Showing posts with label Migrant Crisis. Show all posts

Migrant crisis: Concern rises as EU-Turkey deal looms

There is growing concern over a lack of preparation for the plan to send migrants back from Greece to Turkey, two days before it goes into effect.
A BBC correspondent who has been to one of the registration sites in Turkey says there are few signs it is ready.
The UN and rights groups have expressed fears about migrant welfare and whether some may be forced back into Syria.
The EU-Turkey deal is aimed at easing the uncontrolled mass movement of people into Europe.
Under the deal, migrants arriving illegally in Greece are expected to be sent back to Turkey from 4 April if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected.
An EU official said it was hoped that several hundred would be returned on Monday.
For each Syrian returned, a Syrian migrant in Turkey will be resettled in the EU, with priority given to those who have not tried to enter the EU illegally.
Germany said on Friday it would take the first migrants.
Interior ministry spokesman Tobias Plate said that most would be families with children, with the numbers in the "double-digit range".
Last year, more than one million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU by boat from Turkey to Greece.
Tens of thousands have been stranded in Greece after northern countries closed their borders.

'Safe country' queried

A Greek police officer passes by a banner in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, GreeceImage copyrightAP
Image captionTension has flared at many of the migrant sites in Greece
Greek officials told Associated Press that Monday's returns could start from the island of Lesbos and involve migrants whose asylum claims were considered inadmissible, including those from Pakistan.
Migrants will be taken on buses and put on chartered vessels, under a heavy security escort of one police guard for every migrant, the officials said.
But the BBC's Mark Lowen, who has been to a proposed registration camp near the western Turkish town of Dikili, says the field earmarked for the centre remains empty.
He says local officials are suggesting those sent back here would only stay temporarily in Dikili before being sent to other areas of Turkey.
Meanwhile, he says, boats are still attempting to cross - 160 migrants were caught by the Turkish coastguard near Dikili on Friday and many more actually reached Lesbos.
Our correspondent says there are grave doubts over the viability of the EU plan, not least due to concerns that migrants sent back could be mistreated, with several aid agencies and EU countries refusing to recognise Turkey as a so-called "safe country of origin".
A report from Amnesty International has accused Turkey of illegally forcing thousands of refugees back to Syria.
Turkey has denied sending back any refugees against their will.

'Big mistake'

On Friday the Greek parliament passed by 169 votes to 107 a law allowing migrants arriving in the country to be returned to Turkey.
Migrants on the island of Chios protest against the EU deal, 1 AprilImage copyrightEPA
Image captionMigrants on Chios protest against the EU deal
But there have been violent protests among migrants.
On the Greek island of Chios, hundreds tore down the razor wire fence that was keeping them in and fled the camp.
They walked to the port demanding to continue their journeys to northern Europe.
One migrant said: "Deportation is a big mistake because we have risked a lot to come here especially during our crossing from Turkey to Greece. We were smuggled here from Turkey. We cannot go back.
"We will repeat our trip again and again if need be because we are running away in order to save our lives."
Tension has also flared at the port of Piraeus near Athens.
The United Nations refugee agency has urged Greece and Turkey to provide more safeguards before the returns begin.
It said conditions were worsening daily for the thousands held on Greek islands.

Key points from EU-Turkey agreement

  • Returns: All "irregular migrants" crossing from Turkey into Greece from 20 March will be sent back. Each arrival will be individually assessed by the Greek authorities.
  • One-for-one: For each Syrian returned to Turkey, a Syrian migrant will be resettled in the EU. Priority will be given to those who have not tried to illegally enter the EU and the number is capped at 72,000.
  • Visa restrictions: Turkish nationals should have access to the Schengen passport-free zone by June. This will not apply to non-Schengen countries like Britain.
  • Financial aid: The EU is to speed up the allocation of €3bn ($3.3 bn; £2.3 bn) in aid to Turkey to help migrants.
  • Turkey EU membership: Both sides agreed to "re-energise" Turkey's bid to join the European bloc, with talks due by July.
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Pope's Easter message condemns failure to help migrants

Pope Francis in Rome, 27 MarchPope Francis has condemned those who fail to help migrants, during his traditional Easter speech in Rome.
The Pope said migrants often met "rejection from those who could offer them welcome and assistance".
He also condemned terrorism as "a blind and brutal violence" that should be fought with "weapons of love".
The Pope was delivering his "urbi et orbi" (To the city and the world) message to thousands amid tight security in St Peter's Square.

