Tag Archives: Migrants

‘No more waiting!’ Syrians stuck in Greece protest at German embassy

Syrian refugee children hold banners and shout during a demonstration against delays in reunifications of refugee families from Greece to Germany, in Athens, Greece, August 2, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

ATHENS (Reuters) – Syrian refugees stranded in Greece chanted “no more waiting!” and protested outside the German embassy in Athens on Wednesday against delays in reuniting with their relatives in Germany.

About 100 people, among them young children, marched from parliament to the embassy holding up cardboard banners in English reading “I want my family” and shouting slogans about travel to Germany.

Greek media have reported that Greece and Germany have informally agreed to slow down refugee reunification, stranding families in Greece for months after they fled Syria’s civil war.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been in Greece for over a year after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

“My message is ‘enough waiting, enough suffering’,” said 41-year-old Syrian Malak Rahmoun, who lives in a Greek camp with her three daughters while her husband and son are in Berlin. “I feel my heart (is) miserable,” she said.

Rahmoun said she and her daughter applied for family reunification last year but that the Greek authorities have not given a clear reply.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union in March 2016 slowed the flow of people crossing to Greece but about 100 a day continue to arrive on Greek islands.

Nearly 11,000 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey this year, down from 173,000 in 2016 and a fraction of the nearly 1 million arrivals in 2015.

Most of the new arrivals this year are women and children, according to United Nations data. In earlier years, men were the first to flee to Europe, leaving other family members to follow.

“I’ve never seen my son (in) two years,” Rahmoun said.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris)

Sweden intensifies crackdown on illegal immigrants

A general view of the migration agency detention center in Marsta, Sweden, June 20, 2017. Picture taken June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Johan Ahlander

By Johan Ahlander and Mansoor Yosufzai

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Sweden has intensified its crackdown on illegal immigrants after a failed asylum-seeker killed five people in Stockholm, but the move has raised concerns that more migrants will be driven underground to join a shadowy underclass.

In the past months, police have staged wider sweeps on workplaces to check papers, netting undocumented workers, sending a warning to employers and sparking heated debate in a nation that has been traditionally tolerant to migrants.

In May, police carried out their biggest raid so far when dozens of officers swooped on a constructions site in Stockholm. Nine were caught and sent to detention centers, while another 40 escaped by scrambling onto scaffolding and across roof tops.

Swedish authorities had already started to tighten up on illegal immigrants, but police stepped up their activities after Uzbek construction worker Rakhmat Akilov drove into Stockholm shoppers in April.

“We have an unlimited amount of work,” said Jerk Wiberg, who leads the Stockholm police unit in charge of domestic border controls. A 22-year veteran who has caught thousands of illegal immigrants, Wiberg led the raid at the construction site in May.

After Akilov became another militant in Europe to use a truck as a weapon, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven made it clear that “no means no” for those whose asylum bids are rejected. Akilov, whose lawyer said he had admitted to committing the crime, had been in hiding after his asylum request was denied.

The Migration Agency estimated 10,000 asylum-seekers a year will choose to disappear rather than be deported. Up to 50,000 undocumented immigrants already work in hotels, transport, construction and restaurants, the agency said last year.

Migration Minister Morgan Johansson said that a “dual labor market … where a growing group lives on the outside of society and remains in Sweden” after having been denied residency was unacceptable.

“It also increases the risk of them being exploited. We cannot have it that way,” he said, adding: “One way is to go after the employers … (using) expanded workplace checks.”

While cheap migrant labor is welcomed by some small businesses, government officials and economists worry that the shadow economy undercuts Sweden’s economic model, whose generous welfare provisions and high wages are built on high rates of productivity and one of the world’s heaviest tax regimes.

ANTI-IMMIGRANT PARTY

Tough measures against immigrants go against the grain for many in Sweden, a country of 10 million which once called itself “a humanitarian superpower” that generously welcomed migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

But attitudes appear to be changing and a 2017 study by Gothenburg University showed 52 percent favored taking fewer refugees into the country with 24 percent opposed. Two years ago 40 percent backed reducing refugee numbers with 37 opposed.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats are now the second biggest party in polls with support of around a fifth of Swedes.

The Social Democrats, the country’s biggest party in every election since 1917 and leader of the governing coalition with the Greens, has been forced to balance its traditional left-wing credentials with the need to enforce immigration laws.

