November
30
2021
Author
Dave Smith
Roundup of Refugee News (29th November)

Asylum / refugees / immigration (UK)

Observer: The Observer view on Priti Patel’s fake migrant crisis

Home secretaries from both main parties have scapegoated asylum seekers in attempts to endear themselves to voters in recent decades. But none with the fervour of Priti Patel, who in her two-year tenure at the Home Office has announced a series of initiatives to put people off seeking asylum in the UK. Wave machines in the Channel, flying asylum seekers to inhospitable islands thousands of miles away to be processed, criminalising those who rescue people drowning at sea: all are recent measures proposed by the home secretary regardless of their compatibility with international law and Britain’s moral obligations.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/21/observer-view-migrant-crisis-priti-patel?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Guardian: Home Office bussing asylum seekers who cross Channel 500 miles to Scotland

Asylum seekers who have spent 10 hours or more crossing the Channel in flimsy dinghies while terrified of drowning are being bussed almost 500 miles to Scotland to be processed immediately after reaching UK shores, the Guardian has learned. 

The asylum seekers typically arrive on the beaches of the UK’s south coast soaked, shivering and traumatised. Until recently they have been processed in Home Office short-term holding facilities (STHF) in immigration detention centres an hour or two away from where they entered the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/21/home-office-bussing-asylum-seekers-who-cross-channel-500-miles-to-scotland

Guardian: Tory MPs suggest sending migrants to UK to the Falklands

Conservative MPs are urging ministers to send people travelling to the UK by small boats to offshore centres as far away as the Falkland Islands as concern grows that the party is losing support among red wall voters.

Priti Patel, the home secretary, should also be willing to automatically return migrants to France if the party is to fulfil the Brexit promise of taking control of the UK’s borders, MPs said.

The increasingly extreme demands come amid deepening alarm in Downing Street and the Conservative party over the rising numbers of people risking their lives by making the journey in winter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/21/migrant-crossings-are-becoming-a-problem-for-red-wall-tory-mps

Observer: Home Office ‘covering up’ its own study of why refugees come to the UK

The Home Office is covering up its own research into why refugees and asylum seekers travel to the UK because ministers “know their arguments don’t stand up,” charities claim.

Officials are refusing to release its evidence on whether so-called “pull factors” play a part in asylum seekers making journeys to the UK.

 On Thursday deputy prime minister Dominic Raab talked about “reducing the pull factor” in an attempt to justify the government’s controversial plans for offshore asylum processing centres in Albania. Home Office minister Chris Philp has claimed that accepting asylum seekers who have travelled through Europe “creates a pull factor where migrants are incentivised to undertake dangerous and illegal journeys”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/20/home-office-covering-up-its-own-study-of-why-refugees-come-to-the-uk?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

BBC: The UK migrant dilemma - it's all about Brexit

The almost daily sight of migrants jumping out of an inflatable onto a beach below Kent's iconic white cliffs is now, we are told, the government's number one priority. But why? Given Home Office plans to use Border Force vessels to push precarious dinghies back into French waters, it seems improbable that it is concern about the safety and welfare of the migrants. 

And given that the latest official figures suggest the UK currently has negative net migration - more people leaving than arriving - it is unlikely to be about numbers, especially for a country with more than a million job vacancies for the first time in its history.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59369179

Daily Mail: 'We told French police that our boat was sinking. They said we were in British waters, so we rang the British... and they told us to call the French': The shocking account of one of the two survivors of the Channel migrant tragedy

A survivor of the Channel crossing tragedy last night claimed authorities on both sides of the Channel refused to rescue the migrants as their boat was sinking.

Mohammed Shekha, 21, detailed a shocking series of desperate calls to French and British authorities and claimed both denied responsibility for the rescue.
At least 27 people drowned as they headed for the UK last Wednesday.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10252099/One-two-survivors-migrants-tragedy-Channel-gives-shocking-account-horror.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top

Independent: Kurdish woman who wanted to live with husband-to-be in UK becomes first named Channel victim

A young woman who was trying to join her fiance in the UK has become the first victim of the mass drowning in the Channel to be identified.

Maryam Nuri Hamdamin, who went by the nickname Baran, was a Kurdish student from northern Iraq in her early 20s. Her relative Krmanj Ezzat Dargali confirmed her identity to the BBC and The Times.  He paid tribute to Maryam on Facebook by posting a photo of her at what appears to be her engagement party, and describing her in a poem as a “beautiful angel” who was a “romantic”.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/migrant-channel-victims-named-kurdish-b1965135.html

Guardian: Death in the Channel: ‘My wife and children said they were getting on a boat. I didn’t hear from them again’

According to his friends, Harem Pirot was an excellent swimmer. In the summer of 2019 he and a neighbour Anas Muhammad set off from their home in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Ranya to nearby Lake Dukan, a popular picnic and boating spot.