Syrian prayer

The Pope said: "The Easter message of the risen Christ... invites us not to forget those men and women seeking a better future, an ever more numerous throng of migrants and refugees... fleeing from war, hunger, poverty and social injustice.
Pope Francis takes a tour of the square after his blessing and before his speech, 27 MarchImage copyrightReuters
Image captionPope Francis takes a tour of the square after his blessing and before his speech
Security was tight in the square after the terrorist attacks on Tuesday in Brussels, 27 MarchImage copyrightEPA
Image captionSecurity was tight in the square after the terrorist attacks on Tuesday in Brussels
"All too often, these brothers and sisters of ours meet along the way with death or, in any event, rejection by those who could offer them welcome and assistance."
Tens of thousands of migrants, mainly fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq, are now stranded in Greece, after European nations and Turkey agreed a plan to shut their route to northern Europe.
Pope Francis also offered a prayer for Syria: "The risen Christ points out paths of hope to beloved Syria, a country torn by a lengthy conflict with its sad wake of destruction, death, contempt for humanitarian law and the breakdown of civil concord."
He expressed his hope for success at peace scheduled to resume next month.
The Pope also urged people to use the "weapons of love" to combat the evil of terrorism.He spoke of recent attacks in Belgium, Turkey, Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Iraq.
"May [the risen Jesus Christ] draw us closer on this Easter feast to the victims of terrorism, that blind and brutal form of violence which continues to shed blood in different parts of the world," he said (text in Italian).
The latest terror attack - in Brussels on Tuesday - left 28 people dead. The former king and queen of Belgium, Albert II and Paola, attended the Mass on Sunday and met the Pope.
Many pilgrims cancelled their planned trips to Rome in the wake of the violence in Brussels, but the square was packed on Sunday, as was St Peter's Basilica when Pope Francis celebrated Mass on Saturday evening.
In his homily in the basilica, he called on Christians not to let fear and pessimism "imprison" them.
He said: "Today is the celebration of our hope. It is so necessary today."

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Syria: A different country after five years of war

Its first moments were fleeting and furtive, small but significant.
Young women unfurled protest banners from their handbags on a busy Damascus street, then quickly retreated. Teenage boys sprayed graffiti on a school wall in the southern city of Deraa.
Five years on, Syria's uprising is now the longest, most vicious conflict in what was first poetically depicted as the Arab Spring.
Many young activists, who first raised their heads and voices to call for political reform are now disenchanted, detained, displaced or dead.
Their cries have long since been drowned out by the deafening roar of a destructive war which sets a multiplying array of opposition forces against the Syrian army and its militias.
On both sides, there's the most bewildering array of outside actors ever seen in any war, anywhere. And then there's the so-called Islamic State (IS).
Syria's war is now everyone's war.
Image copyrightReuters
Image captionRebel groups have gained control of some Damascus suburbs

'All people are afraid'

Syria, before this war, was a middle-income Arab state of exceptional hospitality, exquisite cuisine, fabled charm - and infamous repression.
It was a place in the 1990s where, in the wake of the Soviet Union's jarring collapse, I was constantly told "revolution is not for us, we prefer Syria to evolve". A former government official recently admitted to me it meant "change so slow, it was glacial".
Over the past five years of reporting on a extraordinary country's astonishing turn, many small moments told a much bigger story.
In 2011 among crowds milling around a mosque after Friday prayers, a young man nervously thrust a crumpled message into a colleague's hand. It read: "Thank you. But no one can meet with you because the army is in the street. All people are afraid."
Image copyrightAP
Image caption'No to violence, yes to freedom' - the message of anti-government protests in March 2011
"Look down the road," another man whispered tersely in my ear, as intelligence attired in track suits slipped through an anxious crowd in the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh. Down the road, soldiers stood in wait and snipers were in sight.
Six months later, a people too afraid to even to say they were afraid had lost their fear. Down that same road, residents beckoned us inside a warren of winding lanes filled with chants of protestors. Deep inside, a house belonging to the Free Syrian Army was peppered with shrapnel, blackened by fire.
Another six months on, that road was sealed off and silent. The army was back in charge.

