Category Archives: Refugees

Asylum seeker housing conditions under scrutiny at third ex-military site

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Allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk

A third former military site being used as temporary housing for asylum seekers is facing allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises, it has emerged.

The Home Office has been housing asylum seekers in a former officers’ mess at RAF Coltishall, north of Norwich, since April last year. The Norfolk site has not received as much scrutiny as two similar facilities, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Barracks in Pembrokeshire, which have been dogged by allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions.

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Journeys of hope: what will migration routes into Europe look like in 2021?

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Thousands of people, many fleeing persecution and conflict, will risk everything this year, seeking a new life of freedom and opportunity

In 2020, tens of thousands of migrants crossed desert and sea, climbed mountains and walked through forests to reach what has become an increasingly inhospitable Europe. Many of them died, overwhelmed by the waves, or tortured in the detention centres of Libya. More were displaced after the flames of Moria refugee camp in Greece burned everything they had.

As a new year begins, so do the journeys of tens of thousands more people seeking a new life overseas. The Guardian has spoken to experts, charity workers and NGOs about the challenges and risks they face on the main migration routes into Europe.

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‘Like torture’: Calais police accused of continued migrant rights abuses

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Relentless and escalating programme of refugee evictions amounts to a campaign of harassment, say activists

Shortly before sunrise on 9 January, about 40 officers and officials gathered outside Calais police station as temperatures dipped to -3C (26.6F). Shortly after, in a well-drilled procedure, a nine-vehicle convoy started down the road towards the first of five forced evictions of makeshift refugee camps planned for that morning.

When the convoy arrived at the camp, just a few miles from the city centre, masked police in black uniforms chased refugees away from their tents and belongings. Some of the other 150 refugees who had been sheltering at the camp had already packed and fled before authorities arrived. Soon the camp was empty; frost-covered sleeping bags and jackets were all that remained.

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Asylum seekers on hunger strike over conditions at Kent barracks site

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Home Office urged to shut temporary accommodation after allegations of overcrowding and poor hygiene

Hundreds of asylum seekers are reportedly on hunger strike at a former army barracks in Kent being used as temporary housing, amid allegations conditions at the site are worsening.

About 400 men are being held at the Napier barracks site near Folkestone, which has been used as temporary accommodation since September and has faced calls for closure after allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions.

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Authorities had four warnings about Reading attacker’s mental health

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Refugee support chief warned of Khairi Saadallah carrying out ‘London Bridge-type scenario’

• Reading attacker Khairi Saadallah given whole-life prison sentence

Repeated warnings were given that Khairi Saadallah, who murdered three men in a Reading park last summer, could carry out a “London Bridge-type scenario” shortly before the killings took place, the Guardian has learned.

Documents reveal that Nick Harborne, chief executive of the Reading Refugee Support Group (RRSG), who had had dealings with Saadallah since 2016, made four specific warnings to health and probation professionals between 4 December 2019 and 12 June 2020 that Saadallah could commit a violent crime if he did not receive appropriate support.

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‘There is no noise’: inside the controversial Bhasan Char refugee camp – a photo essay

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Amid concern from charities and NGOs, Bangladesh is relocating Rohinghya refugees to a remote island. One resident describes his new life there

I wanted to come here. No one forced me, and my wife also agreed in a snap.

To be honest, though, I didn’t tell my brother. He lives where I used to live – Kutupalong camp. He is very against this island for some reason. He might have tried to stop me coming if I dared to discuss the topic. So I didn’t. I only told him after I arrived. I was amazed that he didn’t yell at me.

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From Yemen to the UK: Noor’s story

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A women’s rights activist tells the extraordinary story of how she fled Yemen after her life was threatened, and her devastation at having to leave her four children behind. She describes her terrifying journey to the UK, where she faces an uncertain future

Anushka Asthana talks to Noor*, 29, who escaped from Yemen when her life was threatened because of her work as a human rights campaigner focusing on girls’ rights to education and the right for children not to be forced into marriage. Noor was forced into marriage at the age of 14, but later managed to divorce her husband.

She travelled alone with only smugglers and other desperate migrants for company on a terrifying eight-month journey to Britain. Noor was determined to flee not only because her own life was in danger, but also in the hope of rescuing her four children from the Yemen civil war once she had reached safety, and because her children’s lives would be at risk if she remained in the country. She describes the devastating impact of leaving them behind. Her oldest daughter is at risk of child marriage in Yemen, and she says time is running out to bring her children to safety.

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World leaders urged to make Covid vaccine available to millions of refugees

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Global humanitarian figures and NGOs call for rollout to take in all people for the global public good

Global humanitarian figures and NGOs have urged world leaders to urgently make Covid-19 vaccinations available to millions of refugees and others displaced by war, as the pandemic continues to overwhelm some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

The impact of the contagion has sharply intensified across the Middle East in recent weeks, matching soaring global numbers. However, it has been further amplified by drastically underresourced medical responses that cannot cope with the numbers of dying or seriously ill.

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Tributes paid to Ethiopian refugee farmer who championed integration in Italy

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Agitu Ideo Gudeta, who was killed on Wednesday, used abandoned land to start a goat farming project employing migrants and refugees

Tributes have been paid to a 42-year-old Ethiopian refugee and farmer who became a symbol of integration in Italy, her adopted home.

