Italian island of Lampedusa with 147 rescued migrants on board on Wednesday after a judge in Rome suspended far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s decree banning the vessel from Italy’s territorial waters.

The Proactiva Open Arms charity which operates the ship said it would not try to force entry to Lampedusa port, as another rescue vessel, the Sea-Watch 3, did in June, prompting its seizure and the arrest of its captain.

Continue reading...

Behrouz Boochani wins National Biography award – and accepts via WhatsApp from Manus

Posted on by

Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’

The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.

Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.

Continue reading...

Richard Gere and Matteo Salvini clash over migrant crisis

Posted on by

Row follows US actor urging Italian government to ‘stop demonising asylum seekers’

Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has clashed with Richard Gere over the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, suggesting the Hollywood star should house himself those stranded on rescue ships after the US actor urged the Italian government to “stop demonising asylum seekers”.

Gere who is currently on the island of Lampedusa, Sicily, after a visit onboard a Spanish NGO ship, Proactiva Open Arms, where he met some of the 160 migrants the vessel rescued in the strait of Sicily. The ship has been stuck for 10 days off Lampedusa due to Italy’s ban on landing migrants.

Continue reading...

‘We are human beings too’: migrant-led walking tours tackle hate in Italian cities

Posted on by

Guides show Italians the wealth of contributions made to their home cities by migrants

Essediya Magboul leads a group across the open-air market of Porta Palazzo in Turin on a windy Saturday morning. Stopping at a stall, she picks up a bottle of laban, and gives a detailed account of the meticulous mixing needed to prepare the Middle Eastern yoghurt drink. “It’s a Ramadan must,” she adds, smiling, before continuing to an Arab-owned bakery where the owners offer samples of ghoriba cookies and answer questions.

In the space of a few streets, she takes her guests from Eastern Europe to East Asia, via the Middle East. The walkers could easily be mistaken for tourists, but they are in fact locals.

Continue reading...

Stories of home and homeland: ‘We make Australia, we are all Australian’

Posted on by

The migrant experience has changed since the European postwar exodus. Five immigrants share how they made a new home

Pictures by Noel McLaughlin

The word immigrant stems from the Latin root, migrare – to change or to move from one place to another. Australia, where 28% of the population was born overseas, owes its transformation from a British colony to a cosmopolitan modern country to the presence of people from other places who’ve arrived here to build new lives.

The following stories represent five moments during the trajectory of the past five decades of Australian immigration – from the last wave of postwar European immigration to the focus on humanitarian arrivals in the 1980s to the present, a period during which aspiring Australians on temporary visas struggle to put down roots. Each of the stories is accompanied by a photo of an object, something important that reminds them of their homeland.

Continue reading...

Migrant rescue ship with 40 people arrives in Malta after EU deal

Posted on by

Vessel allowed entry under agreement that other countries will look after those onboard

A group of 40 migrants rescued by a German charity ship have landed in Malta and will be taken care of by other EU member states after a deal negotiated by Berlin.

The 40 people were rescued on Wednesday from a small boat off the Libyan coast by the ship Alan Kurdi, which belongs to the NGO Sea-Eye. The NGO then sailed them to southern Italy, saying the port of Lampedusa was the closest and safest harbour.

Continue reading...

Once migrants on Mediterranean were saved by naval patrols. Now they have to watch as drones fly over

Posted on by

Experts condemn move to aerial surveillance as an abrogation of ‘responsibility to save lives’

Amid the panicked shouting from the water and the smell of petrol from the sinking dinghy, the noise of an approaching engine briefly raises hope. Dozens of people fighting for their lives in the Mediterranean use their remaining energy to wave frantically for help. Nearly 2,000 miles away in the Polish capital, Warsaw, a drone operator watches their final moments via a live transmission. There is no ship to answer the SOS, just an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the European border and coast guard agency, Frontex.

This is not a scene from some nightmarish future on Europe’s maritime borders but a present-day probability. Frontex, which is based in Warsaw, is part of a £95m investment by the EU in unmanned aerial vehicles, the Observer has learned.

Continue reading...

Italy grants asylum to Eritrean man mistaken for years for trafficker

Posted on by

Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe was put in deportation centre after acquittal but is now free

Italian authorities have granted refugee status to an Eritrean man who was the victim of one of the country’s most embarrassing cases of mistaken identity.