Despite political support for the crackdown and tougher rules on immigration, police struggle to enforce deportations. Between January and April police deported just under 600 people, a third fewer than in the same period last year.

Some of those caught were freed because detention centers were full, while others cannot be deported as they don’t have passports to prove their country of origin or their home countries refuse to take them.

The government never discloses how many are held in detention centers, saying there are about 360 beds and deportees are normally repatriated within three weeks. The government has told the migration agency to add another 100 beds.

An extra 800 million crowns ($95 million) has been added to the police budget this year to bolster the clampdown, but senior officers say this is not enough.

WIDENING THE NET

In 2016, police made about 1,100 unannounced workplace checks, almost three times more than in 2015, and caught 232 illegal immigrants. A further increase is expected in 2017 as the net widens. Illegal immigrants are also detained through checks at transport hubs, on vehicles or after committing crime.

Deportations made up a small fraction of the 20,000 rejected asylum seekers who left Sweden last year.

“We have been able to increase the number of people who leave Sweden substantially. But we’re listening to the police and we have paved the way for more resources and wider powers,” Johansson said in an interview, adding:

“We will have to increase that number further.”

Expanded police powers include workplace checks without concrete suspicion of a crime, to be allowed from next year, with sharply higher fines for employing illegal immigrants.

Immigrants themselves have been unnerved. When police burst into a pizzeria in the southern city of Malmo where Ehsanulla Kajfar, a 38-year-old Afghan refugee, was working in May he said he thought they were looking for “terrorists or drug dealers”.

He was surprised to be handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police vehicle as tax officials scrutinized the restaurant’s employee ledger. He was told his papers were not in order and was taken to a detention center.

“Sweden used to be a nice country, even when I was living underground,” he told Reuters. “Now although I have a residence permit from Italy and I am registered at the tax agency in Sweden, I’m still locked in a detention center.”

IMMIGRANTS FEARFUL

Nicaraguan Hugo Eduardo Somarriba Quintero, 37, said he was wrongly detained in the big raid in Stockholm in May due to an error by authorities and then released. Migration Agency records confirmed the details of his case.

“But I’ve lost my job – the company where I was working was dropped from the construction site (because of irregularities in not checking work papers properly). Now I am looking for work and there is no job for me,” he tearfully told Reuters, adding:

“Before there was a lot of tolerance for migrants. Now the laws are harder.”

Muhammad, a 22-year old Afghan who declined to give his family name, has been in hiding for three years in Malmo since his asylum application was rejected.

He has moved three times this year and never stays in a place longer than three months. All his belongings are packed in a suitcase and two plastic bags if he needs to leave in a hurry.

Muhammad relies on food stamps from the church and leftover food from restaurants and grocery stores.

He has learned to avoid the city center when there is an increase in policing and gets help from other immigrants and volunteers who work for asylum-seekers’ rights. They warn each other of police checks and raids through text messages.

“Last time the police made a push to find immigrants, my friend stayed inside for 15 to 20 days,” Muhammad said. “But I can’t stay inside all the time, its too depressing.”

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander and Mansoor Yosufzai, additional reporting by Alister Doyle, editing by Peter Millership)

Poland did not invite refugees, has right to say ‘no’: Kaczynski

Leader of ruling party Jaroslaw Kaczynski gestures during a Law and Justice party congress in Przysucha, Poland July 1, 2017. Agencja Gazeta/Slawomir Kaminski via REUTERS

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland has a moral right to say ‘no’ to refugees, the country’s most powerful politician said on Saturday.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), gave his views on immigration at a party convention in Przysucha, 100 km (60 miles) south of Warsaw.

“We have not exploited the countries from which these refugees are coming to Europe these days, we have not used their labor force and finally we have not invited them to Europe. We have a full moral right to say ‘no’,” Kaczynski said in a speech broadcast on television.

Last month the European Commission launched a legal case against Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for refusing to take in asylum seekers, highlighting the feud within the 28-nation bloc over how to deal with migration.

Kaczynski, who has criticized the European Union’s relocation schemes for migrants on many occasions, also said that the PiS could not be accused of being anti-European, as it backed Poland’s joining the block in 2004 and now appreciates the inflow of EU funds.

