Dispatches: EU Border Closures Leave Asylum Seekers Stranded

Written on October 22nd, 2015 in politics Comments Off

REPORT from Human Rights Watch HRW - Published on relief web.int, by Lydia Gall, Oct 20, 2015.

We are stuck between two borders. We can’t enter Slovenia and we are not allowed to go back into Croatia. Everyone says we are someone else’s responsibility.”

25-year-old Hadi from Syria was shivering as we spoke. He said he had been stuck for nearly 20 hours, exposed to rain and cold in the no-man’s land between the Croatian and Slovenian borders. I met him there last night, together with hundreds of other migrants and asylum seekers, including many women and children, who were brought from Croatia’s Tavornik camp at about 1 a.m. the morning before.  

Police officers at both borders couldn’t say how long the people would be kept in this freezing limbo. The situation’s awfulness hit when I saw children burning a teddy bear to keep warm. There is no shelter, and refugees and volunteers told me that food and water didn’t arrive until late afternoon, when aid organizations were allowed into the site. When I returned the next morning, I was told that people who weren’t able to cross the border were taken by Croatian authorities to other crossing points on Slovenia’s border … //

… (full text).

Website: Human Rights Watch HRW.

Links:

Too many aircrafts in Syrian airspace – MoD posts video with Russian jet approaching drone, on Russia Today RT, Oct 21, 2015;
(See also: Russian planes ‘no threat’ to US drones in Syria – Pentagon, on Russia Today RT, Oct 8, 2015);

Water Remains Largely Marginalized in Climate Talks, on IPS, by Thalif Deen, Oct 20, 2015;

Snowden, Surveillance, Cybersecurity and Race, on FreePress.net, by Dana Floberg, Oct 19, 2015: You don’t often get the chance to see two government whistleblowers discuss the future of U.S. surveillance policy. But that’s what happened when Edward Snowden called in to an interview with FBI whistleblower Mike German at last week’s Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference (CFP);

The reign of the Bankocracy goes on, on Socialist Worker.org, by Eric Toussaint, Oct 14, 2015;

CrossTalk on Syria: Russia’s Turn, 24.45 min, uploaded by RT, Oct 12, 2015;

The looting class and its hoarded gold, on Socialist orker.org, by Danny Katch, Oct 8, 2015;
(Danny Katch’s book: Socialism … Seriously: A Brief Guide to Human Liberation);

EU border closures on Google Images-search.

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