Category Archives: refugees

Refugees lament as deal with Turkey closes door to Europe

The New York Times reports: Smoking cigarettes and huddling against the midnight chill, a group of Syrian men sat outside a mosque waiting for a smuggler’s call. It was their last chance, they said, to reach Europe.

It was late Friday, hours after they watched news reports from cafes and hotel lobbies that the Europe Union and Turkey had struck a deal that would send refugees from war-torn countries back to Turkey, from the shores of Greece. Time was running short: Officials said the deal would take effect Sunday.

“One hour ago,” said Milad Ameen, 19, when asked when he decided to set off for Europe. He had a life jacket, an inner tube and small bag containing his passport and school certificates he hoped would help him land a job in Europe.

As the men waited, they lamented a deal that they believe shuts the door on the last way out of their misery. “It’s for Turkey’s good, but not for the good of the Syrian people,” Mr. Ameen said.

A man standing next to him, who gave only his first name, Raafat, said he was from Aleppo, Syria. Raafat said he was demoralized that Europe no longer seemed to welcome Syrians. When he heard news of the pending deal, he rushed from Istanbul, where he had worked in a textile factory, to this coastal city. “We aren’t going to Europe to destroy Europe,” he said, explaining that he wished to assimilate and learn the language in whichever country would take him. “We are going in peace. [Continue reading…]

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‘In Iraq I would have died quickly. Here I feel I am dying, but very slowly’

Millennial refugees describe their lives to The Guardian, first, Akeel, 28, from Baghdad, who is now in Calais, France: I have been in the camp for six months now. It feels like such a long time. I get embarrassed when I speak to people who aren’t in my position. They probably just see me as a refugee and look at me with sympathy. If we had met in Baghdad I might have seemed quite cool.

I had a good life there. My life was probably very similar to that of anyone else my age. I wasn’t always living in a tent on my own, eating food from tins. I had such good friends. I really miss laughing with them. I adored my family, I still do. All my relationships are carried out on my phone now. I am on it all the time. It’s the only way to have any kind of life outside of this place.

I used to be a teacher. I taught maths and English. I wanted to be headmaster one day and run teaching camps for disadvantaged children in Iraq but who knows what I will do now, if anything. It’s hard being young in the camp – I mean, it’s hard being any age. It is just so, so boring. I feel like my 20s are going before my eyes. I feel 50, not 28.

I used to look at life with excitement, and wonder what would happen in the future – that’s what it’s like when you’re young. You have so many possibilities. I wanted to do a lot of good in my country. Now I feel like I am just a lot of needs: someone who needs a home, who needs food and on and on. Not someone who can do something for other people. That is the worst part of it.

I try to keep up the things I like. I love football. I try to play here and sometimes we watch matches on our phones. But we are all now thinking constantly about what life will be for us.

In Iraq I would have died quickly. Here I feel like I am just dying, but very slowly. [Continue reading…]

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More than 44,000 refugees are already trapped in Greece, a number rising each day

The New York Times reports: Taha al-Ahmad’s family is sleeping in mud. His youngest daughter, age 1, lies beneath wet blankets, coughing inside their soggy tent. It has rained for days. Portable toilets are overflowing. Men burn firewood to stay warm. A drone circles overhead. Television trucks beam images of misery to the world.

It is primeval, and surreal, this squalid, improvised border camp of 12,000 refugees, a padlocked waiting room for entering the rest of Europe. Mr. Ahmad, barely two weeks out of Syria, does not understand why his family cannot cross the Macedonian border — roughly a football field away — and continue toward Germany. Hundreds of thousands of migrants passed through last year, but now Macedonia is closed. Europe’s door is slamming shut.

“I am in a very high degree of miserable,” Mr. Ahmad told me, speaking in a singsong English he learned in Syria, as our shoes sank into the muck.

“I ask my friends in Germany and Turkey: ‘What is happening? Tell us,’” he said. “We don’t know what is happening outside.”

