Category Archives: Migration

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Italy grants asylum to Eritrean man mistaken for years for trafficker

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Dozens of bodies found after migrant boat capsizes off Libya

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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.

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

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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.

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Croatian police use violence to push back migrants, president admits

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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.

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Trump orders federal agencies to hand over citizenship data – video

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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'

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The Syrian refugees changing the UK’s food scene

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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.

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Second migrant rescue boat defies Salvini and docks in Italy

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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.

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Survivor of shipwreck off Tunisia describes vessel going down

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Malian was one of four out of over 80 people on board who were rescued after raft sank

One of only four survivors after an inflatable raft carrying more than 80 people capsized off the coast of Tunisia has recounted his ordeal as 54 rescuees from a separate shipwreck headed to Malta.

Soleiman Coulibaly, from Mali, said he had spent two days clinging to a piece of wood after the engine caught fire and the inflatable sank.

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Captain who rescued 42 migrants: I’d do it again despite jail threat

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Carola Rackete faces prospect of long trial for defying Italy’s ban on rescue ships

The ship’s captain facing jail after defying Italian law to bring 42 migrants into port has said she would do it all over again and hit out at Italy’s far-right deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini.

“People’s lives matter more than any political game,” Carola Rackete, the German captain of the migrant NGO rescue ship Sea-Watch 3, told the Guardian.

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More than 80 feared dead as migrant boat capsizes off Tunisia

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Four men were pulled from sinking vessel with one later dying in hospital, says official

More than 80 people trying to reach Europe from Libya are feared dead after their boat capsized off the coast of Tunisia, according to the UN migration agency.

The boat sank on Wednesday off the port town of Zarzis and 82 of the migrants who had been onboard were missing, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Fishermen pulled four men from the sinking boat, said Lorena Lando, the agency’s head in Tunisia. One of the four died later in hospital.

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UN calls for inquiry into Libya detention centre bombing

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Attack widely blamed on warlord Khalifa Haftar, which left at least 44 dead, labelled ‘war crime’

The United Nations has called for an independent inquiry into the bombing of a Libyan migrant detention centre that left at least 44 dead and more than 130 severely injured, describing the attack as “a war crime and odious bloody carnage”.

The detention centre east of Tripoli was housing more than 610 people when it was hit by two airstrikes. The bombing was attributed to the air force of Gen Khalifa Haftar by the Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, as well as by the UN-recognised Government of National Accord.

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Why attack on Libya detention centre was grimly predictable

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The EU has long been aware of the terrible plight of migrants detained or trapped in Libya

Shocking as the precise circumstances are behind the deaths of at least 44 people in an airstrike that hit a detention centre in Tajoura in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, it is a predictable incident.

Even as footage circulated online claiming to show blood and body parts mixed with rubble and migrants’ belongings from the air raid blamed on the forces of the warlord Khalifa Haftar, it emerged the detainees had been housed in a hangar next to a weapons store – the likely target of the strike.

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More than €1m raised for rescue ship captain detained in Italy

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Money will go towards paying Carola Rackete’s legal fees if charges are brought

Two online campaigns to help the German captain of a rescue ship under house arrest in Italy have between them raised more than €1m.

Carola Rackete’s arrest on Saturday, after she forced her way into port in Lampedusa carrying migrants and refugees she had rescued off Libya, prompted a fundraising appeal by two prominent German TV stars that by Tuesday morning had raised €917,195 from more than 33,000 donors.

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Captain defends her decision to force rescue boat into Italian port

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Carola Rackete says act of ‘disobedience’ in Lampedusa was necessary to avert tragedy

An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.

“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.

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