Category Archives: Refugees

Teenage boy the latest to die in Libyan refugee detention centre

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The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care

A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.

Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.

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Officials charged with corruption over award of Uganda refugee camp deals

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Money laundering and abuse of office also among allegations levelled at two senior figures

Two senior Ugandan government officials have been charged with money laundering, corruption and abuse of office over the awarding of contracts at refugee camps.

Robert Baryamwesigwa and Fred Kiwanuka, both at the time commandants at the Bidi-Bidi refugee settlement in Yumbe district in the north of the country, were charged this week with demanding and receiving bribes of more than 393m Ugandan shillings (about £82,000).

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‘Moria is a hell’: new arrivals describe life in a Greek refugee camp

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Originally intended to hold 3,000 people, 19,000 now live at the Moria refugee camp – with no electricity, scant water and, for many, no shelter at all. Journalist Harriet Grant and photographer Giorgos Moutafis met some of those attempting to cope with life there

Above a hill on the north shore of Lesbos, volunteers watch the sea and the twinkling lights of Turkey day and night with binoculars. The coastguard hurry to respond when they see a boat approaching, trying to arrive in time to stop children falling in the icy cold water as they clamber onto rocks and beaches.

On the morning of 11 January, a group of migrants from Afghanistan make it ashore without being spotted and walk to an olive grove where they light a fire and call for help.

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Catastrophic conditions greet refugees arriving on Lesbos

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EU countries need to act urgently to support Greece with ‘unmanageable’ levels of arrivals, UN warns

It’s just getting light on the north coast of Lesbos and in an olive grove by the side of the road a group of refugees are breaking up branches and feeding a fire to keep the children warm. They are a small group, 25 people, all of them from Afghanistan. They climbed out of a boat on the shore at 1.30am and lit the fire while they called for help.

Jalila is 18 and has travelled to the Greek island alone from Afghanistan. “But these people in the boat are my new family” she says cheerily. She is in good spirits, though shivering uncontrollably.

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Two refugees killed after leaving crowded UN facility in Libya

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Circumstances of deaths raise concerns about pressure on gathering and departure facilities

The fatal shooting of two Eritrean men in Libya has raised concerns about overcrowding in UN facilities for refugees there.

The pair were reportedly killed in Tripoli last Thursday, days after the UN refugee agency had pressed them to leave a so-called gathering and departure facility (GDF).

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Trapped on Lesbos: the child refugees waiting to start a new life

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Thousands of children are living in appalling conditions on the Greek island. At the Moria camp, one Syrian teenager tells of trying to join his family in the UK

Outside the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, a shanty town made of tarpaulin strung between olive trees is getting bigger every week. There are now 18,000 people living in this second camp, designed for just over 2,000.

Ahmed (not his real name), 17, and his friend Musa wind their way up muddy tracks towards their tent, swerving to avoid groups of children running in flip-flops through the dirt.

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Norway opens its doors to 600 people evacuated from Libya to Rwanda

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Refugees and asylum seekers who found respite in Rwanda camp after escaping conflict in Libya will be resettled in Norway

Hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers evacuated from Libyan detention centres to a transit camp in Rwanda are to be resettled this year in Norway, according to Rwanda’s foreign minister.

Speaking at a news conference in Kigali on Wednesday, Rwanda’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta said the African nation was currently hosting more than 300 refugees and asylum seekers at the Gashora transit centre south of Kigali, most of whom hail from Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea, according to CGTN Africa.

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MPs vote to drop child refugee protections from Brexit bill

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Commitment to reunite children with family members in UK to be removed from withdrawal bill

The Commons has rejected proposals to keep protections for child refugees in the redrafted EU withdrawal agreement bill, triggering dismay from campaigners.

Alf Dubs, the Labour peer who successfully campaigned for this protection for refugee children in 2016, said it was a “very depressing” development.

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My father, the quiet hero: how Japan’s Schindler saved 6,000 Jews

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Chiune Sugihara’s son tells how he learned of his father’s rescue mission in Lithuania, which commemorates his achievements this year

As a child in Japan in the 1950s and 60s, Nobuki Sugihara never knew his father had saved thousands of lives. Few did. His father, Chiune Sugihara, was a trader who lived in a small coastal town about 34 miles south of Tokyo. When not on business trips to Moscow, he coached his young son in mathematics and English. He made breakfast, spreading butter on the toast so thinly “nobody could compete”.

His son had no idea his father saved 6,000 Jews during the second world war. Over six weeks in the summer of 1940, while serving as a diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara defied orders from his bosses in Tokyo, and issued several thousand visas for Jewish refugees to travel to Japan.

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The child refugees risking the Channel by boat – one year on

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Kent youth asylum seeker charity has seen a 50% rise in demand for its services since December 2018

Bridget Chapman, who swims regularly in the Channel, wasn’t surprised when desperate asylum seekers began travelling to the UK on small dinghy boats last year. On a clear day she can see France’s coastline from where she lives in Folkestone, Kent. “If you’re stuck in Calais and you can see the British coast quite clearly, it must be really tempting to think: I’ll just get a boat,” she said.

It has been a year since the then home secretary, Sajid Javid, declared the increasing number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel a “major incident”, but boat arrivals are still a regular occurrence. On Boxing Day this year, more than 60 migrants were picked up while attempting to cross in small boats.

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Religious leaders urge all to reject darkness in Christmas messages

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Embrace light and look for the good in others, say pope and archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster

The pope has said that “darkness in human hearts” results in religious persecution, social injustice, armed conflicts and fear of migrants.

