Tag Archives: Migrants

Greece starts moving migrants camped at border to state facilities

A refugee and a child warm themselves next to a bonfire next to tents set next to a gas station near the village of Idomeni

By Phoebe Fronista and Fedja Grulovic

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Greek police on Tuesday started moving some of the 8,000 migrants and refugees stranded in a makeshift camp on the sealed northern border with Macedonia to state-run facilities further south.

Several busloads of people, most of them families with children, left the sprawling expanse of tents at Idomeni early on Tuesday and about a dozen more buses were lined up ready to take more, Reuters witnesses said.

At the latest tally, about 8,200 people were camped at Idomeni. At one point more than 12,000 lived there after several Balkan countries shut their borders in February, barring migrants and refugees from central and northern Europe.

Greek authorities said they planned to move individuals gradually to state-supervised facilities further south which currently have capacity of about 5,000 people. The operation is expected to last several days.

“The evacuation is progressing without any problem,” said Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migrant crisis. People would be relocated “ideally by the end of the week,” he said. “We haven’t put a strict deadline on it.”

A Reuters witness on the Macedonian side of the border said there was a heavy police presence in the area but no problems were reported as people with young children packed up huge bags with their belongings.

Media on the Greek side of the border were kept at a distance. Inside the Idomeni camp, police in riot gear stood guard as people from the camp boarded the buses, footage by the state broadcaster ERT showed. Some 1,100 refugees and migrants had been relocated by noon, Greek police said.

A police official said about 1,000 people were blocking the sole railway tracks linking Greece and Macedonia. Protesters demanding passage to northern Europe have for weeks blocked the route, forcing trains to divert through Bulgaria to the east. Some goods wagons have been stranded on the tracks for weeks.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged Greece to refrain from using force during the transfer of the migrants and refugees.

“It’s important that organised movements are voluntary, non-discriminatory and based on well-informed choices by the individuals,” spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing in Geneva.

International charity Save the Children said it was concerned about a lack of basic services such as bathrooms and shelters in the official camps.

“Many of the children, especially lone children, have been through enough trauma already,” said Amy Frost, team leader in Greece.

“Now that the evacuation has started, it is paramount that authorities make it a priority to keep families together, and to ensure that children are being transferred to facilities where they can live in conditions that meet European and international standards for child welfare,” she said.

(Additional reporting by Angeliki Koutantou in ATHENS and Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA; Writing by Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Libyan coastguard intercepts 850 migrants at sea

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan coastguards intercepted about 850 migrants on Sunday off the coast near the western city of Sabratha, a spokesman said.

Ayoub Qassem said the migrants were from various African countries and among them were 79 women, including 11 who were pregnant, as well as 11 children. They were traveling in inflatable rubber boats, he said.

Libya is a major departure point for mainly sub-Saharan African migrants trying to reach Europe through crossings arranged by people smugglers. Migrants are often given flimsy boats that are ill-equipped for traveling across the Mediterranean.

The flow of migrants has increased amid the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising against long-time Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

More than 30,000 have already crossed on the central Mediterranean route to Italy this year, and more are expected to attempt the journey in calmer weather during the summer.

The International Organization for Migration has identified 235,000 migrants in Libya, but says the real number is likely to be much higher, between 700,000 and one million.

Some of these stay in Libya to work before either returning home or trying to continue on toward Europe.

(This version of the story corrects the number from spokesman for number of women to 79 instead of 69 in paragraph two.)

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

U.N. says world must stand up for ignored humanitarian law

Bulgarian border policemen stand guard near barbed wire fence constructed on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, near Malko Tarnovo

By Dasha Afanasieva

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The U.N.’s refugee agency said on Monday border closures in Europe to stop migrants were “inhumane”, and government efforts to stem the flow had averted the crisis only temporarily.

The border closures across the Balkans and a controversial deal between Turkey and the EU have sharply reduced the number of people crossing into Europe this year, after a million made the often perilous journey in 2015.

