Refugee crisis. Something on the scale of the Marshall plan required?

[teqniq]

i am liking the sound of this guy.

An Italian mayor has been arrested for rejuvenating his town's economy by accepting migrants

 

[yield]

Migrant disappearances mark the journey to Europe
01/11/18

As global migration has soared to record highs, far less visible has been its toll: The tens of thousands of people who die or simply disappear during their journeys, never to be seen again. A growing number of migrants have drowned, died in deserts or fallen prey to traffickers, leaving their families to wonder what on earth happened to them. At the same time, anonymous bodies are filling cemeteries around the world.

In most cases, nobody is keeping track: Barely counted in life, these people don’t register in death, as if they never lived at all.

An Associated Press tally has documented at least 56,800 migrants dead or missing worldwide since 2014 — almost double the number found in the world’s only official attempt to try to count them, by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration. The IOM toll as of Oct. 1 was more than 28,500.

The IOM’s research was prompted by two shipwrecks and the deaths of at least 368 people off the coast of Italy in October 2013. It has focused mostly on fatalities in the Mediterranean, although its researchers plead for more data from elsewhere in the world. This year alone, the IOM has found more than 1,900 deaths in the waters that divide Africa and Europe, and more than 17,000 since 2014.

But even there, many of those who go missing are uncounted, including boatfuls of young Tunisians or Algerians and children whose parents lost track of them in the chaos of land border crossings. In all, The Associated Press found nearly 4,900 people whose families say they simply disappeared without a trace in Europe or en route, including more than 2,700 children whose families reported them missing to the Red Cross.

56,800 since 2014.

 

[zahir]

A reminder that the Greek refugee crisis hasn’t gone away.

Samos Island Notes January 2019

 

[zahir]

General strike on Samos over the presence of the refugee hotspot.

Striking for Refugees on Samos?

But what to make of a rare event in which groups such as the church and the local government, not known for their sympathy with the refugees were now joining with business associations, trade unions, political parties and local societies in support of a one day general strike? And this time, the central argument for closing the Hotspot on Samos was because of its intolerable and inhumane conditions. It is clear that the support from some of the less sympathetic (to refugees) was based on their assessment that the blindly evident horror of the hotspot was now their best way of getting it off the island. Nevertheless with many provisos the general strike suggested some solidarity with the refugees which does seem like a small step forward.

As for the strike itself there was one overwhelming question as far as I was concerned: “Where were the refugees?” What was supposed to be an act of solidarity was massively diminished by their absence. Yet on fine weather days such as this, you will always see many refugees on the streets, walking by the sea front or with their children in the play areas. But on this day, apart from a scattering of young African men on the very edges of the gathering, there were no refugees to be seen. It was startling and disturbing.

It is not clear as to what happened. KKE (the Greek communist party) claimed that the police stopped refugees from coming down from the camp and closed some of the access roads into the town. And their argument that the police were under orders from Athens to prevent any sign of solidarity between the refugees and the locals makes some sense. However, it was clear from the refugees we met that there had been no serious attempt to engage them in the general strike. There were no refugees on the speaker’s platform, and in the publicity for the event all the posters were in Greek. Had there been any effort to engage with the refugees, who themselves have marched through the streets of Samos town two times in the past month protesting their conditions, it would have been difficult for the police to keep refugees away.

 

[yield]

'This Is Our Jungle': Abysmal Conditions for Refugees in the Greek Islands - SPIEGEL ONLINE - International

The camp and the hillsides surrounding it are currently home to some 3,800 migrants despite having been intended to house just 648 people. No other "hotspot" in the Aegean Islands is as overcrowded. And because the migrants aren't allowed to leave, Samos has developed into a kind of prison. The situation, says the aid organization Doctors Without Borders, is out of control.

 

[yield]

Up to 70 dead after boat capsizes trying to reach Europe from Libya
10/05/19

As many as 70 people trying to reach Europe from Libya have drowned after their vessel capsized in the deadliest such incident in the Mediterranean since January.

According to survivors, at least 16 of whom were rescued, the boat left Zuwara in Libya, where renewed warfare between rival factions has gripped the capital, Tripoli, in the past five weeks. The vessel capsized 40 miles off the coast of Sfax, south of Tunis, as it headed towards Italy.

The survivors reported that a Tunisian fishing boat came to their rescue and transferred them to a Tunisian coastguard vessel.

The incident came as overall number of people reaching Europe has decreased, whilethe journey has become increasingly dangerous.

 

[teqniq]

Disgusting.

Migrants: 'Lifeline' NGO ship captain convicted in Malta - General news - ANSAMed

The capital of a migrant rescue ship operated by German NGO "Mission Lifenie" has been sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000 euros by a court in Malta. A court in La Valletta, the Dresda-based NGO was quoted as saying by German media, convicted Claud-Peter Reisch for registration irregularities. The ship Lifeline rescued over 230 migrants off Libya's coast but the Maltese court said the vessel violated registration rules.

