TUNIS, Tunisia — About 20 African migrants were found dead Thursday after their smuggling boat sank in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach Europe, Tunisian authorities said. Five survivors were rescued and the Tunisian navy is searching for up to 20 others still believed missing.

Tunisian coast guard boats and local fishermen found and retrieved the bodies in the waters off the coastal city of Sfax in central Tunisia, Defense Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ben Zekri told The Associated Press.

According to survivors, the migrant smuggling boat was carrying about 40 or 50 people heading toward Italy, Ben Zekri said.

The boat was overloaded and in poor condition, and faced strong winds Thursday morning that may have contributed to the sinking, said National Guard spokesman Ali Ayari. It was carrying migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, he told The AP.

Tunisian navy units were searching for any more survivors.

Tunisian authorities say they have intercepted several migrant smuggling boats recently but that the number of attempts has been growing, notably between the Sfax region and the Italian island of Lampedusa.

More than 1,100 migrants have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean this year, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration.

Migrant smuggling boats frequently leave from the coast of Tunisia and neighboring Libya carrying people from across Africa, including a growing number of Tunisians fleeing prolonged economic difficulties in their country.

Tunisians have made up the vast majority of migrants arriving in Italy this year, despite efforts by Rome to negotiate with Tunis to put a stop to the crossings. Of the 34,001 migrants who had arrived in Italy so far this year, 12,847 were Tunisian or 38%. Bangladeshis were the next biggest group, followed by those from Ivory Coast, Algeria, Pakistan, and Egypt.

Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed.

Source:  https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/20-migrants-found-dead-off-tunisian-coast-missing-74893808

The post 20 migrants dead off Tunisia after boat sinks, more missing first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

From Guyana to Paraguay and Chile, Cuban migrants are posting notes on social networks to join the caravans, which have already created problems in Suriname because of border closures due to the coronavirus. Nearly 500 Cuban migrants, including children and pregnant women, are stranded in campgrounds there.

“I came to this country three years ago with my two children and my husband. I came from Cuba to escape the misery, but we’re in the same situation here. Without work and without assistance, living in a neighborhood with drugs and violence,” Janet Figueroa, one of the members of a caravan in Suriname, told el Nuevo Herald.

Suriname, like Guyana, allows Cubans from the island unrestricted entry, so in recent years the two countries have become jumping-off points for migrants heading for the United States or other countries with large Cuban communities, such as Chile and Uruguay.

Figueroa, 36, is traveling with her husband and two children. She is asking the Guyana government for permission to move on “in search of the American dream.”

“We don’t want to hurt anyone. We only want to get to the United States and join our relatives,” she said. Several cousins in Miami have promised to help her family if they manage to pass the tight requirements for asylum applications along the southern border.

The Suriname government has provided humanitarian assistance to the Cuban migrants and requested technical assistance from the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the Red Cross, and the International Organization for Migration, according to Foreign Minister Albert Ramdin. It has also suspended flights from Cuba and Haiti to keep the crisis from escalating.

An official statement from the Cuban government, issued at its embassies in Suriname and Guyana, blamed the United States for the migration crisis. Washington provoked the wave of migration, it claimed, when it reduced the number of immigrant and tourism visas it issues each year. Havana said it’s ready to receive all Cuban citizens who want to return to the island voluntarily.

A mysterious affliction that hit U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana led the U.S. government to reduce its diplomatic personnel in the Cuban capital by 60 percent and process visa applications in third countries in Latin America. The affliction was likely caused by targeted microwave emissions, according to a recent report by the U.S. National Academy of Science.

The number of non-immigrant visas issued to Cubans plunged from 16,335 in 2017 to 6,959 in 2018 and to 10,167 last year. Immigration visas totaled 7,748 in 2019, according to the U.S. State Department. Washington also suspended the Cuban Family Reunification Program, leaving more than 20,000 families in limbo.

Jorge Duany, who heads the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said a new migration crisis is unlikely even though the island is undergoing a profound economic crisis, an increase in the level of repression, and the impact of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policies.

“Since the cancellation of the ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy the United States has deported a growing number of Cubans to their native country,” Duany said.

