Tag Archives: Migrant Crisis

U.N. seeks Syrian peace talks this week, opposition threatens boycott

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Monday it would issue invitations for marathon Syrian peace talks to begin this week, but opposition groups signaled they would stay away unless the government and its Russian allies halt air strikes and lift sieges on towns.

The first talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war were meant to begin on Monday but have been held up in part by a dispute over who should represent the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said he was still working on his list, and expected to issue the invitations on Tuesday for talks to start on Friday.

The aim would be six months of talks, first seeking a ceasefire, later working toward a political settlement to a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, driven more than 10 million from their homes and drawn in global powers.

The ceasefire would cover the whole country except parts held by Islamic State militants and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

De Mistura, whose two predecessors quit in apparent frustration after holding failed peace conferences of their own, acknowledged the going would be difficult. Delegations would meet in separate rooms in “proximity talks”, with diplomats shuttling between them. Threats to pull out should be expected.

“Don’t be surprised: there will be a lot of posturing, a lot of walk-outs or walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or someone has done an attack…. You should neither be depressed nor impressed, but it’s likely to happen,” he said. “The important thing is to keep momentum.”

The spokesman for one of the rebel groups in the opposition High Negotiating Committee (HNC) said it was impossible for the opposition to attend as long as rebel territory is being pounded by air strikes and besieged towns are being starved.

“It is impossible to give up any of our demands. If we attend, it’s as if we are selling our martyrs,” said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for Alwiyat Seif al-Sham, one of the groups fighting against Assad’s forces in the southwest.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected clarity within a day or two over who would attend, and expressed support for de Mistura’s decision to take time to draw up the list.

“We don’t want to decide and have it crumble on day one. It’s worth taking a day or two, or three, or whatever,” Kerry said during a visit to Laos.

The outcome was up to the Syrian parties, he added: “They have to be serious. If they are not serious, war will continue. Up to them. You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make it drink.”

RUSSIAN INTERVENTION

Years of high-level diplomacy have so far yielded no progress toward ending or even curbing the fighting. Since the last peace conference was held in early 2014, Islamic State fighters have declared a caliphate across much of Syria and Iraq, and the war has drawn in world powers.

The United States has led air strikes against the militants since 2014, and Russia launched a separate air campaign nearly four months ago against enemies of its ally Assad.

Russian firepower has helped the Syrian military and its allies achieve military gains, including a major push in the northwest of the country in recent days, with rebels acknowledging a turn in momentum.

The rise of Islamic State and Russia’s entry into the war have given new impetus to diplomacy, leading to a Dec. 18 U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by Washington and Moscow, that called for peace talks.

But world powers remain at odds over who should be invited. Russia says opposition figures it calls terrorists must be excluded, and wants to include groups like the Kurds who control wide areas of northern Syria. Regional heavyweight Turkey opposes inviting the Kurds.

The main Sunni Arab opposition groups, who are supported by Arab governments and the West, say they will not attend unless they can choose their own delegation. Spokesman Salim al-Muslat said the opposition HNC would discuss its position on Tuesday.

The HNC, formed in Saudi Arabia last month and grouping armed and political opponents of Assad, has repeatedly said talks cannot begin until air strikes are halted, government sieges of rebel-held territory lifted and detainees freed, steps outlined in the U.N. resolution.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to sit and talk to anyone without the suffering being lifted first,” Muslat said on Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

SUICIDE BOMBING

The peace conference, if it takes place, will be the third since the war began and the first convened by de Mistura, a veteran diplomat with dual Swedish and Italian nationality.

All previous diplomatic efforts foundered over the future role of Assad, with the opposition refusing to back off its demand that he leave power and the president refusing to go.

A suicide bomber driving a fuel tank truck blew himself up at a checkpoint run by the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham in the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, killing at least 23 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Rebel forces lost the town of Rabiya in Latakia province over the weekend, their second major setback near the Turkish border in northwestern Syria in recent weeks as the government and Russia seek to cut rebel supply lines to Turkey.

