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Report: Arrivals by sea in Europe approach 1m mark

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Over 900,000 people reached the continent and 3,563 went missing or drowned trying to make the journey, monitors say.

About 5,000 refugees are reaching Europe each day along the so-called Balkan migrant route [Santi Palacios/AP]

About 5,000 refugees are reaching Europe each day along the so-called Balkan migrant route [Santi Palacios/AP]

by Al Jazeera

More than 900,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe since January 2015, and over 3,000 have drowned or gone missing during the same period, according to the UN and an organisation which monitors the migration flow.

Since January 2015, at least 907,712 refugees and migrants made the journey to Europe, including 878,495 who have arrived by sea, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday.

That means that almost 97 percent arrived by sea.

At least 3,563 people have gone missing or drowned trying to reach Europe, the IOM said.

The UNHCR put the number of arrivals by sea at 886,262, and 3,515 reported missing or dead.

The IOM and UNICEF said that children accounted for 20 percent of those arriving in 2015.

The share is greatest along the Eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey to Greece and through the Western Balkans, where children make up over one-quarter of arrivals.

In October, more than 90 children died on their way to Greece, and in the past week, nine of the 12 deaths on this crossing were children, the IOM said.

Mostly Syrians and Afghans

Along the journey, children are also more at risk of illness and injury, as well as exploitation, separation from family, kidnapping and trafficking.

Greece has seen the largest number of refugees arriving by sea, where at least 738,465 refugees have arrived since January this year.

The majority of those arriving in Europe by sea come from the world’s top 10 refugees-producing countries, the highest being Syria and Afghanistan.

On Wednesday, the EU struck a deal with Turkey in Brussels that aims to limit the flow of refugees into the continent.

The agreement includes providing Turkey with $3.2bn, along with closer ties with the EU in return for handling the refugees from war-torn countries on its territory.

The UNHCR reported in June that the worldwide displacement was at the highest level ever recorded, in which, by the end of 2014, a staggering 59.5 million people were forcibly displaced.

It also said that globally one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.

Since 2011, the main reason for such a rise in figures has been the war in Syria, now the world’s single-largest driver of displacement.

European leaders commit to more shelter for refugees

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EU and Balkan leaders agree 17-point plan that includes about 100,000 more places for refugees as winter looms.

eu

by Al Jazeera

European Union and Balkan leaders have agreed a 17-point plan to cooperate on managing arrival of refugees through the Balkan peninsula, the European Commission has said.

Among measures agreed at the meeting in Brussels on Sunday evening were that 100,000 places in reception centres should be made available along the route from Greece toward Germany. The UN refugee agency would help establish them.

Some 50,000 places will be created in Greece and another 50,000 on the route through Balkans countries such as Macedonia and Serbia, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said after the mini-summit of 11 nations.

“Refugees need to be treated in a humane manner along the length of the Western Balkans route to avoid a humanitarian tragedy in Europe,” Juncker said.

The agreement comes in the wake of differences among member nations on how to tackle the continent’s greatest refugee crisis since World War II.

“This is one of the greatest litmus tests that Europe has ever faced,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Border operations

They also agreed to expand border operations and make full use of biometric data like fingerprints as they register and screen refugees, before deciding whether to grant them asylum or send them home.

“We have made very clear that the policy of simply waving people through must be stopped,” EU Commission president told reporters, referring to agreements to cooperate and avoid unilateral national measures that have contributed to chaos throughout the region.

The meeting also agreed to deploy 400 police officers to Slovenia within a week to help the country cope with its overwhelming arrival of refugees. Earlier, Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said that his country was not receiving enough help from its EU partners.

Nearly 250,000 people have passed through the Balkans since mid-September.

Croatia said 11,500 people entered its territory on Saturday, the highest tally in a single day since Hungary put up a fence and refugees started moving sideways into Croatia a month ago.

Reporters Without Borders founder: Schools should reject Syrians

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The founder of Reporters Without Borders and current mayor of Beziers refuse to help educate Syrian refugees.

Founder of Reporters Without Borders Robert Menard | Photo: AFP

Founder of Reporters Without Borders Robert Menard | Photo: AFP

by teleSUR

The founder of Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, has sparked outrage after refusing on Wednesday to allow Syrian children to study in public schools in the city of Beziers, where he is the mayor.

“There are a certain number of Syrian families that arrived, that broke doors, that installed themselves here … and now I have a certain number of associations … (that demand) I allow the children (of the Syrian families) in our schools, of course I won’t!” said the mayor during a televised interview.

