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You are here: Home / Archives for Migrants

About 200 feared dead in Libya refugee boat disaster

August 29, 2015 by Nasheman

Officials say 105 dead and at least 100 missing after boat sinks off Libyan coast in latest Mediterranean disaster.

boat-libya

by Al Jazeera

At least 105 people have been killed and more than one hundred others are still missing after a boat, reportedly packed with refugees bound for Italy, capsized and sunk off the Libyan coast.

Hussein Asheini, the head of Libya’s Red Crescent in Zuwara, told the Associated Press news agency that 105 bodies had been recovered. Nearly 200 others had been rescued, the organisation said.

A security official in Zuwarah, a town in the North African nation’s west from where the overcrowded boat had set off, said that there were about 400 people on board.

The UNHCR, the UN Agency for refugees, in a statement, released on Friday, said there were about 500 people on board.

Sources told Al Jazeera that many of the dead had been trapped in the cargo hold when the boat capsized on Thursday.

The people on board had come from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco, and Bangladesh, the Libyan security official said.

The UNHCR also announced on Friday that more than 300,000 refugees and migrants had risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean to Europe in the first nine months of 2015 alone.

About 2,500 people had died while making the perilous journey, the UNHCR said.

“This represents a large increase from last year, when around 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean during the whole of 2014,” the UN said.

Zuwarah, Libya’s most western town located near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers moving refugees to Italy.

Libya has turned into a transit route for people fleeing conflict and poverty to make it to Europe.

Cross-border smuggler networks exploit the country’s lawlessness and chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt or nationals of sub-Saharan countries via Niger, Sudan, and Chad.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Anas El Gomati, who founded the Tripoli-based think-tank The Sadeq Institute, said Libya’s government does not feel it should be helping pay the bill to deal with refugees making their way to Europe as it is facing continued violence across the country.

“Libya’s security approach – and security apparatus – is now completely disorganised and in chaos,” he said.

“You have hundreds of different groups that are operating on the ground now, some of them taking advantage of a very, very chaotic situation – one of civil war.”

In a separate incident on Thursday, 71 refugees were found dead in a parked lorry on a highway in Austria near the Hungarian border on Thursday.

The refrigerated vehicle was found by an Austrian motorway patrol with fluids from the decomposing bodies seeping from its back door.

At a Geneva briefing, the UNHCR said that in another incident on Thursday, 51 people suffocated in the hold of a boat.

Survivors said they had been beaten to force them into the hold and then had to pay money to smugglers just to come out to breathe.

One man, an Iraqi orthopaedic surgeon, said he had paid 3,000 euros ($3,400) to come up on to the top deck with his wife and two-year-old son.

Last week, 49 people died in another boat’s hold after inhaling poisonous fumes, and on Wednesday 21 people are thought to have died after a dinghy with 145 on board got into difficulty, UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

Filed Under: Muslim World Tagged With: Libya, Migrants

Dozens of refugees die as boat sinks off Libyan coast

August 28, 2015 by Nasheman

Official in Zuwarah says many of the hundreds on board the boat appear to have been trapped in the cargo hold.

boat-sinks-off-libya

by Al Jazeera

A boat reportedly packed with people from Africa and South Asia bound for Italy has sunk off the Libyan coast, raising fears that dozens have died.

A security official in Zuwarah, a town in the North African nation’s west from where the overcrowded boat had set off, said on Thursday there were about 400 people on board.

While an official death toll has not been announced, sources told Al Jazeera that dozens of people died in the incident, with many reported to have been trapped in the cargo hold when the boat capsized.

By late in the evening, the Libyan coastguard had rescued about 201 people, of which 147 were brought to a detention facility for “illegal migrants” in Sabratha, west of the capital Tripoli, the security official was cited by Reuters news agency as saying.

Another local official and a journalist based in Zuwarah confirmed the sinking but also had no information on casualties.

The people on board had been from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Syria, Morocco, and Bangladesh, the Libyan security official said.

The Italian coastguard, which has been coordinating rescue operations with the European Union off the Libyan coast, could not confirm a sinking.

Libya’s coastguard has very limited capabilities, relying on small inflatables, tug boats and fishing vessels.

Al Jazeera’s Claudio Lavanga, reporting from Rome, said according to accounts by survivors, most of the people who had died were locked inside the hold of the boat.