“It’s a major pullback for us, but it is not over. We have 17 martyrs and 30 wounded. And none of the injuries are from bullets: it is all due to shrapnel from missiles, proof of how we are struggling to fend off Russian air strikes,” Firas Pasa, a leader of an ethnic Turkmen rebel group told Reuters in Gaziantep, Turkey, near the border.

“If the West wants us to defeat Syrian government forces then we urgently need anti-aircraft capabilities,” he said.

A member of Ahrar al-Sham, Abu Baraa al-Lathkani, said the rebels had abandoned the strategy of trying to hold territory and were shifting to guerrilla tactics.

The Syrian military, its morale running high, is planning the next phase of its offensive in northern Syria. The coming target is Idlib, a rebel stronghold, said a military source.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, David Brunnstrom in Vientiane, Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Hungary’s prime minister seeks fence to help reduce migrant flow

BRDO PRI KRANJU, Slovenia (Reuters) – Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that a fence should be erected on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece to curb the inflow of migrants into Europe.

“If we cannot secure the outer border (of the EU), regardless of how costly or demanding that is, we will destroy the Schengen regime by ourselves,” Orban said, referring to Europe’s free-travel area.

He was speaking during a one-day visit to Slovenia.

Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar told the same news conference the European Union needed a joint solution within weeks to the migrant crisis to avoid possible conflicts between countries.

“We do not have time until spring to find a solution. We need a solution within weeks … if not, we can expect conflicts between countries,” Cerar said.

“The (migrant) situation is entirely out of control and has nothing to do with humanitarianism, integration and help,” Cerar added.

Over 411,000 migrants have entered Slovenia since Hungary fenced off its borders in October and pushed the migrant flow to the west through Slovenia. Almost all of them continued on their way to Austria and further north to Germany and other EU states.

Slovenia on Thursday followed Austria with an announcement that it will reject all migrants apart from the ones seeking asylum in Austria or Germany.

Over the past months Slovenia, too, has erected about 156 kilometers of fence on its southern border with Croatia to ensure that migrants can only enter the country through official border crossings.

Cerar said Slovenia would pull the fence down as soon as a joint EU solution to the migrant crisis is found.

Orban said Bulgaria, which lies north of Greece, should also join the Schengen area as it has shown that it is ready to secure its borders.

(Reporting By Marja Novak; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

At least 43 migrants drown as boats capsize off Greek islands

ATHENS (Reuters) – At least 43 people, including 17 children, drowned when their boats capsized off two Greek islands near the Turkish coast on Friday, coastguards said, marking one of the deadliest days for migrants risking the perilous route to Europe from Turkey.

According to survivors’ testimonies, dozens were on board a wooden sailboat which went down off Kalolimnos, a small island in the Aegean Sea close to Turkey’s coast, one coastguard official said.

Twenty six people were rescued and at least 35 migrants drowned in one of the worst incidents in months, the official said. It was not clear why the vessel capsized, but witnesses said strong winds were blowing at the time.

Fishing vessels assisted the search and rescue operation which lasted hours.

“They weren’t wearing life jackets, I don’t understand. They couldn’t swim,” Michalis, a local fisherman, told Reuters.

He rescued three migrants but one of them, a 50-year old man, later died in his small fishing boat. “The hospital is now full of dead people.”

Survivors said that more people were missing, he said. “There must have been a lot of people on board. It was one of those closed yachts with a small hatch. You can imagine what happened if it had a lot of people on board,” the fisherman said.

In the sinking at Farmakonisi, another small island also close to the Turkish coast, six children and two women drowned when their wooden boat crashed on rocks shortly after midnight. Another 40 migrants on the vessel managed to swim to the shore.

“Once again, last night ruthless human smugglers at the Turkish coast crammed dozens of refugees and migrants in risky and unseaworthy vessels and led innocent people, even young children to perish,” the shipping ministry said in a statement.

The International Organization for Migration said the deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean already make this “the deadliest January on record”.

The latest incidents bring the number of people killed on the eastern Mediterranean route in the past year to at least 900, said IOM spokesman Joel Millman in Geneva.

The total number of arrivals in Europe by sea rose to about 37,000 in January, more than six times the combined figures for the same month in 2014 and 2015, usually a slow month due to the bad weather.