In his Christmas Day message to the world, Pope Francis said: “There is darkness in human hearts, yet the light of Christ is greater still. There is darkness in economic, geopolitical and ecological conflicts, yet greater still is the light of Christ.”

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‘We never chose this’: refugees use art to imagine a better world – in pictures

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London will be the setting for a January exhibition and auction of art by people living in Moria camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos. The proceeds will go to the Hope Project, an initiative that promotes greater dignity for refugees and aims to transform the way they are seen

• Nine paintings will be exhibited in St James’s Church, Piccadilly, from 6 to 17 January 2020, while a charity auction will take place at Christie’s on 13 January

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Thousands flee north-west Syria amid fierce assault by Assad

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Up to 30,000 leave area of Idlib province as government forces push to reopen road from Damascus to Aleppo

A mass exodus of civilians from the last rebel-held stronghold in Syria has begun as thousands of people flee towards the Turkish border in the face of a fierce new military assault by Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies.

As many as 30,000 people have left the area around the town of Maarat al-Numan after four days of airstrikes and heavy shelling paved the way for Syrian government troops to push deeper into north-western Idlib province.

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‘I want to tell of our suffering’: comms crackdown puts Rohingya on mute

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The Bangladeshi government is making life hard for young people trying to document levels of hardship in the world’s largest refugee settlement

For Azimul Hassan, 19, life before he entered the world’s largest refugee settlement was always busy.

He would wake early to visit his private tutor before school, then work late every evening to finish his homework. On Fridays, he would play football with friends – he was a striker.

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New Zealand would be honoured to take Behrouz Boochani. Australia be damned | Morgan Godfery

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The moral case for the former Manus island detainee becoming a citizen is as simple as ‘asylum is a human right’

I wonder if it winds up Peter Dutton to know that Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist, award-winning author and former Manus Island detainee, is a free man in the continent’s orbit. Boochani, the best-known witness, critic and victim of Australia’s offshore “processing centres”, remains in New Zealand after his 30-day visa came to an end. No one quite knows what the No Friend But the Mountains author is planning next, but it seems safe to assume that sooner or later he’ll lodge an application for asylum in New Zealand. A permanent reminder to Dutton, his predecessors and the country’s immigration detention system that they are not as close to vanishing the “boat people” problem as they might have thought.

For their part New Zealand’s policymakers fear as much with headlines suggesting if Boochani’s hypothetical asylum application is successful it could “fuel tensions with Australia”. The problem is Behrouz Boochani, New Zealander, would enjoy free movement between his new home and his old incarcerators, unless Dutton and the gang insert new exceptions in the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement. This is the “back door” the Coalition government in Canberra is so afraid of, and the political problem preventing Scott Morrison from taking up Jacinda Ardern’s invitation to resettle the last remaining detainees on Manus.

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Brexit: Johnson condemned for dropping pledge to replace family reunion law

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Lawyers warn loss of reunion rights for unaccompanied refugee children will put them in danger

The loss of family reunion rights for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will leave them with “no options” except taking dangerous routes and using smugglers, charities in France and Greece are warning.

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, faced criticism after he told parliament he had dropped a promise to replace the EU law that allows child refugees stranded in Europe to reunite with family members in the UK after Brexit.

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‘I’m happy, but I am also broken for those left behind’: life after Manus and Nauru | Elaine Pearson

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Resettlement in the US has allowed some long-persecuted people to flourish, but that doesn’t let Australia off the hook

“To freedom.”

Imran, a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, raises a glass with a big smile. We are in a bustling restaurant on Chicago’s north side. This midwestern city seems a million miles from Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, or the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, yet it’s now home to several Rohingya men resettled under an agreement between Australia and the US.

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Greece says it’s ‘reached limit’ as arrivals of refugees show no sign of slowing

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EU must share responsibility for influx, says Greece, as it forms controversial plans to build ‘prison’ camps for migrants

Sometimes en masse, sometimes alone they keep on arriving: in rickety boats carrying men, women and children looking for a freedom they hope Europe will offer.

Despite winter’s limited daylight and whiplash-heavy storms and rains, the number of asylum seekers landing on Greek shores shows no sign of abating. Not since Europe’s historic agreement with Turkey to curb migrant flows at the height of Syria’s civil war in March 2016 have arrivals been so high.

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Birth of boy sparks renewed calls to rescue Australians in Syria’s squalid al-Hawl camp

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Brutal winter, poor healthcare and limited food raises fears for welfare of infant, born to Sydney woman Rayan Hamdoush

An Australian woman has given birth to a baby boy in the al-Hawl camp in Syria, prompting revived calls for Australia to rescue 67 nationals still held in the camp.

Rayan Hamdoush, 24, from western Sydney, was pregnant when she entered al-Hawl. She gave birth to the boy on 30 November. The boy’s father, Samer Hajj Obeid, also from Sydney, is missing.

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The UN’s fight for Palestinian refugees goes on – but its key agency needs help

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From Israel’s hostility to Trump’s withdrawal of US funding, the UNRWA faces unprecedented challenges. Timely financial and diplomatic support is key

Today, on the 70th anniversary of its founding, the UN Relief and Works Agency, the UN’s main refugee agency serving Palestinians, is facing unprecedented challenges.

It has become a key battleground in Donald Trump’s war against multilateralism and his unilateral attempts to redefine the Middle East peace process along a track proposed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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