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Category: refugees

  • The corporate media could learn a lot from a Sheffield-based project on journalism

    Sheffield-based border abolition project Give Over has put together an abolitionist journalism toolkit for editors and journalists reporting on immigration. Crucially, it challenges Western legacy media outlets’ institutionally racist and colonial approach to journalism.

    It provides a one-stop-shop style guide for approaching immigration reporting in a way that’s actively anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist. In following Give Over’s guide, journalists can contribute to dismantling the violent systems of oppression dehumanising and denigrating Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised communities.

    In other words, it’s a vital new style guide that all newsrooms committed to this should take up.

    Abolitionist journalism: a vital new toolkit

    Give Over has published a vital report to hold an abolitionist lens over what it means to be a journalist in today’s grossly unjust, unequal world.

    In October, the project published its work under the title:

    JOURNALIST AS SUBJECT: Using an abolitionist lens to report on borders

    It challenges the inherent assumption in traditional Western corporate media that journalists must always be neutral, unbiased, and objective. Moreover, it moves beyond a model of media that venerates reporters removed from the injustices they’re reporting on.

    Instead, its report calls for a solidarity reporting approach, grounded in lived experience and active participatory citizenship. It explains that its toolkit is:

    an exploration of the type of journalism that is possible when the journalist is considered as a subject; a live, heart-beating, trembling part of life as much as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to close one’s journalism off from the history of critical approaches to anti-racism, colonialism, and abolition that define the Western project.

    Writer and researcher on Islamophobia and former Canary journalist and editor Dr Maryam Jameela (she/he) lead the project and authored the report. Together with four other members of the Give Over team, she has worked for three years to examine racist reporting on immigration.

    In that time, Give Over has hosted a series of community events, including workshops, panel discussions, art curation and exhibitions. These formed a key part of producing its vital new journalism toolkit. The Canary previously reported on one of these. This was its ‘Conditional Western Solidarity and Palestinian Journalism’ panel in March 2024. You can read more about it, and watch the full event here.

    Lived experience and community voices

    In fact, the report itself made a point of emphasising the crucial role these events played in building the toolkit. It underscored that:

    Whilst it may seem unorthodox for a project about journalism to host discussion spaces for local community members this has been a core part of Give Over. Our work in commissioning guest authors, in compiling this report as a guide for journalists and editors would not have been possible without a sustained interest and passion for the communities we belong to. Journalists are as active members of society as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to reduce journalists to stenographers of history and, frankly, such a thing is wildly unnecessary.

    In other words, journalists’ own lived experience, and role in communities should not be relegated by traditional conventions of journalism committed to centring whiteness.

    And this is a big part of what the toolkit calls on newsrooms to encourage and embed in their reporting too. It proposes that media outlets could also host workshops that bring together diverse groups to tackle envisioning solutions for the future.

    A toolkit to take traditional media to task

    Significantly, the report acts as a style guide for reporters. These guidelines aim to challenge the racist status quo the Western media routinely perpetuates on refugees and migration.

    It advocates that to work towards border abolition, journalists should consider the following as key tenets of a more ethical media landscape. The report divides these into multiple categories for ease of use.

    Firstly, it puts across key language and terminology considerations, which include:

    • Using humanising language that respects migrants’ dignity and rights. By the same reasoning, this also means avoiding dehumanising language.
    • Writing in active voice. Journalists should do so to “clearly identify the systems and policies responsible for border violence”.
    • Make sure to acknowledge the diverse and complex identities of migrants with inclusive narratives that avoid homogenisation and oversimplification.

    Next, it implores journalists to embed the following when thinking of the story focus and framing:

    • Centre lived experiences – whether the journalist’s own or the communities’ they’re reporting on.
    • Interrogate Western narratives that relegate refugees worth to their utility, and make solidarity conditional.
    • Reframe the narrative from reactive to proactive storytelling.

    Abolitionist journalism: a style guide for a just and equitable future

    Besides these, the abolitionist journalism toolkit challenges journalists to think critically on where and who it’s sourcing its stories from. Alongside this, it emphasises the importance of ensuring appropriate contributor attribution. With all that in mind, it says that journalists should:

    • Elevate marginalised voices of people the border regime is impacting, and “particularly those from the global majority.”
    • Make sure to fact-check with care by consulting trusted sources and experts.
    • Acknowledge all contributors collaborating, and credit appropriately.

    The style guide also brings up key visual and multimedia considerations that put dignity and rights at the heart of journalism, including:

    • Using respectful imagery that “respect the dignity and agency of those depicted” and avoid reductive stereotypes.
    • Captioning and context for images.
    • Wherever possible, use creative approaches that involves commissioning artwork to help contest “traditional visual narratives of migration”.

    Give Over’s abolitionist journalism framework also centres on journalists contributing to the work imagining more just and equitable futures too. It means recognising that future migration and border scenarios are interconnected with other global crises, such as the climate crisis for instance.

    What’s more, in envisioning future narratives, journalists should ensure these are inclusive. This means giving over space to historically marginalised communities and:

    ensuring that their lived experiences shape the story of what is possible.

    The toolkit offers other vital guidance for journalists around crafting intersectional, multi-layered, and nuanced narratives and scenarios.

    Gaza: a case and point of media complicity

    Of course, Give Over constructed its toolkit in the midst of Israel’s unending brutal genocide in Gaza. It therefore couldn’t facilitate journalists engaging in meaningful introspection without drawing attention to how Western media’s purposeful failure to do the above is perpetuating this abhorrent violence towards Palestinians.

    Specifically, Western media reporting on this is exemplar of the way in which this journalistic approach denigrates the freedoms, journalism, and lived realities of Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised people.

    That is, Western corporate media has failed to call out Israel as it intentionally, unconscionably, murders Palestinian journalists. It has shown that its ideals of journalistic freedom doesn’t apply equally, or in fact, at all to Palestinian reporters. In short, Western media solidarity with Palestine is conditional.

    Unsurprisingly then, Western media reporting on Gaza has flouted every rule in the Give Over handbook.

    For instance, passive voice persistently rears its head. Who did the killing? As Give Over points out, news outlets have repeatedly omitted Israel from the headlines. Meanwhile, Western media whiteness is on full display in its rank double standards. Russia for instance, regularly features as the perpetrator in attacks on Ukraine in sharp contrast.

    It also regularly uses language to dehumanise Palestinians. In one example, it shows a Guardian news piece that calls young Israeli hostages “children”. In the same sentence, it describes young Palestinian hostages as:

    people aged 18 and younger

    Instead of amplifying Palestinian voices, news outlets also regularly act as propagandist mouthpieces for Israeli officials. Or in other words, the very people perpetrating the genocide.

    A lens to challenge Western media white supremacy

    When Give Over speaks of abolition, this isn’t solely the physical borders in and of themselves. In reality, structures of white supremacy, institutional racism, and colonialism maintain borders in many aspects of society. In other words, it’s concerned with the violent impulses and practices of the state. For instance, examples of this it identifies would be detention and deportation, disappearing people to maintain borders, overseas wars, and militarisation.

    Moreover, the report draws on the idea of borders involving the state manufacturing consent for the borderisation of societal spaces. It unpacks how the state expropriates everyday people in professional public service roles as willing, complicit agents of this. Of course, this invariably applies to journalists too.

    Now, Give Over’s unflinching project is calling on reporters to take up its tools of anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist liberation in their own work. It subverts the legacy media notions of impartiality and objectivity. Instead, it offers up a journalism lens that serves racially minoritised and other marginalised communities. Specifically, those that these tired traditional media notions have consistently sidelined.

    And crucially, it’s a powerful, poignant reminder to reporters that journalism should always challenge the oppressors, while centring and amplifying the voices that it has traditionally marginalised. Because ultimately, what is journalism for, if not precisely that?

    Every journalist that cares about building a better world should read it, and put its principles at the heart of all they do.

    Featured image supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The corporate media could learn a lot from a Sheffield-based project on journalism

    Sheffield-based border abolition project Give Over has put together an abolitionist journalism toolkit for editors and journalists reporting on immigration. Crucially, it challenges Western legacy media outlets’ institutionally racist and colonial approach to journalism.

    It provides a one-stop-shop style guide for approaching immigration reporting in a way that’s actively anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist. In following Give Over’s guide, journalists can contribute to dismantling the violent systems of oppression dehumanising and denigrating Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised communities.

    In other words, it’s a vital new style guide that all newsrooms committed to this should take up.

    Abolitionist journalism: a vital new toolkit

    Give Over has published a vital report to hold an abolitionist lens over what it means to be a journalist in today’s grossly unjust, unequal world.

    In October, the project published its work under the title:

    JOURNALIST AS SUBJECT: Using an abolitionist lens to report on borders

    It challenges the inherent assumption in traditional Western corporate media that journalists must always be neutral, unbiased, and objective. Moreover, it moves beyond a model of media that venerates reporters removed from the injustices they’re reporting on.

    Instead, its report calls for a solidarity reporting approach, grounded in lived experience and active participatory citizenship. It explains that its toolkit is:

    an exploration of the type of journalism that is possible when the journalist is considered as a subject; a live, heart-beating, trembling part of life as much as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to close one’s journalism off from the history of critical approaches to anti-racism, colonialism, and abolition that define the Western project.

    Writer and researcher on Islamophobia and former Canary journalist and editor Dr Maryam Jameela (she/he) lead the project and authored the report. Together with four other members of the Give Over team, she has worked for three years to examine racist reporting on immigration.

    In that time, Give Over has hosted a series of community events, including workshops, panel discussions, art curation and exhibitions. These formed a key part of producing its vital new journalism toolkit. The Canary previously reported on one of these. This was its ‘Conditional Western Solidarity and Palestinian Journalism’ panel in March 2024. You can read more about it, and watch the full event here.

    Lived experience and community voices

    In fact, the report itself made a point of emphasising the crucial role these events played in building the toolkit. It underscored that:

    Whilst it may seem unorthodox for a project about journalism to host discussion spaces for local community members this has been a core part of Give Over. Our work in commissioning guest authors, in compiling this report as a guide for journalists and editors would not have been possible without a sustained interest and passion for the communities we belong to. Journalists are as active members of society as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to reduce journalists to stenographers of history and, frankly, such a thing is wildly unnecessary.

    In other words, journalists’ own lived experience, and role in communities should not be relegated by traditional conventions of journalism committed to centring whiteness.

    And this is a big part of what the toolkit calls on newsrooms to encourage and embed in their reporting too. It proposes that media outlets could also host workshops that bring together diverse groups to tackle envisioning solutions for the future.

    A toolkit to take traditional media to task

    Significantly, the report acts as a style guide for reporters. These guidelines aim to challenge the racist status quo the Western media routinely perpetuates on refugees and migration.

    It advocates that to work towards border abolition, journalists should consider the following as key tenets of a more ethical media landscape. The report divides these into multiple categories for ease of use.

    Firstly, it puts across key language and terminology considerations, which include:

    • Using humanising language that respects migrants’ dignity and rights. By the same reasoning, this also means avoiding dehumanising language.
    • Writing in active voice. Journalists should do so to “clearly identify the systems and policies responsible for border violence”.
    • Make sure to acknowledge the diverse and complex identities of migrants with inclusive narratives that avoid homogenisation and oversimplification.

    Next, it implores journalists to embed the following when thinking of the story focus and framing:

    • Centre lived experiences – whether the journalist’s own or the communities’ they’re reporting on.
    • Interrogate Western narratives that relegate refugees worth to their utility, and make solidarity conditional.
    • Reframe the narrative from reactive to proactive storytelling.