Fleeing war, thousands of mainly Syrian refugees have braved rough seas this year to make the short, but precarious, journey from Turkey to Greece’s islands, from which most continue to mainland Greece and northward into wealthier western Europe.

Winter conditions make the journey even more dangerous.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, George Georgiopoulos and Theodora Arvanitidou in Athens and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Senate blocks bill for tighter Syrian refugee screening

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats narrowly blocked legislation on Wednesday that would slow the entry of refugees from Syria and Iraq into the United States in a contentious vote cloaked in presidential election-year politics.

The vote was 55-43, with “yes” votes falling short of the 60 needed to advance the Republican-backed measure in the 100-member Senate. No Republicans voted against the bill, and only two Democrats backed it.

Among other things, the bill would have required high-level U.S. officials to verify that each refugee from Iraq and Syria posed no security risk before being allowed into the United States.

Republicans said the tighter screening was essential to ensure the safety of Americans and prevent attacks within the country by Islamic State and other militant groups.

Democrats called the legislation an attack on people who are fleeing war. They accused Republicans of holding the vote to allow their 2016 presidential candidates in the Senate to back legislation touted as tough on security.

All three of the Senate Republican 2016 presidential hopefuls, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, backed the bill.

Democrats had also sought to play politics. They tried and failed to reach a deal with Republicans that would have set up a vote on an amendment establishing a religious test for would-be immigrants.

That vote was planned to see if Republicans would side against 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has advocated barring Muslims from entering the United States.

The Syria refugee bill passed the House by a large, bipartisan margin in November days after the Nov. 13 Islamic State attacks in Paris, supported by dozens of Democrats who broke from their party despite Democratic President Barack Obama’s threatened veto.

“We need to talk about efforts to defeat ISIS, not creating more paperwork for cabinet secretaries,” Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, told reporters before the vote.

It currently takes 18-24 months for Syrian refugees to be screened before they can move to the United States.

The United States has offered refuge to far fewer of the millions fleeing war in Syria and Iraq than many of its closest allies in Europe and the Middle East.

Obama announced last year that he would admit 10,000 Syrians, a plan opposed by many Republicans as a potential threat to U.S. security.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Eric Beech and Cynthia Osterman)

Austria to slash asylum claims, strengthen border checks

VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year’s total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up “massively”- but how that would be done was unclear.

Germany said on Wednesday Austria’s decision was “not helpful” to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution with the support of Turkey, from which most migrants reach the European continent.

Hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into Austria, a small Alpine republic of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria’s population, applied for asylum last year.

Public fears about immigration have fueled support for the far right, and calls for a ceiling on the number of migrants by members of the centre-right People’s Party within the coalition government have grown.

“We cannot take in all asylum seekers in Austria, or in Germany or in Sweden,” Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has resisted calls to cap immigration, told a joint news conference, referring to the countries that have taken in the most migrants.

The government plan announced on Wednesday provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria’s population, spread over the next four years.

Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019.

Asked what would happen if the number of people who wanted to apply for asylum exceeded that figure, Faymann said only that experts were due to examine the issue.

“We must also step up controls at our borders massively,” Faymann told the joint news conference with Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner and other officials, without explaining what that would involve.

Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said one option would be to accept asylum requests without processing them.

“The (other) option of not having to accept asylum requests at the Austrian border is now being checked, and to send these people back, to deport them back to our safe neighbor states,” she told public broadcaster ORF.

Slovenian police said later on Wednesday that Slovenia planned “the same action” as Austria on its southern border with Croatia if Austria, which lies north of Slovenia, took further steps to limit the inflow of migrants.

The Dutch prime minister, whose government currently chairs EU ministerial councils, said Austria’s move illustrated the kind of national action likely to multiply if the 28-nation EU did not start implementing a commonly agreed strategy on asylum before a likely “spike” in arrivals with spring weather.

Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed “we have to think about a plan B”.

As Germany has firmed up border controls in recent months, Austria has often followed. Austria’s interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe.

Faymann said he had discussed his government’s plans in principle with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their Slovenian counterpart.

Faymann referred to the measures as a second-best option while awaiting a European solution involving securing the EU’s external borders, setting up centers there for people to apply for asylum, and spreading them around the bloc.

(Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Marja Novak in Ljubljana and by the Brussels bureau; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Winter brings new dangers for migrants crossing frozen Balkan peninsula

PRESEVO/SID, Serbia (Reuters) – Migrants braved temperatures as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday to cross frozen Balkan borders en route to western Europe, visibly unprepared for winter and in increasing danger from the cold.

Governments and aid agencies along the route have laid on heated tents and mobilized trains and buses to support the flow of migrants, most of them refugees from the war in Syria winding across the Balkan peninsula.

But the sheer numbers – though down from a summer peak of some 10,000 to just under 2,000 per day – mean many spend nights sleeping on tent floors.

A Reuters photographer saw children crying from the cold as they walked or were carried several kilometers across the Macedonian-Serbian border to waiting buses.

The United Nations and aid agencies warned on Tuesday that children were particularly at risk given their lack of adequate clothing or access to sufficient nutrition.

A spokesman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said the risk of children freezing to death was “clearly very, very high.”

Most migrants wore jackets and sneakers; some had hats and gloves, and many were wrapped in gray blankets handed out by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

“It’s too cold, but what can I do? I’m wearing everything I have but it’s still too cold,” said a 22-year-old man at the town of Sid on the Serbian-Croatian border. He gave his name as Amr and said he was from the Iraqi town of Fallujah, where Islamic State militants hold sway.

On the highway in Serbia, hundreds of migrants received hot soup, tea and gloves from aid groups at a disused motel that has been turned into a refugee camp.

More than a million people fleeing war, poverty and repression in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe’s shores last year, most heading for Germany.

Aid agencies expect a similar number this year, testing the willingness of a divided Europe to take them in and putting unprecedented strain on the continent’s commitment to a Schengen zone of open borders.

(Writing by Matt Robinson, editing by Sarah Young)

U.N. seeks $1.3 billion in humanitarian funding for South Sudan

NAIROBI (Reuters) – The United Nations is seeking $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid for South Sudan, where two in ten of the population have been driven from their homes during two years of conflict.

More than 10,000 people have been killed and 2.3 million displaced since the country’s civil war broke out in December 2013, when soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir first clashed with troops who backed his deputy, Riek Machar.

Eugene Owusu, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, said $1.3 billion would be the “bare minimum” needed to support 5.1 million people in the country facing life-threatening circumstances. “The challenge we face is unprecedented,” he said.

The U.N. said more than 680,000 children below the age of five are believed to be acutely malnourished.

Much of the fighting has been along ethnic lines between Kiir’s Dinka community and Machar’s Nuer people.

Progress on a peace deal signed last year has been slow, with both sides accusing the other of violating the agreement and dragging their heels over plans to form a government of national unity.

The war has also devastated South Sudan’s economy, slashing the oil production that funds most public spending.

(Reporting by Drazen Jorgic; editing by John Stonestreet)

EU official warns Europe has two months to tackle migration crisis

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – European Council President Donald Tusk issued a stark warning on Tuesday that the European Union had “no more than two months” to tackle the migration crisis engulfing the 28-nation bloc or else face the collapse of its passport-free Schengen zone.

Tusk was speaking to the European Parliament in Strasbourg amid growing frustration in Brussels and Germany – the bloc’s biggest economy and main destination for migrants arriving in Europe – that the EU seems unable to get its act together on its worst migration crisis since World War Two.

“We have no more than two months to get things under control,” Tusk, who chairs the summits of EU leaders, said.

“The March European Council (summit) will be the last moment to see if our strategy works. If it doesn’t, we will face grave consequences such as the collapse of Schengen.”

The European Council summit on March 17-18 will focus mainly on the migrant crisis. The Schengen system has already been suspended in some countries like Denmark, Germany and Sweden, which have introduced controls at their borders in order to stem the flow of migrant and refugee arrivals.

Tusk said that EU governments have failed to deliver on commitments to curb the flow of refugees and migrants reaching Europe, with more than 1 million arrivals last year and figures showing little sign of decreasing over the winter months.

A landmark deal with Turkey, which is meant to keep more people on its soil in exchange for funding for migrants and reviving its long-stalled EU membership talks, “was still to bear fruit”, Tusk said.