To Mr. Ahmad, “outside” is the world of politics and policy beyond the wretchedness of the Idomeni camp. In Idomeni, refugees exist in a decrepit suspended animation. Disease spreads. Grandmothers sleep beside train tracks. Outside, specifically in Brussels, the leaders of the European Union, under public pressure to stop the migrant flow, will begin discussing the fate of refugees on Thursday, and a disputed plan to deport them to Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Refugee crisis: Russian withdrawal from Syria won’t let Europe off the hook

By Geoff Gilbert, University of Essex

The first Russian aircraft have already begun to leave Syria following Vladimir Putin’s troop withdrawal announcement. The ceasefire appears to be holding and parties are committed to fresh peace talks in Geneva. But will this development mean anything for the flow of refugees out of the war-torn country? It would be premature to make any assumptions about an early easing of the crisis, given the sheer number of people fleeing the conflict.

When the revolt against the Assad regime started five years ago, it seemed it was another phase in the Arab Spring that was sweeping the region. Little did anyone realise that it would lead to the largest cross-border displacement of a single population in decades.

This at a time when displacement around the globe generally was escalating. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ resources are stretched – only 2-3% of its budget comes from UN central funds – and it cannot put other crises on the “back burner” while it deals with the Syrian displacement.

The conflict in Syria has challenged Europe in terms of its internal freedom of movement, its core values and, most fundamentally, its adherence to international human rights standards.

The European focus distorts the reality of that crisis. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iMDC), as of December 2015 there were 6.6m internally displaced persons (IDPs) compared to about 4.2m refugees. International organisations and local humanitarian actors were still operating in-country trying to provide relief and protection.

Even when the focus is on those who have crossed an international border, the Euro-centrism of some parts of the media is called into question by the sheer numbers in neighbouring countries. Statistics from UNHCR show instantly how it is neighbouring states that continue to offer protection while Europe persists in closing its doors in some vain hope the problem will somehow resolve itself.

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German election: Is this really a verdict on Merkel’s open door to refugees?

By Katharina Karcher, University of Cambridge

Three German federal states have elected new parliaments in regional votes that have seen major gains made by Alternative for Germany (AfD), a right-wing populist party that wants drastically to reduce immigration to Germany.
State parliaments in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt have been reshuffled, although the AfD didn’t actually come first in any of the votes.

These elections were being framed as a verdict on Merkel’s “open-door” refugee policy. Critics of her pro-refugee stance have been eager to observe that it has isolated her in her own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and alienated many voters. Now, they say, the electorate has punished the whole party for Merkel’s single-handed attempt to help refugees.

At first glance, it seems they were right. The CDU has lost votes in all three federal states, and more than a few former CDU voters have switched to supporting the AfD.

The anti-Merkel, anti-establishment, anti-immigration rhetoric appealed particularly to voters in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD became the second-strongest party. It also secured good results in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, winning more than 10% of the vote.

But to suggest that Merkel’s refugee policy sent voters “flocking to the populist party” is wrong, even dangerous.

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German elections: AfD’s remarkable gains don’t tell the whole story

The Guardian reports: The results for German anti-refugee party Alternative für Deutschland in Sunday’s regional elections are remarkable: it won 15% of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, 12.5% in Rhineland-Palatinate and more than 24% in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt – the strongest showing for a rightwing, populist party since the end of the second world war.

The last time these three states voted (in 2011), AfD didn’t even exist. Whatever way you look at the numbers, the AfD result is significant. However, the prevailing narrative in swaths of the press on Monday morning – that the results are a rejection of Angela Merkel’s refugee policy – is simplistic.

Here’s why. In Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD did best, the vote for Merkel’s CDU held. The party dropped less than three points compared with 2011.

According to an exit poll for the state, a substantial majority of voters across all parties, except the AfD, prefers an open and tolerant society to a traditional one. The strongest source of AfD support, in the east German state and elsewhere, were previous non-voters (in all three states turnout was up by 10 points): [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The German government will stick by its existing refugee policy, a spokesman has said, after the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland made strong gains in regional elections on Sunday.