“We’ve seen this many times before, only a few days before 50 refugees died because they were held in the hold,” Lavanga said.

“Sometimes they die of suffocation and sometimes they drown because they can’t escape after the boat capsizes…these are people who don’t have the money to pay for a ‘deck’ position.”

Smugglers’ launchpad

Zuwarah, Libya’s most western town located near the Tunisian border, is a major launchpad for smugglers shipping refugees and migrants to Italy.

Libya has turned into a transit route for people fleeing conflict and poverty to make it to Europe.

Cross-border smuggler networks exploit the country’s lawlessness and chaos to bring Syrians into Libya via Egypt or nationals of sub-Saharan countries via Niger, Sudan, and Chad.

More than 2,300 people have died this year in attempts to reach Europe by boat, compared with 3,279 during the whole of last year, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Anas El Gomati, who founded the Tripoli-based think-tank The Sadeq Institute, said Libya’s government does not feel it should be helping pay the bill to deal with refugees making their way to Europe as it is facing continued violence across the country.

“Libya’s security approach – and security apparatus – is now completely disorganised and in chaos,” he said.

“You have hundreds of different groups that are operating on the ground now, some of them taking advantage of a very, very chaotic situation – one of civil war.”

On Thursday, 71 refugees were found dead in a parked lorry in Austria near the Hungarian border on Thursday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the discovery had shaken European leaders discussing the refugee crisis at a Balkans summit.

Libya has been struggling to cope with an influx of foreigners, putting them in overcrowded makeshift detention facilities such as schools or military barracks where they live in poor conditions lacking medical care.

Libya used to deport people it caught but with fighting between armed groups having cut off land border crossings to Niger, Algeria, and Chad many stay months or years in detention facilities.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Libya, Migrants

Australia pays off smugglers to return migrants to Indonesia

June 12, 2015 by Nasheman

The country’s navy paid about US$30,000 in cash to people-smugglers to turn their boat packed with 65 migrants back to where they came from.

Australia has adopted one of the toughest stands against asylum seekers trying to reach its shores by boat. | Photo: Reuters

Australia has adopted one of the toughest stands against asylum seekers trying to reach its shores by boat. | Photo: Reuters

The Australian navy has paid a group of people smugglers thousands of dollars to turn around their boat carrying 65 migrants and head back to Indonesia, and while the controversy heats up surrounding this case, Prime Minister Tony Abbot Friday refused to deny this was true.

“We don’t go into the details of operational measures to fight crime, we don’t go into the details of operational measures on national security, and I’m certainly not going to go into the details of operational matters on the water now,” Abbott told reporters.

.@TonyAbbottMHR: “Australia does NOT negotiate with terrorists….but people-smugglers? no f*cking worries” #auspol

— John Wren (@JohnWren1950) June 12, 2015

.@TonyAbbottMHR: “Australia does NOT negotiate with terrorists….but people-smugglers? no f*cking worries” #auspol

— John Wren (@JohnWren1950) June 12, 2015

.@TonyAbbottMHR: “Australia does NOT negotiate with terrorists….but people-smugglers? no f*cking worries” #auspol

— John Wren (@JohnWren1950) June 12, 2015

The fact is Australia has vowed to stop the flow of asylum seekers reaching its shores when possible, adopting one of the harshest stances against migration. But critics and activists have criticized the method of paying off smugglers, a case that is now being investigated by Indonesia. The Australian government is sending those asylum seekers who do arrive in the country to camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for long-term detention. Australian and Indonesian news reports revealed earlier this week that the people-smugglers were paid about US$6,000 each to abandon their journey to Australia and return to Indonesia after being intercepted at sea. The Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton have denied the reports, but Abbott has declined to do so, citing operational security, according to Reuters.

#auspol Labor spent billions on ppl smugglers shipping terrorists with no identification to Australia. pic.twitter.com/jrTxmPJYZt

— captain zero (@ccar1259) June 12, 2015

In Indonesia, the country’s foreign ministry spokesperson Armanatha Nasir said the captain of the asylum-seeker vessel that was paid to return was being detained on charges related to people-smuggling.

Nasir said the captain and his five-member crew told him that they were each paid about US$6,000 to turn back the ship.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Australia, Migrants, Tony Abbot

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