Tag Archives: Migrants

More than 6,000 migrants plucked from sea in a single day, 22 dead

Migrants in a dinghy await rescue around 20 nautical miles off the coast of Libya,

ROME (Reuters) – About 6,055 migrants were rescued and 22 found dead on the perilous sea route to Europe on Monday, one of the highest numbers in a single day, Italian and Libyan officials said.

Italy’s coastguard said at least nine migrants had died and a pregnant woman and a child had been taken by helicopter to a hospital on the Italian island of Lampedusa, halfway between Sicily and the Libyan coast.

Libyan officials said 11 migrant bodies had washed up on a beach east of the capital, Tripoli, and another two migrants had died when a boat sank off the western city of Sabratha.

One Italian coast guard ship rescued about 725 migrants on a single rubber boat, one of some 20 rescue operations during the day.

About 10 ships from the coast guard, the navy and humanitarian organizations were involved in the rescues, most of which took place some 30 miles off the coast of Libya.

Libyan naval and coastguard patrols intercepted three separate boats carrying more than 450 migrants, officials said.

Monday was the third anniversary of the sinking of a migrant boat off the Italian island of Lampedusa in which 386 people died.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, around 132,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the start of the year and 3,054 have died.

Most depart from Libya, where political chaos and a security vacuum have allowed people smugglers to act with impunity.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Andrew Heavens)

Belgrade refugees make a break for the Hungarian border

Several hundred refugees and migrants walk heading in the direction of the Hungarian border, in Belgrade, Serbia

By Aleksandar Vasovic

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Several hundred refugees set off from central Belgrade on Tuesday morning and headed for the Hungarian border, holding handwritten banners and chanting demands for open borders, Reuters witnesses said.

The crowd walked north along the city’s Sava river, stopping occasionally to negotiate with police. All of them appeared to be men and boys about 15 or older. “We are people, not animals,” read one banner.

Some 7,000 migrants, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, are trapped in Serbia, prevented from continuing further into Europe by fences now running the length of the Hungarian-Serbian border.

“We will walk to border with Hungary,” said Sadaqat Khan, a Pakistani in his 20s from Qetta. Most of the migrants seek sanctuary in the wealthy countries of Northern Europe. “We do not want Serbia,” Khan said.

Many migrants in Belgrade, most of whom bed down in makeshift camps by the city’s central rail station, had thought Hungary’s referendum last weekend on migrant quotas meant the border would be opened.

In fact, Hungary voted on whether to accept European Union quotas for taking in refugees, and almost all of those who went to the polls voted against the quotas. However, less than half the electorate voted, rendering the results of the referendum invalid.

A large group of refugees who left Belgrade’s camps earlier this year got as far as the northern city of Novi Sad, but from there they were taken to reception centers on the Serbian side of the border.

(Reporting By Aleksandar Vasovic, Fedja Grulovic and Branko Filipovic; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Larry King)

Death Toll from capsized migrant boat off Egypt rises to 177

An Egyptian mother reacts beside the body of her son who was on a boat carrying migrants which capsized off Egypt's coast, in Al-Beheira, Egypt, September 22, 2016.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Eight more bodies from the wreck of a boat carrying hundreds of migrants were recovered from Mediterranean waters off Egypt on Tuesday, ambulance sources said, taking the death toll to 177.

The boat capsized off Burg Rashed, a coastal village in the Nile Delta, on Sept. 21. Rescue workers and fishermen said they had rescued at least 169 people, but confusion remained over how many might still be unaccounted for.

The spokesman for the Beheira regional governor said the shipwreck had been hoisted out of the depths and was likely to contain dozens more bodies.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday it was still tracking the incident and believed that about 300 people in all were aboard the boat.

Egyptian security sources initially said there had been almost 600 migrants aboard. But a survivor whose comments appeared in an online video said the migrants had been told that about 200 people would be making the journey but traffickers had then added another 50, causing the boat to founder.

Officials said the boat was carrying Egyptian, Sudanese, Eritrean and Somali migrants, and that they believed it was heading for Italy. Four members of the crew were arrested.

The IOM says that more than 3,200 migrants have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean this year, while an estimated 298,474 have reached European shores. More than 1 million Middle Eastern, African and Asian migrants entered Europe in 2015.

(Reporting by Mohamed Abdellah in Cairo and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Asma Alsharif; editing by Mark Heinrich)

France confirms Calais migrant camp shutdown

Migrants pass by a road sign as they leave the northern area of the camp called the "Jungle" in Calais, France,

By Elizabeth Pineau

CALAIS, France (Reuters) – President Francois Hollande said on Monday that France will completely shut down “the Jungle” migrant camp in Calais by year-end and called on London to help deal with the plight of thousands of people whose dream is ultimately to get to Britain.