    Abolitionist journalism: a style guide for a just and equitable future

    Besides these, the abolitionist journalism toolkit challenges journalists to think critically on where and who it’s sourcing its stories from. Alongside this, it emphasises the importance of ensuring appropriate contributor attribution. With all that in mind, it says that journalists should:

    • Elevate marginalised voices of people the border regime is impacting, and “particularly those from the global majority.”
    • Make sure to fact-check with care by consulting trusted sources and experts.
    • Acknowledge all contributors collaborating, and credit appropriately.

    The style guide also brings up key visual and multimedia considerations that put dignity and rights at the heart of journalism, including:

    • Using respectful imagery that “respect the dignity and agency of those depicted” and avoid reductive stereotypes.
    • Captioning and context for images.
    • Wherever possible, use creative approaches that involves commissioning artwork to help contest “traditional visual narratives of migration”.

    Give Over’s abolitionist journalism framework also centres on journalists contributing to the work imagining more just and equitable futures too. It means recognising that future migration and border scenarios are interconnected with other global crises, such as the climate crisis for instance.

    What’s more, in envisioning future narratives, journalists should ensure these are inclusive. This means giving over space to historically marginalised communities and:

    ensuring that their lived experiences shape the story of what is possible.

    The toolkit offers other vital guidance for journalists around crafting intersectional, multi-layered, and nuanced narratives and scenarios.

    Gaza: a case and point of media complicity

    Of course, Give Over constructed its toolkit in the midst of Israel’s unending brutal genocide in Gaza. It therefore couldn’t facilitate journalists engaging in meaningful introspection without drawing attention to how Western media’s purposeful failure to do the above is perpetuating this abhorrent violence towards Palestinians.

    Specifically, Western media reporting on this is exemplar of the way in which this journalistic approach denigrates the freedoms, journalism, and lived realities of Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised people.

    That is, Western corporate media has failed to call out Israel as it intentionally, unconscionably, murders Palestinian journalists. It has shown that its ideals of journalistic freedom doesn’t apply equally, or in fact, at all to Palestinian reporters. In short, Western media solidarity with Palestine is conditional.

    Unsurprisingly then, Western media reporting on Gaza has flouted every rule in the Give Over handbook.

    For instance, passive voice persistently rears its head. Who did the killing? As Give Over points out, news outlets have repeatedly omitted Israel from the headlines. Meanwhile, Western media whiteness is on full display in its rank double standards. Russia for instance, regularly features as the perpetrator in attacks on Ukraine in sharp contrast.

    It also regularly uses language to dehumanise Palestinians. In one example, it shows a Guardian news piece that calls young Israeli hostages “children”. In the same sentence, it describes young Palestinian hostages as:

    people aged 18 and younger

    Instead of amplifying Palestinian voices, news outlets also regularly act as propagandist mouthpieces for Israeli officials. Or in other words, the very people perpetrating the genocide.

    A lens to challenge Western media white supremacy

    When Give Over speaks of abolition, this isn’t solely the physical borders in and of themselves. In reality, structures of white supremacy, institutional racism, and colonialism maintain borders in many aspects of society. In other words, it’s concerned with the violent impulses and practices of the state. For instance, examples of this it identifies would be detention and deportation, disappearing people to maintain borders, overseas wars, and militarisation.

    Moreover, the report draws on the idea of borders involving the state manufacturing consent for the borderisation of societal spaces. It unpacks how the state expropriates everyday people in professional public service roles as willing, complicit agents of this. Of course, this invariably applies to journalists too.

    Now, Give Over’s unflinching project is calling on reporters to take up its tools of anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist liberation in their own work. It subverts the legacy media notions of impartiality and objectivity. Instead, it offers up a journalism lens that serves racially minoritised and other marginalised communities. Specifically, those that these tired traditional media notions have consistently sidelined.

    And crucially, it’s a powerful, poignant reminder to reporters that journalism should always challenge the oppressors, while centring and amplifying the voices that it has traditionally marginalised. Because ultimately, what is journalism for, if not precisely that?

    Every journalist that cares about building a better world should read it, and put its principles at the heart of all they do.

    Featured image supplied

    By Hannah Sharland

  • India’s Manipur authorities give Myanmar refugees 1-month deadline to return home

    Read RFA coverage of this story in Burmese

    Authorities in the eastern Indian state of Manipur are warning thousands of Myanmar nationals who fled conflict in the Sagaing region that they have one month to return home, despite the ongoing threat of junta airstrikes that wiped out many of their villages.

    Sagaing has seen some of the fiercest fighting between junta troops and the armed opposition since the military‘s February 2021 coup d’etat, which has forced around 5,000 residents of the region to seek shelter in neighboring India’s Manipur state.

    Late last month, Manipur authorities met with the displaced in the state‘s Kamjong and Ukhrul districts, across the border from Sagaing region’s Tedim township, and told them they would have to return home in the coming weeks, one of the Myanmar refugees told RFA Burmese.

    “It remains unclear what is happening in other districts [of Manipur],” said the refugee who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “The head of Kamjong district met with [the displaced] on Oct. 23 and told them to return home by Dec. 10. The [refugees] there are now preparing to go back.”

    Of around 5,000 Myanmar war refugees in Manipur state, approximately 3,000 are sheltering in the two districts, according to aid workers.

    Families with schoolchildren are allowed to stay until March 2025, when exams are over, they said.

    Threats back home

    While towns like Kham Pat and Myo Thit in Sagaing are now under the control of the armed opposition forces, many homes were destroyed in junta arson attacks and rebuilding will be tough, another displaced person told RFA.

    “In the upper area of Sagaing, Nan Aung Maw village was completely burnt down, while all the houses in Su Thar Yar ward of Aung Zeya town were also destroyed,” he said. “The refugees from these areas are preparing to return home this month. They will have to build makeshift bamboo houses, and they will face difficulties.”

    Those displaced from Sagaing’s Tamu township dare not return, as the area remains under the control of junta forces and allied Pyu Saw Htee militias, he added.

    RELATED STORIES

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    An official from the Burma Refugee Committee in Sagaing’s Kabaw area who also declined to be named told RFA that the refugees were asked to return home “to prevent armed conflict at the border” and “address ethnic issues.”

    “These Manipur districts have ties to Naga rebels [fighting for independence in India’s Nagaland], who entered Myanmar through the border with Tamu township to join junta troops in armed conflict,” he said.

    “Some of them were killed or arrested [in Myanmar] … So, the Manipur authorities might have decided to force Myanmar refugees to return home to prevent ethnic conflicts,” he added.

    Attempts by RFA to contact the U.N. refugee agency, the Myanmar Embassy in India, and the Indian Embassy in Yangon for comment on the deadline set by Manipur authorities went unanswered Friday.

    Porous shared border

    India shares a 1,600-kilometer (1,000-mile) border with Myanmar along its far-eastern states of Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

    Junta attacks against ethnic minority insurgents and pro-democracy militias that emerged in the wake of Myanmar’s coup have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Chin state and neighboring Sagaing region, with thousands seeking refuge across the porous Indian border.

    Among those who have slipped into India are supporters of those fighting to end military rule and they could be in grave danger if forced back into the arms of the junta, activists say.

    People from Paletwa town in Myanmar are seen at the Kakiswa Refugee Camp in the Longtharai district of India on June 2, 2024.
    People from Paletwa town in Myanmar are seen at the Kakiswa Refugee Camp in the Longtharai district of India on June 2, 2024.

    Attempts by India to stem the flow of refugees from Myanmar have affected people on both sides of the border.

    In August, people in western Sagaing region said their supplies of rice, cooking oil, salt, fuel and medicine were dwindling because of trade disruptions caused by Indian border gate closures.

    Indian authorities cited the need to check the flow of illegal goods from Myanmar as the reason for the closures, but a diplomat at India’s Embassy in Yangon told RFA that the Indian government permits movement through designated border crossing points and any restrictions were likely imposed by Myanmar or local authorities.

    India has also repatriated scores of junta troops who fled across the border to escape armed opposition offensives in recent months.

    Translated by Aung Naing. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN relief chief urged global support this week as Israeli legislation threatens aid to Palestinian refugees – November 8, 2024

    Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

    The post UN relief chief urged global support this week as Israeli legislation threatens aid to Palestinian refugees – November 8, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.


    This content originally appeared on KPFA – The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Under Israeli bombardment, Lebanon’s refugees turn to each other for survival


    This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden-Harris White House gets ratioed after disgusting Day Of The Dead tweet

    Between 1 and 2 November Mexico marks the Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead. Its focus is celebrating the memory of loved ones who are no longer with us. The tradition is a mixture of ancient Mesoamerican indigenous culture and the Catholicism of Spanish colonisers. This year, the Biden-Harris White House tweeted that it was celebrating the day.

    Day Of The Dead

    But its tweet backfired, with award-winning journalist Aura Bogado responding:

    Indeed, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would likely need to fill the White House with altars in order to remember the hundreds of people who have died at the US-Mexican border under their administration’s watch.

    “Competing over who can appear tougher on immigration”, at the expense of human life

    In 2022, the number of refugees dying on the US border with Mexico reached a record high. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) confirmed that the frontier had become “the world’s deadliest land migration route”. Combining the number of deaths and disappearances, the Biden administration also has the worst statistics.

    As Human Rights Watch (HRW) explains, the US government has pushed a ‘Prevention Through Deterrence’ policy since 1994. The Border Patrol says there have been around 10,000 refugee deaths during that time. Human rights groups in the area, however, think there may have been up to 80,000. The idea of the policy was to make crossing the US-Mexican border “so dangerous that people are discouraged from even trying”. This strategy has “proven ineffective at reducing migration”, though.

    Nonetheless, Biden’s government has sought to appear tough on immigration. And Harris is no different, which she’s made crystal clear during her electoral match-up with Donald Trump. As HRW’s Vicki B. Gaubeca wrote in October, “both parties are competing to see who can keep propping up the same old failed myths about immigration”. In short, they’re “competing over who can appear tougher on immigration”. As DemocracyNow reported in July, Harris:

    defended her support for harsher immigration and border enforcement policies. Harris compared her record to Donald Trump’s and blamed the Republican presidential nominee for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have further militarized the southern border.

    She even boasted that:

    Some of the most conservative Republicans in Washington, D.C., supported the bill. Even the Border Patrol endorsed it.

    Why do people still try to get to the US?

    The US remains the world’s biggest economy. And in the Americas, most of the other countries suffer instability and immense inequality, largely as a result of US imperialism systematically terrorising their people for many decades. Whether that has been via Washington’s support for brutal right-wing dictators, devastating civil wars, or a combination of coups, terror, sanctions, and invasions, the US has provided people throughout the hemisphere with a very good reason to emigrate.

    Having the biggest economy on the planet, meanwhile, creates significant demand for workers. That’s why businessman Steven Kopits stressed in a 2017 CNBC article that immigration will continue as long as there is demand. Because the government provided “only about one third as many visas as needed by U.S. businesses”, despite them being “unable to find Americans to fill these jobs”, illegal immigration was bound to happen. Issuing enough visas, Kopits said, would help to cover domestic labour needs and make illegal immigration even less attractive.

    There are many benefits of welcoming immigrants, as academic research has shown. And the need for immigrants will only keep growing. Economists insisted earlier this year that the US economy, and in particular its Social Security system, “depend on a growing immigrant workforce”. This is partially to do with the growing number of people in retirement, and the falling number of births.