President Barack Obama eliminated the policy in early 2017 before leaving office. It had allowed Cubans who set foot on U.S. territory to remain but deported those intercepted at sea. Since then, applications for asylum along the southern border have soared, even though Trump administration restrictions have made it more difficult to win asylum.

“It is expected that the southern borders of the United States, with Mexico and the Caribbean, will remain hermetically sealed, at least until the Trump administration hands overpower and the situation with the pandemic normalizes,” added Duany, an expert on Cuban issues.

MORE CUBAN CARAVANS IN URUGUAY, CHILE, AND PERU

Hundreds of other Cubans are preparing to leave for the United States from Chile, Uruguay, and Peru, according to dozens of WhatsApp and other social media posts viewed by el Nuevo Herald and telephone interviews.

José Yans Pérez, a Cuban who has lived in Chile for three years but dreams of living in the United States, is one of the migrants ready to travel through Latin America to reach the U.S. border.

“The situation in Chile has become very difficult. There’s no work, and the process of becoming legal is interminable,” said Pérez, who tried to reach the United States from Cuba several times aboard makeshift boats before he emigrated to Chile.

Posts in whatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger show the Cubans organizing and detailing the process for applying for political asylum when they reach the U.S. border.

“I’ve been in Chile without papers for two-and-a-half years. Friends have been in the United States for one year and they already have residence. That’s why I am going. I don’t want to stay here, where the Cubans are last,” said Gustavo Cedeño, 46.

“Without papers you can’t work. We also don’t have access to healthcare, and now they are threatening to deport us to Cuba.”

A camp of Cuban migrants in Suriname. MARIO J. PENTÓN

The post Thousands of Cubans in South America planning caravans to the U.S. border to seek asylum first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Francis, who has made a defense of migrants and refugees a key part of his pontificate, made his comments in to a group of refugees, including women and children, brought to Italy by the Vatican from a transit camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

“How can we fail to hear the cry of so many brothers and sisters who prefer to face a tempestuous sea rather than die slowly in Libyan detention camps, places of torture and ignoble slavery?” he said.

More than 5,000 refugees and migrants are held in 19 official detention facilities in Libya, some controlled by armed groups, as well as an unknown number in squalid centres run by traffickers, according to the United Nations.

Rights groups say abuses are rife including beating and forced labor.

“We need a serious commitment to empty out the detention camps in Libya, evaluating and activating all possible solutions,” Francis said, adding, without elaborating, that “complicity by institutions” should be denounced.

In September, prosecutors arrested three people, a Guinean and two Egyptians, suspected of torturing migrants in a detention center in northwest Libya. The three were found in a migrant registration center in Sicily.

Francis spoke sombrely as he unveiled a cross bearing a battered red life jacket that was used by an unknown migrant who drowned in the Mediterranean in July.

Detainees in the Libyan camps include those who left on boats for Europe and were brought back by the European Union-backed Libyan Coast Guard, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

More than 1,100 migrants have died or are missing at sea after attempting to cross the Mediterranean this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. The number of crossings dropped sharply from 2017 amid an EU backed push to block arrivals.

“The problem is not resolved by blocking boats,” Francis said, adding that this left them at the mercy of unscrupulous human traffickers.

The post Pope calls for refugee camps of ‘slavery and torture’ to close first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In July, a nondescript blue vessel drifting along the Italian coast became the latest flashpoint in Europe’s “migration crisis.” For the people on board, mostly from African countries, the Sea-Watch 3 was their last hope for escaping desperate circumstances in their homelands. To many onshore, the humanitarian vessel was political contraband. The Italian authorities refused to let the boat dock, as the right-wing Interior Minister Matteo Salvini complained that other European nations were forcing Italy to take in migrants it did not want. A standoff ensued between the Italian government and the scrappy 31-year-old captain Carola Rackete. After two weeks adrift, during which conditions on board grew increasingly desperate — migrants were reportedly at risk of self-harm — Rackete drove into the port, clashing with a patrol boat. Eventually, France, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take in the 40 migrants on board, Rackete was arrested, and Salvini called the ordeal “an act of war.”

Johannes Bayer, chairman of Sea-Watch, the humanitarian project that runs the boat, called Rackete’s actions an act of necessity. “No European institution is willing to take responsibility and to uphold human dignity at Europe’s border in the Mediterranean. This is why we have to take responsibility ourselves… The guarantee of human rights must not be conditional to a passport or to any EU negotiations, they have to be indivisible.”