“There are a lot of people patting themselves on the shoulder and saying the deal worked, the people have stopped coming: but there’s more to it than that,” Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said on the sidelines of the world’s first humanitarian summit.

“It has pushed the problem backwards and the problem is not yet solved.”

On the moves to seal borders, she added: “The sudden closure and the action by unilateral states was inhumane vis-à-vis many vulnerable people.”

Under the deal between Europe and Turkey, Ankara has agreed to take back illegal migrants from Europe in return for aid, accelerated EU accession talks and visa-free travel to the bloc.

Host country Turkey has taken in nearly 3 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war and spent nearly $10 billion. But aid groups say it is not a safe country for refugees.

Last week a Syrian on the Greek island of Lesbos won an appeal against a decision to forcibly return him to Turkey, successfully arguing that Turkey does not afford refugees the full protection required under the Refugee Convention, rights group Amnesty International said.

Fleming said it was not yet clear whether this would set a legal precedent.

Finalisation of the EU-Turkey deal has been held up by disagreements over Turkey’s anti-terrorism law, which Brussels wants brought in line with European standards.

Billed as the first of its kind, the United Nations summit in Istanbul aims to develop a better response to what has been called the worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.

(Editing by David Dolan and Andrew Roche)

Greece to begin evacuating migrants camped at border within days

A woman holding an umbrella walks in a flooded field during heavy rainfall at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border

THENS (Reuters) – Greece will begin in the coming days to evacuate a makeshift camp on its northern border with Macedonia where thousands of migrants and refugees have been stranded in dire conditions for months, the government said on Monday.

The sprawling camp in a field near the Greek town of Idomeni sprang up in February after border shutdowns across the Balkans left the people stranded there. They had mostly been heading for Germany and other wealthier northern European countries.

The migrants, mostly from conflict zones in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, have refused to move despite having to sleep in the open in very difficult conditions or being tear-gassed by Macedonian police. They have largely ignored appeals by Greek authorities to move to organized camps set up around Greece.

Giorgos Kyritsis, a government spokesman for the migration crisis, told state TV the evacuation process would begin “tomorrow, the day after and will be completed in a week, at most 10 days”.

Asked if the government planned to remove all 8,000 people estimated to be living in the camp, Kyritsis said: “Yes. A thing like Idomeni cannot be maintained. It only serves the interests of smugglers.”

A police source said 50 riot police squads would be deployed to Idomeni for the gradual removal of the migrants starting from Tuesday evening. Some 2,000 people who have been blocking the railtrack on the border will be removed first, the source said.

The tracks have been blocked by the migrants for more than a month, forcing trains to re-route through Bulgaria further to the east. Some wagons loaded with goods have been stranded on the tracks at Idomeni for weeks.

Kyritsis said that while the government did plan to reopen the railway it was not planning a police sweep operation at the camp.

“Removing all the refugees from the disgrace which is Idomeni is in their own interest. The railtrack will open for the train to pass through normally but the fundamental thing is for the people to be transferred to where the conditions are humane.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris and Theodora Arvanitidou; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Smugglers made over $5 billion off migrants in 2015

A Turkish Gendarme officer detains a man believed to be a smuggler as Syrian refugees who are prevented from sailing off for the Greek island of Lesbos by dinghies wait in the background near a beach in the western Turkish coastal town of Dikili, Turkey, March 5, 2016.

GENEVA (Reuters) – People smugglers made over $5 billion from the wave of migration into southern Europe last year, a report by international crime-fighting agencies Interpol and Europol said on Tuesday.

Nine out of 10 migrants and refugees entering the European Union in 2015 relied on “facilitation services”, mainly loose networks of criminals along the routes, and the proportion was likely to be even higher this year, the report said.

About 1 million migrants entered the EU in 2015. Most paid 3,000-6,000 euros ($3,400-$6,800), so the average turnover was likely between $5 billion and $6 billion, the report said.