“The fact that we appreciate them (the funds), does not mean that we have lost the right to various assessments, including those regarding the historical context,” Kaczynski said, adding that Poland has never received any compensation for the losses it suffered during the Second World War.

During his 70-minute speech, the PiS leader suggested the government increase social spending if the economic situation allows. He also said there was a need to reduce the share of foreign capital in the media sector.

(Reporting by Agnieszka Barteczko and Pawel Sobczak; Editing by Stephen Powell)

Nearly half a million Syrians return to own homes this year: UNHCR

GENEVA (Reuters) – Nearly half a million Syrians have returned to their homes so far this year, including 440,000 internally displaced people and more than 31,000 returning from neighboring countries, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

Most returned to Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, it said, on the view that security had improved in parts of the country.

“This is a significant trend and a significant number,” UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told a Geneva news briefing.

“Most of these people are returning to check on properties, to find out about family members … They have their own perceptions about the security situation, real or perceived improvements in areas they are returning to.”

He said it was premature to say whether de-escalation zones set up via talks held by Russia, Iran and Turkey in Astana or U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva had accelerated the return trend.

An estimated 6.3 million people remain internally displaced across Syria after more than six years of war, Mahecic said.

A further 5 million are refugees in neighboring countries.

A survey conducted by the UNHCR in recent weeks showed that more than 80 percent of Syrian refugees expressed their wish to return home, he said.

“Of those, only about 6 percent were considering that to be a possibility in the near future,” he said

UNHCR believes that conditions for refugees to return in safety and dignity “are not yet in place in Syria”, he added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams)

Exclusive: U.S. starts ‘extreme vetting’ at Australia’s offshore detention centers

An undated handout image from Amnesty International claiming to show the view of inside the living quarters at the country's Australian-run detention centre on the Pacific island nation of Nauru. Amnesty International/Handout via REUTERS

By Colin Packham

SYDNEY (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security officials have begun “extreme vetting” interviews at Australia’s offshore detention centers, two sources at the camps told Reuters on Tuesday, as Washington honors a refugee swap that U.S. President Donald Trump had called “a dumb deal”.

The Trump administration said last month the agreement to offer refuge to up to 1,250 asylum seekers in the centers would progress on condition that refugees satisfied strict checks.

In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a center in Costa Rica, where the United States has expanded intake in recent years, under the deal struck with former President Barack Obama.

The first security interviews finished last week at Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island detention center, two refugees who went through the process told Reuters.

The refugees told Reuters that interviews began with an oath to God to tell the truth and then proceeded for as long as six hours, with in-depth questions on associates, family, friends and any interactions with the Islamic State militant group.

“They asked about why I fled my home, why I sought asylum in Australia,” said one refugee who declined to be named, fearing it could jeopardize his application for U.S. resettlement.

The security interviews are the last stage of U.S. consideration of applicants.

Manus Island is one of two Australian-operated detention centers, which hold nearly 1,300 people who were intercepted trying to reach Australia by boat.

Human rights groups have condemned the intercept policy and the harsh conditions of the camps. Australia says offshore processing is needed as a deterrent after thousands of people drowned at sea before the policy was introduced in 2013.

A decision on the fate of the first 70 people interviewed is expected to be reached within the next month, a different source who works with refugees said.

A spokesman for Australia’s immigration minister refused to comment on the resettlement process.

The U.S. State Department and White House did not immediately respond to questions.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for extreme vetting have extended to those traveling to the United States from Muslim countries.

Australia’s relationship with the new administration in Washington got off to a rocky start when Trump lambasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the resettlement arrangement, which Trump labeled a “dumb deal”.

Details of an acrimonious phone call between the pair soon after Trump took office made headlines around the world. Australia is one of Washington’s staunchest allies and has sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. military in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The relocation of asylum seekers to the United States is designed to help Papua New Guinea and Australia proceed with the planned closure of the Manus detention center on Oct. 31.

But the fate of approximately 200 men deemed non-refugees is uncertain.

Those not offered resettlement in the United States will be offered the chance to settle in Papua New Guinea or return home.

Australia has already offered detainees up to $25,000 to voluntarily return home; an offer very few have taken up.

(Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Asylum-seekers fleeing U.S. may find cold comfort in Canada’s courts

FILE PHOTO: A woman who told police that she and her family were from Sudan is taken into custody by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers after arriving by taxi and walking across the U.S.-Canada border into Hemmingford, Quebec, Canada on February 12, 2017. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi/File Photo

By Anna Mehler Paperny and Rod Nickel

TORONTO/WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Migrants who applied for asylum in the United States but then fled north, fearing they would be swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, may have miscalculated in viewing Canada as a safe haven.

That is because their time in the United States could count against them when they apply for asylum in Canada, according to a Reuters review of Canadian federal court rulings on asylum seekers and interviews with refugee lawyers.

In 2016, 160 asylum cases came to the federal courts after being rejected by refugee tribunals. Of those, 33 had been rejected in part because the applicants had spent time in the United States, the Reuters review found.

Lawyers said there could be many more such cases among the thousands of applicants who were rejected by the tribunals in the same period but did not appeal to the federal courts.

The 2016 court rulings underscore the potentially precarious legal situation now facing many of the nearly 2,000 people who have crossed illegally into Canada since January.

Most of those border crossers had been living legally in the United States, including people awaiting the outcome of U.S. asylum applications, according to Canadian and U.S. government officials and Reuters interviews with dozens of migrants.

Trump’s tough talk on illegal immigration, however, spurred them northward to Canada, whose government they viewed as more welcoming to migrants. There, they have begun applying for asylum, citing continued fears of persecution or violence in their homelands, including Somalia and Eritrea.

But Canadian refugee tribunals are wary of “asylum-shopping” and look askance at people coming from one of the world’s richest countries to file claims, the refugee lawyers said. (For graphic on asylum process see http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ)

“Abandoning a claim in the United States or coming to Canada after a negative decision in the United States, or failing to claim and remaining in the States for a long period of time – those are all big negatives. Big, big negatives,” said Toronto-based legal aid lawyer Anthony Navaneelan, who is representing applicants who came to Canada from the United States in recent months.

The Canadian government has not given a precise figure on how many of the border crossers were asylum seekers in the United States.

But it appears their fears may have been misplaced. Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that anyone in the United States illegally is subject to deportation, but there is no evidence that asylum seekers with pending cases are considered illegal under the new administration.

“LACK OF SERIOUSNESS”

The asylum seekers will make their cases before Canada’s refugee tribunals, which rejected 5,000 cases last year. The tribunals’ decisions are not made public, so the reasons are not known. An Immigration and Refugee Board spokeswoman confirmed, however, that an applicant’s time in the United States can be a factor in a tribunal’s decision.

Rejected applicants can appeal to Canada’s federal courts, whose rulings are published. The federal courts upheld 19 of the 33 tribunal rejections they heard last year and recommended fresh tribunal hearings for the other 14 cases.

The judges believed those claimants had a good explanation for having been in the United States first. The outcomes of the new tribunal hearings are not known.

The federal court handles only a small portion of all applications rejected by the refugee tribunals. But overall, applicants who have spent time in the United States have a higher chance of being rejected, said multiple immigration lawyers, including two former refugee tribunal counsel, interviewed by Reuters.

Last year, a federal judge upheld a refugee tribunal rejection of Sri Lankan man who had abandoned a pending U.S. claim. The tribunal said the man’s decision demonstrated a “lack of seriousness” and was “inconsistent with the expected behavior” of someone who fears persecution in their own country.

A Chadian applicant lost his 2016 appeal because he did not claim asylum “at the first opportunity” in the United States.

The asylum-seekers who have crossed the U.S border since January are still going through the claim process and many have yet to go through tribunal hearings.

WELL-FOUNDED FEAR?

Canadian officials want refugee applicants to behave the way they think people fleeing for their lives would behave, said lawyer and researcher Hilary Evans Cameron. Living undocumented in the United States for years or abandoning a pending claim, as many people among this latest refugee influx have done, are not seen as consistent with that fear, she said.

Those with failed U.S. asylum claims must prove to Canadian tribunals that the U.S. courts were wrong in their assessment, that their circumstances have changed for the worse, or that they qualify in Canada, several lawyers said.

Crucially, all applicants must show that the often years-old fears that led them to leave their home countries for the United States still exist.

Canada grants asylum if applicants qualify under the United Nations’ definition of someone who has a well-founded fear of persecution based on certain criteria, such as race, religion, nationality or political affiliation.