The standoff reflected a crisis of Europe’s own creation: For years, EU leaders have watched Europe’s southern waters morph into a mass grave for migrants. Most come from Africa, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, and many have endured unspeakable trauma — war, torture, rape, even enslavement. The problem is not so much that the continent “has no room” for them, as conservative politicians often argue. Rather, because the EU is so riven with nationalist and racial anxieties, it has repeatedly failed to develop any sort of coordinated scheme for supporting migrants in their arrival and resettlement — not just those who cross the Mediterranean, but also those who enter by land through the Balkans. Meanwhile, border authorities cannot stop the smuggling boats from setting off for European shores, nor can they stop humanitarian groups from rescuing stranded people from the sea.

To avoid further border clashes, some EU member states have floated a disembarkation and relocation plan, which aims to move people from their arrival point, usually the coast of Italy, to other member states, and to more efficiently screen migrants to determine who might qualify for humanitarian protection. Relocation is just a temporary step — allowing people to stay while their legal cases are wending through the asylum process — but as a stopgap measure, the plan is part of an incremental effort to push more member states to share the “burden” of handling Europe’s so-called “migrant crisis.”

The new “Joint declaration of intent on a controlled emergency procedure” was drafted by the two frontline transit countries, Italy and Malta — and two major destination countries, Germany and France — along with Finland, which holds the rotating position of EU president. Presented at a mini-summit held in late September, the framework hinges on recruiting other member states to volunteer to serve as relocation sites by receiving a designated share of migrants. After an initial security and medical screening, migrants seeking asylum would be relocated and continue their legal processing, while those deemed ineligible for asylum would be returned, with “logistical and operational support” from the European Border and Coast Guard and International Organization for Migration. Relocation would overall take about four weeks.

In a statement to Truthout, an EU Commission spokesperson stated that the proposal had been presented to other member states for discussion, and the Commission “hope[s] that as many Member States as possible will join this collective effort.” So far, only Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal have reportedly expressed willingness to participate in the scheme.

However, although the relocation proposal might save EU leaders some embarrassment when rescue boats arrive, it would not address the fundamental unfairness of Europe’s immigration regime. Although the plan makes overtures toward law enforcement actions — combating the high-profile crimes of “smuggling” and “human trafficking is vague on legal protections for migrants, and particularly vague on what recourse is available to those deemed ineligible for humanitarian protection. Human rights activists are concerned that the framework leaves open the possibility of returning boats to their departure point: the chaotic, war-torn tip of Libya.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International argue that the relocation plan should ensure that migrants would not be arbitrarily or unjustly turned back to dangerous circumstances. Philippe Dam, advocacy director of HRW’s Europe and Central Asia Division, tells Truthout, “One thing which is really missing is a commitment to establish the necessary safeguards against unsafe or arbitrary return.”

Sea-Watch, the NGO that runs the rescue vessel that clashed with Italian authorities last summer, is opposed to any forced return, advocating instead for the relocation of all migrants who disembark, not just those deemed to have a chance at asylum. “Relocation should be automatic/immediate” for all migrants, the group said in a statement, while also “taking into account individual needs and connections such as family, community and social links conceived in a broad sense.”

MOAS, a humanitarian NGO that runs rescue ships along the Mediterranean, criticized the agreement for not incorporating the role of civil society-led rescue operations — suggesting that the proposal prioritizes official search-and-rescue vessels and excludes NGO ships: “Rather than looking for a framework through which to work with Search and Rescue NGOs, the approach is still to imply an incompatibility between state and non-state actors, which is something MOAS simply does not agree with.”

Conservative EU officials, meanwhile, criticize the plan as an encroachment on sovereignty. The right-wing Hungarian government — which has been accused of numerous human rights abuses against migrants on its border, and recently tried to criminalize the act of aiding migrants — dismissed the relocation proposal as an attempt to unilaterally impose “quotas” on member states.