    The White House: a bastion of social murder

    In short, immigration is a complex issue. But both Democrats and Republicans continue to treat it simply as a propaganda tool to show how tough they are on some of the most vulnerable people in the region. And we should never stop holding them to account for the loss of human life that results from their inhumane policies.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • West Papuan outcry over Prabowo’s plan to revive transmigration

    By Victor Mambor in Jayapura

    Just one day after President Prabowo Subianto’s inauguration, a minister announced plans to resume the transmigration programme in eastern Indonesia, particularly in Papua, saying it was needed for enhancing unity and providing locals with welfare.

    Transmigration is the process of moving people from densely populated regions to less densely populated ones in Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s most populous country with 285 million people.

    The ministry intends to revitalise 10 zones in Papua, potentially using local relocation rather than bringing in outsiders.

    The programme will resume after it was officially paused in Papua 23 years ago.

    “We want Papua to be fully united as part of Indonesia in terms of welfare, national unity and beyond,” Muhammad Iftitah Sulaiman Suryanagara, the Minister of Transmigration, said during a handover ceremony on October 21.

    Iftitah promised strict evaluations focusing on community welfare rather than on relocation numbers. Despite the minister’s promises, the plan drew an outcry from indigenous Papuans who cited social and economic concerns.

    Papua, a remote and resource-rich region, has long been a flashpoint for conflict, with its people enduring decades of military abuse and human rights violations under Indonesian rule.

    Human rights abuses
    Prabowo, a former army general, was accused of human rights abuses in his military career, including in East Timor (Timor-Leste) during a pro-independence insurgency against Jakarta rule.

    Simon Balagaize, a young Papuan leader from Merauke, highlighted the negative impacts of transmigration efforts in Papua under dictator Suharto’s New Order during the 1960s.

    “Customary land was taken, forests were cut down, and the indigenous Malind people now speak Javanese better than their native language,” he told BenarNews.

    The Papuan Church Council stressed that locals desperately needed services, but could do without more transmigration.

    “Papuans need education, health services and welfare – not transmigration that only further marginalises landowners,” Reverend Dorman Wandikbo, a member of the council, told BenarNews.

    Transmigration into Papua has sparked protests over concerns about reduced job opportunities for indigenous people, along with broader political and economic impacts.

    Apei Tarami, who joined a recent demonstration in South Sorong, Southwest Papua province, warned of consequences, stating that “this policy affects both political and economic aspects of Papua.”

    Human rights ignored
    Meanwhile, human rights advocate Theo Hasegem criticised the government’s plans, arguing that human rights issues are ignored and non-Papuans could be endangered because pro-independence groups often target newcomers.

    “Do the president and vice-president guarantee the safety of those relocated from Java,” Hasegem told BenarNews.

    The programme, which dates to 1905, has continued through various administrations under the guise of promoting development and unity.

    Indonesia’s policy resumed post-independence on December 12, 1950, under President Sukarno, who sought to foster prosperity and equitable development.

    It also aimed to promote social unity by relocating citizens across regions.

    Transmigration involving 78,000 families occurred in Papua from 1964 to 1999, according to statistics from the Papua provincial government. That would equal between 312,000 and 390,000 people settling in Papua from other parts of the country, assuming the average Indonesian family has 4 to 5 people.

    The programme paused in 2001 after a Special Autonomy Law required regional regulations to be followed.

    20241104-ID-PHOTO-TRANSMIGRATION FIVE.jpg
    Students hold a rally at Abepura Circle in Jayapura, the capital of Indonesia’s Papua Province, yesterday to protest against Indonesia’s plan to resume a transmigration programme, Image: Victor Mambor/BenarNews

    Legality questioned
    Papuan legislator John N.R. Gobay questioned the role of Papua’s six new autonomous regional governments in the transmigration process. He cited Article 61 of the law, which mandates that transmigration proceed only with gubernatorial consent and regulatory backing.

    Without these clear regional regulations, he warned, transmigration lacks a strong legal foundation and could conflict with special autonomy rules.

    He also pointed to a 2008 Papuan regulation stating that transmigration should proceed only after the Indigenous Papuan population reaches 20 million. In 2023, the population across six provinces of Papua was about 6.25 million, according to Indonesia’s Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS).

    Gobay suggested prioritising local transmigration to better support indigenous development in their own region.

    ‘Entrenched inequality’
    British MP Alex Sobel, chair of the International Parliamentarians for West Papua, expressed concern over the programme, noting its role in drastic demographic shifts and structural discrimination in education, land rights and employment.

    “Transmigration has entrenched inequality rather than promoting prosperity,” Sobel told BenarNews, adding that it had contributed to Papua remaining Indonesia’s poorest regions.

    20241104-ID-PAPUA-PHOTO TWO.jpeg
    Pramono Suharjono, who transmigrated to Papua, Indonesia, in 1986, harvests oranges on his land in Arso II in Keerom regency last week. Image: Victor Mambor/BenarNews]

    Pramono Suharjono, a resident of Arso II in Keerom, Papua, welcomed the idea of restarting the programme, viewing it as positive for the region’s growth.

    “This supports national development, not colonisation,” he told BenarNews.

    A former transmigrant who has served as a local representative, Pramono said transmigration had increased local knowledge in agriculture, craftsmanship and trade.

    However, research has shown that longstanding social issues, including tensions from cultural differences, have marginalised indigenous Papuans and fostered resentment toward non-locals, said La Pona, a lecturer at Cenderawasih University.

    Papua also faces a humanitarian crisis because of conflicts between Indonesian forces and pro-independence groups. United Nations data shows between 60,000 and 100,000 Papuans were displaced between and 2022.

    As of September 2024, human rights advocates estimate 79,000 Papuans remain displaced even as Indonesia denies UN officials access to the region.

    Pizaro Gozali Idrus in Jakarta contributed to this report. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel has cut off ties to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestine refugees.


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Greatest Man in Gaza

    When Koko (cuteness for Kareem) and Momo (cuteness for Mohammad) hear the bombs explode over eastern Rafah they are filled with joy. They don’t know any better, for they are not yet three years old and their father, Omar, tells them the bombs are fireworks.

    “The people are celebrating,” he says. So now, when the explosions illuminate their bedroom at night like lanterns in the sky, his children get excited.

    “It’s better than them being scared,” he tells me over video chat. “Besides, if the bombs fall on our house, we will all die instantly, so they’ll never know what hit them.” We both laugh. Omar can make a joke about anything.

    He’s inspired by his children, especially the newest addition to the family, eighteen-month-old Mimi (cuteness for Maryam). Her joy is infectious, and the family is happy, or at least as happy as any family could be under the circumstances. And the circumstances are the complete eradication of life as they knew it before October 7, 2023.

    “Here’s a video I took when our apartment building in Gaza City was bombed,” Omar says. “We barely escaped.”

    Omar Latifa and Children

    Omar set the scene. “It was the beginning of November. My family including my brothers and parents lived in a ten-story apartment building. We had been watching the bombing of other neighborhoods, then the war came to us. The first rocket blew up the front of the building, knocking me unconscious. When I came to, my leg was injured and a neighbor dragged me back to my apartment. Then another rocket hit the place where I had just been, killing the family of one of my best friends. Bodies lay everywhere, but there was no time to grieve. I gathered up my family, and we had to walk down the stairs stepping over the dead.”

    I watched in silence as first responders strapped a corpse to a stretcher on the ground floor and guided the wounded into the foyer. Those who can walk on their own decide to take their chances in the street. Omar begs them to stay inside, but they won’t listen.

    “We have white shirts to wave,” they reassure him. “We’ll be okay.”

    Halfway down the block a couple of Israeli tanks finish them off.

    Omar waits for the tanks to leave the area, and then leads his extended family past his fallen neighbors to his uncle’s house. On the way, they cover themselves with wet sheets to protect against the white phosphorus dropped by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). Like a snowstorm of evil, white phosphorus fills the sky with trails of deadly pale smoke that, on contact, can burn human flesh down to the bone. Luckily, Israel denies they use white phosphorus on civilians, so any suffering must be imaginary.

    Omar’s family makes its way to the new house without incident, but times are hard. The utilities fail. They have to walk several kilometers in one direction to get water. And several kilometers more in another to charge their smartphones—their lifeline for information about humanitarian aid and the fate of loved ones.

    Then the IDF drops leaflets telling them they will be safe in Rafah. Omar and his family, though skeptical, decide to go and begin the long trek south to supposed safety. A third of the way into their trip by taxi, they encounter a roadblock and have to walk. Omar pushes his sick mother in a shopping cart along the street while his father follows behind, limping with a cane. Omar’s wife and two brothers each carry one of the children.

    For agonizing hours they travel through a desolate land pockmarked by craters and unexploded ordnance. On occasion, they are force-marched between rows of Israeli soldiers, who make everyone hold a white shirt in one hand and their identification cards in the other. Those with backpacks keep their belongings. Those without, keep nothing. Dropped items are lost forever. Bend over to pick them up and get shot. For the lucky, to be called out of line is to be made to strip naked and stand for hours while looking down the barrel of a gun. The unlucky are never seen again.

    In Rafah, the people are crammed together in endless rows of tents. A Palestinian ghetto is formed. Reminiscent of the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II, scabies, dysentery and lice multiple. Like its distant relative, the Rafah Ghetto will grow smaller and smaller with each new phase of occupation, until little remains to do for the refugees but be expelled to the next hopeless piece of land. If Gaza had been large enough, the Palestinians would have been put into cattle cars and herded to camps surrounded by barbed wire. But Gaza is small and already fenced in.

    Without a tent, Omar’s family meanders from mosque to mosque. At least they have a roof over their head. Inside they are protected from wind and rain. But winter is coming, and during the night, without blankets, they shiver relentlessly. Then the IDF starts bombing the mosques, and Omar’s family grows increasingly desperate. Finally, in one of the few remaining houses of prayer, a good Samaritan notices Omar’s immobile parents and young children and offers them a room in his house. Relief.

    In February I started to write about refugees and messaged an Indonesian photographer named Kawan. She curated photographs of the genocide in Gaza on social media. “How can you handle seeing all the death and destruction?” I asked.

    She replied with a link to Omar’s Facebook profile and the words: “Omar has a story he wants to tell.”

    So I contacted him. Gregarious, upbeat and confident, Omar is the most positive person I’ve ever met. He laughs when he recalls how he was paralyzed as a teenager.

    “The doctors didn’t know what to do,” he says. “But I didn’t care what they knew. I just kept on living until I began to walk again.”

    Koko and bandage

    Shortly after our first talk, Omar spills boiling water on Koko while heating it on a jerry-rigged stove. Luckily, the nearest hospital was still open. Omar sends me a video of him bandaging the toddler at home. Burns: second-degree. Screams: heartbreaking.

    The only way to deal with the pain is to welcome the suffering. Omar evaporates horror with a happy-go-lucky attitude. He also gets along with everyone, so it’s no surprise that his best friend is a Palestinian Christian named Fahmi. Christians have inhabited Gaza since the first century. The IDF shoots them. Hamas protects them. Strange bedfellows. Long ago the Israelis waged war on the various tribes of the land of Canaan, now they seek to destroy the Palestinians. History repeats itself. This land was always someone else’s. What would Jesus do?