“The situation is unacceptable and everyone here knows it,” Hollande said on a visit to the northern port city where as many as 10,000 migrants from war-torn countries such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan live in squalor.

“We must dismantle the camp completely and definitively,” he said.

France plans to relocate the migrants in small groups around the country but right-wing opponents of the Socialist leader are raising the heat ahead of the election in April, accusing him of mismanaging a problem that is ultimately a British one.

The migrants want to enter Britain, but the government in London argues that migrants seeking asylum need to do so under European Union law in the country where they enter.

Immigration was one of the main drivers of Britain’s vote this year to leave the EU. It is also likely to be major factor in France’s presidential election.

If France stopped trying to prevent migrants from entering Britain, Britain would ultimately find itself obliged to deal with the matter when asylum-seekers land on its shores a short distance by ferry or subsea train from France’s Calais coast.

Hollande bluntly reminded Britain of that, saying that he expected London to fully honor agreements on managing a flow of migrants.

“I also want to restate my determination that the British authorities play their part in the humanitarian effort that France is undertaking and that they continue to do that in the future,” Hollande said.

London and Paris have struck agreements on issues such as the recently begun construction of a giant wall on the approach road to Calais port in an attempt to try to stop migrants who attempt daily to board cargo trucks bound for Britain.

“What happens in the Jungle is ultimately a matter for the French authorities, what they choose to do with it,” a British government spokesman said.

“Our position is very clear: we remain committed to protecting the shared border that we have in Calais,” the spokesman said. He added: “The work that we do with France to maintain the security of that border goes on and will go on, irrespective of what happens to the Jungle camp.”

(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle; Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Thousands flee fire at Greek migrant camp as tensions flare

Migrants stand among the remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

By Karolina Tagaris

ATHENS (Reuters) – Thousands of people fled a migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesbos on Monday night after fire swept through tents and housing cabins during violence among residents, police said.

The fire was over by mid-day on Tuesday at the Moria camp which houses the 5,700 migrants on the island and many people had returned, though children had been transferred to other facilities, police said.

No casualties were reported from the fire and its cause was not clear.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, linked the fire to poor living conditions and a sense of insecurity among many of the residents.

Refugees and migrants on Lesbos are stranded there by a European Union deal with Turkey preventing them going beyond the island until their asylum claims have been processed. Those who do not qualify will be deported to Turkey.

Tensions have boiled over at overcrowded camps on Greece’s islands as the slow processing of asylum requests adds to frustration over tough living conditions.

Greek media said the clashes on Monday erupted among residents following a rumor that hundreds of people would be deported.

Roland Schoenbauer, UNHCR’s spokesman in Greece, said people were “sick of waiting” in the camps. “They don’t know when their asylum claims will be processed. Some people feel they don’t have enough information,” he said.

A police official in Athens said two riot police squads had been deployed to the island.

Nearly 60 percent of the Moria camp, including tents and metal-roofed cabins, had been destroyed by the fire, a police official said. Work was underway on Tuesday to set up new tents, Police Minister Nikos Toskas said.

At least nine people were arrested on accusations of damaging property and causing unrest and were expected to appear before a prosecutor, a police official in Athens said.

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece,

The remains of a burned tent at the Moria migrant camp, after a fire that ripped through tents and destroyed containers during violence among residents, on the island of Lesbos, Greece, September 20, 2016. REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

OVERCROWDING

Panos Navrozidis, Greece director of aid agency International Rescue Committee, said the camp had been operating at over-capacity for months, with people crammed into the facility with limited access to water, and in conditions that do not meet humanitarian standards.

He criticized the system to process claims as “opaque and inconsistent” and said preferential treatment based on nationality led to tensions within the community.

Thousands have applied for asylum and the wait is long, ranging from weeks to months. Just over 500 people have been deported to Turkey since March but none of those who have requested asylum were among those, Greece says.

Despite a slowdown in arrivals from Turkey compared to last year, more than 13,500 migrants and refugees are now living on eastern Aegean islands, nearly double a capacity of 7,450.

“The situation is difficult,” Christiana Kalogirou, prefect of the north Aegean region, told Greek TV. “There is a great need for decongestion of the islands … in the future things could become much more difficult,” she said.

Including those on the islands, there are 60,000 migrants and refugees stranded in Greece, mostly Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who made risky journeys in flimsy inflatable boats.

(Additional reporting Renee Maltezou; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Libya says 1,425 migrants turned back over two days

Migrants are rescued during a MOAS operation off the coast of Libya August 18, 2016 in this handout picture courtesy of the Italian Red Cross released on August 19, 2016.

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan patrols intercepted some 1,425 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe over the past two days, a naval spokesman said on Friday.