Past efforts at distributing Europe’s “irregular” migrants have foundered, especially amid an increasingly right-wing, nationalistic political climate. In Central and Eastern Europe particularly, right-wing nationalist politicians argue most new arrivals are not genuine refugees, but “economic migrants” seeking work. (Rights advocates argue that drawing this sharp distinction between economic migrants and refugees is illogical, since asylum policies are often extremely restrictive, and even people who come to seek work are often fleeing extremely desperate circumstances.)

“Refugee and asylum and migration issues have become very toxic in Europe,” Jeff Crisp, a research associate with Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, told Truthout. Right-wing politicians are exploiting the public’s fears, he added: “If they can say, well, we’re not allowing these people to set foot on our territory … then that gives the impression of being more in control, and is more likely [to gain] popular support among the electorate.”

The rising death toll at sea, on the other hand, factors little into the electoral calculus of many European politicians. This year, about 1,078 migrants have died at sea as of late October, mostly in the central Mediterranean. There were even more deaths in previous years, peaking at 3,780 in 2016. Deaths typically occur when smuggling ships begin to cross over from a war-torn and chaotic region in Libya, get stranded at sea, and are not rescued in time by a passing vessel. But in 2019, with more than 77,900 arrivals by sea in Europe, the numbers of both attempted crossings and fatalities are down sharply from previous years— driven in large part by stricter patrols, led by the Libyan Coast Guard in collaboration with European authorities.

Beyond temporary relocation, the longer-term challenge is the establishment of a functional Common European Asylum System that can fairly and efficiently review asylum cases with standardized procedures. Previous attempts to develop a more consistent, stable EU-wide legal infrastructure have failed. Overall, since 2015, more than 34,700 individuals have been relocated from Italy and Greece, but mostly on an ad-hoc basis. They then enter a disjointed, heavily backlogged asylum system. While about 50,000 people have been granted asylum over the past few years, as of late 2018, some 878,600 requests for asylum were pending, and rejection rates are on the rise.

Hostile terrain

Meanwhile, Italy’s coastline is becoming increasingly hostile territory for migrant aid organizations. Last March, the EU, under pressure from Italy, decided to suspend the patrol boats of the humanitarian rescue program Operation Sophia. Last December, the Aquarius, a rescue boat operated by the NGOs Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and SOS Méditerranée, was forced to end operations, after coming under what it called “sustained attacks” by EU authorities — being forced to remain adrift off the Italian coast, stripped of its registration and even slapped with criminal charges, despite having saved more than 33,000 people over three years.

Aid groups want more than a disembarkation scheme. In a statement to Truthout, Sonal Marwah, MSF humanitarian affairs manager for Libya search and rescue, said that the recent discussions on disembarkation “were a promising first step,” but the lack of support from member states “has been disheartening.” In the immediate term, Marwah added, another MSF ship, the Ocean Viking, currently remains stranded offshore with 104 people aboard. “We can only hope in lieu of a permanent disembarkation mechanism, states will act humanely and allow these vulnerable people to disembark to safety,” she said.

EU officials insist that their crackdowns on humanitarian vessels are a form of “deterrence,” assuming that by making death at sea more likely, migrants — who have likely braved multiple forms of trauma already — will suddenly be frightened out of making the final boat journey to Europe.

Emmanuel, a Cameroonian refugee, described the brutal reality of “deterrence” in testimony to Amnesty International: A passing ship refused to rescue him and others trapped on two stranded dinghies. The crew said the refugees would have to be retrieved by the Libyan authorities. Meanwhile, Emmanuel recalled, “I could see people dying on the other boat, pieces of boat were floating and bodies too. [By the time] a small Libyan ship came to get us … all the people on the other dinghy had died.”

In addition to “deterrence” strategies, some European officials also seek to “externalize” their migration problem by warehousing refugees abroad. To block the Western route through Greece, where many Syrians and others crossed in recent years, refugees have been pushed back to Turkey and housed in sprawling detention camps, even as they are seeking resettlement in Europe. (Grim conditions in Turkish refugee camps, however, are driving more migration to neighboring Greece, creating another pressure point on the EU.)

The EU has also collaborated with the notoriously brutal Libyan security forces to patrol the Mediterranean and turn back migrant smuggling vessels. The effort to push back migrants is unraveling, however, as civil conflict in Libya escalates and leaves migrants trapped in squalid, violent detention centers.