Last month a judge in Palermo acquitted Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of being a human trafficking kingpin, confirming he was the victim of mistaken identity when he was arrested more than three years ago in a joint operation by Italian and British authorities.

Continue reading...

Running dry: the water crisis driving migration to the US – podcast

Posted on by

Nina Lakhani explores how drought and famine are fuelling the wave of migration from Central America to the US. Plus: Emma Graham-Harrison on China and the Hong Kong protests

Victor Funez walks to a cemetery in Nejapa, El Salvador, every day and fills a three-gallon plastic pitcher with water before trudging home. He repeats this several times a day – it’s his family’s only source of water. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani met him as part of an investigation into how a lack of access to clean water is a major driver of migration from Central America to the US.

She tells India Rakusen that rising sea levels are destroying coastal towns in Honduras and how drought and famine have prompted a mass exodus from Guatemala. In El Salvador, meanwhile, corporate interests, corruption and gangs worsen the problems caused by the lack of clean water.

Continue reading...

‘People are dying’: how the climate crisis has sparked an exodus to the US

Posted on by

As part of the Running Dry series, the Guardian looks at how drought and famine are forcing Guatemalan families to choose between starvation and migration

At sunrise, the misty fields around the village of Guior are already dotted with men, women and children sowing maize after an overnight rainstorm.

After several years of drought, the downpour brought some hope of relief to the subsistence farmers in this part of eastern Guatemala.

Continue reading...

Dozens of bodies found after migrant boat capsizes off Libya

Posted on by

Up to 150 have died in what is thought be deadliest incident in Mediterranean this year

Dozens of bodies have been recovered from the Mediterranean, a day after the shipwreck that caused the deaths of up to 150 migrants.

Eyewitnesses described harrowing scenes in the sea, in what a senior UN official called the “the worst Mediterranean tragedy” so far this year.

Continue reading...

The jungle metropolis: how sprawling Manaus is eating into the Amazon

Posted on by

Informal settlements are expanding, with a new occupation attempt every 11 days, and the threat to the rainforest is severe

Antonio Pinto’s makeshift home on the outskirts of Manaus is an open-air shack, one of dozens of similar dwellings of timber and tarpaulin scattered around the hills.

Around them is the evidence of the use of flame and iron: the hills are scorched and brown, littered with fallen logs and toppled, twisted trees.

Continue reading...

Croatian police use violence to push back migrants, president admits

Posted on by

Human Rights Watch calls on Croatia to end illegal practice of forcing people back over Bosnian border

After months of official denials, Croatia’s president has admitted that the country’s police are involved in the violent pushbacks of migrants and asylum seekers apprehended inside the country.

The best chance for thousands of refugees stuck in Bosnia is to cross its border with Croatia to make it to the European Union. For the past year there has been repeated evidence of police using force against those who have made it across the border and then dumping them back in Bosnia.

Continue reading...

Trump orders federal agencies to hand over citizenship data – video

Posted on by

Donald Trump abandoned his attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 US census but will sign an executive order forcing federal agencies to hand over citizenship data to the commerce department. 'As a result of today's executive order we will be able to ensure the 2020 census generates an accurate count of how many citizens, non-citizens and illegal aliens are in the United States of America. We will leave no stone unturned,' the US president said. The attorney general, William Barr, said including a question on the census was not the only way to obtain this 'vital information'

Continue reading...

The Syrian refugees changing the UK’s food scene

Posted on by

Mohamad Rahimeh found a talent for cooking in the Calais refugee camp. Now he has a viable business in London

When Mohamad Rahimeh arrived in the Calais refugee camp that was nicknamed “the Jungle”, cooking was the last thing on his mind. He was a political scientist from Syria with a journey from hell behind him. Food was just a means to an end.

But when a close friend fell sick, he rustled up a meal of eggs. A hidden talent was uncovered.

Continue reading...

Second migrant rescue boat defies Salvini and docks in Italy

Posted on by

Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrives in Lampedusa with 41 shipwrecked migrants

A charity rescue vessel brought 41 shipwrecked migrants into port in Lampedusa on Saturday, the second boat to defy far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini’s bid to close Italian ports to them.

Mediterranea’s Italian-flagged Alex arrived in port where a strong police presence was waiting for them but everyone remained on board after spending two days with the rescued migrants and asylum-seekers on the sailboat.

Continue reading...