    It was Israeli threats that separated them. Fahmi sought refuge with his family in the Church of Saint Porphyrius—the third oldest Christian church in the world. The IDF instructed the Christians to seek safety in Rafah, but there was no church there. So they stayed where they were. If God decided it was their time to die, they would accept it. Fahmi would leave the Earth surrounded by those bonded by faith and blood. Besides, Israel would bomb them wherever they went. There has always been a deep Zionist hatred of Arabs, whether Muslim, Jewish or Christian. They had already eradicated the Arabic language and customs among Palestinian Jews. Now, all they had to do was annihilate the remaining Gentiles. ‘Innocent civilians be damned!’, ‘Let them starve, let them rot!’ were typical comments I saw on Israeli social media.

    Omar and Fahmi lived in the old way. “Bonds of brotherhood, respect and love unite us. I was there when Fahmi wedded his wife Vivian, and he drove me to deliver the dowry for my then bride-to-be Alaa. Israel doesn’t like it when they see Palestinian Christians cooperate with Muslims. But we have so much in common, how could we not? Both of our wives are pharmacists, and our children are as adorable as ever. Fahmi was a project coordinator for the YMCA, and I was employed as the head of customer support for an Internet Service Provider. We owned our own homes and bought our cars. We served Gaza.”

    It was the American Dream in Palestine. The difference? Our dreams are safe. Theirs had been exterminated. Now, they lived increasingly isolated from each other and the world, and with no Internet at the church, they lost contact. Omar’s messages and calls to Fahmi had gone unanswered. Then he heard the news that the IDF had bombed St. Porphyrius. Omar feared the worst.

    I tried to contact the Christian community in Gaza and met Rami. He had done interviews with the international press, as well as written a story about the Gaza genocide for America Media, a Catholic magazine. He and his wife Maryan had an infant daughter named Kylie who was born just before the start of the war. She had spent her brief life getting acquainted with baptisms, killer drones and missiles. They were just like the first Christians who had been persecuted and crucified by the Romans two thousand years ago. I messaged Rami on social media and told him about Fahmi and Omar.

    “What a coincidence,” Rami said. “I’m Fahmi’s brother-in-law and Omar’s friend.”

    The Church’s Internet had just been restored, and soon they had a joyous online reunion. They reminisced about old times. Before Gaza was bombed to pieces, all three men would go to the beach to barbecue seafood and smoke shisha late into the night. Back then the world was a half-decent place for families with young children, and war was so far over the horizon that those young enough came to believe it had never existed. There had never been any suffering, and childhood memories of the intifada were just thoughts in storage, nightmares to be forgotten. Each man was pious, generous and loving. They were all People of the Book. They all worshiped the same God. Now, they were together again, if only online. Their friendship had survived.

    Then came Ramadan. In years past Omar invited Fahmi over for Iftar, the evening Ramadan feast. This year they would be apart, but the holiday would still serve them. I met Hassan at a local Iftar feast and told him about my stories on refugees. I hadn’t seen him in years. Hassan was a reverted Jewish Muslim. As a young man, he had fully believed in Zionism. Then he ‘saw the light’, in his words. He and his wife Latifa, also a Muslim revert with a Jewish background, wanted to meet one of the refugees over Zoom. So I introduced them to Omar. He was his usual cheerful self and filled us in on the new developments in his life, his wife beside him, his children asleep.

    “I have a new volunteer job,” he said. “A local charity has hired me to distribute money to the poor.”

    Omar began navigating war-torn Gaza in a taxi while the IDF hunted humans from high above. The taxi could be blown up at any moment. Still, he was as enthusiastic as ever.

    “There are those who love Allah and those who hide behind religion,” Hassan told me when the meeting was over. “I am humbled by Omar’s humility and his ability to endure the horrible tragedy we call war.”

    Hassan and Latifa wanted to chat with Omar again. “Is it okay if we invite friends and relatives?” they asked.

    “Sure,” I replied. And just like that, we had weekly Sunday meetings attended by Muslims, Jews and Christians.

    Omar was our Gaza host. He learned English through an eight-year friendship with Cassandra, an American woman he met in an online chat group. The world could not be a stranger place, with this woman from a one-light town in the land of freedom, and a devout Muslim from an urban war zone in the land of hospitality. Omar embodies Sumood—the Palestinian word for a man of great composure, determination and perseverance—mixed with the energetic joy of a child. And Cassandra is his first-world counterpart.

    To help raise money for Omar’s family, Cassandra set up an Instagram account full of video clips of Omar and his family. Please Donate To Save Their Lives!!! echoes through my consciousness as I watch the daily uploads. The contrast between their life now and that of the past is palpable. They had a beloved Siamese cat who was martyred when their apartment building collapsed after they fled. Now, they have a mourning dove whose coos soften the harshness of war. Grandmother was a respected embroiderer in times past. Now, she mends what little clothing they have left. Sometimes Cassandra does TikTok live streams where rude people hurl insults at her as she gathers donations. In America, the war of words never ends.

    One day, as I watch a video of Mimi taking her first steps, Omar sends me a photograph of a missile exploding nearby. The next day he sends me a video clip of all the dead and wounded from the building it demolished.

    Rami, Omar, and Fahmi

    As the weeks go by, the Zoom meetings grow to include other refugees, starting a cascade of donations to their GoFundMe campaigns. The world seems like a better place. Fahmi and Rami finish raising the money they need to evacuate from Gaza. They have to bribe Egyptian officials with five thousand US dollars, a rate set by the Egyptian government, for every family member who wants to cross the border. It’s state-sanctioned human trafficking. On May 5th, Omar meets Fahmi and Rami at the Rafah border crossing and sends me photographs. Smiles abound. Later that day Omar gets more good news: Mark Hoffman, an American who I had recruited to help with refugee fundraisers, donates the rest of the money Omar’s family needs to leave Gaza.

    That night I watched a video of Fahmi decorating a Christmas tree before the war. All is calm, all is bright. Then comes the war machine. Hamas has accepted a cease-fire deal, but despite Palestinian celebrations, it turns out not to be. In the early morning hours of May 6th, the IDF bombs a house a block away from Omar’s home. Then another. The charade is over. Kareem and Mohammad are crying. There are no fireworks, just enemies. There is no safe place; it was all an illusion Israel conjured up to appease its international partners and UN charities.

    In the morning the IDF drops leaflets again, this time with evacuation orders for eastern Rafah: We are here to save you from the terrorists. You must leave this zone immediately and migrate to the safe havens that are being prepared for you. Do not listen to the humanitarian aid agencies. Rebel against Hamas. If you die, you can file a complaint. Maryam has taken a bite out of the leaflet. Even small children can see the lies. Omar and his family make preparations to flee. By the end of the day, Alaa and the children have migrated to her parent’s house. Omar’s parents had already left the previous week. His brothers follow.

    I watch more Instagram videos to pass the time. Koko plays with the family cat. Momo bangs on a keyboard. Mimi giggles as she somersaults off a bed. Omar poses in front of a demolished building with a smile like he is having fun at the beach. Alaa cooks flatbread atop meager sticks of firewood. I cry as clips of the entire family move across the screen and You Are My Sunshine plays in the background. Momo and Koko roam a tiny olive orchard behind their house in Rafah, as quaint Lavender drones hover above them, rifles locked and loaded. It’s rumored they’re controlled by AI. A premonition of things to come? At any moment, these memories may become all that remains of Omar and his family.

    In a panic, I call Omar. His family is safe, but he doesn’t want to leave Rafah. Now, it’s too late. The bombs are falling too fast for the taxi drivers to risk going to pick him up. He’s stuck at the house with his cousin. He wants to run, but during the night they’re trapped by drones that shoot anything that moves. I hear rockets exploding in the background, but Omar’s not afraid. He’s joking about how even the stray dogs knew the IDF was coming, for they left eastern Rafah with the refugees. We laugh as the explosions get closer. Eventually, he hangs up to make a run for it as the sun rises. He wants to take a solar panel someone had donated, but the owner of the house said no, and it’s too heavy to run with anyway.

    Omar runs past burning homes and empty streets. People’s lives, whole family’s lives, lie in smoldering ruins with nothing but twisted metal and charred remains to mark the occasion. He stumbles over motionless bodies and prays that the dead have found peace. Then, as the explosions fade in the distance, the smoke dissipates and the air becomes cool and clean. Everything is silent. The drones are long gone. A Palestinian Sunbird with glossy blue-green feathers whistles in the stillness, looking for a mate. Later that day, I found out that Omar was safe.

    Days after the IDF had come and gone, Omar ventured back to see what was left of the house. To no surprise, it had been flattened by a bomb, and the solar panels were crushed to pieces.

    Omar relocates to Al Mawasi, a beach town that overlooks the Mediterranean. As the invasion continues, the rest of Rafah empties of civilians. Soon over a million people crowd Omar’s space. His family is one of the lucky ones who have a tent, but he’s depressed nonetheless. The internet is not working. I can only reach him by phone, a sketchy proposition since Israel only allows 2G in Gaza. 2G!!! That means practically no cellular data. The IDF has to stop the truth from getting out.

    Omar continues working for the charity. It’s not registered, so I can’t name them. They’re trying to avoid the authorities. Which ones? I never ask. All governments are the same: they have a mountain of red tape that costs money and a lawyer just to navigate. The Jordanians register NGOs in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, but they don’t have any power in Gaza. Of course, Gaza has no working government, so there’s no way anyone can register there. The charity is run by local people and funded by donors outside of Gaza. The workers are like Omar—everyday people who have stepped up to help when conditions call for action. The donors include Palestinian emigres from the left and the right, religious or not, who can’t stand to watch their country be destroyed.

    Omar gets promoted. Now, he’s setting up a camp for pregnant women and widows with children. I send refugees his way. Omar gives food to a family eating animal feed. He gets medication for a one-year-old whose face is rotting off as recorded in my story Gaza’s Last Fairytale. But not everything is easy. They give away tents to the needy, but some of the recipients try to sell them. They rent an apartment for Omar in Deir al-Balah, but the families on either side of him have a shootout. Corruption and lawlessness grow as Israel kills more and more police and aid workers, part of their plan to cause chaos and strife. Eventually, the pressure will be too much and Omar will take a break from volunteering, but for now, he’s doing the best he can.

    One day I told Omar about a refugee who sent me a video of someone collecting human body parts for burial. I told her never to send a video like that to any of the donors I work with. I’m afraid she’ll scare them away.

    “That’s quite funny,” Omar tells me with a smile. “I can imagine the look on your face when you opened up the video thinking it was some nice plea for donations by an innocent young woman in a hijab, only to see human flesh and bones.”

    “Omar, you’re crazy,” I say, shaking my head in disbelief.

    “I’m crazy?” he replies. “Think about the people who are bombing us!” And the greatest man in Gaza bursts out laughing.

    You can find out more about Omar here

    If you want to attend Omar’s Zoom meetings, please email the author at moc.liamgnull@erotavlassore.

    The post The Greatest Man in Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Write for Rights 2024 to start soon

    Every year, people from around the world take part in Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign. It’s a really easy way to make a big difference by doing something “little”. It doesn’t take much time – all you need to do is write a letter, send a post or sign a petition.

    Since Write for Rights started in 2001, millions of people have changed the lives of those whose human rights have been taken away. In fact, over the past 20 years more than 56 million actions have been taken, while over 100 people featured in our campaign have seen a positive outcome in their case. For this years toolkit see:

    https://www.amnesty.org.au/write-for-rights-2024-activist-toolkit/

    This year’s campaign will feature nine individuals and groups from all around the world. From a TikToker in Angola to a women’s rights defender in Saudi Arabia, these inspiring people are connected because their human rights have been violated.