On creating the bloc’s joint border guard – another measure to address the migration crisis – Tusk said he expected a political agreement between EU leaders when they meet for a summit in June.

He said the EU would “fail as a political project” if it could not control its external borders properly.

The crisis has exposed bitter disputes among EU countries, with some blaming Greece and Italy for letting too many people in. Athens and Rome say Germany’s initial open-door policy encouraged more arrivals than anyone could cope with.

DEAL WITH BRITAIN

Tusk also said he would present his detailed proposal on talks with Britain ahead of a summit next month over its demands for changes to the bloc that London says are necessary for the country to stay in.

The most contentious demand is to allow London to curb benefit payments to EU migrants for four years after they arrive in Britain.

“There will be no compromise on fundamental values on non-discrimination and free movement,” Tusk said. “At the same time, I will do everything in my power to find a satisfactory solution also for the British side.”

He said time he would try to obtain a deal in February.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska and Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

UN report details horrors affecting Iraqi civilians

The ongoing violence in Iraq killed nearly 4,000 civilians in just six months last year and thousands more are being held as slaves, according to a new report from the United Nations.

The report, a project of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, was released Tuesday and shines a light on the extent of the toll that the Islamic State’s presence in Iraq is taking on the nation’s civilian population.

“The violence suffered by civilians in Iraq remains staggering,” the report reads. “The so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

The report indicates at least 3,855 civilians were killed between May 1 and October 31 of last year, pushing the total number of civilian deaths in the country since the start of 2014 to 18,802.

“Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq. The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said in a statement.

The report indicates at least 7,056 civilians were wounded in Iraq during the six-month window last year. In total, there have been at least 36,245 civilians wounded since the beginning of 2014.

Some 3.2 million people have been displaced within Iraq over the past two years, the UN report found.

The report documents reasons they may be fleeing their homes, including the Islamic State’s gruesome execution techniques.

It cites many reports of public beheadings and several instances in which civilians were thrown from rooftops, as well as one incident in which militants forced nine people to lay down in a Mosul street and then ran them over with a bulldozer in front of a crowd of onlookers.

Some civilians who weren’t killed or injured are being sold into slavery, the report found.

The agencies behind the report wrote they believe the Islamic State currently holds roughly 3,500 people in slavery, many of whom are women the terrorist group is holding as sex slaves.

The Islamic State is also abducting children and training them to become soldiers, according to the report, and captured between 800 and 900 children in one single incident in Mosul.

But Iraqi civilians are facing threats to their safety from other organizations, the UN reported.

The report documents a series of acts allegedly carried out by pro-government forces, including abductions, illegal killings and evictions of people who were trying to escape violence. The acts may represent a violation of international humanitarian law, the UN agencies said in the report.

“This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee to Europe and other regions. This is the horror they face in their homelands,” Hussein said in a statement.

Children on Syrian refugee route could freeze to death, U.N. says

GENEVA (Reuters) – Thousands of refugee children traveling along the migration route through Turkey and southeastern Europe are at risk from a sustained spell of freezing weather in the next two weeks, the United Nations and aid agencies said on Tuesday.

The U.N. weather agency said it forecast below-normal temperatures and heavy snowfall in the next two weeks in the eastern Balkan peninsula, Turkey, the eastern Mediterranean and Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan.

“Many children on the move do not have adequate clothing or access to the right nutrition,” said Christophe Boulierac, spokesman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

Asked if children could freeze to death, he told a news briefing: “The risk is clearly very, very high.”

Children were coming ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos wearing only T-shirts and soaking wet after traveling on unseaworthy rubber dinghies, the charity Save the Children said in a statement.

“Aid workers at the border reception center in Presevo say there is six inches of snow on the ground and children are arriving with blue lips, distressed and shaking from the cold,” it said.

It said temperatures were forecast to drop to -4 degrees Fahrenheit in Presevo in Serbia and 9 degrees Fahrenheit on the Greek border with Macedonia.

Last year children accounted for a quarter of the one million migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in Europe, Boulierac said. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said a daily average of 1,708 people had arrived in Greece so far in January, just under half the December daily average of 3,508.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Dominic Evans)