Worldcrunch
-OpEd- BERLIN — Last year Angela Merkel said that “the welfare of Africa is in the German interest.” Since then, the Chancellor has spoken more about Africa than any of her predecessors and has made the continent a priority for Germany’s G-20 chairmanship this year. On Monday, the German Chancellor invited eight African leaders to […]
This is part of a Syria Deeply series “Bags and Belongings,” in which we ask refugees what they packed in their bags and what they left behind. Here we meet Mustafa Awad, a Syrian badminton coach from the northwestern city of Idlib who recently arrived in Athens with his wife and three children. Read the first installment here. ATHENS — We come from Idlib, a city that was once so beautiful it was nicknamed the Green, but is now known as Red Idlib from the amount of blood spilled over it. We love peace and quiet, but the war forced […]
GAZIANTEP — “The nightmares only started when I left Aleppo,” says 30-year-old Mahmoud, a Syrian activist and journalist now living as a refugee in Turkey. “Before — even after my best friend was killed next to me when we were filming a battle against the regime — I felt sad but I never had nightmares,” he said, speaking in late September in a southern Turkish border town. Mahmoud lost a finger that day in 2013, and his friend’s skull was shattered. Over years of reporting in Syria, Mahmoud faced much danger and personal loss. But it wasn’t until six months […]
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. […]
The IB group says they just want to preserve their country’s identity. But officials warn they are using “camouflage tactics” to hide their real proto-fascist intentions.
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 […]
Note: This article was originally published on July 13, before the failed coup attempt -Analysis- ISTANBUL — This newspaper (Turkish daily Hürriyet) published the following report last month: “Syrians who want to spend the Ramadan Bayram (Eid al-Fitr) holiday with the relatives they left behind in their country where a horrible civil war is still […]
This is the second installment of a three-part series “Couchsurfing (And Keeping Secrets) In Palestine.” Read Part 1 here. -Essay- We wake up at 9 a.m. “I need to go to work,” Ehab tells us, implying that Samuel (the American who was sharing the room with us) and I also need to go. Quickly, we […]
Die Tageszeitung, July 20th Monday’s gruesome axe attack on a commuter train in southern Germany left many unanswered questions on the Wednesday front page of German daily Die Tageszeitung, as evidenced by its enigmatic headline made of just four question marks. On Monday evening, a 17-year-old man armed with a knife and an axe wounded […]
WARSAW — Of the nearly 4,000 foreigners who have applied for international refugee protection in Poland since the start of the year, just 38 have received refugee status. Though the majority of those granted the refugee protection (21) were from Syria, the largest number of applicants were from Russia, and other former Soviet countries, which […]
Austrian daily Salzburger Nachrichten poses the question “Sealed border?” on its front page Thursday, after the government announced plans to limit the number of migrants allowed in the country. An estimated 90,000 asylum seekers registered in 8-million-strong Austria last year, with tens of thousands more crossing the country for Germany. Austrian authorities revealed plans Wednesday […]
Bangkok and other urban areas in Thailand are home to some 8,000 refugees who have fled religious persecution in their home countries. But since the deadly shrine bombing in August, the government has been harassing and arresting illegal immigrants.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Sept. 14, 2015 Germany introduced temporary controls at its border with Austria Sunday in an attempt to slow down the influx of refugees into the country, as the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on its front page Monday. Shortly after Berlin’s unexpected move, border control officers started conducting passport checks near Austria. […]
Why are they here? Who can stay? How should we treat them? The fate of Middle East and African refugees dominates German debate. They were once our own grandparents.
PARIS — Shocking photographs of the body of a Syrian toddler, whose body had washed up on a Turkish beach after his family’s failed attempt to reach Europe, are sparking global outcry. Will the publication of the hard-to-look-at images mark a turning point in raising global consciousness of the plight of refugees? The series of […]
MIGRANT PROTEST IN BUDAPEST As many as 2,000 migrants are stranded outside Budapest’s Eastern railway station and are protesting against the Hungarian police after the government banned any access to the station to those who are neither Hungarian nor tourists, Die Welt reports. Describing the “squalid” conditions in which these migrants are waiting on the […]
The six Nigerian women had each risked their lives like so many crossing the Mediterranean. When they found each other in church in northern Italy, they discovered they had something else in common.