A federal judge ruled in March that the deportation of a Honduran family, who had lived in the United States for more than three years, could go forward after immigration officials found the family no longer faced a risk in Honduras.

“The longer they’ve been away (from their country of origin), the more difficult it is to establish that they’re a refugee,” said Winnipeg refugee lawyer Ken Zaifman.

Graphic on asylum process http://tmsnrt.rs/2nyY8CJ

(Additional reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington; Editing by Amran Abocar and Ross Colvin)

Number of migrant criminal suspects in Germany surged in 2016

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere (R) and his Saxony state counterpart Markus Ulbig present the German crime statistics for 2016 during a news conference in Berlin, Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) – The number of migrant criminal suspects in Germany soared by more than 50 percent in 2016, data from the Interior Ministry showed on Monday – a statistic that could boost support for the anti-immigration party five months ahead of a federal election.

More than a million migrants have arrived in Germany in the last two years. Fears about security and integration initially pushed up the poll ratings of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), but the party’s support has slipped as the rate of arrivals has slowed.

The number of suspects classed as immigrants – those applying for asylum, refugees, illegal immigrants and those whose deportation has been temporarily suspended – rose to 174,438, 52.7 percent more than the previous year.

The number of German suspects declined by 3.4 percent to 1,407,062.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said crimes committed by refugees had “increased disproportionately” last year and warned: “Those who commit serious offences here forfeit their right to stay here.”

But he said some migrants committed multiple offences, distorting the statistics, and that most migrants lived peacefully and obeyed German law.

Migrants accounted for 8.6 percent of all crime suspects in Germany in 2016, up from 5.7 percent the previous year.

De Maiziere said one reason for the high crime rate among migrants was likely to be their accommodation situation. In 2016 many were living in makeshift shelters or sharing crowded rooms.

The number of attacks on refugee homes has declined for the first time since data started being collected in 2014. Some 995 were carried out in 2016, compared with 1,031 the previous year.

Crimes motivated by Islamism increased by 13.7 percent, the report showed. In December a failed Tunisian asylum seeker who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; editing by Andrew Roche)

Emotional reunion shows plight of Syria’s lost children

Hajar Saleh poses with her grandson Jaafar as she holds a picture depicting Jaafar's parents, Amina Saleh and her husband Imad Azouz who were killed fleeing Syria's civil war, at a garden in the Damascus district of Mezzeh,

By Dahlia Nehme

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – When Jaafar’s grandmother recognized him by his birthmark in a Turkish orphanage, months after his parents were killed fleeing Syria’s civil war, she held him tight, screaming for joy.

The story of how Hajar Saleh, a 47-year-old nurse, spent fraught weeks tracing her grandson in a foreign country and many months trying to bring him home underscores the terrible plight of Syria’s thousands of lost children and their families.

Jaafar was only three-months-old when his parents, Amina Saleh, 23, and her husband Imad Azouz, 25, decided to flee their home in the Sayeda Zeinab suburb of Damascus, close to a frontline, and seek a better life for their family abroad.

Palestinian refugees whose families had been in Syria for decades, they lacked legal travel documents, so they gathered their scant savings and paid a smuggler to guide them across the border into Turkey from an area held by Kurdish groups.

A last photograph Amina sent her mother before the attempted border crossing in January 2016 shows her smiling warily at the camera, wearing a heavy winter coat and black headscarf and holding Jaafar, a tiny pink baby in yellow romper suit.

But when they tried to cross the frontier a few hours later with dozens of other refugees in a smuggler convoy in northeast Syria, the Turkish border guards who battle Kurdish insurgents there opened fire. Amina and her husband were killed.

Little Jaafar escaped unscathed, protected by his father’s body, and was gathered up by survivors of the shooting and taken to the nearby Turkish city of Mardin, where they gave him into the care of a local judge.

Hajar’s account of the ill-fated border crossing comes from them and from what Turkish authorities told the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF, she said.

Before they left Mardin, some of the refugees phoned Hajar to inform her of the fate of her daughter and son-in-law, and to give her the name and phone number of the judge, the start of her months-long odyssey to reclaim her grandson.

“I still have two sons, but Amina was my only daughter. My friend and secret keeper,” said Hajar apologetically, as if to justify her frequent sobbing and the black clothes of mourning she still wears for the dead couple.