Europe’s main response to the Libyan crisis has been to shove migrants even farther away. Following the recent horrific bombing of a Libyan detention facility, EU and United Nations authorities have developed an ad-hoc relocation scheme that has landed about 500 evacuated migrants in Rwanda, where they will reportedly be granted asylum-seeker status. It is unclear what kind of opportunities they will have to seek resettlement in Europe.

Anneliese Baldaccini, Amnesty’s executive officer for asylum and migration, says the Mediterranean crisis is not due to a lack of physical or economic capacity to admit more refugees. After all, countries in the Middle East have been sheltering millions of regional refugees, whereas Europe’s migrant influx is proportionally vastly smaller.

“The problem is the lack of solidarity,” Baldaccini says, “because if you consider the EU as a whole, there is certainly scope to put in place better policies of support and reception.” Referring to the member states’ collective inaction on border policy, Baldaccini adds, “It’s always the case that they very well unite on more repressive and regressive measures than on progressive measures.”

Europe has not always been so resistant to migrants, however. In the 1980s, some member states, including Italy, Spain and Germany, granted amnesty to unauthorized migrants within their borders. However, today, such measures have generally been discouraged by the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum; ironically, the EU-wide standards for controlling immigration have also impeded member states’ ability to adopt more open policies than their neighbors.

Nonetheless, Europeans are uniting to defend migrants’ rights at the grassroots, developing “translocal” campaigns and weaving together cities across Europe to demand humanitarian and legal protections for migrants. The rescue vessels at sea, refugee aid workers helping migrants navigate Hungarian borders, and ordinary citizens staging direct-action protests to stop deportations — the wave of humanitarian activism in recent months has shown that European citizens and EU ministers are diverging sharply on the question of borders.

So migrants keep coming, despite the obstacles, and people keep aiding them, despite the law. And together, it’s the migrants and their allies in the EU, not the ministers, who are shaping the frontiers of Europe, demonstrating that the borders themselves are the problem.

Source: https://www.salon.com/2019/11/12/as-europe-shuts-out-migrants-activists-are-pushing-back_partner/

The post As Europe shuts out migrants, activists are pushing back first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The rescue ship Alan Kurdi picking up 44 people from a wooden boat in the Mediterranean this month. Photograph: Fabian Heinz/Sea-Eye/EPA

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has said European countries have made progress on plans to redistribute refugees rescued in the Mediterranean, efforts criticized by Italy’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini.

The question of what to do with the thousands of refugees still attempting to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean has drawn a sharp response in some countries, with Italy saying it is bearing the brunt of the problem while its EU partners do little to help.

A tentative agreement, which aims to work towards a more efficient system of redistributing rescued people, was reached late on Monday at a meeting in Paris under French chairmanship.

Macron said 14 states had approved the plan, while eight said they would actively take part. They include France, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Lithuania, Croatia and Ireland, Macron’s office said, without naming the other six.

Salvini, who has closed ports to NGO rescue boats, said the agreement underscored a demand that Italy “continue to be the refugee camp of Europe”.

After snubbing the meeting, he said Italy “does not take orders and is not a partner. If Macron wants to discuss migrants, come to Rome.”

Charities earlier criticized what they called Europe’s “campaign of criminalization” towards the rescue boats.

“Every effort is made to scare and to prevent ships from doing their job,” Frédéric Penard, the head of operations at SOS Méditerranée, told a press conference in Paris.

Last month, Italian authorities arrested the German captain of the Sea-Watch 3 charity ship, Carola Rackete, after she hit an Italian speedboat while docking without permission in the southern port of Lampedusa.

In a joint statement, the heads of the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration said: “The crucial role played by NGOs must be acknowledged. They should not be criminalized nor stigmatized for saving lives at sea.”

At present, NGO boats must try to find a country ready to admit them each time they rescue migrants and refugees, leading to time-consuming negotiations between EU member states.

Salvini, who once accused the NGOs of running a “taxi service” for migrants, has demanded that other European countries open their ports to the boats.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/23/eu-countries-agree-plan-to-handle-migrants-and-refugees

The post EU countries agree plan to handle migrants and refugees first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

KUBEKHAZA, Hungary — As mayor of this Hungarian village where tens of thousands of migrants recently marched toward northern Europe, Robert Molnar has some sympathy for his country’s decision to build a fence on the border with Serbia.