To launder the money and integrate it into the legitimate economy, couriers carried large amounts of cash over borders, and smugglers ran their proceeds through car dealerships, grocery stores, restaurants or transport companies.

The main organizers came from the same countries as the migrants, but often had EU residence permits or passports.

“The basic structure of migrant smuggling networks includes leaders who coordinate activities along a given route, organizers who manage activities locally through personal contacts, and opportunistic low-level facilitators who mostly assist organizers and may assist in recruitment activities,” the report said.

Corrupt officials may let vehicles through border checks or release ships for bribes, as there was so much money in the trafficking trade. About 250 smuggling “hotspots”, often at railway stations, airports or coach stations, had been identified along the routes – 170 inside the EU and 80 outside.

The report’s authors found no evidence of fighting between criminal groups, but larger criminal networks slowly took over smaller opportunistic ones, leading to an oligopoly.

In 2015, the vast majority of migrants made risky boat trips in boats across the Mediterranean from Turkey or Libya, and then traveled on by road. Around 800,000 were still in Libya waiting to travel to the EU, the report said.

But increasing border controls mean air travel is likely to become more attractive, with fraudulent documents rented out to migrants and then taken back by an accompanying facilitator, the report said.

Migrant smuggling routes could be used to smuggle drugs or guns, and there was growing concern that radicalized foreign fighters could also use them to enter the EU, it said.

But there was no concrete data yet to suggest militant groups consistently relied on or cooperated with organized crime groups, it added.

($1 = 0.8837 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Miles)

Almost 2/3 of Germans think Islam doesn’t ‘belong’ to their country

A whirling dervish performs during a ceremony for families at the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan in a tent in Duisburg

BERLIN (Reuters) – Almost two-thirds of Germans think Islam does not “belong” to their country, a survey showed on Thursday, indicating changing attitudes following militant Islamist attacks in Europe and the arrival of more than a million, mostly Muslim, migrants last year.

Former German president Christian Wulff sparked controversy in 2010 when he said Islam belonged to Germany, a comment repeated by Chancellor Angela Merkel last year.

Six years ago, 49 percent of Germans agreed with Wulff and 47 percent did not.

Thursday’s poll, carried out by Infratest dimap for broadcaster WDR, showed that the mood has shifted, with 60 percent now saying that Islam does not belong to Germany. It showed 34 percent thought it did belong.

Scepticism about the religion was greatest among older people, with 71 percent over the age of 64 believing Islam does not belong to the country.

Germany is home to around four million Muslims, about five percent of the total population, and unease over the religion is on the rise, especially in the wake of deadly Islamic State attacks in Brussels and Paris.

Earlier this month members of the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) backed an election manifesto that says Islam is not compatible with the constitution and calls for a ban on minarets and the burqa.

Just over half of Germans are concerned that the influence of Islam in Germany will become too strong due to the influx of refugees, the Infratest dimap poll showed.

Fears about an Islamist terrorist attack in Germany are also rife, with almost three-quarters of Germans worried about the possibility.

The survey of 1,003 Germans was conducted between May 2 and May 3.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Toby Davis)

Italy breaks up people-smuggling ring that imprisoned migrants

Migrants are seen aboard the British vessel HMS Enterprise before disembarking in the Sicilian

ROME (Reuters) – Italian police arrested seven people on Wednesday for running a people-smuggling ring in which Somali boat migrants who reached Italy by boat were held prisoner until their families paid their passage further north, a statement said.

A court in Catania in eastern Sicily ordered that 13 people be detained for running the smuggling operation, but only seven were picked up. The others were thought to be living abroad.

The investigation, dubbed “Somalia Express”, raided nine apartments in and around Catania used by the group to hold migrants in lieu of payment. Thirty-seven Somalis were freed from the apartments when the arrests were made, including three minors, the police statement said.

Families used pre-paid credit cards, or hawala, an informal payment system based on personal relationships, to pay off the smugglers, who would pick them up from migrant shelters in Sicily and neighboring Calabria, at the southern end of the Italian peninsula.