Lifenine's spokesman Axel Steier announced an appeal, saying the captain is innocent: "The ruling is scandalous. It is clearly a political sentence". At the time of the rescue operation, the vessel was registered under the Dutch flag....

 

[teqniq]

More info here, in German.

https://www.bazonline.ch/ich-war-noch-nie-zum-spass-auf-see/story/31855284

 

[teqniq]

Fortress Europe has a lot to answer for in this.

Opinion: I’m a refugee in a detention centre in Libya – this is how it feels when the world stops caring

I am a refugee detained on the dangerous front lines of Tripoli’s conflict.

There is barely any food and clean water. There is no rest with the noise of heavy weapons. Even now, the guards abuse us.

I feel terrible about the loss of my brothers and sisters two weeks ago, who had been detained for years in Tajoura camp just waiting for relocation and to get their freedom, before they were killed in an air strike. It is a crime I can’t forget. Who is responsible for their death?

We panic every day. We are dying slowly, because of too much depression and starvation. Thinking too much makes it hard for me to sleep. I'm always conscious of the airplanes which come in the night....

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Turkish State begun to deport Syrian refugees en masse back to the war zones in Syria and border cities

What is worse is that the Turkish left is totally complicit in all these racist attacks on the Syrian and other immigrants. Ever hostile to proletarian internationalism, the main body of the Turkish left sees its best opportunity to seize power positions in an alliance with a moderately secular racist Kemalist regime, as opposed to the conservative racism of the AKP. Turkish left is completely incapable of envisioning an internationalist world without borders. In the last elections almost all major parties supported the openly anti-Arab mainstream opposition coalition. For instance, ODPs leader (Freedom and Solidarity Party), one of the biggest left-wing parties in Turkey agreed to ran in the Kemalist CHPs list in Istanbul municipal elections, TKP (the mainstream stalinist party) pulled out from the election in June (in support of the CHP candidate) and HDP (the Kurdish opposition party, which many socialist parties and groups support) openly supported the CHP candidate for Istanbul. For these nationalist left-wing groups and parties uniting under the banner of an anti-Arabic coalition is convenient, since they can't envision a secular and internationalist program. From the Turkish left's standpoint the choice is between islamism or secularism. Instead of a class struggle perspective this is the fake bourgeois duality they accept and force upon the working class.

Internationalists in Europe, the middle East and elsewhere should know that:
1) Turkey has become a vast concentration camp for immigrants from the middle East and Africa.
2) The EU's policies against immigrants are more vicious, sinister and successful than even that of the US. By turning huge countries in its periphery (not only Turkey but also Libya etc) into prisons, the EU indirectly and de facto reestablished slavery. EU capitalists are taking in as many immigrant laborers as they need to exploit for cheap and they are expelling the rest to be exploited or die in even worse conditions in its peripheral slave states like Turkey.
3) Internationalists can not turn a blind eye to the suffering of immigrant proletarians in these states, nor they can trust the local official left-wing groups and parties. These middle-class nationalist parties are openly racist and chauvinist and they are tailing behind the government or official bourgeois opposition parties.
4) To show class solidarity, the first practical step the European internationalists can take is to tell the workers of Europe the truth about the situation of immigrants in Turkey. The EU policies must be exposed and its covert support for Turkey must be stopped.

 

[teqniq]

The more i hear about her, the more respect i have.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-skipper-idUSKCN1VB1VI

Paris awarded Pia Klemp and her compatriot Carola Rakete the Grand Vermeil Medal in July for their repeated bravery in bringing migrants to shore despite Italian efforts to stop them.

“We do not need authorities deciding who is a ‘hero’ and who is ‘illegal’,” Klemp said in a statement on Facebook late on Tuesday.

Addressing Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, she wrote: “You want to award me a medal ... because our crews ‘work to rescue migrants from difficult conditions on a daily basis’.

“At the same time your police steal blankets from people you force to live on the streets while you suppress protests and criminalize people who defend the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.”...

 

[yield]

Greek refugee camp for 640 people is found to be housing 3,745
13/11/19

An EU-funded refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos built to house 640 people is home to 3,745, with unaccompanied children forced to sleep on the floor of windowless and overcrowded containers, an official audit has revealed.

Other children were found to be living in makeshift tents or in derelict buildings on the outskirts of the camp in what the special report from the European court of auditors described as “dire conditions”.

“Seventy-eight unaccompanied minors were in tents or abandoned derelict houses outside the hot spot, in unofficial extensions to the facility,” the auditors said. “Nine unaccompanied girls were sleeping on the floor in a 10 metre sq container next to the police office, with no bathroom or shower.”

The situation at Greek facilities on Samos and at the island of Lesbos are described as “highly critical in terms of capacity and the situation of unaccompanied minors”, due to a failure of the bloc’s relocation and return scheme for migrants coming to Europe from countries such as Syria.