But Molnar has a message for Americans: Don’t let President Trump build his wall with Mexico.

“We have a serious immigration issue. Europe is not prepared. It is important to protect our sovereignty. I accept that,” said Molnar, 47, sitting in his office in Kubekhaza, a short distance from the point where the boundaries of Hungary, Romania and Serbia meet.

“It serves no purpose other than political theater. It should come down. I would urge Americans to examine whether Trump’s wall will really make them safer or better off,” Molnar said.

He pointed out that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a staunch anti-immigration nationalist who easily just won a third term, had ordered $1 billion in electrified fencing equipped with cameras and heat sensors to keep out migrants.

More: Border walls aim to keep out migrants, but also threaten bears, deer, other wildlife

More: From 7 to 77: There’s been an explosion in building border walls since World War II

Orban referred to refugees as “Muslim invaders” and vowed during the election campaign to protect Hungary from the “rust” of Muslim immigration.

“Orban decided we needed this wall. And that is the only reason we have it,” Molnar said. “If migrants want to come to Kubekhaza, for example, all they have to do is simply walk here from (neighboring) Romania, where there is no wall.”

Since the start of Europe’s migrant crisis in 2015, at least 800 miles of fences have been erected by Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Slovenia and others — a swift and concrete reaction as more than 1.8 million people descended on Europe from war zones from Afghanistan to Syria.

The length is about 40% of the 2,000-mile wall Trump wants built between the United States and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants. About 700 miles of fencing already exists.

A recent visit by USA TODAY to Hungary and Slovenia — the two countries with the region’s largest expanse of fences — revealed that those who live and work near these barriers often find they serve little purpose and can be psychologically damaging. It’s a verdict with significance for Americans as Trump pushes his signature campaign promise: Build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

Orban’s 20-foot-high, barbed-wire fence that stretches for 200 miles was built to block migrants from streaming through Hungary on their way northern Europe from Greece. It ends abruptly at the border with Romania to the northeast.

Molnar said the barrier will impact a generation of students.

 “We run a summer camp in this village, but more and more parents say their kids are scared to come here because of our proximity to the fence,” the mayor said.

“They think Kubekhazais a dangerous place because of the migrants. Yet we have no migrants here anymore, and the wall is not doing anything. It’s like a monument,” he added.

About 300 miles west of Kubekhaza, in Slovenia, hotel owner Peter Madronic copes with the nearby fence his nation built on the border with Croatia.

Madronic, 28, runs a guesthouse in a river valley popular with kayakers and mountain bikers. Slovenia preserved his hotel’s access to the Kolpa River — the natural border between Slovenia and Croatia — by building the fence around his land instead of directly next to the river. Doing that means his hotel is technically not in Slovenia nor in Croatia, less than 100 feet away.

“For some, it seems we are no longer in Slovenia, that we have been ‘fenced out,’ ” Madronic said, eyeing the 12-foot-tall chain-link fence. “Thankfully, the fence is not so ugly,” he said, adding that the barrier has not hurt his business.

Authorities claim Europe’s anti-immigration barriers accomplish what they set out to do: Keep people away.

Hungary said the fences helped cut migrants on its borders by nearly 100% since 2015, along with a deal made by Turkey and the European Union to stem the flow of migrants reaching the continent.

In the first three months of 2018, just 635 migrants were detected in the western Balkans — Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia — trying to reach European countries farther north, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated group.

Last year, 200,000 migrants landed in Europe, way down from the nearly 2 million in 2015, according to Frontex, the EU border agency.

The barriers have brought fresh complaints and concerns. Scientists worry about the possible long-term effect on wildlife, such as brown bears, which can migrate across as many as nine countries in Europe.

“The fences are a real threat to them,” said biologist Djuro Huber at the University of Zagreb in Croatia who studies wildlife on the Slovenian-Croatian border.

And many in this region were baffled about inconsistencies and gaping holes along the borders.

“I don’t know why there are so many gaps in the fence,” Marija Grdesic, 32, said while guarding a narrow, wooden bridge that separates Croatia from Slovenia. “Perhaps it’s so local people can still reach the river to swim here,” she said, motioning toward the Kolpa River.