The money was then used to buy bus or train tickets for the migrants to send them to their final destination further north in Europe or within Italy, and for fake documents that allowed them to move freely, police said.

“These organized networks could continue to grow. We’re not optimistic,” Catania police chief Marcello Cardona told reporters after the arrests. Catania investigators broke up a similar group focused on Eritrean migrants in 2014.

As of May 10, 31,250 migrants had reached Italy by boat this year, a 14 percent decline from the same period last year, according to the Interior Ministry. This year, about 2,500 Somalis have reached Italy, compared with 12,176 last year.

Italy is one of the front-line countries in Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two. More than 320,000 came to Italy by boat in 2014-15, fleeing poverty and persecution at home and seeking a better life in Europe.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Urgent measures needed on living conditions in Greek migrant camps

People queue for free food at a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – Urgent measures are need to address overcrowding and poor living conditions in refugee and migrant camps in Greece, Europe’s top rights watchdog warned on Wednesday.

The Council of Europe, which brings together 47 countries, said some facilities were “sub-standard” and able to provide no more than the most basic needs such as food, hygiene products and blankets.

The report echoes warnings by other rights groups and aid agencies who say Greece has been unable to care properly for the more than 800,000 people reaching its shores in the last year, fleeing wars or poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

The Council described dire living conditions in several sites visited on a March 7-11 trip, just before the European Union and Turkey reached a deal that reduced arrivals but increased the number of people held in detention awaiting asylum decisions or deportation.

It said in its report that people who reached Greece were locked away in violation of international human rights standards and lacked legal access.

At Greece’s Nea Kavala temporary transit camp, people were left burning trash to keep warm and sleeping in mud-soaked tents, according to the report.

The Council called for the closure of a makeshift camp in Idomeni, where some 10,000 people have been stranded en route to northern Europe due to the closure of Macedonia’s border.

Germany has taken in most of the 1.3 million refugees and migrants who reached Europe across the Mediterranean in the past year, triggering bitter disputes among the 28 EU member states on how to handle the influx.

Europe’s deal with Turkey last month gave its leaders some breathing space but has come under pressure since Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, one of the sponsors of the accord, stepped down.

The morality and legality of the deal has been challenged by human rights groups, however, and a provision to grant Turkish citizens visa-free travel to Europe in exchange for Ankara’s help remains politically contentious.

In a separate report, a trio of European Parliamentarians on Tuesday described the poor conditions faced by people who have been returned to Turkey under the deal.

“We have seen how the migration policies imposed by the European Union have terrible consequences on the lives of thousands of people,” said Cornelia Ernst, a German member of the European Parliament and a co-author of that report.

“Turkey has been hired as a deportation agency, putting into practice the migration policies designed in Brussels.”

The left-wing deputies said on their May 2-4 visit to Turkey they had met people who complained of not being able to claim asylum in Europe, which would run counter to international humanitarian law.

They also described poor detention conditions, confiscation of private property and widespread difficulties in getting access to legal help or information, among other issues.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Hugh Lawson)

Tired of waiting, Greece’s migrants turn to business to survive

A refugee sits by his grocery stall as women cook traditional Arabic bread at a camp for refugees and migrants at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, Greece,

By Lefteris Papadimas

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Within sight of a razor wire fence guarded by Macedonian police, 35-year-old Iraqi migrant Saima Hodep rolls dough with an old steel water pipe outside her tent, in preparation for customers for her unleavened bread.

Saima is one of a small but growing number of migrants eking out a living on the Greek side of the Macedonian border, where about 10,000 people have set up Europe’s biggest refugee camp and are showing signs of settling in for the long term.

She sells about 100 pieces of bread a day at the Idomeni camp, which has no running water but at least eight barbers.

“My parents didn’t have any choice when we ran out of money a few weeks ago. They had to do something to make money,” said Saima’s 17-year-old daughter Saven.