    For results from the recent past: Meet three incredible people whose lives have been changed for the better and find out what people power means to them.

    After huge public campaigning, artist and anti-war activist Aleksandra (Sasha) Skochilenko was freed in a historic prisoner swap in August 2024. The deal was brokered between Russia and Belarus on the one hand and Germany, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and the USA on the other.

    Woman in rainbow tie-dye tshirt smiles and makes a v / peace hand gesture.
    Aleksandra Skochilenko on the day of sentencing, November 16, 2023.

    Rita Karasartova is a human rights defender and expert in civic governance from Kyrgyzstan. For over a decade she dedicated her life to providing independent legal advice, helping people whose rights had been violated. Charged with attempting to “violently overthrow the government”, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment, Rita and 21 other defendants were acquitted on 14 June 2024.   

    In August 2017, Myanmar’s military unleashed a deadly crackdown on Rohingya Muslims – an ethnic minority who have faced decades of severe state-sponsored discrimination in Myanmar. Over 620,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh after security forces unleashed a campaign of violence, killing an unknown number of Rohingya; raping Rohingya women and girls; laying landmines; and burning entire Rohingya villages.  

    Fearing for their lives, then 17-year-old Maung Sawyeddollah and his family walked 15 days to Bangladesh, where they reached Cox’s Bazar refugee camps. Fuelled by his desire to become a lawyer, Sawyeddollah wanted to seek justice for the suffering around him.

    Alongside his studies, he started a campaign calling for Facebook’s owner, Meta, to take responsibility for the way its algorithms amplified anti-Rohingya incitement on the Facebook platform, fuelling the Myanmar military’s violence.  

    In 2023 Sawyeddollah was facing serious security risks in the refugee camps. Together with partners Victim Advocates International and Dev.tv, Amnesty International put together resources to help ensure Sawyeddollah’s safety. Through Amnesty’s Global Relief Team he was provided with urgent financial assistance to support his security needs throughout the year. In August 2024, Sawyeddollah was granted a student visa and moved to the USA to study. He landed in New York City on 19 August 2024, and he is now an international student at New York University.

    Young person wearing a backpack taking a selfie in a US airport.
    Maung Sawyeddollah, in New York, USA, 2024.

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • EU refuses to publish findings of Tunisia human rights inquiry

    Inquiry preceded controversial migration deal linked to claims of abuse in increasingly authoritarian country

    The European Commission is refusing to publish the findings of a human rights inquiry into Tunisia it conducted shortly before announcing a controversial migration deal with the increasingly authoritarian north African country.

    An investigation by the EU ombudsman found that the commission quietly carried out a “risk management exercise” into human rights concerns in Tunisia but will not disclose its results.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Brazilian nun Rosita Milesi is the Laureate of the 2024 UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award

    A Brazilian nun who has helped refugees and migrants for 40 years on Wednesday won the Nansen prize awarded every year by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees for outstanding work to protect internally displaced and stateless people.

    Sister Rosita Milesi, 79, is a member of the Catholic order of the Scalabrini nuns, who are renowned for their service to refugees worldwide. Her parents were poor farmers from an Italian background in southern Brazil, and she became a nun at 19.

    As a lawyer, social worker and activist, Milesi championed the rights and dignity of refugees and migrants of different nationalities in Brazil for four decades.

    https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/CC584D13-474F-4BB3-A585-B448A42BB673

    She is the second Brazilian to receive the award. Former Sao Paulo Archbishop Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns won the prize in 1985.

    Milesi leads the Migration and Human Rights Institute (IMDH) in Brasilia, through which she has helped thousands of forced migrants and displaced people access essential services such as shelter, healthcare, education and legal assistance.

    She coordinates RedeMIR, a national network of 60 organizations that operates throughout Brazil, including in remote border regions, to support refugees and migrants.

    https://www.unhcr.org/news/press-releases/five-trailblazing-women-win-unhcr-s-nansen-refugee-awards-their-life-changing

    https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazilian-nun-awarded-un-refugee-prize-work-with-migrants-2024-10-09/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • As a Lebanese Australian, the country I live in feels hostile to my pain – and by extension, to me | Sherine Al Shallah

    Every bit of news of every attack trivialises everything else here. Dreams, plans, ‘achievements’

    I grew up and spent most of my life in Beirut before migrating to Australia just over a decade ago. I had to leave and I cannot go back. I have come to terms with the reality that I am a forced migrant.

    Forced migrants and refugees flee to seek safety. I watch photographs and videos of as many as a million Lebanese people internally displaced since September, living on streets, in schools and even in a nightclub. It appears to me that safety is a moving scale, and evidently not everyone is owed safety. That my people, and I, cannot access the safety promised in the refugee convention. Or that the safety we are owed looks very different.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Human rights groups urge Polish PM to shelve plan to suspend right to asylum

    More than 60 NGOs including Holocaust memorial group tell Donald Tusk region’s volatility ‘doesn’t exempt us from humanity’

    Human rights and a Holocaust memorial group have urged the Polish prime minister to shelve plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum, telling him that the region’s volatility “doesn’t exempt us from humanity”.

    The intervention from more than 60 NGOs including Amnesty International and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation comes after Donald Tusk told his party of plans to introduce a new migration strategy.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • EU unable to retrieve €150m paid to Tunisia despite links to rights violations

    Concerns are growing that funds from the migration deal are connected to abuses by the repressive regime in Tunis

    The EU will be unable to claw back any of the €150m (£125m) paid to Tunisia despite the money being increasingly linked to human rights violations, including allegations that sums went to security forces who raped migrant women.

    The European Commission paid the amount to the Tunis government in a controversial migration and development deal, despite concerns that the north African state was increasingly authoritarian and its police largely operated with impunity.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Children from Indonesia, Syria and Ukraine share hopes for the future – in pictures

    To mark the centenary of the rights of the child, Save the Children has partnered with children from Indonesia, Syria and Ukraine to produce a unique and creative photo series reflecting their identities, rights and hopes for the future. Working with photographers Ulet Ifansasti (in Indonesia), Kate Stanworth (in Jordan), and Oksana Parafeniuk (in Romania), children were invited to create photo montages and write poems expressing who they are, what matters to them and how they feel about their rights

    *Some names have been changed

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Labour will decimate the UK aid budget to 17-year LOW unless action is immediately taken

    On Wednesday 18 September, over 100 leaders of the UK international development, humanitarian and peacebuilding sector have come together ahead of the Autumn Budget, to urge the Labour Party government to take immediate action to prevent further cuts to the UK aid budget.

    UK aid budget: lowest since 2007

    122 leaders of the UK’s largest NGOs including ActionAid UK, Oxfam GB, CARE International UK, International Rescue Committee UK, and Save the Children UK, have signed a statement warning that the spending plans the new government has inherited from the previous government will cut UK aid to its lowest levels since 2007, (including under recent Conservative governments), unless the government takes action in the Autumn Budget.

    The statement warns:

    If these plans are not urgently revised, the Prime Minister and his government will be withdrawing vital services and humanitarian support from millions of marginalised people globally and turning up empty-handed to global forums over the coming months.

    Urgent action for UK aid budget needed

    Leaders call for the government to take immediate and bold action in the autumn budget to:

    • Maintain UK aid at current levels (0.58% of GNI) and prevent further cuts due to high spending within the UK on refugees and asylum seekers.
    • Reduce the amount of UK aid being spent within the UK on refugees and asylum seekers, while still ensuring adequate support for this vulnerable group.
    • Urgently set out new plans for how and when the government will return to 0.7% by introducing fair and transparent fiscal tests and scale-up UK aid as progress is made towards meeting them.

    A private letter signed by NGO leaders has also been sent to the prime minister, outlining these asks in detail and warning that with upcoming global summits and forums like the UN General Assembly, G20, and COP29, the UK cannot afford to show up empty-handed as it seeks to rebuild its reputation and restore relations with lower-middle-income countries.

    The statement and private letter follow Bond’s recent briefing on the state of UK aid which reveals that without any action in the autumn budget, UK aid spending outside of the UK (on development and humanitarian programmes) is expected to fall to £9.8 billion in 2024, equivalent to just under 0.36% of GNI.

    Sarah Champion MP, re-elected Chair of the Select Committee for International Development, said:

    It is right that we support refugees and asylum seekers, but the reckless spending of the UK aid budget to pay for extortionate hotel bills for this vulnerable group in the UK not only mismanages taxpayer money but also deprives millions of marginalised people around the world of the vital humanitarian support they need to stay safe in their own countries.

    In the short term, we need the UK government to top up the UK aid budget to cover these additional costs, so we don’t see further cuts to programmes.

    The UK aid budget is meant to tackle global poverty and instability, not to cover the costs of a broken asylum system at home. In the long-term, we need humane solutions for this vulnerable group that doesn’t come at the expense of marginalised communities globally.

    ‘Deeply concerned’

    Romilly Greenhill, CEO of Bond, the UK network for NGOs, said:

    We are deeply concerned that more cuts to the UK aid budget are on the way. The government must urgently act in the autumn budget to provide additional funding for vital humanitarian support and services for millions of marginalised people worldwide.

    With UK aid spending on refugee and asylum accommodation in the UK at extremely high levels, the government needs to urgently find alternative funds from other government budgets to support this vulnerable group instead of counting this as UK aid.

    The decisions the UK chooses to take now will heavily shape judgments on its global development ambitions and ability to rebuild trust with low- and middle-income countries.

    Halima Begum, CEO of Oxfam GB, said:

    If the government doesn’t act swiftly to protect UK aid, the consequences will be devastating and far-reaching. With the world facing crucial challenges such as climate change and a growing food insecurity crisis, the new government must restore the UK aid budget.

    They must stop diverting it to prop up the UK’s broken asylum system, and instead support vulnerable groups already in the UK through alternative Home Office funding.

    These steps are essential to ensure that millions of people worldwide can still access life-saving services. Failure to do so would undeniably put the UK at risk of further diminished credibility as a dependable agent in addressing urgent global crises.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • New research shows anti-migrant posts spread faster and further across racist cesspit Twitter

    Twitter (now X) is a hotbed of anti-migrant racism. Notably, anti-immigration tweets spread one and a half times quicker on the site when it was Twitter than pro-immigration posts. What’s more, a tiny number of users expressing anti-migrant sentiments were responsible for both the production and spread of this content.

    These are the results of a study of more than 200,000 tweets from 2019 and 2020 on the social media site. Of course, this was before Musk took over the site – showing that some of the problems were there already.

    Twitter: a hotbed of anti-migrant racism

    Andrea Nasuto and Francisco Rowe of the Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool in the UK, have presented these findings in the open-access journal ‘PLOS ONE’.

    Nasuto and Rowe analysed 220,870 immigration-related tweets posted in the UK from December 2019 through April 2020. Specifically, they applied natural language processing methods and social network science to explore the three factors. To do so, they built a ‘ChatGPT-like’ language model to identify different stances towards immigration.

    Their analysis confirmed a high degree of polarisation between networks of pro and anti-immigration Twitter users in the UK during the study period.

    While, the pro-immigration community was 1.69 times larger in number than the anti-immigration community, they had far less reach. Crucially, the anti-immigration community was more active and engaged to a greater degree with each other’s content.

    In particular, they identified how anti-immigration content spreads 1.66 times faster than pro-immigration content.

    Significantly, they found that within the anti-immigration community, the top 1% of users generated about 23% of anti-immigration tweets.