Asked if the results in three German states, where support for chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives dwindled, would lead to a change in policy, Steffen Seibert said: “The German government will continue to pursue its refugee policy with all its might both at home and abroad.” [Continue reading…]

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Germany’s Trump-like problem: Right-wing, anti-foreigner movement poised for big election win

The Los Angeles Times reports: A populist far-right German party that has fiercely attacked the government for letting in more than a million refugees in the last year is expected to be the big winner in three important state elections Sunday that will serve as a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s controversial open-door policies.

The party has aimed its appeal to German voters with a shrill anti-foreigner bent that has some similarities to Donald Trump’s bid to win the Republican nomination for U.S. president.

The Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, has campaigned hard against refugees streaming into the country, mostly from Syria and Iraq, and it has surged in public opinion polls from about 3% last summer to as high as 20% ahead of elections in three of Germany’s 16 states. That is far above the 4.7% the AfD won in the 2013 federal election just half a year after it was formed mainly to oppose Europe’s single currency, the euro, and the expensive European Union financial bailouts to Greece. [Continue reading…]

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No way out: How Syrians are struggling to find an exit

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Eleonora Vio reports: Over the last five years, close to 4.8 million Syrians have fled the conflict in their country by crossing into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. But as the war drags on, neighbours are sealing their borders. Forced from their homes by airstrikes and fighting on multiple fronts, the vast majority of Syrian asylum seekers now have no legal escape route.

Earlier this week, EU leaders reached a hard-won deal with Turkey aimed at ending a migration crisis that has been building since last year, and that in recent weeks has seen tens of thousands of migrants and refugees stranded in Greece. But the agreement turns a blind eye to the fact that even larger numbers of asylum seekers are stranded back in Syria, unable to reach safety.

Syrians hoping to apply for asylum in Europe first have to physically get there. EU member states closed their embassies in Syria at the start of the conflict, and even embassies and consulates in neighbouring countries have been reluctant to process visa and asylum applications.

When Syria’s war erupted in March 2011, it was initially relatively easy for most refugees to leave the country. Those without the means to fly poured out in waves of tens of thousands across land borders into Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. But one by one, these exits have been restricted or closed off entirely. [Continue reading…]

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Lost in the world: The young people shunted around a global asylum system

By Elaine Chase, UCL and Nando Sigona, University of Birmingham

Immigration control is a global phenomenon. Young people seeking safety and security are subjected to the vagaries of all kinds of “solutions” at various national borders. Sometimes they are taken in and sometimes they are turned away. Sometimes, as we have found in our research, they are offered help but then deported as soon as they become legal adults. These people end up drifting between states and detained in immigration centres without understanding the system that put them there.

Each year many young people arrive in a Western country as unaccompanied children. They may be granted time-limited leave to remain and spend their teenage years there. Then they are told to leave. This can happen when a young person becomes a legal “adult” (institutionally and politically at the age of 18) and is no longer eligible for the same protections and rights that they enjoyed as children.

Once appeal rights have been exhausted, they can be forcibly returned to their countries of origin. From here, finding life unsustainable and unsafe, many re-migrate. Rejected in one region of the globe, they seek security in another, searching for the ever elusive better life.

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Third Republic: Germany enters a dangerous new political era

Dirk Kurbjuweit writes: Seven or eight months ago, Germany was a different country than it is today. There were no controversial political issues demanding immediate action and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s leadership was uncontested. It was quiet and comfortable. But then the refugees began streaming into Europe and the country’s sleepy tranquility came to a sudden end. Since then, disgusting eruptions of xenophobia have come in quick succession, a right-wing populist party is on its way to holding seats in several state parliaments, Merkel has gained approval from the center-left Social Democrats and from the Greens, some conservatives want to throw her out and the state is overwhelmed. Does anyone know what is happening? What is wrong with this country?

For Germany, this is the second democratic republic, if one leaves out East Germany, since it was only a faux democracy. First came the Weimar Republic, from 1918 to 1933, and then, since 1949, the Federal Republic, which simply continued following the momentous events of 1989. But now, it looks as though the refugee crisis has brought a significant rupture. To be sure, the German constitution and the country’s institutions won’t be called into question any time soon. But the conventions governing Germany’s political interactions are changing with incredible speed.