The makeshift camp, home mostly to Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, sprang up four months ago. At the time, huge numbers were making their way to northern Europe in the hope of gaining asylum in countries such as Germany, but border shutdowns in the Balkans stranded thousands in Greece.

They refuse to move, despite being tear-gassed by Macedonian police, and appeals by Greek authorities to move to organized camps deeper inside the country.

Today, the Idomeni camp has three improvised mosques, a kindergarten and a school, as well as at least four makers of falafel – the ground spiced chickpea patty of the Middle East -who supplement food provided by non governmental organizations.

FACILITIES LACKING

Migrants tents are haphazardly placed, jostling for space in the meadow outside Idomeni village. Basic facilities are scarce; there are chemical toilets, but they stink and often overflow.

Yannis Mouzalas, Greece’s migration minister, said last week that conditions at the camp were an “affront which should stop”. Yet Greece, unlike France which tore down part of an unofficial camp known as “The Jungle” at Calais, goes for the softly-softly approach with the Idomeni migrants.

“We will step up the dialogue,” Mouzalas told the semi-official Athens News Agency.

Raied Anbtauy, a 44-year-old from Aleppo, has been stranded in Idomeni for three months, separated from his family who had already reached Germany.

For the past 10 days, he has been making falafel to survive, cooking them in a small hut tied together with blankets. “I ran out of money and I needed to do something,” he told Reuters.

Another, Ridwan Kiko, 29, a Palestinian who lived in Damascus, said he is forced to sell fruit and vegetables that he buys from Greek Roma to survive and get medicines for his mother, a diabetic who needs insulin.

“The life here is so terrible, we don’t have clean water, we don’t have money, the food is not good and is not enough for everyone.”

Budding enterprise was probably born of the realization that the border would stay shut, said Marco Buono, head of UNHCR’s field office in Idomeni.

“The shops started at the end of March… There are people with skills that want to be useful to their community and to their family and at the same time make some money,” he told Reuters.

Despite the repeated appeals by Greek authorities, most refugees and migrants at Idomeni are refusing to budge.

Kiko, who taught mathematics and physics in Damascus, says he will stay until he can move on to Germany. As long as Idomeni exists, he says, it will tax Europe’s conscience. “If we leave Idomeni the world will forget about us.”

(Writing By Michele Kambas; editing by David Stamp)

Italy rescues nearly 1,800 migrants in last 24 hours

A child is helped during a rescue operation by Italian navy ship Grecale off the coast of Sicily

ROME (Reuters) – Italian vessels have helped rescue nearly 1,800 migrants from boats trying to reach Italy from north Africa in the last 24 hours, the navy said on Friday, indicating that numbers are rising as the weather warms up.

The navy said 1,759 migrants were rescued in 10 operations involving the Italian navy, coastguard and finance police, the European Union’s external borders agency Frontex and the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The Italian frigate Grecale was taking the migrants to the Sicilian port of Augusta, where they were expected to arrive on Saturday morning, a navy statement said. It gave no details of their nationalities.

The latest arrivals picked up in the Strait of Sicily will bring the total of migrants reaching Italy by boat so far this year to more than 30,000, slightly higher than in the same period of 2015.

Humanitarian organizations say the sea route between Libya and Italy is now the main route for asylum seekers heading for Europe, after an EU deal with Turkey dramatically slowed the flow of people reaching Greece.

Officials fear the numbers trying to make the crossing to southern Italy will increase as sailing conditions improve in warmer weather.

More than 1.2 million Arab, African and Asian migrants fleeing war and poverty have streamed into the European Union since the start of last year.

Most of those trying to reach Italy leave the coast of lawless Libya on rickety fishing boats or rubber dinghies, heading for the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is close to Tunisia, or toward Sicily.

On Wednesday, however, Italy’s coastguard said it had rescued 42 migrants from a sailboat off the coast of Puglia, in the southeastern heel of mainland Italy.

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; editing by Andrew Roche)