In southern Tel Aviv, some 50,000 refugees amass on the margins of society. Too many in Israel, once the refuge for European Jews, have turned their back on these migrants.
Tag: refugees
MUNICH — Dirk Rateike values ecologically friendly living and runs an organic hotel in the north of Hesse. But he’s facing anonymous threats from his own neighbors in the village of Gilserberg, between Marburg and Kassel in central Germany. The intimidation has included warnings that he shouldn’t go out at night lest he should face […]
Though the Pakistan Taliban was responsible for the murders of 130 students in Peshawar, the local government believes some of the country’s longtime Afghan refugees harbor terrorists. Deportation and confinements have begun.
Fleeing war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, and even Crimea, some Ukrainians are finding life difficult in the capital.
Since Syrians began fleeing the war zone for safety in their neighboring country, schools are overcrowded, jobs are scarce and tensions are high. Especially vulnerable are school children.
Germany’s state of Bavaria is overwhelmed by the number of Somali refugees, creating a crisis at schools ill-equipped to deal with not only language barriers, but serious childhood trauma.
Turkey’s fraught relationship with Europe and the U.S. should be bolstered by its impressive response to the refugee crisis in neighboring Syria. But now will the West step up?
As white supremacists proliferate in Sweden, a reformed neo-Nazi has been dissuading youths from following his own former path. Now he’s trying to stem growing Islamic radicalism.
QASYAR — Ahmed is wearing a Barcelona soccer jersey with Argentine superstar Lionel Messi’s name on the back. Rasheed has Rodrigo Palacio’s from Inter Milan, while Samad is sporting the Chelsea shirt of Brazil midfielder Oscar dos Santos Emboaba Junior. While their heroes compete in the World Cup on the other side of the world, […]
Italy is often a point of arrival in Europe for immigrants from troubled points east and south. But most will eventually wind up in northern destinations. What have they seen? What will they find?
-OpEd- PARIS — How often are war crimes being committed in Syria? Is it every time a helicopter from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime drops a barrel bomb on a school, a hospital, an apartment block? Every time a fighter-bomber launches a strike in the middle of a town? Or every time a group of Islamist […]
The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has reached 900,000. They are our new poor. How we treat them is the great test of a new democracy.
Bracing itself for an influx of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russia has indicated an easy path to citizenship. But skeptics note Moscow’s notoriously tough migration policies.
KAMAISHI — Tsukayo Ito lost everything in the tsunami three years ago. Since the 2011 disaster, the 88-year-old geisha has been living in a settlement of containers in Kamaishi. On the walls of her tiny living room are the few photos that could be salvaged from the rubble. She has almost no possessions, but still […]
A boat filled with mostly Afghan immigrants was stopped and towed away by the Greece’s Coast Guard. But when the boat eventually sank, 11 people ended up dead. Survivors recount.
Nostalgia, illness and the pain of missing loved ones pushes some to try to ‘re-defect’ back to North Korea. But Seoul won’t allow it, and the risk of punishment upon their return is huge.
GÄVLE — Under the dark of a freezing arctic night, Jimi arrived at his destination. They welcomed him with a plate of Swedish meatballs, before showing him to a soft, white bed in a room that sleeps eight. “Welcome to Sweden,” says a man of African origins, shaking his hand. Jimi, 25, who is from […]
BANGUI – Bibiane had a dreadful night. As torrents of rain came beating down on the capital of the Central African Republic, this 28-year-old mother, her two children, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters tried in vain to gather under a single canvas sheet, pocked with holes. Still, compared to the 35,000 to […]
Wednesday, December 10, 2014 CALLS TO PROSECUTE AFTER CIA TORTURE REPORTThe United Nations Human Rights Council has called for the prosecution of U.S. officials “responsible for the criminal conspiracy” unveiled in the summary of a Senate report into the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation methods, The New York Times reports. Praising the Obama administration for their courage […]
BERLIN — A refugee slams a briefcase down on the table, snaps it open and takes out a series of plastic cards. “Here,” he says, “health card from Italy, residence permit, identity card. We have everything. Our asylum cases are complete. We’re allowed to move around in Europe, but we’re not allowed to work, not […]
LAMPEDUSA — Yesterday, they buried those remaining of the 385 victims from the Oct. 3 shipwreck off Lampedusa. There were no flowers. No gravestones. None of the ceremony that so many had promised. That first day, as the death toll mounted, various political leaders, including Prime Minister Enrico Letta, had called for some kind of […]
The tragedy earlier this month off the coast of the island of Lampedusa, which left more than 300 dead, is a cruel reminder of the treacherous journey across the sea to Italy’s southern coastlines made by so many would-be immigrants. But Italy is typically just the entry point for immigrants, a springboard for other European […]
FRIEDLAND — “Germany is a country where rules matter,” declares Martin Steinberg. The pastor in this central German city is standing before a group of people who’ve just fled a country where the only rule that mattered was that of survival. “Here the most aggressive driver with the biggest car doesn’t automatically have the right […]
LAMPEDUSA — “Follow me,” said Jesus, “and I will make you fishers of men.” A disturbing parallel is evoked from this famous passage of the Gospel of Matthew, as nets tossed into the sea off the Italian island of Lampedusa fill up with the bodies of men… of women and children. After the latest tragic […]
A quarter of the two million Syrians fleeing their country have wound up in Jordan, where there is overcrowding and difficulty obtaining work permits. Refugees are rooting for strikes asap.