Emile Farran, 77, who works on a vineyard in Slovenia’s Istria region, pointed to an opening the length of a football field in the 15-foot-high fence topped with barbed wire intended to secure Slovenia’s border with Croatia.

“There is no need for this thing,” he said. “This is not a place where strangers ever pass. If the government really wants to help people like me, it should think about buying us some new tractors.”

These fences built in Europe differ from the one Trump wants along the Mexican border, said Ema Zuagen, 65, a retired physical therapist having coffee in Sevnica, Slovenia, the hometown of first lady Melania Trump.

“The thing about Trump’s wall is that it would keep out Mexicans and South Americans, who are mostly Catholic,” said Zuagen, who approves of the barriers. “Whereas our walls are keeping out immigrants who are mostly Islamic. There is a big difference.”

The post Trump isn’t the only one who wants to build a wall. These European nations already did first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The lack of a unified immigration policy had the result of offloading the EU’s welcoming responsibility onto Greece and Italy, the primary arrival points for most of the refugees. The two Mediterranean countries, already hit by the Eurozone economic crisis, have tried to seek help, calling on the EU member countries for a burden-sharing of the refugee intake. However, when it comes to refugees, European members have adopted very different policies, which differ from one country to another. These different attitudes have significantly slowed down resettling policies, giving rise to an unprecedented wave of xenophobia and feelings of hatred, witnessing a surge in far-right parties’ popularity across the European Union.

EU Reaches Agreement with Turkey

In 2016, in order to diminish the number of arrivals by sea, the European Union has brokered a deal with Turkey. Following the closure of the borders by Balkan countries, Europe signed a bilateral agreement with Turkey for the management of migratory flows. The text of the agreement stated that “for every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU taking into account the UN Vulnerability Criteria.” An exchange process, aimed at reducing sea-crossing, which also involved the relocation of 18,000 refugees in Europe and the first tranche of 3 billion euros to Turkey.

Two years after the EU-Turkey agreement, landings have certainly dropped. In 2015, 856,723 people arrived in Greece, a number that decreased in 2016 where, according to UNHCR data, 173,450 landed and only 29,718 in 2017. Certainly, numbers tell a good story, namely the alleged success of the agreement. Migration flows have indeed diminished, but the reality is very different.

Greece, which still hosts thousands of refugees, is one of Europe’s poorest countries. The high influx of migrants has added tensions to a country which has been dealing with a severe economic crisis since 2009. The lack of proper rescuing and hosting facilities have further deepened Greece’s economic and social crisis. In the last few weeks, the Greek island of Lesbos has witnessed clashes led by far-right protesters who threw bottles and stones at asylum seekers. The unbearable economic crisis and problems driven by the difficulty of social integration among the many asylum seekers and the Greek residents have deepened the tensions of a country already burdened by structural problems.

Migrants Stranded on Greek Island

Further, two years after the deal, Greece, a country suffering from a severe economic crisis, has had to deal with a large number of asylum seekers stranded on the Greek islands due to the slow and complicated process of repatriation to Turkey, and relocation to other European countries. At the moment, Greece would host more than 60,000 asylum seekers in different hotspots. Of these, 15,000 are confined to the Greek islands as a result of a government measure that prevents refugees from moving to Athens, until their asylum request is verified.

Therefore, after the EU-Turkey deal, many member countries were expected, as part of the relocation program, to take in a certain amount of refugees. But, according to latest Eurostat data, the burden was not shared equally among EU countries. Almost half of the beneficiaries from Greece and Italy were relocated to Germany (10,265, 31%) and France (4,483; 15%). Additionally, 9% were transferred to Sweden, 8% to the Netherlands and 6% to Finland. According to the International Organization for Migration, as described in its report, there were 186,768 new arrivals to Europe (Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria) registered in 2017. This represents a 52% decrease compared to 387,739 reported in 2016 and an 82% decrease when compared with more than one million (1,046,599) registered in 2015. In total, the people relocated were 34.563, too less for a continent of 500 million people.

