Category Archives: Refugees

Migration: EU praises Greece as ‘shield’ after Turkey opens border

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Bloc leaders announce financial support as UN questions Athens’ suspension of asylum applications

European Union leaders have given a show of support for Athens, describing Greece as Europe’s “shield” in deterring migrants, despite questions from the UN about breaches of international refugee law.

Four EU leaders met the Greek prime minister, Kyriákos Mitsotákis, at the border town of Orestiada on Tuesday, near where Greek police have been using teargas to deter hundreds of migrants from attempting to cross from Turkey.

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Four years after Turkey deal, EU no closer to new asylum system

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Distracted leaders have been unable to agree on how to ease the burden on frontline states

It was said to be the moment when the European Union lost its political innocence. Nearly four years ago, in March 2016, EU leaders signed a deal with Turkey aimed at preventing asylum seekers from travelling to Europe.

The pact was “celebrated by people who are dancing on the grave of refugee protection”, said the Europe boss of Amnesty International. But the realpolitik worked: the number of people arriving on the Greek islands from Turkey dropped drastically from a peak of 7,000 a day to a few hundred, although numbers began creeping up again in 2019.

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Clashes as thousands gather at Turkish border to enter Greece

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EU border agency Frontex on high alert as Turkish president keeps crossings open

Migrants trying to reach Europe have clashed violently with Greek riot police as Turkey claimed more than 76,000 people were now heading for the EU as a result of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decision to open the Turkish side of the border.

Officers fired teargas at the migrants, some of whom threw stones and wielded metal bars as they sought to force their way into Greece at the normally quiet crossing in the north-eastern town of Kastanies.

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Erdoğan says border will stay open as Greece tries to repel influx

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Turkish leader claims 18,000 people have crossed into EU but some are met with teargas

Thousands of migrants may be in no man’s land between Turkey and Greece after Ankara opened its western borders, sparking chaotic scenes as Greek troops attempted to prevent refugees from entering Europe en masse.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, claimed 18,000 migrants had crossed the border, without immediately providing supporting evidence, but many appear to have been repelled by Greek border patrols firing teargas and stun grenades.

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Refugees arrive on Lesbos as Turkey opens border – video

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Three boats of refugees have landed on Lesbos in the last 24 hours as the island prepares for an influx of people after Turkey announced it was opening its borders. Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered in the Turkish city of Edirne, which borders Bulgaria and Greece

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Police and protesters clash on Greek islands over new migrant camps

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Teargas used against demonstrators on Lesbos and Chios who want migrants moved to the mainland

Clashes have broken out on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, where residents tried to prevent the arrival of riot police and excavating machines to be used to build new migrant detention camps.

Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds that gathered early on Tuesday to try to prevent officers from disembarking from government-chartered ferries.

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The contraceptive helping refugee women plan their families

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Instead of becoming ‘factories for babies’, women who’ve fled South Sudan to Uganda are trying new options for managing their reproductive health

Christine Lamwaka and her husband gathered their six children and fled. It was April 2017 and their town in South Sudan had just been attacked. They walked for two days from Eastern Equatoria before crossing the border into Uganda.

“It was hard to flee with the young children. We struggled to run. I thought we couldn’t make it alive,” says Lamwaka, who was 22 at the time of the attack.

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Coronavirus fears grip Middle East as Iran denies cover-up

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Shrine city of Qom believed to be virus hub, as concern grows for region’s refugee population

Fears are growing across the Middle East that coronavirus has infiltrated a main pilgrimage route, which could lead the deadly pathogen to vulnerable refugee populations, causing perhaps unprecedented public health crises across the region.

Concern is centred on the Iranian shrine city of Qom, which is thought to be a hub of the disease and the likely source of its spread elsewhere in the country and in neighbouring states, where infected travellers have been diagnosed in recent days.

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‘A step away from hell’: the young male refugees selling sex to survive

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Photographer Heba Khamis spent a year and a half documenting the lives of ‘black birds’: the male Afghan and Iranian sex workers in Berlin’s Tiergarten

  • All photographs by Heba Khamis

The allure of romance is never far away in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, a vast 520-acre expanse home to manicured lawns, dense forest, a picturesque boating lake and the city zoo. As families lay out picnics and millennials fire up barbecues, those seeking something more illicit head to the park’s wooded north, where young male Afghan and Iranian refugees can be found selling sex to the hundreds of buyers who pass through Tiergarten each day.

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How the American dream died on the world’s busiest border

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It is a place where worlds converge, a vast melting pot of different peoples, all in search of a better life. Yet the US-Mexico border is also, increasingly, a focal point for human suffering

Milson, from Honduras, sits with his 14-year-old daughter, Loany, on the reedy riverbank beside the bridge connecting Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with downtown Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande.

On the far reach – a few yards but another world away – is a vast tent (officially a “soft-sided facility”) erected to cope with the sheer numbers seeking asylum in the US. In a few weeks’ time, on the date stipulated on their “notice to appear” document, the people staying here will have their “credible fear interview” by video link.