Menard’s latest remarks come after he himself took up the task of evicting Syrian migrants in his city last week. A video of him carrying door-to-door evictions with a translator and a handful of armed policemen was posted by the mayor’s office on Youtube.

“You are not welcome in this city,” he tells a Syrian refugee, who entered an abandoned apartment.

The mayor, accompanied by armed policemen, aggressively tells another refugee that he has to leave immediately and if he refuses, the police will take him out.

“We cannot accept that people behave this way … They exploit (these people) politically,” he explains to other local government authorities accompanying him at the end of the video.

Menard has also been widely criticized for using a picture of Syrian refugees boarding a train in Macedonia for the front cover of the local government’s magazine, with the title “They are here!”

The misuse of the photograph elicited the news agency AFP and its photographer to sue Menard for 60,000 Euros (US$68,517).

The organization he founded, Reporters Without Borders, has become famous for its freedom of the press reports which specifically targets countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Since 2008, the United Nations’ Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has twice sanctioned the organization for its lack of ethics.

Austria: Arrests after 71 dead refugees found in truck

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Austrian police confirm final death toll, saying the refugees included eight women and four children.

Initial investigations revealed the truck had left Budapest on Wednesday morning, before being sighted near the Austrian border overnight [Reuters]

Initial investigations revealed the truck had left Budapest on Wednesday morning, before being sighted near the Austrian border overnight [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Austrian authorities say three people have been arrested in Hungary after the bodies of 71 refugees were found in a truck abandoned on a motorway.

Police had originally put the death toll at between 20 and 50 after the truck was found on Thursday, but Austrian officials revised the figure upwards on Friday.

Speaking at a press conference in Eisenstadt, Austrian police official Hans Peter Doskozil said the dead comprised 59 men, 8 women and four children, including a young infant.

He said it was likely that those in the truck suffocated.

Of the three arrested, one is a Bulgarian who is believed to have owned the vehicle. The others, a Bulgarian and another with Hungarian documents, are “pretty certain to be those who drove the vehicle,” Doskozil said.

Officials said they hoped the three would lead them to others responsible for trafficking the dead across Europe.

The truck, found on Thursday, had travelled to Austria from Hungary. The partly decomposed bodies were piled on top of each other in a cargo container in the vehicle, parked off the highway in Burgenland state.

The shocking discovery cast a shadow over talks in Vienna, where Europe’s leaders had gathered on Thursday to discuss the mounting refugee crisis on the continent.

“We were all shaken by the horrible news that up to 50 people died … these were people coming to seek safety,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, prior to the new toll being released.

“This is a warning to work to resolve this problem and show solidarity.”

The conference held a minute of silence to commemorate the dead.

This year has seen record numbers of people trying to reach the EU by sea and land as they flee conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In Austria, the number of asylum requests rose above 28,300 between January and June alone – as many as for the whole of 2014 – and officials expect the total to reach 80,000 this year.

The Western Balkans conference was called to find a common European answer to the refugee crisis that is overwhelming some countries while leaving others relatively unaffected.

Austrian plan

At the summit, Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz floated elements of a five-point plan that foresees establishing safe havens in the refugees’ home countries where those seeking asylum in the EU could be processed and – if they qualify – be given safe passage to Europe.

Beyond safe havens, possibly protected by troops acting under a UN mandate, the Austrian plan to be submitted to EU decision-makers foresees increased controls on Europe’s outer borders and coordinated action against human smuggling.

It also calls for refugee quotas for each of the EU’s 28 members – something that many countries have opposed.

 

EU members Greece and Italy, and non-EU Balkan countries such as Macedonia and Serbia – whose leaders attended the summit – are dealing with the initial refugee burden through sea and land routes. But many of these refugees are only in transit to western European countries.

Nearly 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean this year with at least 2,373 “migrants and refugees” dying in a bid to reach Europe, nearly 300 more than the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Record number of refugees enter Hungary from Serbia

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More than 2,000 refugees crossed frontier on Monday, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

After crossing Serbia, refugees enter Hungary to continue their journey to western and northern EU countries [EPA]

by Al Jazeera

A record number of refugees streamed into EU member Hungary from Serbia, police said, just days before Hungary completes a border fence.

A total of 2,093 potential asylum seekers, the highest ever daily total, crossed the border near the Hungarian town of Roszke, a police statement said on Monday.