Complications from Asylum Seeker Preferences

However, the differences in the relocation are also due to the asylum seekers’ preferences. Different factors, such as family reunion, or economic opportunities, have shaped the refugees’ application to one country or another. According to Eurostat data, with 198 thousand applicants registered in 2017, Germany accounted for 31% of all first-time applicants in the EU-28. It was followed by Italy (127 thousand, or 20%), France (91 thousand, or 14%), Greece (57 thousand, or 9%), the United Kingdom (33 thousand, or 5%) and Spain (30 thousand, or 5%).

Despite EU’s efforts to control the influx of migrants, the central Mediterranean route remains one of the deadliest; yet EU countries are still not doing enough to equally share the burden of hosting and welcoming thousands of refugees and finding a comprehensive and communitarian plan for their assistance.

Cristin Cappelletti is a writer for the online Italian publication L’Indro focusing on in-depth analysis about the Middle East, women’s issues and human rights.

The post Christian ministry cancels California event fearing the state ‘will forbid some of what it teaches’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also complained in an interview published by the Turkiye newspaper on Aug. 11 that the EU’s refusal to open new chapters in membership talks was “entirely political” and Western allies had failed to sufficiently support President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after he faced down a military coup last year.

Under a 6 billion euro deal agreed last year, EU money has been coming in, giving Turkey’s sluggish economy a boost and helping it manage the world’s largest population of refugees.

But Brussels has not delivered on pledges to allow Turks to travel to most EU countries without a visa and to accelerate membership talks. Instead, it has heaped criticism on Turkey for human rights abuses in the crackdown that followed the failed coup and persisted through a constitutional referendum in April that gave Erdogan sweeping new powers.

“Were our law enforcement to quit all of its efforts tomorrow, the Aegean Sea would become a route for irregular migration and a serious crisis would emerge. We expect the EU to keep this in mind and immediately fulfill its obligations under the agreement,” Cavusoglu told the newspaper.

He stopped short of saying Turkey would tear up the deal, and it is not the first time Turkey has threatened to set off a humanitarian crisis if the EU fails to meet its demands. Erdogan told the EU in March it could “forget about” Ankara’s promise to readmit asylum seekers.

But it clashes with a Turkish push in recent weeks to repair frayed ties with Europe, especially Germany, that have undermined Ankara’s decadeslong quest to become an EU member.

Leveraging the plight of refugees in exchange for cash and visas dents the credit Turkey is rightly due for sheltering more than 3 million people fleeing the six-year war in Syria and even offering them a path to citizenship.

Cavusoglu’s rhetoric aims to stir memories of 2015, the peak of the migration crisis, when a record 1.05 million people reached Europe, nearly 90% of them from Turkey across the Aegean, where 279 people died trying, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Images of lifeless bodies washing up on Greek and Turkish beaches and hundreds of thousands of people trudging on foot in freezing weather through the Balkans still haunt Europeans.

Turkey has proven it can control the flow. In the first six months of this year, 12,191 people used the eastern route to reach Greece from Turkey, and 45 people died on the way.

“A year and a half ago, EU leaders were all lining up to deal with the refugee crisis. We ended this drama in the Aegean Sea. It’s as though they have forgotten our efforts,” Cavusoglu said.

Just two weeks ago, the EU said it had “no concerns” about the migration agreement and that it was working well.

And relations with Germany show glimmers of a recovery. Last week, NATO brokered a deal to allow German lawmakers to visit their troops at a base in central Turkey after Germany threatened Turkey with economic sanctions and said the country was not safe for its businesses and tourists. Berlin is also outraged by the detention of two German journalists and a rights activist in the post-coup clampdown that has jailed 50,000 people.

For his part, Erdogan said Aug. 12 that German criticism was motivated by electioneering and relations would normalize after Germany’s Sept. 24 Bundestag poll.

Despite Cavusoglu’s salvo, the migrant deal is largely sticking because both sides have benefited from it, experts say. But Ankara may have less sway in other matters. It has lobbied for an expansion of a 20-year-old Customs Union to include more Turkish exports to its biggest trading partner.

The European Commission in December proposed negotiations on upgrading the trade pact. But late last month Germany reportedly asked the European Commission to suspend the talks with Turkey and to consider withholding financial aid to compel it to respect the rule of law.

Source: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/08/turkey-warns-migrants-spat-eu.html

The post Turkey warns of migrant surge in spat with EU first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.