Funerals and massacres

As the years dragged on, the momentum of battle shifted between sides.
Everyone paid a price.
In 2012, in the hilly heartland of President Assad's Alawite community in Latakia, entire villages turned out virtually every day, sometimes three times a day, to bury young soldiers returning in coffins from front lines.
My colleague Phil Goodwin, who filmed our reports on most trips, asked a man lingering by a graveside how such a warm people could have descended into such darkness. "There's a wild beast within all of us," he sighed.
Media captionThe BBC's Lyse Doucet: "This is a war crime"
The worst in Syria has been the worst no one could have imagined.
In 2013 in the village of Haswiya, where news spread of a massacre, we opened a door on a sprawling compound to find houses of horror.
Charred bodies sprawled inside rooms and slumped across doorways, left where they'd been shot and burned. Washing hung on the clothes line and food was still in the oven.
Soldiers who escorted us blamed fighters of the al-Nusra Front. A villager whispered that members of a pro-government militia "had acted without orders".
In Syria's war, truth has been as hard to find as peace.
At times, there was a massacre almost every week. In every instance, someone lives with the knowledge of what really happened. Someday, there will be a reckoning.
Every weapon has been deployed, no one spared: neighbourhoods wiped out, chemical wepaons unleashed, even children tortured.
Image copyrightReuters
Image captionCivilian areas in rebel-held cities and suburbs have been bombarded by government forces

Starvation tactics

One of the most powerful weapons in this war has been its simplest: food.
All sides have cut off food, water, medicine in their quest for power.
Thirteen-year-old Kifah tried to put on a brave face when we met him in the besieged Palestinian camp of Yarmouk in 2014. But he soon collapsed in tears: "There was no bread."
Media caption"They are absolutely desperate; desperate for help and desperate to get out"
2014 file photo of Palestinians in Yarmouk queuing for foodImage copyrightAP
Image captionBesieged residents of the Palestinian Yarmouk camp queuing for UN aid
One UN official said he has had to work hard to convince warring parties that wheat flour isn't used to make bombs.
But, in the words of a senior US official, President Obama has been "pathologically opposed to greater military involvement in Syria".
Without America firmly at the helm, Arab states and Turkey have backed different groups for different goals. In contrast, President Assad has had the most loyal of friends, including Russia, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Internally displaced people waiting to get permission to cross into Turkey near the Syrian-Turkish border, Syria, February 7, 2016Image copyrightReuters
Image captionMillions of Syrians have been displaced inside the country, with many fleeing abroad
In the immediate wake of a strategic victory in the town of Qusayr in 2013, Hezbollah forces didn't hide their presence or pride. "How difficult were the battles," I asked some of the Lebanese fighters. "Easy-peasy lemon squeezy" one man replied with a grin.
Return to Deraa
Five years on, there is a rare, if fragile, truce, only because outside players finally decided to give peace a bit of a chance.
This month we went back to the city of Deraa, an unassuming agricultural area thrust into the headlines of history, to find a city drained by war.
The unprecedented protests of 2011 had morphed into the most significant assault by rebel forces known as the Southern Front to take the city last summer.
Governor Mohammad Khaled al-Hannus, whom we first met in 2011, showed us floors and windows gutted and shattered by rockets.
"We may have made some small mistakes," he admitted, but insisted the blame belonged firmly on the other side. "Their false revolution destroyed and divided our country."
Anti-government protest inside a 2nd century Roman amphitheater in Bosra near Deraa March 4, 2016Image copyrightReuters
Image captionStill protesting - an anti-government demonstration near Deraa during the truce
We reached by telephone a teacher named Zahra in rebel-held Deraa. "A lot was destroyed, but the revolution was inevitable," she told me. "So many fled because one man wants to stay in power."
Defiance and distrust are undiminished.
Syria is a different country now. Millions fled with their children to try to begin a new life elsewhere.
But Syria isn't lost - yet.
Somewhere in between a regime and a revolution a new Syria, with remnants of its old self, could still emerge from these ruins - but only if this war stops stealing its future.