They were part of a wave of around 8,000 refugees whose journey to the European Union had been blocked last week when Macedonia declared a state of emergency and closed its borders after being overwhelmed by the huge influx of people, amid Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II.

Many refugees said they had passed through Serbia after travelling through Macedonia’s border with Greece.

“We were stopped in Macedonia for two days, the riots were terrible, police used guns and tear gas, I saw an old woman beaten, her money and papers taken,” a 29-year-old IT engineer from Mosul in Iraq told the AFP news agency.

Al Jazeera’s Djordge Kostic, reporting near the border with Hungary, said an estimated 1,500 refugees are currently staying at 28 shelters set up by the UN and Russian-Serbian aid organisation in the city of Kanjiza.

He said the refugee situation at Kanjiza is “better organised” than in other parts of Serbia.

“There water, food, toilet and shower stalls provided to them. They even have Wi-Fi,” he said.

From there, the refugees can proceed to Horgos, about 12-km away, where they can take the train to Hungary, our correspondent said.

Meanwhile,Al Jazeera’s Aljosa Milenkovic, reporting from Presevo on the Serbia-Macedonia border, said more refugees were likely to come, “putting to test the region’s ability to cope with the large number of people transiting through”.

The latest movements came as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Fracois Hollande called for a unified system for the right to asylum, and the setting up of reception centres in Greece and Italy.

The issue is set to top the agenda at a summit of Balkan leaders on Thursday, which Merkel will attend.

Razor-wire fence

Hungary has registered more than 100,000 asylum seekers so far in 2015, over double the total for all of last year. In 2012, the figure was just 2,000.

The numbers have sharply increased to around 1,500 a day in August, after Hungary’s conservative government announced it would build a razor-wire fence along its southern border with Serbia.

In recent days, refugees have entered Hungary alongside a cross-border train track near Roszke, one of the few sections of the border with Serbia not yet blocked by three rolls of razor-wire, which the government says will completely seal off the border by August 31.

The fence is one of several measures making it more difficult for refugees to enter and stay in Hungary. The government is also tightening asylum laws, introducing penalties for illegal border-crossing, and the planned closure of permanent refugee camps.

About 102,000 “migrants” entered the EU via Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro or Kosovo between January and July this year, versus just 8,000 for the same period in 2014, according to EU border agency Frontex.

The number of refugees now making their way from Greece towards the EU is worrying many EU politicians and has left the Balkan countries struggling to cope with the humanitarian crisis.

Thousands stuck in limbo at Macedonia border bottleneck

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Rain-soaked refugees brave elements in no man’s land as Macedonian police continue to block border crossing from Greece.

A Syrian refugee woman cries on her husbands arms as they wait to cross into Macedonia at the Greek-Macedonian border [Reuters]

A Syrian refugee woman cries on her husbands arms as they wait to cross into Macedonia at the Greek-Macedonian border [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Thousands of rain-soaked refugees remain trapped in a no man’s land between Greece and Macedonia as Macedonian police continue to block the frontier, preventing them from heading north to other nations within the European Union.

Police let small groups of families with children cross the border overnight on Friday by walking to a railway station in the Macedonian town of Gevgelija, where most take trains to the border with Serbia before heading towards EU-member Hungary.

Those who could not cross, including many women and children, spent the rainy and chilly night in the open, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Idomeni on the Greek side of the border, said people were continuing to arrive at the border crossing, where a “bottleneck” had formed on Saturday morning.

“This is now a bottleneck of people, there are hundreds, thousands even, and they’ll keep coming throughout the day,” he said.

Our correspondent said large numbers of Syrians had moved back from the point of crossing to separate themselves from other nationalities.

“They want to separate themselves from the other nationalities; the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Iraqis…what they say is that all these other nationalities claim to be Syrians as well, because it is the Syrians who have the most valid claim to asylum.

“They are refugees, they are fleeing civil war. Many of the others, they say, are economic migrants.”

Violent clashes

Police fired stun grenades and clashed with the migrants who tried to rush over the border on Friday, a day after Macedonia’s government declared a state of emergency on the frontier to deal with the issue.

Ivo Kotevsky, a spokesman for the interior ministry, told Al Jazeera that the officers had not used violence against the refugees but had been forced to take measures to protect themselves and the border.

Kotevsky said Macedonia was trying to do its best in protecting the refugees, who had been “practically expelled from Greece”.