    Largely, bots weren’t hugely influential for either pro or anti-immigration tweets. Overall, they appeared to make up less than 1% of all key producers and spreaders of pro or anti-immigration content.

    From social media to real-world violence

    There were other stark differences between pro-immigration and anti-immigration users on the platform too.

    The top 1% of pro-immigration posters generated almost half the proportion that anti-immigration users produced. This was 12% to anti-immigration users 23%.

    Furthermore, the difference was even more pronounced amongst those who disseminated this content. Anti-immigration users comprised over 70% of top 1% spreader accounts – those that retweeted posts. On top of this, while the top 1% spreaders of anti-immigration users generated over 21% of the total retweets of this content, pro-immigration spreaders in the top 1% accounted for markedly less than this. They retweeted little over 6% of the total pro-immigration retweets.

    The researchers noted the potential for online anti-immigration content to provoke real-world harm, including violence. On the basis of their findings, they suggested that efforts to curb online hate content might benefit from identification and monitoring of highly active anti-immigration users.

    The authors stated that:

    A concentrated effort by a few can amplify a message far beyond its origins, redefining the power dynamics of social media.

    Crucially, in the research itself, the study authors suggested that:

    The extent of the polarization in the online public debate on immigration-related issues in the UK could enhance online violence which can ultimately trickle down to physical actions towards migrants and minorities.

    Therefore, the findings are particularly pertinent in light of the UK’s recent race riots. Notably, the authors argued that:

    The speed at which anti-immigration content circulates is more than just alarming—it’s dangerous. England’s recent events reveal how fast online narratives can incite real-world violence.

    Of course, the data pre-dated these recent events. However, the authors essentially suggested that if this anti-immigration trend has continued on the platform, this type of real-world violence could easily be the result.

    Other studies have revealed how the right-wing has swelled on the platform under Musk. And given disinformation on X was partly to blame for fanning the flames of the fascist far-right pogroms, this assessment seems plausible.

    The new study might have analysed Twitter from 2019 to 2020, but it still holds relevance for the ongoing impacts of unfettered bigotry festering online. When racist vitriol spills over from social media, marginalised communities will pay the price.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • ‘Inhumane’ treatment of migrants rounded up in UK’s failed Rwanda plan revealed

    Testimonies from Home Office and security staff show repeated use of force on distressed detainees

    The “inhumane” treatment of migrants rounded up in a “futile” operation for the now scrapped Rwanda scheme, has been laid bare in testimonies from Home Office staff that reveal force was used against distressed detainees.

    Internal documents disclosed to the Observer and Liberty Investigates under the Freedom of Information Act also reveal four recorded instances of migrants attempting to harm themselves after being apprehended.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Doctors Without Borders accuse hard-right Italy of trying to criminalise humanitarian aid

    The president of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF) has accused Italy’s hard-right government of seeking to criminalise humanitarian aid to drowning refugees. This comes as a court suspended authorities’ blockage of its ship.

    The organisation’s search and rescue vessel, the Geo Barents, has been at port in Salerno, Italy, for two weeks. The ship was placed under administrative detention by Italian authorities, a decision MSF have appealed.

    On Wednesday afternoon, that appeals court suspended the order. An MSF spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP) that this ruling allows the Geo Barents to be “free to return to the Mediterranean.”

    Desperate refugees Doctors Without Borders want to help

    Ahead of the decision, MSF’s president surgeon Christos Christou, said Italy’s accusations that the group had failed to provide timely information to coordinating authorities during multiple rescues it carried out on August 23 were baseless.

    He accused Italy of creating obstacles to saving refugees in the Mediterranean, and told AFP:

    I felt I had to come here (to Salerno) to advocate about how unfair it is to detain the Geo Barents for 60 days while there is so much happening in the Mediterranean

    Under Italy’s law, vessels operated by rescue charities are obliged to only perform one rescue at a time. It’s a system the groups claim is inefficient and puts lives at risk.

    Christou said that on August 23, having just completed a rescue and following instructions from Italian authorities to head to port, it witnessed another refugee boat in distress and went to help. He said:

    People were jumping into the sea. They were there, helpless, without any life vests.

    We were trying to contact the Libyan coast guard again but there was no response. Looking at the people in the sea, in that moment the only thing you must do is to offer a hand and pull them out of the sea.

    ‘Pattern of obstacles’

    The detention of the Geo Barents was the ship’s third such blockage under an Italian decree-law from January 2023 that has also led to the seizure of rescue ships from humanitarian charity groups such as France’s SOS Mediterranee and Germany’s Sea-Eye and Sea-Watch for periods up to 60 days.

    Like Wednesday’s decision by the Salerno appeals court, other courts have similarly overturned such detention orders, most recently in June.

    Christou said Italy’s detentions of NGO rescue vessels fit a “pattern of measures and ways to create obstacles to what we do in the Mediterranean”. He continued:

    With this government in Italy we can clearly see the intention: they really want to criminalise the humanitarian aid provided by civil sea rescue ships.

    Ahead of the court ruling, the interior ministry spokesman declined to comment to AFP on the matter.

    Italy’s interior minister Matteo Piantedosi has previously said the “rules of conduct” for the charity ships are intended to “make their activity more functional” in coordination with Italy’s coastguard, which rescues the bulk of refugees.

    Rescue groups are also ordered to disembark refugees at faraway ports, adding to time and cost.

    Since 2017, Italy and the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli have partnered on a controversial EU-endorsed refugee deal. Human rights groups say it pushes thousands of refugees back to Libya to face torture and abuse under arbitrary detention.

    Dead and missing

    The crossing from North Africa to Italy or Malta in the central Mediterranean is the world’s deadliest migration route. At least 2,526 refugees died or went missing there last year, and at least 1,116 this year so far.

    That is out of the estimated 212,100 refuges who made the crossing, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

    The group has counted more than 17,000 dead or missing since 2014.

    The number of refugees crossing the central Mediterranean has dropped by about a third this year, according to border agency Frontex.

    But refugees are opting to cross to Europe using new, dangerous routes, said Christou, citing surges this year in routes from Africa to Greece or to the Canary Islands, leading to “more people dying.”

    Those routes “were not on our radar until recently,” he said.

    The European Union, Christou said, “is failing in providing collective solutions”, with most funding for migration going to security measures rather than humanitarian ones. He explained:

    More drones, more fences, more coastguard… instead of humanity and treating people with human dignity.

    Christou’s comments and the actions of organisations looking to save drowning refugees should be the responsibility of governments. However, Fortress Europe is more invested, as Christou argues, in drones and fences that police its borders and have coastguards that watch people die. Protecting borders instead of people can only ever be cruel and callous.

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Reuters

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Borders Are Drawn to Protect Stolen Wealth. They Are a Process, Not a Place.

    Five rich men disappeared in a tourist submersible, and the rich world was obsessed with them. In the same week, 750 poor people were crammed onto a fishing boat called the Adriana that the rich world let sink. On the sub were two billionaires, two millionaires and a millionaire’s son. One of the millionaires and his son were from Pakistan, the same country from which many of the migrants on…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Home Office ‘mostly consulted Rwandan officials’ in asylum plan safety report

    Review finds research did not meet ‘minimum standards’ for assessing whether Rwanda was safe place to send people

    The last Conservative government relied largely on evidence from Rwandan officials in its assessment of the country as a safe place to send asylum seekers, an official report has found.

    The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI) looked at the Home Office’s assessment of whether or not Rwanda was a safe place to send refused asylum seekers, a document known as “country of origin information”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Mani once sang of freedom in Afghanistan. Now, silenced, she’s desperate to escape. Will Australia help? | Shadi Khan Saif

    This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’

    In the final days of the Afghan republic – in defiance of a looming takeover by the Taliban – the Hazara journalist Mani sang revolutionary poems in public in Kabul about women, freedom and justice. Now she is on the run, waiting for the Australian government to grant her a humanitarian visa.

    It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Funeral of refugee activist Viraj Mendis to draw mourners from all over Europe

    Mendis, who stayed in Manchester church for two years in 1980s to fight deportation, has died aged 68 in Germany

    Refugees and human rights activists are making their way to Bremen in north-west Germany for the funeral of a man who fought for freedom and safety for asylum seekers.

    Viraj Mendis came to prominence after seeking sanctuary in a Manchester church where he spent two years in the 1980s. He died aged 68 on 16 August in Bremen, which offered him sanctuary after he was deported from the UK.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Gaza’s Last Fairytale

    Alaa Jamal’s pain and suffering is wound so tightly around her heart that it shields it from all the horrors she’s lived through. So even though she’s in the crosshairs of Netanyahu’s hatred’s sights, her heart beats unceasingly, in defiance of what the Occupation has done to her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be able to keep the remnants of her family alive: a one year old son named Eid and a three year old daughter named Sanaa. Alaa calls her daughter Princess, an apt nickname for Alaa’s life has always been a fairytale, just one punctuated by war every two to four years. Birth, war. School, war. Adolescence, war. Friendship, war. Family, war. University, war.

    Then, when she was eighteen, Mohammed came, and Alaa forgot about the wars. Instead, she says, “A great love story arose.” Handsome, smart, and strong, Alaa knew they were meant for each other. He was a civil engineer, and she, a future architect. He proposed on Eid-al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. Alaa’s parents agreed, and the lovebirds married. In photographs they’re the quintessential couple. He’s sharp in casual clothes, she’s dazzling demure in repose.

    “I was so happy dressed in white,” she says, reminiscing about her wedding.

    And for a moment, I could see Alaa, smiling with the groom in the midst of her fairytale. Two children later, it would end. Now, the only white garments worn in Gaza are shrouds for the dead.

    When the war began, Alaa was at the hospital with her infant son. Eid had been born with an enlarged heart and needed close supervision whenever he was ill. Now, Alaa found herself trapped with him, as fighting raged on all around her. Israeli soldiers raided the hospital and dragged people out of their beds to kidnap or kill. Terrified, Alaa grabbed her son, ripped out the IV in his arm and ran out the back of the hospital, covered in his blood.

    Alaa ran all the way home, but when she arrived, things got worse. The neighborhood children were playing in the street in front of her house. A missile landed on the next block, and a large piece of shrapnel was sent reeling from the resulting explosion towards the children, decapitating Mohammed’s 12-year-old cousin Badr as Alaa watched. Mohammed’s father was next.

    Alaa was still in shock when the Israelis dropped leaflets ordering them to go south. She left first, taking the children. Mohammed was supposed to follow a few days later. In the meantime, their neighborhood was destroyed one block at a time. Dozens of Alaa’s friends and relatives were martyred—wedded to the land they loved in the ultimate sacrifice. Day-by-day, hour-by-hour, with each new message, Alaa learned of their deaths. And it was there, among the hordes of refugees walking south along the sea of Gaza, that Alaa’s fairytale life finally came to an end:

    “My brother Bahaa was volunteering to drive refugees trapped in the fighting to safety. Mohammed was with him, when the Occupation shot up the car they were in. My brother was wounded, and Mohammed tried to drag him to safety. That’s when they shot my husband in the face. Somebody called an ambulance, but the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t let the paramedics through. They bled out for charity.”

    Alaa began to weep.

    “The Occupiers refused to let anyone collect the bodies for burial. My beloved husband and brother became food for stray dogs and crows.”

    Alaa didn’t have time to properly mourn. Even after reuniting with her remaining relatives, things continued to get worse. As the days and weeks rolled by, they faced a lack of clean water, food and medical care. Winter came, and they had nothing to keep them warm. Everyone was malnourished and sick.