“Harem was a really good person. He could swim well in deep water,” Anas said yesterday. “Our families knew each other well. A great guy. He was 25.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/27/death-in-the-channel-my-wife-and-children-said-they-were-getting-on-a-boat-i-didnt-hear-from-them-again

Guardian: ‘He’s missing’: anxious wait in Calais camps for news on Channel victims

On Saturday Gharib Ahmed spent five hours outside the police station in Calais, desperately waiting for news. “It was so cold. There was no answer,” he said. Ahmed was seeking confirmation that his brother-in-law Twana Mamand was one of 27 people who died in the Channel on Wednesday after the flimsy dinghy taking them to the UK sank. “I want to see his body. I have to understand,” Ahmed told the Guardian.

Relatives of the mostly Iraqi Kurds who perished in the world’s busiest shipping lane spent the weekend in a state of anxiety and confusion. Ahmed said he last heard from his brother-in-law at 3am on Wednesday, around the time Twana set off in darkness from a beach near Dunkirk. After two days of silence, Ahmed travelled with his wife, Kale Mamand – Twana’s sister – from their home in London to northern France, arriving on Friday night.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/28/anxious-wait-in-calais-camps-for-news-on-channel-victims

Guardian: Border Force staff union joins fight to block Priti Patel’s pushback plans

The union representing Border Force staff has announced it is taking part in a legal challenge against a plan by Priti Patel to push back small boats in the Channel. 

The news that the home secretary’s own staff are participating in a legal challenge against the high-profile policy will be a significant blow to Patel as she faces criticism from fellow Conservatives for failing to get a grip on the crisis.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/27/border-force-staff-union-joins-fight-to-block-to-priti-patels-pushback-plans

Observer: Tory anger grows over Priti Patel’s failure to start resettling stranded Afghans

Priti Patel is facing growing criticism from Tory MPs over the Home Office’s failure to open a programme to allow Afghans to resettle in Britain, three months after it was announced – as the crisis over the deaths of 27 people in the Channel escalates. 

Some Conservative MPs are understood to have confronted the home secretary directly over the delay in launching the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS), which was announced with great fanfare in August as the Taliban seized control in Kabul.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/28/tory-anger-grows-over-priti-patels-failure-to-start-resettling-stranded-afghans

Guardian: Victims of sexual violence let down by UK asylum system, report says

Victims of sexual violence face further abuse and trauma as a result of the UK asylum process and are systematically let down by authorities, according to a report.

The research found that gender-insensitive and sometimes inhumane asylum interviews, sexual harassment in unstable asylum accommodation and a lack of access to healthcare and psychological support were just some of the factors compounding the trauma of forced migrants in the UK 

The study, conducted by the Sexual and Gender Based Violence against Refugees from Displacement to Arrival (Sereda) research team, is the largest piece of academic research of its kind and calls on the Home Office to integrate gender and trauma sensitivity into the asylum system.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/nov/29/victims-of-sexual-violence-let-down-by-uk-asylum-system-report-says

Guardian: ‘Shocking’ that UK is moving child refugees into hotels

Record numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers who arrived in the UK on small boats are being accommodated in four hotels along England’s south coast, a situation that the Children’s Society has described as “shocking”.

About 250 unaccompanied children who arrived in small boats are thought to be accommodated in hotels, which Ofsted said was an unacceptable practice.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/nov/28/uk-child-refugees-hotels-unaccompanied-minors

Mirror: Priti Patel's officials 'brand her a moron' over 'erratic and outlandish ideas'

Priti Patel has been forced to issue a joint statement with her top official after she was plunged into a furious briefing war with her own staff. The Home Secretary privately described her department as 'not fit for purpose' over the thousands of migrants crossing the Channel, according to the Mail on Sunday. 

She is said to have considered drafting a letter to the Cabinet Secretary lambasting her civil servants' progress on the issue. But it was reportedly never sent - and the civil servants then got wind of the letter and hit back.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/priti-patels-officials-brand-moron-25510697?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar 

Independent: Incorrect asylum refusals costing taxpayers more than £4m a year in admin costs alone, research finds

Incorrect asylum decisions cost the UK taxpayer millions of pounds each year, according to new research that has prompted calls for the government to urgently improve the “flawed” decision-making process.

Ministers have been accused of presiding over failings in the asylum system that lead to “serious economic and human costs”, after an analysis of data revealed that the government had spent more than £4m annually in administrative costs alone fighting successful appeals.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-decisions-cost-appeals-home-office-uk-b1958050.html

Washington Post: After long legal battle with ‘ISIS bride,’ U.K. pushes for power to cancel citizenship without notice

Britain’s Conservative government could be allowed to strip people of citizenship without giving them notice to appeal if legislation being debated in Parliament becomes law.

The Nationality and Border Bill would permit the home secretary, Britain’s top domestic security official, to cancel citizenship without warning on national security grounds if it is not “reasonably practicable” to do.