The refugees hope that by crossing to Macedonia they would be able to take trains through Serbia to Hungary, an EU member, which has begun erecting a fence to try to keep the distraught refugees out.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) urged the Macedonian government to do more, saying it should allocate a site to accommodate people fleeing war.

UNHCR spokesman Petros Mastakas told Al Jazeera that the refugees included “hundreds of vulnerable persons, children, babies and those with extreme vulnerabilities including medical needs.

“Most of them stay rough in the open air,” he said.

Remembering Srebrenica, two decades on

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Thousands of mourners descend on town where more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered during Bosnian war.

The bodies of the recently identified victims will be transported to the memorial centre in Potocari where they will be buried on Saturday [Reuters]

The bodies of the recently identified victims will be transported to the memorial centre in Potocari where they will be buried on Saturday [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Tens of thousands of people poured into Srebrenica 20 years after more than 8,000 people were killed in the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.

The remains of 136 newly-identified victims will be laid to rest on Saturday along with thousands of others already buried at a memorial centre just outside the Bosnian town.

Thousands of Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces after they captured Srebrenica in July 1995 near the end of Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war,

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic arrived at a memorial complex on Saturday morning and spoke with female relatives of the victims.

Dozens of dignitaries from across Bosnia and abroad, were also expected to be present at the ceremony and a day of mourning will be observed throughout the Balkan country.

Former US President Bill Clinton, whose administration brokered the Dayton peace deal that ended Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war only a few months after the Srebrenica killings, travelled to Srebrenica for the memorial.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Britain’s Princess Anne and Jordan’s Queen Noor were also due to attend.

The bones of newly identified victims will be interred beneath marble gravestones in the Potocari memorial cemetery, in what has become annual ritual as more graves are discovered.

“One cannot describe with words how I feel today,” said Zijada Hajdarevic as she escorted the remains of her brother on Thursday from the morgue to the cemetery, where her grandfather and other close relatives are all buried.

“We knew he was gone, but it will be easier now we know where we can visit his grave,” said Hajdarevic, who is still searching for her father.

Disputed term

A UN court has ruled that the killings in Srebrenica was genocide.

Many Serbs dispute the term, the death toll and the official account of what went on – reflecting conflicting narratives of the Yugoslav wars that still feed political divisions and stifle progress toward integration with Western Europe.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik last month described Srebrenica as “the greatest deception of the 20th century”.

Russia this week vetoed a UN resolution last week that would have condemned the denial of Srebrenica as genocide. Moscow called for all people responsible for the massacre to be brought to justice.

Samantha Power, Washington’s ambassador to the United Nations who was a 24-year-old journalist in Bosnia at the time, said: “You cannot build reconciliation on the denial of genocide.”

Ever since the massacre, the West has faced questions over how it allowed the fall of Srebrenica, a designated UN “safe haven” for Muslims Bosniaks displaced by the war.

Months later, NATO air strikes forced the Serbs to the negotiating table. A US-brokered peace treaty ended the fighting and enshrined in Bosnia a complicated and unwieldy system of ethnic power-sharing that survives today.

The accused chief architects of the massacre – Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic – remain on trial at a UN court in The Hague, protesting their innocence.

'Forty migrants drown in Mediterranean': Save the Children

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Migrants wait to disembark from military ship "Bettica" following a rescue operation at sea on May 5, 2015 in the port of Salerno, southern Italy. (AFP/Mario Laporta)

Migrants wait to disembark from military ship “Bettica” following a rescue operation at sea on May 5, 2015 in the port of Salerno, southern Italy. (AFP/Mario Laporta)

by Al Bawaba

Forty migrants drowned off the coast of Italy when a boat trying to reach Europe either deflated or burst from the heat, survivors told the organization Save the Children.

According to Reuters, some of the 194 survivors told the activist group the deaths occurred on Sunday. The survivors came from several African countries including Gambia, Senegal, Ghana, Mali and the Ivory Coast. AFP said there were 137 people on board.

Human traffickers have increased their attempts to smuggle people out of conflict-torn countries to try to reach Europe as spring weather has calmed seas and provided good weather. The UN has estimated more than 1,700 migrants have died in the Mediterranean so far this year.

Is the world going Muslim? One in ten Europeans will be by 2050

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Christianity will no longer be the world's dominant faith in the next generation. (AFP/File)

Christianity will no longer be the world’s dominant faith in the next generation. (AFP/File)

by Kashmira Gander, The Independent

A new study charting how religions will develop globally over the next four decades has predicted that one in 10 of the next generation of Europeans will be Muslim.

