Category Archives: Refugees

‘Call out the lies’: UK charities hit back over bids to blame refugees for housing crisis

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Far-right harassment of asylum seekers and refugees in emergency accommodation comes as Home Office gears up for mass evictions

Thousands of asylum seekers and refugees temporarily housed in emergency accommodation across the UK are being “unfairly and inaccurately” blamed for the national housing crisis, according to a coalition of more than 100 housing organisations.

Charities including Shelter, Homeless Link and the Big Issue say the housing emergency is the fault of the government, not those who have fled trafficking, violence and conflict.

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Senior Libyan coastguard commander arrested for alleged human trafficking

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Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, is suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of refugees

The UN-backed government in Libya has arrested a coastguard commander alleged to be one of the world’s most ruthless human traffickers.

On Wednesday, authorities in Tripoli said Abd al-Rahman Milad, known as Bija, and suspected of being behind the drowning of dozens of people, has been arrested in the Hay-al-Andalus district of the city and is now being detained by Rada special forces.

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Aid cuts and Covid force Uganda refugees to brink of starvation

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More than 90,000 face extreme hunger with another 400,000 hit by food crisis, says report

Nearly 500,000 refugees in Uganda are struggling to eat as a result of cuts to food aid and Covid-19 restrictions.

More than 91,000 people living in 13 refugee settlements around the country are experiencing extreme levels of hunger, according to the latest analysis by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), published this week. More than 400,000 refugees are considered to be at crisis hunger levels.

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Gang violence erupts in Bangladesh Rohingya camps forcing families to flee

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Fighting leaves seven dead as rival factions fight for control of drugs trade and terrorise vulnerable refugees

Fighting between rival gangs in the Rohingya refugee settlements in Bangladesh has forced hundreds of people to leave their shelters in a week where at least seven have died.

“When it is night, it becomes hell. When you try to sleep you hear a lot of firing, you hear a lot of bullets, people are screaming, people are fleeing from home,” said a Rohingya refugee who lives close to where the fighting has taken place.

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Europe’s migration ‘crisis’ isn’t about numbers. It’s about prejudice

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Reforming the EU’s inhumane refugee policy also means confronting Orbán’s view of Europe as a superior, white Christian club

Fortress Europe is being redesigned – but it is no easy task. European Union home affairs ministers on Thursday began the process of repairing the bloc’s broken migration policy, just weeks after the tragic devastation of the Moria refugee camp on Lesbos. Expect no quick changes, however. The 27 countries are deeply divided over proposals for a new “pact” on asylum and migration.

The European commission’s plan calls for faster pre-entry screening and quick returns of those who fail to quality for asylum. The focus is on ending sometimes deliberately slow, inhumane and inefficient border management procedures, which lead to squalid, overcrowded camps such as Moria, where people can be left in limbo for years. The return of those denied asylum could be managed with a newly appointed “EU returns coordinator”. EU data shows that on average approximately 370,000 applications are rejected each year, but only a third of people are expelled.

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The captain rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean during the Covid-19 pandemic – video

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Savvas Kourepinis is the captain of the Astral, a humanitarian boat patrolling the Mediterranean Sea to rescue people attempting to cross the main maritime route from north Africa to Europe. For most of this year, the Covid-19 pandemic forced these vital search-and-rescue missions to cease in what is often referred to as the deadliest migration route in the world. As Kourepinis and his crew set out on one of their first patrols since lockdown restrictions eased, they face stringent coronavirus regulations and the reluctance of nearby countries to take in the people the Astral has rescued

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‘Moria 2.0’: refugees who escaped fire now living in ‘worse’ conditions

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More than 7,500 people living in tents on squalid settlement, with two other camps on Lesbos set to close

Thousands of people who fled the fire that destroyed the infamous Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, last month are living in dire and unsanitary conditions in a temporary settlement with little access to water or basic sanitation.

Just over 7,500 people are now living in tents among the rubble and dust of a former shooting range in an informal settlement that has become known as “Moria 2.0”.

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Memo to the Home Office: a little humanity goes a long way | Kenan Malik

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Delivering migrants to an offshore location is more about spectacle than solution

Dump them on Ascension Island. Or in Moldova. Imprison them in disused ferries. Build “marine fences” across the Channel. Deploy water cannons to make huge waves to swamp their boats.

And so it goes on. All apparently ideas from Home Office “brainstorming” sessions on how to deal with asylum seekers and cross-Channel undocumented migrants.

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UK asylum detention: top civil servant says ‘all options on the table’

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Matthew Rycroft tells MPs civil service is considering all ways to improve migration system

The top civil servant at the Home Office has said “all options are on the table” for the migration system, in response to reports officials were asked to consider proposals to hold refugees in offshore detention centres, including remote islands in the south Atlantic.

Matthew Rycroft, the department’s permanent secretary, said the Cabinet Office would lead an inquiry into the leak of documents that revealed officials were asked to consider “possible options for negotiating an offshore asylum processing facility similar to the Australian model in Papua New Guinea and Nauru”.

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‘Catastrophe for human rights’ as Greece steps up refugee ‘pushbacks’

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Human rights groups condemn practice as evidence reviewed by the Guardian reveals systemic denial of entry to asylum seekers

At about 1am on 24 August, Ahmed (not his real name) climbed into a rubber dinghy with 29 others and left Turkey’s north-western Çanakkale province. After 30 minutes, he said, they reached Greek waters near Lesbos and a panther boat from the Hellenic coastguard approached.