Ayoub Qassem said about 1,050 migrants on seven inflatable boats were turned back early on Wednesday. Most were from sub-Saharan African countries and about one third were women and children, he said.

On Thursday two more rubber boats were intercepted with about 300 people on board, as well as three small wooden boats carrying a total of about 75 people.

Qassem said all the boats were found near the western coastal city of Sabratha, the most common point of departure for migrants attempting to cross from Libya during recent months.

Most migrants trying to reach Europe by boat across the central Mediterranean head for Italy from Libya, where years of political turmoil and armed conflict have allowed migrant smuggling networks to flourish.

More than 120,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by boat so far this year, a slight increase over 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Many of those who make it into international waters are picked up by European rescue ships, while Libyan authorities say they have turned back more than 11,000 migrants.

As of Sept. 6, nearly 3,200 migrants had perished attempting to cross the central Mediterranean, according to IOM data.

(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami; Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Merkel wants Germany to get refugees into workforce faster

Refugees show their skills in metal processing works during a media tour at a workshop for refugees organized by German industrial group Siemens in Berlin, Germany,

By Georgina Prodhan and Andreas Rinke

FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany needed “viable solutions” to integrate refugees into the workforce faster after she met blue-chip companies that have hired just over 100 refugees since around a million arrived last year.

Merkel, her popularity undermined by her open-door policy, summoned the bosses of some of Germany’s biggest companies to Berlin on Wednesday to account for their lack of action and exchange ideas about how they can do better.

Many of the companies contend that a lack of German-language skills, the inability of most refugees to prove any qualifications and uncertainty about their permission to stay in the country mean there is little they can do in the short term.

Merkel told rbb-inforadio that if needed, special provisions could be developed to speed up the integration of refugees into the workforce, but she acknowledged this would still take time.

“Many are in integration courses or waiting to get on them. So I think we will need to show some patience, but must be ready at any time to develop viable solutions,” she said.

A participant at the meeting with Merkel said company executives from DAX firms and small businesses discussed their opinions for 2-1/2 hours and came to the conclusion: “We want to do this”. When talking about the refugee influx, Merkel frequently says: “Wir schaffen das” or “we can do this”.

The meeting spurred some firms to announce more action to help get refugees into the workforce.

Deutsche Bahn [DBN.UL] boss Ruediger Grube said IT would offer 150 extra places in qualification programs for refugees, Volkswagen said it was working with Kiron, a non-profit start-up, to help refugees start a university degree, Thyssenkrupp announced around 150 extra training positions and Daimler announced 50, the source said.

“Wir Zusammen” or “We Together”, an integration initiative of German companies, said much had been achieved to support the arrival of the newcomers but now they had to turn their attention to integrating them into the workforce.

“Now it’s about motivating those companies that are not yet active,” it said in a statement after the summit.

A survey by Reuters of the 30 companies in Germany’s stock index last week found they could point to just 63 refugee hires in total.

Of those, 50 were employed by Deutsche Post DH, which said it applied a “pragmatic approach” and deployed the refugees to sort and deliver letters and parcels.

“Given that around 80 percent of asylum seekers are not highly qualified and may not yet have a high level of German proficiency, we have primarily offered jobs that do not require technical skills or a considerable amount of interaction in German,” a company spokesman said by email.

Deutsche Post’s Chief Executive Frank Appel said on Wednesday the company had now hired more refugees, taking its total to 102.

Several of the 27 firms who responded said they considered it discriminatory to ask about applicants’ migration history, so they did not know whether they employed refugees or how many.

What is clear is that early optimism that the wave of migrants might boost economic growth and help ease a skills shortage in Germany – where the working-age population is projected to shrink by 6 million people by 2030 – is evaporating.

“The employment of refugees is no solution for the skills shortage,” industrial group Thyssenkrupp’s Chief Executive Heinrich Hiesinger said earlier this month.

APPRENTICESHIP BARRIERS

Most large German companies, especially those in manufacturing, prefer to hire through structured apprenticeship programs, in which they train young people for up to four years for highly skilled and sometimes company-specific jobs.

But the recent arrivals from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are mainly ill-prepared for such training, they say.

The DAX-listed companies surveyed by Reuters were able to identify about 200 apprentices in this or last year’s intake. Many will have been through months of pre-training especially designed for migrants by large companies, such as engineering group Siemens, Mercedes maker Daimler, or automotive technology firm Continental.

Two Syrian interns visited by Reuters at a Siemens power-plant construction site in April applied for apprenticeships, but could not immediately be accepted because they are still in the process of proving their school-leaving qualifications. One is meantime doing temporary work in IT and the other taking German classes.

It is simply too soon to expect large numbers of refugees to have been hired yet, most German companies say.