Research published today by a US think tank has also revealed that Christianity will no longer be the world’s dominant faith by 2050,  as almost all of the major religious groups will increase in numbers.

As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with nearly a third of all 6.9 billion people on Earth adhering to it, while Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23 per cent of the global population.

Over the course of the next four decades, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world for the first time in history – at 31 per cent and 30 per cent of the global population, respectively.

In those four decades, four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa, the Pew Research Centre study suggests.

The Hindu population will rise by 34 per cent from a little over 1 billion to nearly 1.4 billion, while the global Jewish population is expected to grow from a little less than 14 million in 2010 to 16.1 million worldwide in 2050.

The number of followers of so-called folk religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions – are projected to increase from 405 million to nearly 450 million.

Meanwhile, the number of Buddhists will be about the same size as it was in 2010, due to low fertility rates and aging populations in countries such as China, Thailand and Japan.

At the same time, the number of atheists, agnostics, and other people not affiliated with any religion will decline, from 16 per cent in 2010 to 13 per cent by the middle of the century, but increase in countries including the US and France.

In Europe, the percentage of Muslims will rise to around 10 per cent of the population in 2010.

While a larger Muslim population is not an issue in itself, Conrad Hackett, the lead researcher and demographer for the Pew report, stressed in an interview with the New York Times that this figure may be seized by anti-immigrant groups who warn of a Muslim-dominated “Eurabia”.

“We just don’t see that happening,” Dr. Hackett said.

The results are the culmination of a six-year study compiled from more than 2,500 censuses, surveys and population registers from across the world. Researchers took into account the current size and geographic distribution of the world’s major religions, age differences, fertility and mortality rates, international migration and patterns in conversion.

The Pew Research Centre study reasons that religious populations will grow because adherents are younger and have more children, while a smaller portion of people will switch or take up new faiths.

According to the study, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3.1 children per woman – higher than 2.1, the minimum needed to maintain a stable population. Christians came in second, at 2.7 children per woman, Hindu at 2.4, while Jewish women gave birth to  2.3 children on average.

All the other groups have fertility levels under 1.8, which is too low to sustain their populations.

Almost 100 families evicted daily in Spain – statistics

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An anti-eviction activist helps remove a family’s belongings during their eviction in Madrid February 16, 2015 (Reuters / Susana Vera)

An anti-eviction activist helps remove a family’s belongings during their eviction in Madrid February 16, 2015 (Reuters / Susana Vera)

by RT

At least 95 families were evicted every day in Spain in 2014, fresh statistics say as Spaniards struggle to meet mortgage payments. Home foreclosures have become a stark symbol of the 7-year economic crisis, with 2014 seeing a further rise in numbers.

The number of foreclosures on all types of residences, including holiday homes, offices and farms, reached 119,442 last year, almost 10 percent higher than in 2013, according to data from the National Statistics Institute.

Image from ine.es

Foreclosure procedures on main residences rose to 34,680 families in 2014, an increase of 7.4 percent over the previous year.

Andalusia, Catalonia and Valencia were the worst-affected regions.

Evictions have become a symbol of the economic crisis Spain has been struggling with since 2008. Most of them were connected to mortgages taken out during property booms in 2006 and 2007.

The situation has provoked nationwide protest. Campaigners often rally outside homes in an attempt to prevent residents from having to spend the night in the street. They are calling on the country’s authorities to make more housing available, or allow vacant housing following developers’ bankruptcies to be used.

Spain has seen a six-year recession, with unemployment reaching 23.7 percent by January 2015, a decline from the 25.93 registered in January 2014. Still this year’s result is second only to Greece in the eurozone, where the jobless rate stands at 25.7 percent.

Separate estimates show it might take the country over a decade to bring unemployment back to the pre-crisis level.

Evictions are the main topic for Spain’s political parties in their electoral campaigns. The country’s government introduced several temporary changes to help the most vulnerable households avoid evictions. In Spain residents are liable for mortgages, even after their homes are returned to banks.

In December, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said that 2014 was “an economic renaissance” for the country, as figures were expected to show GDP grew 1.4 percent.

“2012 was a year of budget cuts for our country, 2013 a year of reforms, 2014 of an economic renaissance, and 2015 will be a year of an economic takeoff,” TASS quotes Rajoy talking to his conservative Popular Party.

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