LOST CHILDREN

UNICEF told Reuters in March it had documented the cases of 650 separated children in 2016 alone, but that the likely number of undocumented cases was probably far higher.

Since the war began in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and about half the country’s pre-war population made homeless, large numbers of them children.

After learning about her grandson’s plight, Hajar approached every local and international organization she could think of seeking help.

Eventually, UNICEF and the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR located Jaafar and secured travel documents for her to visit Turkey to pursue the legal process of proving kinship and claiming him.

“My daughter always came to me in my dreams and would beg me to bring her son back and raise him,” she said, speaking in the UNICEF headquarters in Damascus.

Little Jaafar, now 16-months-old, wide-eyed, smiling and well-groomed, was meanwhile snatching at everything in his reach and fidgeting to escape his grandmother’s lap for a few steps before quickly returning to her.

Hajar’s journey to the orphanage in Mardin was nearly over before it began, a victim to the chaos inflicted by the attempted coup d’etat in Turkey last summer, a day before she was scheduled to fly, which closed all the country’s airports.

With her Lebanese visa running out, Hajar only managed to fly to Ankara five days later with a day to spare before she would have been returned to Syria.

Unable to speak Turkish and having never traveled before, she was lost for five hours while changing flights in Istanbul before UNHCR officials found her and guided her onwards. After a 16-hour bus drive from Ankara, she finally reached Mardin.

REUNITED

As soon as Hajar saw Jaafar in the Cucuk Evleri Sitesi Mudurlugu orphanage, she recognized him by the prominent birthmark on his forehead, she said.

“I held him tight, crying and screaming in joy and I fainted afterwards,” she said. “When I woke up I held him tight again and sobbed. He stared at me. He didn’t cry or feel afraid. Instead he wiped my tears away,” she added.

With little money left and the weather turning colder, Hajar’s efforts to bring Jaafar home were further complicated by the Turkish government’s purge of the judiciary in the aftermath of the attempted coup, she said.

It took three months to prepare a DNA test and find a judge who could verify it and give her permission to take home her grandson.

“Every time a judge assumed my case, he would be replaced soon after,” she said.

The Turkish authorities told her where her daughter and son-in-law were buried in unmarked graves, but she was unable to visit them. Even when they finally tried to fly back in December, a blanket of heavy snow delayed their journey for days.

But now they have returned to her home in Sayeda Zeinab.

“Jaafar is full of energy and loves putting himself in trouble,” she said. “But for the sake of my daughter, I will raise him as well as I can.”

(Editing by Angus McDowall and Angus MacSwan)

Migrant boat sinks off Turkish coast, 11 dead: DHA

Lifeguards from the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms sanitise five dead bodies of migrants on-board the former fishing trawler Golfo Azzurro following a search and rescue operation in central Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast, March 24, 2017. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

ANKARA (Reuters) – A plastic boat carrying 22 migrants sank off Turkey’s Aegean coastal town of Kusadasi on Friday, killing 11 people and leaving four missing, the Dogan news agency (DHA) said.

Television footage showed bodies washed up on a beach near the town. Rescuers managed to save seven people from the stricken vessel and the coast guard was searching for any other survivors, Dogan said.

A deal between Turkey and the European Union on curbing illegal migration, struck a year ago, helped reduce the migrant influx to Europe via Greek islands to a trickle. But some are still trying to make the perilous voyage across the Aegean.

Just 3,629 refugees and migrants have crossed to Greece from Turkey so far this year, according to the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, and about 60 arrive on Greek islands each day. At least 173,000 people, mostly Syrians, arrived in 2016.

Europe’s deteriorating relations with Turkey could endanger the deal, under which Ankara helps control migration in return for the promise of accelerated EU membership talks and aid.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey would review all political and administrative ties with the EU after an April referendum, including the migrant deal.

Erdogan has been angered by Germany and the Netherlands cancelling planned rallies on their territory by Turkish officials seeking to drum up support for a “yes” vote in the referendum, which could lead to constitutional changes extending the powers of the presidency.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara and Karolina Tagaris in Athens; Writing by Nick Tattersall)

Dutch vote in test of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders of the PVV party surrounded by security as he votes in the general election in The Hague, Netherlands, March 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

By Stephanie van den Berg and Toby Sterling

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – The Dutch tested their own tolerance for immigration and Islam on Wednesday in an election magnified by a furious row with Turkey, the first of three polls in the European Union this year where nationalist parties are seeking breakthroughs.