 

[teqniq]

FFS

Home Office ‘ignoring offers to give homes to child refugees’

The Home Office has been accused of ignoring more than 1,400 offers from local councils to house child refugees, prompting criticism that Boris Johnson’s government is defying its obligations to offer sanctuary to vulnerable minors. Councils across the UK have volunteered to take hundreds of unaccompanied children from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. However, numbers of arrivals are said to be “pitifully low to nonexistent”....

 

[teqniq]

Beyond disgusting:

MPs vote against protecting rights of child refugees after Brexit

Amendment to Boris Johnson’s legislation tabled by former refugee from Nazis

www.independent.co.uk

 

[not-bono-ever]

fucking pigs .

 

[teqniq]

In light of recent events this article has some uncomfortable truths.

Detention, torture and killing … how the EU outsourced migration policy | Kenan Malik

Only a morally warped ideology can justify opening fire at those fleeing for their lives

www.theguardian.com

 

[teqniq]

 

[yield]

Where Will Everyone Go?
ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center, have for the first time modeled how climate refugees might move across international borders. This is what we found.
July 23, 2020

People are already beginning to flee. In Southeast Asia, where increasingly unpredictable monsoon rainfall and drought have made farming more difficult, the World Bank points to more than 8 million people who have moved toward the Middle East, Europe and North America. In the African Sahel, millions of rural people have been streaming toward the coasts and the cities amid drought and widespread crop failures. Should the flight away from hot climates reach the scale that current research suggests is likely, it will amount to a vast remapping of the world’s populations.

 

[teqniq]

This has to be all kinds of illegal, but they appear to be beyond giving a fuck:

 

[zahir]

Fire at the Moria camp on Lesvos.

Moria: “Time bomb” exploded, burned down Hotspot & “European values” - Keep Talking Greece

It was short before Tuesday midnight when fires broke out in several parts in- and outside the Moria

www.keeptalkinggreece.com

1,000s flee fire at migrant camp on virus lockdown in Greece | eKathimerini.com

Thousands of migrants fled a camp under Covid-19 lockdown after multiple fires gutted much of the site on the Greek island of Lesvos, authorities said early Wednesday.

www.ekathimerini.com

 

[zahir]

 

[zahir]

A thread with some background:

 

[zahir]

BBC radio report recorded before the second fire destroyed the rest of the camp.

Newshour - Fire destroys Greece's largest migrant camp - BBC Sounds

Moria, a migrant camp on the island of Lesbos, was home to nearly 13,000 people.

www.bbc.co.uk

Thread from the MSF representative interviewed in the report.

 

[zahir]

Samos - the refugee presence starting to look permanent.

Hope and Fear: Samos Island September 2020

Roger came by the house yesterday evening. In his early 20s Roger is from Gaza. He’s full of energy and ideas and has been like this since he arrived in Samos over a year ago. His days are full of …

samoschronicles.wordpress.com

Because so many refugees are now confined on Samos for months even years and are also concentrated in Vathi we have seen a slow but deepening of contacts between locals and refugees. There are growing numbers on both sides of this divided population who are recognising that they have much in common and need to work together. The creation of Just Action which provides food aid to both locals and refugees is probably the clearest example of this shifting dynamic. Roger and his friends, as well as those working in Open Doors and Just Action are amongst those who are now talking and thinking about how they can join together and help create new bonds of solidarity between the refugees and the locals. Albeit for differing reasons in part, both groups know that they have been abandoned; they get nothing but the barest minimum from the state and they expect nothing. Growing numbers are beginning to realise that together they can do better.

Not all the refugees live in the camp. Over recent years there are many hundreds of families and groups renting homes and some neighbourhoods in Vathi are dominated by ‘refugee’ households. I use ‘ ‘ because there are a growing number of those gaining asylum in Greece who are deciding that Samos island is preferable to Athens or Thessaloniki as a place to live and be safe (especially with respect to the children). In other words they are no longer refugees in the formal sense. They will not go to the new camp. They will remain in Vathi and try to make their lives there, at least for some years.

 

[zahir]

Covid on Lesvos. 135 cases in the new camp.

 

[teqniq]

Inside the smuggler’s warehouse: Africa’s 21st-century slave trade

 

[teqniq]

'Black book' of thousands of illegal migrant pushbacks presented to EU

 

[nottsgirl]

100 people feared dead after shipwreck in the Med.

More than 100 asylum seekers feared dead after shipwreck off Libya

Dozens of bodies have been spotted near a capsized vessel which had about 130 people on board

www.google.com

 

[teqniq]

 

[teqniq]

Absolute scum:

Tufton Street think tank Migration Watch uses Ukraine crisis to attack other refugees

Migration Watch has suggested that while Ukrainian refugees are worthy of protection, those arriving on boats are 'scammers'.

leftfootforward.org