    Eid and Sanaa went to the hospital to get treated for starvation with a nutrient IV drip. The elderly had no such luck. Three different times Alaa woke up on a cold morning to find one of her aunts dead. Their bodies simply couldn’t produce enough heat with so little food to eat. I wondered about her own health.

    “How much weight have you lost since October 7th?” I asked.

    “Thirty pounds,” she said.

    I wanted to know more, but Alaa steered the conversation back to her children.

    “My daughter Sanaa lost her ability to speak after her father died. She was in shock, depressed, and fell seriously ill. I tried to comfort her. Then one day she began to sing: ‘When I die, I will go to Heaven to be with my father.’”

    Sanaa’s understanding of the afterlife allowed her to be a child again.

    By April, when I met Alaa, the food situation had improved. But in May, Sanaa contracted hepatitis C and wouldn’t eat. The hospital fed her through another IV. In June, Eid got a bacterial skin infection on his face. Day-by-day I watched it spread in photographs Alaa sent me. The hospital in Deir al-Balah wanted one hundred dollars for the medication. One hundred more than what was reasonable. I used my connections in Gaza to get a charity to pay for it. But Alaa wouldn’t leave her children alone to retrieve the medicine. She was afraid she’d come back to find them dead. Her father went instead. Just in time too, because the skin on Eid’s face began to rot as it decayed. With all his other health issues, it could have been the end of him.

    Eventually, Alaa realized that she needed to make a future for her children. She began to study online to finish her degree. She’s already started on her senior project: designing a rehabilitative mental health center for healing from PTSD. She wants to build it as soon as the war stops. It’s part of her overall plan: “I want to make Gaza beautiful again.”

    In the meantime, she’s desperately trying to raise money to buy a tent. It’s crowded and unstable the way she lives, always shuffling around between her remaining relatives. Whenever I try to get a charity to help her, she asks if she can work for them. How can she simultaneously work, mourn, study, raise children and survive? Her life is one of incomprehensible contradictions.

    “I hope God will compensate Alaa for her loss,” one of her relatives told me.

    I concur, if things go well. If they don’t, Alaa tells me what will happen next: “I am an ambitious person, and I love life very much. But I know that one day my blood, and the blood of my children, will water this land.”

    May God be pleased with her.

    Alaa Jamal, Sanna, Eid with Mohammed

    Alaa and her children

    • You can learn more about Alaa Jamal here

    • You can find more stories about Gaza at https://erossalvatore.com/

    The post Gaza’s Last Fairytale first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Rohingya refugees brave heavy monsoon rains to mark seven years of exodus | Radio Free Asia (RFA)


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Labour’s new ‘hostile office’ immigration plans: racist political theatre for the far-right

    As the new Labour Party government panders to the right-wing fascists in the wake of the UK race riots, a migrant rights non-profit has exposed its latest plans for the violent, racist sham they are.

    Notably, the group has called out Labour’s immigration raids as:

    a form of racist kidnapping and an extension of colonial divide and rule tactics

    Labour’s ‘hostile environment’

    As the Canary reported, on Wednesday 21 August, Labour announced that the government aims over the next six months to:

    to achieve the highest rate of deportations of failed asylum seekers for five years. The goal is to remove more than 14,000 people by the end of the year, according to the Times.

    The new Labour government intends to increase detention capacity at removal centres and sanction employers who hire people with no right to work in the UK.

    Now, the Migrants’ Rights Network has produced a report exposing the abhorrent racism at the heart of Labour’s new policies.

    Its new ‘Hostile Office’ report is titled ‘Immigration Raids: An Anatomy of Racist Intimidation’. The Migrants’ Rights Network and academics Monish Bhatia and Jon Burnett collaborated on the new analysis. As it says on the tin, this delves into the government’s use of immigration raids against migrants communities.

    Unsurprisingly, far from fomenting the violent deportation aims of the state, it found instead that these function as a “fear mechanism”. In other words, the government uses these as a form of racist intimidation, to divide racialised communities.

    The Migrants’ Right Network therefore argued that:

    Raids are meant to humiliate, intimidate, racially subjugate and inflict harm on the “Other”, specifically migrants and/or racialised people.

    Raids and racial profiling

    Notably, the new report revealed that authorities have targeted South Asian communities the most. Between January 2022 and September 2023, immigration enforcement officials conducted a disproportionate number of raids on Indian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani nationals. While people of Asian heritage made up just 9.3% of the population, the state carried out 50% of the 19,895 immigration raids during that period against them.

    Central and Eastern Europeans were the next largest group authorities targeted at 21%. Following these groups, the stated had targeted Albanian nationals and Romanian nationals most, in 8% and 7% of raids respectively.

    The charity has also released groundbreaking research mapping the location and frequency of raids. Crucially, it showed that immigration enforcement often carry these out either in city centres on businesses, in areas with significant racialised populations, or in significant areas for migration routes.

    In particular, authorities executed the greatest number of raids in Belfast, Northern Ireland (1,277), and Stranraer in Scotland (1,102), around their harbours. These are all areas covered by Operation Gull, the joint border policing exercise between police and immigration services in the UK and Ireland.

    Similarly, authorities had implemented a high number of raids in areas of London and Birmingham with high racialised populations.

    Raids and deportations on the rise after Tories’ racist bills

    Given immigration enforcement’s focus on these communities, the report challenged the:

    efficacy of the intelligence used versus the influence of racial profiling.

    Critically, it demonstrated that raids are highly secretive and ambiguous. For instance, it underscored that it is unclear how officials conducting the pre-visit checks determine the immigration status from surveillance at the premises, or how thorough these checks are. Instead, the report suggested that most immigration raids take place as a result of low-grade intelligence such as ‘tip-offs’, including fabricated reports from rival businesses or gossip.

    Significantly, the report highlighted how raids had sky-rocketed. In particular, it found that:

    The number of immigration raids increased by 68% from September 2022 to September 2023. Almost constantly since March 2023, more than half of people present at an immigration raid have been arrested. The arrest rate peaked at 64.24% in April 2023 and has only fallen below 50% twice – to 47.31% and 47.83% in May and August 2023, respectively. This is a significant increase: before August 2022, the percentage of people arrested following an immigration raid was largely between 25% and 30%.

    Alongside this, the report identified how the deportation rate appeared to ramp up in tandem:

    From January to August 2022, the median deportation rate following an immigration rate was 6.26%. Between September 2022 and February 2023, this increased to 9.17%. The largest increase in deportation rates following an immigration raid rose to 14.83% in March 2023 and 19.95% in April 2023.

    Notably, it highlighted how the state had increased these after passing the Tories’ racist anti-immigration acts. Specifically, the spike in arrests in deportations followed the state putting the Nationality and Border Act into effect in July 2022, and the Illegal Migration Act in July 2023. Given this, it stated that the timing reinforced:

    the function of immigration raids as a fear mechanism and as ‘political theatre’. These two pieces of legislation created new immigration offences for which people might be arrested, increased punishments for existing offences, expanded powers for Immigration Enforcement (and other agencies) and sought to reduce legal protections for migrants in conflict with the law.

    Labour: fomenting ‘state-sanctioned fear’

    Largely, the report concluded that immigration raids were a tool of “state-sanctioned” fear against racialised communities across the UK.

    CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network Fizza Qureshi said:

    Raids are an extension of colonial ‘divide and rule’ tactics that pit neighbours, colleagues and the wider community against each other and while inflicting fear. It’s time to send a clear message to the State that we will be holding them to account for the intimidation of racialised communities. I hope this report marks the beginning of an organised effort to scrutinise incredibly secretive operations, and encourage more community-led pushback to these raids.

    Echoing this, academics and co-authors of the report Monish Bhatia and Jon Burnett said:

    Raids are a mechanism to create State-sanctioned fear. They are utilised as part of attempts to disrupt and intimidate communities. They turn neighbour against neighbour, and legitimise the idea that they need to exist. This report makes it loud and clear that raids are part State violence and part political theatre.

    And Home secretary Yvette Cooper’s latest parade of deportation policies and goals cannot be extricated from this racist political pantomine either. Needless to say, it’ll do nothing but stoke more fear and division against migrants and racialised communities. And much as the Tories toxic anti-immigration acts and raid culture have done – fan the flames of fascist bigotry festering on this racist island.

    Feature image via the Canary

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Rohingya refugees drown fleeing Myanmar’s war as concerns mount

    Twenty-six members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority drowned when their boat capsized as they were trying to flee to Bangladesh, witnesses said, an accident likely to compound fears that the largely Muslim community is facing a new round of genocide.

    Rohingya living in Rakhine state in western Myanmar have been caught in crossfire between ethnic minority insurgents fighting for self-determination against Myanmar’s military, with both sides accused of killing them.

    Some analysts have warned that the latest attacks are worse than those inflicted on the community in 2017, when a Myanmar military crackdown against Rohingya militants triggered an exodus of some 700,000 people to Bangladesh.

    As then, Rohingya are again fleeing the violence to Bangladesh, many crossing a border river in small boats.

    On Monday, a crowded boat crossing the Naf River to Bangladesh sank killing 26 of those onboard, witnesses said, the latest in a spate of deadly accidents on the river.

    “There were 30 people on the boat including 18 children. Only four survived. The rest died,” said one of the witnesses who declined to be identified because of security fears.

    Rescue workers searching for bodies had found seven victims, including four children and a pregnant woman, he added.

    Aung Kyaw Moe, deputy minister of human rights for Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government, said the boat was heading to Bangladesh because of intense fighting in Maungdaw township on the border between junta troops and the Arakan Army, or AA, insurgent group.

    “They fled for their lives. They were worried about where the heavy artillery would fall,” he said. “The Naf River is dangerous because of the ebb and flow of the tide. They had to risk their lives.”

    Aung Kyaw Moe said the situation in Rakhine state was confusing because some areas were controlled by junta forces while others were in the hands of the AA, with tens of thousands of Rohingya caught up in the conflict.

    The AA draws its support from the largely Buddhist ethnic Rakhine community, the majority in the state. The rebels are fighting Myanmar’s military for greater autonomy, in alliance with ethnic minority forces from other areas and democracy activists who took up arms after the army overthrew an elected government in 2021.

    Both sides have been accused of killing Rohingya, with AA fighters blamed for attacking people believed to be supporting junta forces.

    On Aug. 5, dozens of Rohingya people were killed by fire from heavy weapons as they waited for boats to cross to Bangladesh, survivors told Radio Free Asia. Some survivors said the AA was responsible though the insurgents denied that.

    RELATED STORIES

    Arakan Army seizes key town in southern Myanmar

    Attacks against Rohingyas ‘now worse than 2017

    Rebels evacuate 13,000 Rohingyas amid battle for Myanmar’s Maungdaw

    Torched homes

    On Aug. 12, Human Rights Watch said both the junta and the AA had committed extrajudicial killings and widespread arson against Rohingya, Rakhine and other civilians in Rakhine state.

    “Ethnic Rohingya and Rakhine civilians are bearing the brunt of the atrocities that the Myanmar military and opposition Arakan Army are committing,” said the group’s Asia director Elaine Pearson. “Both sides are using hate speech, attacks on civilians, and massive arson to drive people from their homes and villages, raising the specter of ethnic cleansing.”

    The recent attacks on Rohingya were “worse than in 2017” and represents a “second wave of genocide”, two experts told a press briefing in the United States this month.

    There were about 60,000 displaced people in Rakhine state before the latest round of fighting resumed late last year but now there are more than 500,000, aid groups there say.