A crisis of representation is necessarily accompanied by jolts to the political party system. Some of those jolts have been a long time in the making, but they are now becoming apparent as the refugee crisis takes hold. It could be that our country is currently experiencing lasting change. The contours of a Third Republic are becoming apparent. [Continue reading…]

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Outsourcing a humanitarian crisis to Turkey – is that the European thing to do?

By Marianna Fotaki, University of Warwick

European countries plan to send thousands of refugees back to Turkey in a deal aimed at preventing people from trying to reach the EU by sea.

In what is being described as a “one in, one out” deal, anyone washing up on the shores of Greece will be sent back to Turkey, with one person being transferred from a Turkish refugee camp in their place.

But the deal, which is yet to be finalised, is flawed from the outset. Denying refugees the right to apply for asylum as they reach the EU is against international humanitarian law. And refusing protection to unarmed people fleeing war and persecution by sending them back to Turkey, a country under threat of a civil war, is unconscionable.

European Union leaders must be both desperate and clueless to pursue this. If the goal is to save the European Union from implosion, the question is on what terms will its unity be maintained?

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EU woos Turkey for refugee help, ignoring rights crackdown

The New York Times reports: The contrast was jarring: Just days after the police broke into the offices of an opposition newspaper using tear gas and water cannons, Turkey’s prime minister was greeted in Brussels with offers of billions in aid, visa-free travel for Turks in Europe and renewed prospects for joining the European Union.

The juxtaposition highlighted the conundrum Europe faces as it seeks solutions to its worst refugee crisis since World War II. To win Turkey’s desperately needed assistance in stemming the flow of migrants to the Continent, European officials seem prepared to ignore what critics say is President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s steady march toward authoritarianism.

It is a moment of European weakness that the Turkish leadership seems keen to capitalize on. As Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu arrived in Brussels this week, he upped the ante, asking for more financial aid than was previously negotiated and demanding visa-free travel by June, while offering to take back some migrants who had crossed into Europe. [Continue reading…]

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Refugee crisis magnified by European divisions

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Der Spiegel reports: A rickety gate of galvanized wire is all that separates desperation from hope. The gate is part of the fence erected in the farming village of Idomeni on the border between Greece and Macedonia. At this moment, some 12,000 people are waiting for it to be opened.

It’s the gateway to Europe and the gateway to Germany.

A woman in boots and a blue uniform stands guard in front of the gate. Her name is Foteini Gagaridou and she is an official with the Greek border police — and she looks exhausted. All it would take for her to open the border would be to pull a thin metal pin out of the latch, but she’s not allowed to.

If it were up to her, she says, she would let every single one of these people pass through, just as they were able to do just a few weeks earlier — across the border to Macedonia and on through Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia to Austria, where they could continue their journey to Germany on what is known as the Balkan Route. It’s the same path chosen by hundreds of thousands of refugees last year, but the Balkan Route is now closed. It ends at Gagaridou’s wire gate.

This is where Fortress Europe begins, secured with razor wire and defended with tear gas. Desperate scenes played out here on Monday, reminiscent of those witnessed in Hungary back in September. A group of young men used a steel beam as a battering ram to break down the gate. Rocks flew through the air as the gate flew off its hinges, prompting the volleying of tear gas cartridges and stun grenades from the Macedonian side. Men could be seen running and children screaming. One woman lay on the ground with her daughter, crying.

This frontier has become Europe’s new southern border, with Greece serving as Europe’s waiting room — and the possible setting for a humanitarian disaster. Around 32,000 migrants are currently stranded in the country, a number that the Greek Interior Ministry says could quickly swell to 70,000. The aid organization Doctors Without Borders is even expecting 200,000 refugees. Greece’s reception camps are already full, and the highly indebted country is stretched well beyond its capacity.

The decision as to whether and how many refugees will be able to cross the border isn’t one for border guard Gagaridou to make. Rather, it will be taken by the Macedonian government. Macedonia, for its part, is pointing fingers at countries further to the north, noting it is they who have tightened their borders, especially Austria, which created a chain reaction of border closures last week. The countries apparently felt they could wait no longer for the broader European solution German Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised will result from a special EU summit scheduled for March 7.