Agitu Ideo Gudeta was attacked and killed, allegedly by a former employee, on her farm in Trentino on Wednesday.

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Calls for release of man arrested photographing transfer of Rohingyas

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Bangladesh authorities under pressure from rights activists including Bianca Jagger over detention of Abul Karam

Bangladesh authorities are facing calls to release a Rohingya man arrested while photographing the transfer of refugees to a controversial island camp this week.

Abul Kalam, 35, has been held since Monday morning when he was reportedly beaten before being taken to police barracks near the Kutupalong refugee camp, where he has lived since leaving Myanmar as a child refugee in the early 1990s.

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Syrians refugees flee Lebanon camp after tents set on fire

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Three people wounded in clash between camp residents and youths near coastal city of Tripoli

Hundreds of Syrian refugees have fled their makeshift camp in north Lebanon after their tents were set alight when fighting broke out between local youths and camp residents.

At least three people were wounded in the clash on Saturday in the Miniyeh region near the coastal city of Tripoli, after which youths set fire to the camp, Lebanon’s state-owned National News Agency said.

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‘Please help us’: child refugees running out of time to reach UK before Brexit

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Desperate relatives in Britain plead with Home Office for flexibility as paperwork holdups delay family reunions while deadline looms

The Home Office has said it will not allow a group of stranded refugee children to join their families in the UK if their cases do not make it through the Greek asylum system by 31 December when the EU family reunification programme comes to an end.

Around 20 children who are eligible to join their relatives in the UK under the current family reunification scheme are still waiting for their cases to be completed in Greece, before the UK government ends the programme when it leaves the EU on the 31st December.

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Fire destroys migrant camp in Bosnia

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Lipa facility had been criticised by rights groups for failing to provide basic services

A fast-moving fire has destroyed a migrant camp in Bosnia strongly criticised by rights groups as inadequate due to its lack of resources.

The blaze broke out at the Lipa camp, close to the border with Croatia, on the same day the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had declared the effective closure of the facility, saying Bosnian authorities had ignored its appeals to supply basic services.

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‘Black book’ of thousands of illegal migrant pushbacks presented to EU

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Shocking dossier of systematic violations of asylum seekers along the notorious ‘Balkan route’ compiled by watchdog groups

A 1,500-page “black book” documenting hundreds of illegal pushbacks against asylum seekers by authorities on Europe’s external borders was released last week and handed over to the EU commission.

Compiled by the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), the Black Book of Pushbacks is a collection of 892 group testimonies, detailing the experiences of 12,654 victims of human rights violations along the Balkan migration route, one of the most gruelling in the recent migrant crisis given the alleged violence of border police officers.

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‘A mental health emergency’: no end to trauma for refugees on Lesbos

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Mental health problems are spiralling among adults and children at ‘Moria 2:0’ camp as winter sets in and security tightens

Nadia hasn’t slept. The mother of five spent last night trying to soothe her seven-year-old son, Matin, who is autistic, while heavy rain fell on the family’s tent. He was crying and asking for the noise to stop. “I tried to explain to him that the rain is not in our control,” she says, “but in these moments, you can’t reach him any more.”

The family, originally from Parwan province in Afghanistan, are living in the new refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos that was built in three days, after the fire that razed to the ground parts of the infamous Moria camp.

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‘If a smuggler says do it, you do’: refugees on trying to rescue their friends from the Channel

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Two Kurdish asylum seekers made frantic attempts to save lives of family whose boat capsized in rough conditions

Two asylum seekers who were in the same boat as a Kurdish Iranian family who drowned trying to cross the Channel have spoken out about their frantic attempts to save the family’s lives after the vessel capsized.

Rasul Iran Nezhad, his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children: Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin, were among 22 people who boarded the boat, a rigid polyester structure about 20ft long, in October.

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Thousands of refugees in mental health crisis after years on Greek islands

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One in three on Aegean isles have contemplated suicide amid EU containment policies, report reveals

Years of entrapment on Aegean islands has resulted in a mental health crisis for thousands of refugees, with one in three contemplating suicide, a report compiled by psychosocial support experts has revealed.

Containment policies pursued by the EU have also spurred ever more people to attempt to end their lives, according to the report released by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on Thursday.

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Deported to danger and death: Australia returns people to violence and persecution

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Asylum seekers forcibly returned to their home countries have faced arrest and threats. Some have died

They came for him, as he had said they would. They came for him with knives.

Samad Howladar had spent five years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, held within the Manus Island detention centre until he was deported, in handcuffs, back to Bangladesh in March 2018.

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They risked all to cross the Red Sea. Now a cruel fate awaits in Yemen

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Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land

Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.

“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.

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UK ‘reneges on vow to reunite child refugees with families’

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Home Office accused of making ‘no arrangements’ for transfers of unaccompanied minors after EU rules expire at end of year

Unaccompanied children in France are being told by the French authorities that they should give up hope of being reunited with family in the UK after the Home Office failed to offer the help it had promised.

With the deadline to enter the UK legally and safely under the EU’s family reunification rules due to expire at the end of the year, the Home Office is accused of reneging on its vow to help unaccompanied children reunite with family in the UK.

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