Trump’s victory reminds this Chilean writer of some of the worst moments of the past half-century, including 1973 army coup in Chile and the 9/11 terror attacks.
Category: Migrant Lives
Near the French capital’s Gare du Nord train station, migrants have expanded yet another shantytown just days after the controversial Calais “Jungle” was dismantled by the state. Locals are not pleased.
SKARA — As Bert Karlsson enters the refugee center’s cafeteria, dark-haired boy greets him with a “Hey!” The four-story building called Stora Ekeberg is just one of many refugee centers started by Karlsson’s Jokarjo AB group, which respond to Sweden’s burgeoning need to house refugees. This center is reaching its capacity of 570 people. “Here, […]
NOGINSK — Knowledge Day falls on Sept. 1 and marks the traditional start of the school year in Russia. But for the children of Syrian refugees who live in Noginsk, a town of about 100,000 inhabitants that’s a 90-minute train ride from Moscow, it’s a day like any other. These refugee children can’t go to […]
BREMEN — Murat Kurnaz, a German native of Turkish origin, likes to joke around. And considering his story, the humor can sometimes turn rather dark. Today, he speaks about the journey from the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba to the Ramstein U.S. air base in Germany at the end of his five-year imprisonment in August […]
In towns and cities around the Nile delta, fishermen are selling their boats to a local mafia outfit, which controls a burgeoning human trafficking racket.
There is an economic explanation for why more Syrian refugee families in Jordan were able to make it to Mecca this year.
Germany suddenly faces hundreds of young girls who have disappeared from schools because their parents have found husbands for them. Lawmakers appear powerless to face the new phenomenon of child brides brought by the arrival of immigrants.
INGOLSTADT — Math is the first class of the day. Only two students, who are clearly aces at math, are raising their hands to answer the teacher’s questions. Almost everyone else is dozing off. But Mahmoud, who is seated in the first row, appears to be wide awake. He does not, however, raise his hand. […]
Libya is where refugees now gather to attempt the perilous crossing to Europe. But Egypt is often the source of both crafts and crews. Only economic solutions can stop human smuggling.
BERLIN — It’s been a year since German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a Palestinian refugee teen burst into tears live on national television. Reem Sahwil was 14 years old, and living on a temporary residence permit, when she was invited with others for a townhall-style public encounter with Merkel on July 15, 2015, in the […]
In the small Sicilian town Of Mineo is a sprawling facility where asylum seekers, many of whom have survived perilous journeys, live in limbo and face exploitation.
This African country produces more refugees per capita than any other. But there is method to the madness: Gambia’s dictator systematically banishes people and refuses to accept repatriation agreements. And he receives European funds for his services.
Too many Muslims keep to themselves, speak poor German and pass on their problems to the next generation. They harm themselves and therefore the rest of society.
TURIN — Refugees have come to Italy from all across war-torn Iraq and Syria, from the monasteries of Mosul to the Assyrian villages of the Khabur valley and the Christian churches of the Nineveh plains. Among the millions now languishing in refugee camps are people from all walks of life, including government bureaucrats, university professors, […]
JALALABAD — It’s early morning in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan. Haroon Sarwari, 17, and Manzoor Ali, 18, are wearing their backpacks and walking quickly to get a taxi to reach Kabul on time. These close friends have laid out plans to travel to Europe illegally with the help of a smuggling agent. Haroon’s cousins managed to get to Germany three months before, so his father, Sarwar Khan, supports the plan. “My father sold a few of his cows and borrowed some money from his friends to send me to Europe,” the teenager explains. “He has already agreed with the agent on […]
SABRATHA — It’s just past 10 p.m., and Omar, Mohammed and Isa are driving on the Mediterranean coast highway that links the Libyan capital of Tripoli with the Tunisian border. In the distance, flares of burning natural gas emanating from the Mellitah oil terminal light up the pitch black night. The three men, all in […]
For psychiatrists at Munich’s Heckscher Clinic, underage migrants who have fled war and violence, often alone, represent a difficult new group of patients.
Top German security officials say criminals and violent Islamists are using the asylum crisis to recruit refugees. They especially target minors traveling alone.
Near the western coast of Turkey, a humble imam recites too many lonely prayers in a cemetery that is filling with nameless victims of the perilous migrant route to Europe.