    Echoing growing concerns about the Rohingya, the U.K.-based Burma Human Rights Network, or BHRN, called on Wednesday for the international community to protect Rohingya, particularly those in Maungdaw.

    It cited witnesses as saying many Rohingya had been killed in boat accidents or from bombs on the banks of the Naf River. The group cited witnesses as saying AA fighters had torched Rohingya homes in Maungdaw. 

    “These problems started when the junta forcibly recruited Rohingya for military service,” Kyaw Win, director of Burma Human Rights Network, told RFA. “If there are violations by AA troops on the ground, the AA needs to be exposed and action needs to be taken.”

    The AA, in an Aug. 18 statement, accused “Muslim armed forces” of setting fire to homes and it warned that rights activists making accusations could affect harmony between ethnic groups. The AA said it had evacuated nearly 20,000 people, including Rohingya, from embattled Maungdaw town and would move more to safety.

    Kyaw Win said forces opposed to the junta throughout the country, including the National Unity Government and other insurgent groups, had been reluctant to criticize the AA, their anti-junta ally. 

    But he said the international community should investigate the AA’s actions and take measures, including sanctions, if necessary.

    Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn.


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Labour just played into the far-right’s hands and legitimised the race riots at the same time

    The Labour Party government has announced new measures to curb the arrival of asylum seekers on boats from France and to step up the removal of failed asylum seekers. This includes increasing capacity at detention centres pioneered under Tony Blair’s government. It shows that, far from offering ‘change’, Labour has effectively played into the far-right’s narrative in the wake of the recent race riots – with some accusing it of legitimising them.

    Labour: stop the boats and send them home

    Labour said 100 new “specialist intelligence and investigation officers” would be recruited to the National Crime Agency (NCA) to help dismantle smuggling gangs that run the dangerous Channel crossings.

    The Home Office added that the government also aims over the next six months to achieve the highest rate of deportations of failed asylum seekers for five years. The goal is to remove more than 14,000 people by the end of the year, according to the Times.

    The new Labour government intends to increase detention capacity at removal centres and sanction employers who hire people with no right to work in the UK. Home secretary Yvette Cooper said:

    We are taking strong and clear steps to boost our border security and ensure the rules are respected and enforced.

    Stopping the small boat arrivals was a key issue in the 4 July election, in which Labour won a thumping majority.

    Labour: back to the even badder old days

    Within days of taking power, prime minister Keir Starmer scrapped a controversial scheme to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda, which had been a flagship policy of the last Conservative government.

    Starmer has instead pledged to dismantle the people-smuggling gangs who organise the crossings and are paid thousands of euros by each migrant.

    The Home Office is recruiting a so-called Border Security Commander who will work with European countries against the people-smuggling gangs.

    Starmer has also pledged with French president Emmanuel Macron to strengthen “cooperation” in handling the surge in undocumented migrant numbers.

    The Home Office said the NCA is pursuing about 70 investigations against criminal networks involved in people trafficking. It said the government would issue financial penalty notices, business closure orders and bring possible prosecutions against anyone employing “illegal” workers.

    The department also said it was adding 290 beds to two removal centres and redeploying staff to try to remove failed asylum seekers at the highest rate since 2018. The Home Office did not give figures on the numbers involved.

    Starmer giving credence to the far right

    However, people on X were quick to point out just what Labour was doing:

    Minnie Rahman of migrant rights group Praxis accused Labour of “legitimising the far right”:

    And, as the Green Party’s Peter Underwood summed up – Labour has still done nothing about safe routes:

    Enver Solomon, of the Refugee Council, accused the government of “wasting taxpayers’ money on expanding detention places” and said it should be investing in voluntary returns programmes.

    If you treat people with respect, humanity and support them to return, many more people return.

    Enver also urged ministers to focus on providing safe routes to deter small boat crossings, arguing “unless the government also provides safe routes, it won’t succeed”.

    Ultimately, it seems that Labour is quite happy to continue the Tories ‘hostile environment‘ for refugees and asylum seekers – which is exactly what the far right want.

    Featured image via the Canary

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Discrimination, dialogue and diversity: 8 life lessons as an ESOL teacher

    By Roni Roseberg

    I recently retired and finally said goodbye to the classroom.

    As a teacher of ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages), I had the great privilege of working with around 75 different national and cultural groups.

    Many of my students were refugees from overseas.

    And whilst I was supporting my students with their English – including everything from beginners English to proficiency levels – I am sure that I learned more than I taught.

    It’s a career that started out quite unexpectedly, but which has since shaped my life.

    Wind back many years, Auntie Anita, my first husband’s aunt, was nagging me to visit her at work.

    She was a secretary at a public Northern California adult educational centre about ten miles from where we lived. And she though it’d be just my thing.

    I’d taught four years of high school by that time and given it up to raise a toddler. Now, I was thinking of part time work.

    “But I don’t have the right credential to teach adults,” I protested.

    It didn’t work. She persisted.

    “I can get you a temporary credential” she continued. “And you’ll have a year to get the permanent one. You’re right for the job.”

    And so, she did. My first class was at night in downtown Oakland, California.

    A cosmopolitan city if ever there was one! I had students from at least a dozen countries that first night.

    I was given very broad curriculum guidelines, and I did a lot of creative “ad lobbing” as it was my first class. It went great!

    The evening flew by, and by the end of the class everyone was smiling. I knew this was the right setting for me.

    So, I continued part time, had a second baby, and changed to a school closer to home.

    I was still teaching at night with a class full of adults who worked during the day, and though tired, came to night school, optimistic and cheery about getting ahead in American society.

    I knew then that I’d not go back to teaching high school. I proceeded to get my credential in adult education.

    My district in particular welcomed hundreds of refugees from Afghanistan.

    We also welcomed people from dozens of other countries, from Argentina to Mongolia.

    I spent the next years in urban areas teaching English as a Second Language, cultural diversity awareness in the business sector, and basic reading skills to recently released prisoners.

    I did so for a total of 40 years.

    That, coupled with early years working in Alaska, gave me a complete window on the world.

    Thanks to social media, I’m still in touch with dozens of former students, and have accepted invitations to visit them in half a dozen countries where they live.

    I consider myself very lucky indeed!

    Auntie Anita, one of the most persistent people I’ve met, harangued and dispensed lots of unwanted advice.

    But, she was on target. I was right for the job.

    Watching my students develop their English language skills was an absolute joy.

    As was, learning from them.

    Lessons learned: around the world in a classroom

    I may have been the teacher, but I really do feel that this incredible experience taught me much more.

    Here’s what I learnt!

    1. Don’t stereotype people

    Just because a person comes from a certain culture, it does not make them a spokesperson for the whole culture.

    Each person is an individual with their own experiences, views and lived experiences.

    Plus, what I also discovered is that cultural communities are very diverse.

    Not all people from the same place are alike!

    Whether from a minority of majority community, each culture is rich in language, history, culture and beliefs.

    Get to know the individual on their terms – you’ll learn a lot more.

    2. Be aware of inter-communal biases

    It goes without saying that we should welcome migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to their new home.

    And that includes: ensuring that we’re not fostering any space for racism, discrimination and exclusion.

    Negative stereotypes, scapegoating of communities and cultural biases are everywhere (no thanks to the media!).

    So, as in point #1, firstly: check yourself for conscious and unconscious biases.

    Secondly: we need to also understand, recognise and mitigate for inter-community biases and conflicts.

    No community is immune from negative biases. There are internal biases and racism with many cultures – not just our own.

    So, whatever the history (e.g. religious, ethnic, “caste-based”, gender and socio-economic difference/conflict), be ready to recognise biases and work against them. 

    3. Seeking refuge is a right not a choice

    People leave their home countries for a variety of reasons – and causes.

    Displaced by the effects of climate change, poverty, conflict, persecution (relating to one’s faith, gender or sexuality) – there are countless reasons.

    But one common denominator is this: life. To live in freedom, safety and security.

    I can safely say that after my experiences, many people who change countries usually do so out of necessity – not because they want to do so.

    Moving country is challenging in any context – some more complex and challenging than we could ever imagine.

    4. Language is fundamental

    Learning the language of anywhere you’re living is critical. It opens so many doors – economic and social, cultural.

    From accessing medical services, going to work and making new (and varied) friends – language is crucial. It really is key to integration.

    Of course, people come with vastly varied experiences and levels of education.

    Some may by fluent in the national language, others a little rusty. Some may be starting from scratch.

    Everyone has different histories and needs. And how fast people learn a new language often depends on whether they plan to stay in the new country.

    Again: each context is different.

    Language is key to integration – but it’s not the only element.

    As a society, our strength lies in our respect for diversity and ensuring equity across the board.

    5. Trauma travels with you

    The resilience of people can be astounding – including the coping skills people bring with them.

    Yet, whilst, you’re looking to the future – but the past can travel with you.

    People who come to a new country may have suffered immense hardship/trauma – and therefore struggle with conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression and/or anxiety.

    For refugees and asylum seekers in particular, the affects of trauma from conflict/violence (personal loss/grief and displacement) and persecution/torture (physical, sexual, phycological abuse), require empathy, care and potentially professional support.

    When counselling someone, empathy and compassionate listening are critical.

    I however personally always try to give suggestions for concrete actions – whilst of course ensuring that my advice is informed and useful.

    Signposting may be the best advice you give.

    6. Experiences vary greatly across generations

    First generation immigrants face many challenges and hardships, including potential language gaps, financial struggles, cultural shocks and emotional trauma (see point #5).

    These challenges are usually different to that of their second-generation children (and subsequent generations).

    Children who are born in the new country or arrived at an early age generally find it easier to carve out their own sense of identity, embracing both their own native and the national culture of their parents’ adopted country.

    Parents may be determined to re-create a sense of the home culture in a new place but can become frustrated when their children will not or cannot accept that.

    As a result, their children may struggle to manage both the expectations of senior members of their family, alongside their own experiences and wants/beliefs as a second/third generation migrant/refugee.

    Of course however, every family, individual and context is different.

     7. We share more in common

    Whilst the world is so wonderfully diverse, we’re all human. And we’re actually more alike than people may think.

    Yes, we’ve got far more in common than any differences among us!

    Of course, our experiences and our upbringing all shape us, our beliefs and our view on the world.

    But, when it comes down to it, we all share the same foundations, feelings and wants of being human.

    What’s more, each of us keeps on learning and changing throughout our lives.

    Cross-cultural learning can bring not just a great sense of discovery, but also solidarity and teamwork to the classroom.

    8. A smile goes a long way

    You may speak different languages, you may have been born in different countries – or even continents – and you may be at different stages in your life…

    But I can guarantee one thing: you all welcome a friendly face!

    Smiling isn’t quite universally understood in the same way. But, a lot of people do appreciate a smile and a helping hand.

    And a smile can often go a long way at breaking the ice, easing a bit of tension or sometimes filing a bit of silence.

    And that’s what it’s all about really: supporting one another together.

    Individuals and communities have different life-experiences, traditions and needs. And that’s great!

    We are richer in our diversity and we can all learn from one another. We have so much in common.

    We don’t need to all be the same in each and every way. We just need to share a sense of common citizenship, unity, respect and equality.

    Ultimately: we are stronger together.

    So, in increasingly turbulent times, let this be our reminder: let’s come together, remember what we have in common and learn from one another.

    Because love trumps hate every time.  

    Featured image: Freepik

    This post was originally published on Voice of Salam.