 The move comes months after a top British court said that Shamima Begum, the British-born “ISIS bride” who left the country as a teenager to join the Islamic State, will not be allowed to return to the United Kingdom to fight a legal case about the revocation of citizenship.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/11/19/revoking-citizenship-uk-new-bill/

 

Asylum / refugees / immigration (international) 

Guardian: One-year-old Syrian child dies in forest on Poland-Belarus border

A one-year-old child from Syria has died in a forest in Poland near the border with Belarus, according to /Polish medical workers, becoming the youngest known victim of the crisis on the eastern edge of the European Union.

Thousands of people attempting to reach the EU are still stranded in freezing conditions, amid a standoff between the bloc and Belarus, which has been accused of deliberately creating the crisis by flying in people from the Middle East and facilitating their travel to the border.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/18/one-year-old-syrian-child-dies-in-forest-on-poland-belarus-border

Guardian: Lukashenko says Belarusian troops may have helped refugees reach Europe

The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, has acknowledged that his troops probably helped Middle Eastern asylum seekers cross into Europe, in the clearest admission yet that he engineered the new migrant crisis on the border with the EU.

In an interview with the BBC at his presidential palace in Minsk, he said it was “absolutely possible” that his troops helped migrants across the frontier into Poland.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/lukashenko-says-belarusian-troops-may-have-helped-refugees-reach-europe 

Al Jazeera: Poland says Belarus still bringing migrants to its border

Poland has accused Belarus of continuing to ferry migrants to its border despite clearing camps close to the frontier earlier this week, as the country’s prime minister started a tour of Baltic states to seek support in the crisis. 

The European Union has accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of deliberately attempting to flood the bloc with migrants and refugees in retaliation for sanctions against the country as well as the EU’s refusal to recognise Lukashenko’s legitimacy after a disputed presidential election last year.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/21/poland-says-belarus-still-bringing-migrants-to-its-border 

Al Jazeera: ‘Go through, go,’ Lukashenko tells asylum seekers near EU border

With no end in sight for the weeks-long crisis at the European Union’s eastern frontier, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has told hopeful asylum seekers that his country would not stop them from attempting to cross into the bloc. 

Addressing a group on Friday, his first public appearance at the border since the start of the crisis, Lukashenko met asylum seekers and refugees at a warehouse turned into a shelter and told them they were free to head west or go home as they chose.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/26/go-through-go-lukashenko-tells-asylum-seekers-near-eu-border

New Yorker: The Secretive Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe

A collection of makeshift warehouses sits along the highway in Ghout al-Shaal, a worn neighborhood of auto-repair shops and scrap yards in Tripoli, the capital of Libya. Formerly a storage depot for cement, the site was reopened in January, 2021, its outer walls heightened and topped with barbed wire. Men in black-and-blue camouflage uniforms, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, stand guard around a blue shipping container that passes for an office. On the gate, a sign reads “Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration.” The facility is a secretive prison for migrants. Its name, in Arabic, is Al Mabani—The Buildings.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-secretive-libyan-prisons-that-keep-migrants-out-of-europe

 

Other Relevant News

The Conversation: Refugees in the media: how the most commonly used images make viewers dehumanise them

When the Syrian refugee crisis began in 2011, the journeys of thousands of people fleeing their home country to cross the Mediterranean were widely documented in the media. But the public response was tepid until 2015, when a photograph of drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi on a Turkish beach was printed in media around the world. The photo prompted international responses, a change of EU policy on refugees, and a surge in donations to charities working with refugees. 

Images shape our perceptions of the world and have the capacity to become political forces themselves. While more refugees risk their lives to cross the English Channel and the Mediterranean, not to mention the Belarus-Poland border, our research has found that the photos of these populations in the media affect how people view and respond to migration issues.
https://theconversation.com/refugees-in-the-media-how-the-most-commonly-used-images-make-viewers-dehumanise-them-171865

Guardian: Empire State of Mind review – ‘Within moments, I am crying on to my laptop’

Sathnam Sanghera’s two-part documentary on how imperialism has shaped Britain opens with a clear demonstration of one of its legacies. Namely, what happens when you dare to talk about it as a brown or black person.

“Such utter crap,” says the writer and journalist in the powerful opening moments of Empire State of Mind (Channel 4). “You are just another little man terrified of saying anything good about your benefactor.” Sanghera is reading aloud one of many letters sent to him (along with thousands of abusive tweets) since his book on the same subject, Empireland, came out at the start of this year. “The things we find dehumanising … for some white people are just an interesting intellectual debate,” he says. “For us it’s really depressing and personal.” Sanghera has learned to manage his feelings in public, but privately gets “deeply upset”. It’s at this point that he has to stop talking because he’s on the verge of tears. And I, a fellow fortysomething child of Indian immigrants, start crying on to my laptop.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/20/empire-state-of-mind-review-i-started-crying-on-to-my-laptop