Many refugee families after World War II took generations to get on their feet. A new German study finds today’s influx of refugees face the same risk, and new ones too.
The dangerous sea and land crossings that Syrian refugees are making to Europe have been well-documented. Less well known are the equally perilous journeys people take to leave Syria itself.
In the Paris neighborhood of Belleville, home to a thriving Chinatown, prostitutes with no other prospects work to support families here or in China. And now, new dangers loom.
GASR GARABULLI — Migrant #322 slowly lifts his head and opens his eyes. The long shadow of the sun, punctuated by the jail’s metal bars, bathes the cement walls as the blue sky seeps through the metal grate ceiling. It’s silent in the cells, except for the faint sound of children crying in the distance […]
The German Chancellor has made many mistakes: She has isolated Germany, inside Europe. But it is hardly her fault alone in a continent unable to see the stakes at hand.
SALLA — On the door of the tourism bureau in Salla, Finland, there’s a poster proudly informing visitors that they are “in the middle of nowhere.” That much is indisputable: Salla is a dark, remote place, lost in the middle of hundreds of miles of Laponian pine forests and covered in a thick mantle of […]
The village of Sutera was facing demographic doom as young people have been leaving for generations. Then locals started to wonder about those migrants coming to Italy.
In the multiethnic French city of Marseille, the La Rouvière complex has its own unwritten bylaws.
On foot in the cold or crammed into run-down train cars, migrants face a long journey of long waits, endless security checks, and uncertain prospects. Up close along the Serbo-Macedonian Border.
GENEVA — War is reshaping Syria, causing massive displacements of populations that, even more than the rising casualty numbers, have shifted the roles played by the country’s principal ethnic and religious communities. Some groups have emerged strengthened, others weakened, now and perhaps forever. These demographic gains and losses will carry more weight in the long […]
Turkey is supposed to guard our borders against more refugees and receive financial aid for its services. But refugees fleeing to Europe across the Mediterranean keep coming.
Six month later, a reporter is reconnected to a family who’d fled war in Deir ez-Zor, Syria. They wound up in a small village, where they are building a new life. Integration is not easy.
The North African country is increasingly a destination for sub-Saharian Africans looking to move on to Europe, even if many get stuck in Algeria with few rights or hopes for work.
A wave of violence rocked Cologne on New Year’s Eve, when more than 100 women reported that men of Arab and North African appearance robbed, groped and raped them. Though shocking in Germany, such attacks are all too common in Arab countries, wher
Hey Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez Would Be So Proud CHILE / America Economia, Aug. 25 Jihadism As Nihilism, An X-Ray Of Homegrown Terror In France FRANCE / Le Monde, Dec. 3 The Siberian Fasting Cleanse For Body And Mind RUSSIA / Le Temps, Aug. 17 El Chapo Escape, When Income Inequality Breeds Corruption MEXICO / […]
QUETTA/JAKARTA/MELBOURNE — Five-year-old Mohammad Raza is holding a photograph of his uncle Sadiq Ali. He believes his uncle is in Australia and that he will soon send a toy airplane. But his grandmother knows that Sadiq Ali is detained abroad. Sadiq left, she says, because he didn’t see any hope for his future in Pakistan. “It was a tough time for him here,” she says, “He ran his own shop but got tired of having no work because the area was unsafe. So he left the country.” Sadiq, 22, is part of the Shia Hazara community in Quetta, a town […]
About 60,000 underage refugees have arrived in Germany this year without their parents. An alarming number are disappearing from custody. Experts warn they are vulnerable to both human traffickers and Islamists.
-OpEd- PARIS — If you travel to the far north of England, you’ll see Hadrian’s Wall still proudly standing almost 19 centuries after it was built. Of course, it’s no match for the Great Wall of China, in length or in what remains of its fortifications. But it’s still an impressive construction, and its message, […]
PARIS — Our fair-minded but ever subjective staff of journalists, translators and editors have chosen what we believe to be the year’s most engaging and provocative stories. Why The Chinese Are So Good, But Rarely Great CHINA / Caixin, Jan .5 That Slippery Euphemism We Call “Cultural Differences” FRANCE / Worldcrunch, Jan. 15 Artificial Intelligence […]
Border police and other German law enforcement unions say a black market of passports and insufficent border controls are creating a major security risk amidst the surge of Syrian refugees.