Merkel wants to see Turkey stem the flow of refugees and put a stop to the exodus to Europe. European leaders agreed on Feb. 18 that this plan remains the “priority.” But Austria and the Balkan states nevertheless moved ahead and closed their borders.

Idomeni has become a symbol of the current political chaos in Europe and the crumbling of a joint European refugee policy. The town is emblematic of the new Europe of fences. It is here that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border policies have met their end. Under Austria’s leadership, the Balkan Route has been closed in the precise move Berlin had hoped to avoid.

Merkel has begun warning of the EU’s disintegration “into small states” that will be unable to compete in a globalized world, as well as of the possibility that border controls might soon be reintroduced all across Europe.

Were Europe in agreement, it would be unproblematic to accommodate 2-3 million refugees, given the Continent’s population of a half billion people. From such a perspective, the current spat actually seems somewhat ridiculous. But in the run up to next week’s EU summit, Europe is gripped by strife. Europe’s greatest achievement, the opening of its borders through the Schengen agreement, is at stake, and the increasingly toxic atmosphere between countries has reached alarming dimensions. [Continue reading…]

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Migration evidence shows how badly the EU needs to rethink its strategy

By Vicki Squire, University of Warwick and Nina Perkowski, University of Warwick

European leaders continue to be stumped by the so-called migration crisis. Fences are going up in the east and warnings are being issued that there is no more room. But people keep coming.

Europe’s agenda on migration is primarily focused on preventing people from reaching Europe. It seems to rest on the assumption that an unending number of people want to come to the EU, and that deterrent measures are therefore necessary.

But our new research shows that these are flawed assumptions. It suggests that people don’t always move with the aim of reaching Europe as an ideal end goal. Often they simply seek a place of safety.

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The EU risks major ructions if Greece is offered no help with its refugees

Costas Lapavitsas writes: he current influx of refugees into Greece has major humanitarian implications but it also poses a direct threat to the European Union. Together with the neverending eurozone crisis and the Brexit referendum, it could throw the EU into an existential crisis in 2016. Visionary leadership is called for, which at present looks in short supply.

According to the UNHCR, in 2014 Syria was the main source of refugees in the world, and 95% of Syrian refugees were located in surrounding countries. Turkey held the largest number at roughly 1.6 million. It is worth noting that developing countries took 86% of the world’s refugees in 2014. The poor proved more compassionate and generous than the rich yet again.

In 2015 Greece became the main point of entry into the EU of refugees and migrants from Turkey; it is believed 850,000 people undertook the perilous crossing of the Aegean. In January and February more than 120,000 have arrived – far more than the same period last year. At this rate there will be millions of men, women and children who will risk their lives in shoddy rubber dinghies between Turkey and Greece in 2016. Up to 90% are likely to be from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

These are not economic migrants. There is absolutely no doubt that the wave of refugees and migrants into Europe is a direct result of the destruction of the three countries largely due to western intervention during the last three decades. [Continue reading…]

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Europe’s harsh new message for refugees: ‘Do not come’

The Washington Post reports: A senior European Union official carried a stark warning Thursday to the front lines of the migrant crisis, telling those seeking to flee poverty and unrest that Europe is no longer the answer, even as about 1 million migrants have now poured into Europe in the past year.

“Do not come to Europe,” said Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, after meeting with the Greek prime minister in Athens. “Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing.”

Tusk’s comments came as a top U.N. official also warned Thursday that as many as 70,000 people could be “trapped” in Greece in the coming weeks because Macedonia and other European countries are shutting their borders, transforming Greece into a holding pen for migrants desperate to leave.

Tusk also said it was up to Turkey, not its European neighbors, to decide how to manage a reduction in refugee numbers — a stance that Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu quickly rebuffed. Turkey is under pressure to reduce the numbers of migrants crossing into Greece as a March 7 summit meeting between Turkey and the European Union approaches to discuss the issue. [Continue reading…]

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