The center-right VVD party of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, 50, is vying with the PVV (Party for Freedom) of anti-Islam and anti-EU firebrand Geert Wilders, 53, to form the biggest party in parliament.

As many as 13 million voters began casting ballots at polling stations across the country that will close at 2000 GMT. A charged campaign, plus clear skies and sunshine meant high turnout was expected. National broadcaster NOS said that by 0930 GMT in the morning, turnout was at 15 percent, 2 percent ahead of the previous parliamentary election in 2012.

With as many as four out of 10 voters undecided a day before voting and a tight margin of just 4 percent between leading candidates, the outcome was unpredictable.

Wilders, who has vowed to “de-Islamicise” the Netherlands, has little chance of forming a government given that other leading parties have ruled out working with him. But a first place PVV finish would still send shockwaves across Europe.

The vote is the first gauge this year of anti-establishment sentiment in the European Union and the bloc’s chances of survival after the 2016 surprise victory of “America First” presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States and Britain’s vote to exit the EU.

“Whatever the outcome of the election today the genie will not go back into the bottle and this patriotic revolution, whether today or tomorrow, will take place,” Wilders said after voting at a school in The Hague.

Wilders won over Wendy de Graaf, who dropped her children off at the same school. “I hope he can make a change to make the Netherlands better.. I don’t agree with everything he says… but I feel that immigration is a problem,” she said.

France chooses its next president in May, with far-right Marine Le Pen set to make the second-round run-off, while in September right-wing euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany, which has attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, will probably win its first lower house seats.

Rutte, who has called the Dutch vote a quarter-final before a French semi-final and German final said a Wilders victory would be felt well beyond the Netherlands.

“I think the rest of the world will then see after Brexit, after the American elections again the wrong sort of populism has won the day,” he said.

Late opinion polls indicated a three percentage point lead for his party over Wilders’, with a boost from a rupture of diplomatic relations with Ankara after the Dutch banned Turkish ministers from addressing rallies of overseas Turks.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the Dutch of behaving like Nazis, and Rutte’s government expelled a Turkish minister who had traveled to the country to address Erdogan supporters at an impromtu rally without seeking permission.

“I think Rutte did well this weekend with the Turkey row,” said Dave Cho, a 42-year-old supply manager and long-time VVD supporter.

On Wednesday morning, two major publicly subsidized voter information websites were offline, targeted by a DDoS cyber attack.

It was not clear whether Wednesday’s attack was related to the row with Turkey, which also led to the temporary defacement of numerous small websites in the Netherlands.

Separately on Wednesday, several large Twitter accounts including that of the European Parliament, Reuters Japan, Die Welt, Forbes, Amnesty International and Duke University were hijacked temporarily, apparently by Turkish activists.

NO CLEAR WINNER, WEEKS OF BARGAINING

Unlike the U.S. or French presidential elections, there will be no outright Dutch winner under its system of proportional representation. Up to 15 parties could win a seat in parliament and none are set to reach even 20 percent of the vote.

Experts predict a coalition-building process that will take many months once the final tally is known.

Rutte’s last government was a two-party coalition with the Labour Party, but with no party polling above 17 percent, at least four will be needed to secure a majority in parliament. It would be the first such multi-party alliance since three in the 1970s. Two of those fell apart within 12 months.

In a final debate on Tuesday night, Wilders clashed with Lodewijk Asscher, whose Labour party stands to lose two-thirds of its seats in its worst defeat ever on current polling.

Asscher defended the rights of law-abiding Muslims to not be treated as second-class citizens or insulted, saying “the Netherlands belongs to all of us, and everyone who does his best.” Wilders shot back: “The Netherlands is not for everyone. The Netherlands is for the Dutch.”

Front-runner Rutte, who is hoping Dutch economic recovery will help him carry the election, has been insistent on one thing – that he will neither accept the PVV as a coalition partner nor rely on Wilders to support a minority government, as he did in 2010-2012.

“Not, never, not,” Rutte told Wilders.

(Additional reporting by Phil Blenkinsop and Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)