Til Schweiger may be Germany’s most popular actor-director, but right now he’s flat in the middle of the real-life, hot-button political issue of the day: immigration.
LANGSA — It was 8 p.m. and the sea was calm in the Strait of Malacca, at the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island. Ibrahim, a local fisherman, was pulling in his first catch of the night when he received news that a nearby boat was overcrowded and in trouble. “We met another small fishing boat and they asked us to help,” Ibrahim recalls. “The fisherman said there were more than 1,000 people that needed help, but his boat could only take around 20 to 30 people.” He immediately released his catch and headed towards Malaysia. Half an hour later, […]
The Dominican Republic will send a delegation to Haiti to discuss the deportation of Haitian citizens from the country, Tuesday’s edition of El Caribe reports. The migration minister announced that the administration would consult with its neighbor before expelling Haitians illegally residing in the country. Hundreds of thousands of Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, […]
Kos is one of the Greek islands closest to the Turkish coast and receives hundreds of Syrian and Afghan refugees every day, a heavy burden for a country already ravaged by economic crisis.
PARIS — Up to 8,000 Rohingya, a long-persecuted Burmese minority, are still reportedly stranded on rickety boats in deplorable and perilous conditions, weeks after being abandoned by human traffickers in the Andaman Sea. Denied safe passage on the shores of countries in the region, the plight of this Muslim ethnic group is however just one […]
-Analysis- TURIN — Thousands of people — calling them people, i.e. men, women and children, is the first step — have died in the Strait of Sicily since 2010. Sunday saw the worst tragedy yet, but it was not the first, and unfortunately it won’t be the last. Many of these people are fleeing the […]
A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER IN YEMEN The fighting in Yemen is creating a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF said yesterday. Hundreds of people have been killed in ongoing clashes between Yemeni militias backed by a Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels, Reuters reports. ON THIS DAY An eruption of Mount Vesuvius devastated Naples 109 […]
Khaled walked into an ISIS recruiting office and volunteered to fight — for $30 a month. Now he’s a refugee in Turkey. Here’s how he got from there to here.
In Chad, savage accounts from the first wave of refugees after reported massacres in Nigeria. Meanwhile, forces Wednesday have begun to step up the military response to Boko Haram.
A Syrian refugee living in a tent near the border with Turkey has lost his home, but he is preserving the family business of creating beautiful works of traditional mosaic art.
Khaled’s family is one of the 190 from Syria that have recently moved to poor and isolated Gaza. Doors elsewhere for refugees are closing, especially to the Palestinian minority fleeing Syria.
ALEXANDRIA — It is filthy and squalid here, putrid air and the smell of sewage palpable amid the din and dust from the constant passage of heavy vehicles. Far away, beyond the silhouette of a refinery, the horizon is hardly distinguishable. It is from this shore, in the suburbs of Alexandria, Egypt, that Mohammed tried […]
Exclusive: inside a special German intelligence program that questions asylum seekers about their home countries. Berlin denies that asylum requests are contingent on cooperation.
People escaping the Communist bloc used to try to cross from Bulgaria into Turkey. Now, immigrants, including many refugees from the war in Syria, cross the other way.
In Poland, after criticism of the treatment of asylum seekers, the government has responded with some very practical training for those who come face-to-face with immigrants every day.
Up close with Syrian smugglers and Western NGOs. Turkish troops turn blind eye to arms trafficking, but worries grow about who is getting their hands on the weapons.
TRIPOLI – Nafisa Muhammad knows all too well that vengeance is alive and well in post-revolution Libya. “One of my brothers was kidnapped by rebels from Misrata at Benghazi airport,” she says. “On his first day at a local detention center, he was beaten to death.” The 31-year-old woman now lives in a refugee camp […]
BEIRUT – Elias, a 42-year-old Syrian, is chain smoking under the silent gaze of his children. This Christian farmer abandoned his lands, near the Lebanese border, leaving behind conflicts he felt had nothing to do with him, but tormented by the future of Syria and the fate of his minority religion there. Together with 20 […]