Eight officers in blue shorts and shirts, some wearing black masks and armed with rifles, forced the group – more than half women and including several minors and six small children – to come aboard at gunpoint. They punctured the dinghy with knives and it sank. “They said they would take us to a camp,” said Ahmed. “The children were happy and started laughing, but I knew they were lying.”

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EU proposes to ditch refugee quotas for member states

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Countries would be offered €10,000 an adult to take people in under ‘solidarity à la carte’ plan

The European commission is abandoning the idea of mandatory refugee quotas, as it revives an attempt to change Europe’s asylum and migration rules after more than four years of deadlock.

The long-awaited migration proposals, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, would allow EU member states to choose whether to accept refugees, or take charge of returning those denied asylum to their home countries.

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Aid agencies warn of Covid-19 crisis in refugee camps as winter approaches

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Displaced populations across the Middle East, already in cramped, unhygienic conditions, face a health catastrophe as infections rise

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic an abiding fear had stalked the world’s most vulnerable populations. Millions of people displaced by conflict in the Middle East watched with alarm as Europe and the west withered under a caseload that stretched first-world healthcare systems to their limits. They saw field hospitals being set up in capitals. Governments buckling under the strain. The developing world offering aid to the developed.

It seemed inevitable that the contagion would reach those less able to absorb its impact. And now, as second and third waves of Covid-19 surge around the globe, worst fears are being realised. Several months into the crisis, the virus has crept into the populations of refugees and internally displaced people, where stopping its advance will be close to impossible. Up to 15 million people across the region, many of whom were already at risk of disease, now face a rampant spread through their communities.

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Folkestone charities fear far right will target asylum seeker base

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Refugee groups urge ministers to ensure safety of 400 people housed in barracks

The people of Folkestone have become used to the sound of helicopters buzzing over their heads at night, as authorities scour the waters off the south coast for asylum seekers crossing the Channel on small boats.

September has become the busiest month on record for migrant Channel crossings, while more than 6,500 have made the journey this year – more than three times the total in 2019. The sight of new arrivals, some in flimsy dinghies and using spades as oars, has become an almost daily occurrence.

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Justice and the Rohingya people are the losers in Asia’s new cold war

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Attacks against the Muslim minority in Myanmar have gone unchecked as regional players focus on their own interests

The persecution, ethnic cleansing, and attempted genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state is an affront to the rule of law, a well-documented atrocity and, according to a top international lawyer, a moral stain on “our collective conscience and humanity”. So why are the killings and other horrors continuing while known perpetrators go unpunished?

It’s a question with several possible answers. Maybe poor, isolated Myanmar, formerly Burma, is not important enough a state to warrant sustained international attention. Perhaps, in the western subconscious, the lives of a largely unseen, unknown, brown-skinned Muslim minority do not matter so much at a time of multiple racial, ethnic and refugee crises.

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Dozens jump from NGO rescue ship in attempt to reach Sicily – video

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Dozens of people made a perilous jump from the Proactiva Open Arms in an attempt to reach Sicily, in the largest known incident of its kind this year.

The Spanish NGO said 124 of the 273 people on the boat jumped into the water between Thursday and Friday in an attempt to swim to Palermo's port.

They were rescued by the Italian coastguard and brought to safety after Proactiva's crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers

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Dozens jump from migrant rescue ship in attempt to reach Sicily

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Italian coastguard rescues 124 people, who had been waiting 10 days to disembark

Dozens of people have jumped from an NGO migrant rescue ship in an attempt to reach Sicily, after the crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers.

The Spanish NGO Open Arms said 124 of the 273 refugees and migrants on its Proactiva Open Arms boat, leaped into the water during the largest-known incident of its kind.

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Syrian teenage refugee homeless on Lesbos – despite having right to live in UK

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Labour urges Home Office to ‘right this wrong’ as Syrian teenager remains stranded in Greece despite legal right to join family

“When I saw the smoke coming I didn’t have the chance to get my backpack, I just ran. The fire was very close, I couldn’t save anything, I lost all my documents. I just escaped through the forest.”

Ahmed looks nervously around as he talks about the catastrophe he has just lived through: the fire that destroyed the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos. Around him people are going about their daily lives in the island capital Mytilene, drinking coffee and chatting in the sunshine. But today the Syrian teenager is focused on the basics of survival. “Do you know where I can buy clothes?” he asks. It has been a week since the fire and he only has what he is wearing.

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Uganda calls in troops as violence flares between refugees and locals

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Tensions between locals and South Sudanese refugees have left at least 10 dead as authorities act to prevent escalation

Uganda has sent security troops to its north-west region where tensions are on the rise following deadly attacks on refugees by local people.

More than 10 South Sudanese refugees were killed, including a teenage girl and a 25-year-old woman and her baby, and 19 others were seriously wounded in clashes at a water point in Madi-Okollo district last week.

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Refugees demand rescue from Lesbos after Moria camp blaze

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Greek authorities struggle to persuade former camp residents to move to a new temporary site as protests continue

Greece is facing mounting demands from refugees displaced by the devastating Moria refugee camp fire to either let them leave Lesbos or deport them.

The Greek authorities are struggling to persuade former residents of the camp to move to a new temporary site, and many people continue to sleep on the streets of the island.

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‘I need freedom’: refugees approved for resettlement stranded on Nauru as processing stalls

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Delays are causing further suffering for almost 200 refugees whose requests for transfer or resettlement were approved in 2019

A group of almost 200 refugees on Nauru who have had either medical transfers or resettlement requests approved since 2019 still remain on the island, and their cases have stalled, despite the Coalition claiming to have dealt with the backlog.

The delays and policy inertia is causing further suffering for refugees and raises questions about why the resettlement and medevac processes have ground to a halt.

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