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On the ground in Idlib: ‘This is the last call to people with humanity to help’ – video

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The UN has estimated that 170,000 of the 900,000 civilians forced from their homes in a recent wave of displacement in north-west Syria are living out in the open. Laith, an activist who is part of the White Helmets volunteer group, has called for the international community to 'stand with [those] who left their homes and be with them in the camps'. The massive displacement follows an escalation of Russian-supported offensives by the Assad regime to the destroy the last rebel bastions in Idlib and Aleppo provinces 

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Greece’s refugee plan is inhumane and doomed to fail. The EU must step in | Apostolis Fotiadis

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The government wants to create massive detention centres, but this is being resisted by locals and refugees alike

Since the start of the year, Greece’s reception system for migrants has imploded. A spike of arrivals over the past few months, caused by Turkey’s police operations removing refugees and asylum seekers from its western coastal cities and sending them back to the regions where they were registered, has pushed the existing accommodation to its limits.

Between September 2019 and January 2020, the Greek government transferred 14,750 people from the islands to the mainland, as 36,000 new arrivals crossed the Aegean to Greece from Turkey. While the system is unable to absorb any more people, efforts to establish additional camps in the mainland and new detention centres on the islands have met strong resistance from local communities.

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Healing hands: the Italian surgeon treating Libya torture camp survivors

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Prof Massimo Del Bene aids African migrants whose captors inflicted horrific injuries to extort ransom payments

The first patient was a young Ghanaian man who had been tortured every day for more than a year in Libya by traffickers trying to extort a ransom for his release, says Prof Massimo Del Bene, head of reconstructive surgery at the San Gerardo hospital in Monza, north of Milan.

Since then, the surgeon renowned for performing the first double hand transplant in Italy, has adapted his expertise to what he calls “torture surgery”, helping African migrants who have survived Libyan detention camps, where traffickers and criminal gangs are documented to have tortured captives to extort ransom money.

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Deaths of 16 Rohingya at sea raises fears trafficking ring has been revived

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Smugglers responsible for mass atrocities in Thailand may be linked to capsized boat carrying refugees from Bangladesh to Malaysia

Activists fear a dangerous transnational trafficking network is being revived after at least 16 Rohingya refugees drowned in the Bay of Bengal on Tuesday morning.

Bangladeshi officials said a wooden fishing boat carrying about 138 people capsized near Bangladesh’s St Martin’s island in the early hours.

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UN calls for urgent evacuation of Lesbos refugee camp

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Doctor warns of pandemic risk due to lack of healthcare in Greek camp

The UN refugee agency has called for the urgent evacuation of families and sick people from the Moria camp on Lesbos. Over the weekend boats continued to arrive on the Agean islands, sending more families into “alarming” and overcrowded conditions in the refugee camps.

The Moria camp in Lesbos has grown from a population of 5,000 last July to around 20,000, with new families arriving daily. Even the most vulnerable new arrivals can no longer find space in the official area, but have to build makeshift shelters in a rubbish-filled olive grove around the camp.

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The foxes, the young refugees and me: a unique bond – in pictures

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A nature photographer captured an unlikely friendship between children living in a disused army barracks in Berlin and local wildlife

  • All photographs by Jon A Juárez

It all started when I began working as a sports educator for refugee children living in the old military barracks in Spandau, Berlin. It was just a job in the beginning, but it slowly turned into much more. It changed my life.

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How a new Sesame Street show is bringing Muppet magic to refugee camps

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Three new Muppets, Basma, Jad, and Ma’zooza, will star in new show for the millions of children displaced across the Middle East

Cooperation, kindness and the alphabet. For over 50 years, the characters of Sesame Street, from the Cookie Monster to Big Bird, have helped children from diverse backgrounds navigate the challenges of life as a small person in a big world.

From the moment it launched, Sesame Street has unflinchingly dealt with difficult issues – and from this week they are bringing their special brand of magic to the children who need them the most.

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Sudan refugees pushed into Niger desert after camp burned down

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Majority of tents in Agadez were destroyed by fire following peaceful sit-in, leaving Sudanese living in fear

Sudanese refugees in Niger say they have been living in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation after security forces cracked down on protests calling for better living conditions.

Refugees have been sleeping in the desert despite low temperatures since their camp in Agadez was almost completely burned down last month after a sit-in was forcibly dispersed by Nigerien security forces. The Nigerien authorities said they arrested 355 people immediately after the fire.

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Ai Weiwei on his new life in Britain: ‘People are at least polite. In Germany, they weren’t’

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Devastated by his time in Germany, which he regards as still Nazi, the artist has moved. As he unveils a powerful virtual reality artwork, he talks about needing a monster to fight – and why he’d like to be a barber

‘When we filmed this,” says Ai Weiwei, “the elephants didn’t know what to do. Once they were used for labour, and now they have lost their job.” The artist is talking about the groundbreaking documentary he has just made about unemployed logging elephants in Myanmar. You watch the film, shot with 360-degree virtual reality technology, through a special headset. Turn your head slowly and your view gradually changes. Turn your head 180 degrees and the picture changes completely.

“When they lost their job,” he continues, “each elephant had a few people to take care of it, so those people also lost their job.” Ai (Weiwei is his first name and means unknown or future) relates to the elephants as readily as he does to the subject of the second part of his VR project – this one about the lives of Rohingya refugees in a Bangladeshi camp.

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