ZAATARI – The Khamsin is what they call the desert wind that blows in gusts, blocking your sight with an opaque fog, burning your eyes and lungs at the same time. Scruffy-looking kids are pushing makeshift carts through the mini windstorm, piles of clothes and kitchen tools almost falling off them, as ghost-like figures of […]
In the southern Turkish town of Reyhanli, near the Syrian border, anger is rising against Prime Minister Erdogan’s support of Syrian rebels.
AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS Worldcrunch SITTWE – Rescuers were searching for survivors Tuesday after a boat carrying up to 200 Rohingya Muslims capsized off the western Burmese coast. Many are feared drowned among the oft-persecuted minority, who were being evacuated late Monday from low-lying regions of Burma (also referred to as Myanmar) ahead […]
Thousands of young Tunisians who tried to emigrate to Europe after the Arab Spring have disappeared. Their families are desperate to know what happened to them.
LANDQUART – He stirs his spaghetti with one hand, holding a cigarette in the other. Mohamed* has drops of sweat beading on his forehead despite the near-freezing temperatures. “It’s really tough here,” he says in his broken English. “Last week, there was a knife fight between the Afghan and the Nigerian. They were drinking, shouting. […]
ALGIERS – The ultimate goal is Europe. But first the immigrants from countries in central Africa are trying to get refugee status in Algeria. “We were told that if we claimed we were fleeing the war, we would be taken care of and handed out IDs,” says Trésor, a Congolese migrant taken in by the […]
MENAKA – In a land far from Mali’s capital of Bamako, the houses are covered in rough cement, the streets in a reddish earth; the town is scattered with crumbling mosques and the dust sweeps through the sweltering heat. Opposite an enormous bazaar, there is another mosque, but this time, the men standing outside are […]
AFP, ASIANEWS, IRRAWADDY (Burma), REUTERS, AL JAZEERA (Qatar), Worldcrunch A crisis is building in western Burma where one of the world’s largest groups of stateless people, the Muslim Rohingya, are being burned out of their villages by Buddhist Burmese nationalists. Since Sunday, several people have been killed and hundreds of homes have been burned. Thousands […]
PETRA (Jordan), INDEPENDENT, GUARDIAN (UK), AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE (France) Worldcrunch AMMAN – Jordanian police say they have arrested 11 suspected terrorists who had crossed the border from Syria and were planning a major attack against foreigners in Jordan’s capital. The U.S. embassy in Jordan was among the targets, an embassy spokesman confirmed to the Independent. […]
SANA (Syria), CNN (US), REUTERS (UK), AFP (France) The UN’s refugee agency released new estimates Thursday that say the number of Syrian refugees could reach 700,000 by the end of the year. Reuters reports that UN estimates have almost quadrupled since its last forecast in August reported 185,000 refugees. The new figures were published as […]
TEL AVIV – A small synagogue nestles in a dead-end street near the ocean promenade in Tel Aviv. The synagogue, used by Jews from Aleppo, Syria, was crowded last week for prayer services on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. As in the other 10,500 places of worship in Israel, the congregation recited a special […]
NEW YORK – Turkey intends to keep up its diplomatic efforts to establish a buffer zone in Syria, despite the United Nations’ failure last week to reach a resolution at the Security Council meeting on Thursday. “How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random […]
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 […]