“Our experience is that it takes a minimum of 18 months for a well-trained refugee to go through the asylum procedure and learn German at an adequate level in order to apply for a job,” said a spokeswoman for Deutsche Telekom.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Copley, Michelle Martin, Paul Carrel, Andreas Rinke and Markus Wacket in Berlin, Jan Schwartz in Hamburg, Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf and Harro ten Wolde, Ludwig Burger, Edward Taylor and Tina Bellon in Frankfurt; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Britain is building a security wall to stop migrants from Calais

Workers set-up barbed wires on top of a fence along the harbour of Calais to prevent migrants jumping aboard lorries

LONDON/CALAIS, France (Reuters) – Work on building a wall along the approach road to the French port of Calais to try to stop migrants from jumping aboard trucks bound for Britain will begin this month, British officials said.

Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill told lawmakers that security was being stepped up in Calais, home to the “Jungle” camp where thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa hope to cross the English Channel to Britain.

The camp and a Franco-British border control deal that effectively pushes the British frontier onto mainland France have been hotly debated since Britons voted in a June referendum to leave the European Union.

 

Migrants walk in the northern area of the camp called the "Jungle" in Calais

Migrants walk in the northern area of the camp called the “Jungle” in Calais, France, September 7, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

 

Goodwill said the wall was part of a 17 million pound ($22.75 million) package of security measures agreed by Britain and France in March.

“We are going to start building this big new wall as part of the 17 million package that we are doing with the French … We’ve done the fence and now we’re doing the wall,” Goodwill said on Tuesday.

Shrubbery has already been cleared on one side of the Rocade road but there was no sign of workers or machinery at the site on Wednesday. A local official said the project would be completed by the end of the year.

The wall is expected to be four meters (13 ft) high and to be built along both sides of a 1-km (0.6 mile) stretch of road.

A document shown at a public meeting organised by the Port of Calais on July 6 showed the wall would be made of smooth concrete to make it harder to scale, but lined with plants and vegetation on the inside to minimize the visual impact.

France dismantled the southern half of the Jungle camp in February and March and the government said last week it would shut down the rest, but gave no timeframe.

($1 = 0.7472 pounds)

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper in London and Matthias Blamont in Calais; Editing by Richard Lough and Gareth Jones)

Paris to open first migrant camp by October

Migrants tents are seen at a makeshift camp on a street, northern Paris, France,

PARIS (Reuters) – Paris will house close to 1,000 migrants in two camps to tackle the growing number of men, women and children fleeing war and poverty who are sleeping rough on the French capital’s streets, the city’s mayor said on Tuesday.

The building of the two camps in the capital comes as the government faces pressure to dismantle a swollen shanty town dubbed the ‘jungle’ near the port of Calais, whose inhabitants are blamed by residents for an increase in crime and the ailing local economy.

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said one camp would be built for men, the other for vulnerable women and children, with the first site opening in mid-October.

“We have to come up with new ways of overcoming the situation. Things are saturated,” Hidalgo told a news conference. “These migrant camps reflect our values.”

Hidalgo said the camps would be temporary and cost 6.5 million euros to set up, of which the Paris municipal authorities would cover 80 percent.

While France has been much less affected by Europe’s migrant crisis than neighboring Germany, thousands of asylum seekers use it as a transit point in the hope of reaching Britain.

Truck drivers, farmers and Calais business owners on Monday blocked traffic on the motorway approach to Calais demanding a deadline for the dismantling of the “jungle”.

(Reporting by Chine Labbe; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Italy rescues 3,000 migrants from Mediterranean as arrivals surge

A Red Cross member carries a child as migrants disembark from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy

ROME (Reuters) – Some 3000 migrants were saved in the Strait of Sicily in 30 separate rescue missions on Tuesday, the Italian coastguard said, bringing the total to almost 10,000 in two days and marking a sharp acceleration in refugee arrivals in Italy.

The migrants were packed on board dozens of boats, many of them rubber dinghies that become dangerously unstable in high seas. No details were immediately available on their nationalities.

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy,

A woman disembarks from the Italian Navy vessel Sfinge in the Sicilian harbour of Pozzallo, southern Italy, August 31, 2016. REUTERS/ Antonio Parrinello

Data from the International Organization for Migration released on Friday said around 105,000 migrants had reached Italy by boat in 2016, many of them setting sail from Libya. An estimated 2,726 men, women and children have died over the same period trying to make the journey.
Favorable weather conditions this week have seen an increase in boats setting sail. Some 1,100 migrants were picked up on Sunday and 6,500 on Monday, in one of the largest influxes of refugees in a single day so far this year.

Italy has been on the front line of Europe’s migrant crisis for three years, and more than 400,000 have successfully made the voyage to Italy from North Africa since the beginning of 2014, fleeing violence and poverty.

(Reporting by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alison Williams)