Syria conflict: Government sets conditions for new peace talks

Air strikes near rebel-held village on outskirts of Damascus. 4 March 2016The Syrian government says it will send a delegation to fresh peace talks due to start in Geneva on Monday, but has put limits on the agenda.
Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, speaking in Damascus, ruled out any debate of presidential elections.
An opposition spokesman said the government's pre-conditions could halt the talks before they had even started.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to meet his German, French, and British counterparts on Sunday.
Earlier, the US said violence had fallen dramatically since a cessation of hostilities began two weeks ago.
The main Syrian opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said on Friday it would push for an interim government with full executive powers in which President Bashar al-Assad and the current leadership would have no role.
The fate of President Assad has been one of the main stumbling blocks in previous rounds of tentative talks.
UN special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura has said he wants to see presidential elections in the next 18 months, but on Saturday Mr Muallem dismissed the idea.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem speaks during press conference on 12 March 2016 in the capital Damascus.Image copyrightGetty Images
Image captionSyrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem says only Syrians can decide their president
"Neither he nor anyone else has the right to talk about presidential elections. This is an exclusive right of the Syrian people,'' he said.
He described the opposition's demands for an interim government with full executive powers as a "red line".
"If this is what they [the opposition] think, I advise them not to come to the negotiations so that they don't make us tired and we don't make them tired," Mr Muallem said.
He said the Syrian government delegation would return to Damascus within 24 hours if the opposition did not turn up.
HNC spokesman Monzer Makhous accused Mr Muallem of "putting the nails in the coffin of Geneva".
"Muallem is stopping Geneva before it starts," he told Al Arabiya Al Hadath TV.

A fragile process - Lyse Doucet, BBC chief international correspondent

Syria's warring sides are under significant pressure from their respective backers to go to Geneva. No one wants to be blamed for any breakdown. So they are likely to keep their pledge to show up.
But there is an unwavering red line for Damascus - no discussion of President Assad's role, not even of presidential elections. Never mind that UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said elections would be discussed. Mr Muallem - and presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban in a BBC interview - say Mr de Mistura could not "dictate" the agenda.
The Syrian government has been emboldened by Russia's immense military support, as well its diplomatic weight which is shaping this new process. It is still not clear what Russia expects in Geneva. And the opposition, and its backers, have their own red line on President Assad's future.
Despite a truce that, unexpectedly, has largely held for two weeks, the gaps remain dangerously wide in these very early stages of a very fragile process.
The HNC has already said it will attend the UN-sponsored indirect talks in Geneva. The last round collapsed in February without agreement.
A temporary cessation of hostilities agreed by most participants in the conflict began at the end of last month. It excludes so-called Islamic State (IS) and al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria.
Map showing control of Syria
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday that US and Russian officials were meeting to discuss alleged breaches of the temporary truce by government forces.
But he said "perceived" violations of the cessation of hostilities should not derail the Geneva talks.
"The level of violence by all accounts has been reduced by 80-90%, which is very, very significant," he said.
"We believe that the start of talks this next week in Geneva presents a critical moment for bringing the political solution to the table that we've all been waiting for, even as we extend the humanitarian assistance and continue to try to reduce the violence."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said air raids by the Syrian government had killed seven civilians in Aleppo on Friday. The claim cannot be independently verified.
More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and millions more have been forced from their homes in five years of Syria's civil war that began with an uprising against Mr Assad.
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