Umar Farooq wrote a piece on the situation of Central Asian migrants in Istanbul lately for HarekAct. He published another article with LA Times on that same issue:
Via Los Angeles Times – The last time Anurkhol Bipolotov saw her husband, Fakhriddin, was across a street, outside a police station in Istanbul, on March 9. “He couldn’t speak, and I asked to speak with him, but they shouted, ‘You cannot speak.’ Then they sent him to Uzbekistan,” she recalled. “Now I have no idea where he is.”
That night, Turkish counter-terrorism police conducted 10 simultaneous raids across Istanbul, based on an anonymous tip placed to a hotline set up to report suspicious activity. Sixty-nine people, all but two foreigners, were taken into custody, suspected of being Islamic State members. Among them were 17 women and 29 children, including Bipolotov and her three children. None were ever charged with a terrorism-related crime.
On Thursday, 23rd November 2017, the deportation of two migrants was stopped last minute. The two men from Iran and Afghanistan were held in detention on Lesvos Island. Shortly before they were transported to the harbour of Mytilene to be quietly deported to Turkey via ferry, lawyers and activists managed to intervene and stop the deportation of the two men. Eight other people from Haiti, Tunisia, Afghanistan and Pakistan were however deported and will be detained in Turkey, among them a family with a small child.
For the two cases that were stopped, there were serious doubts about the lawfulness of the deportation practice. Alireza Kamran[1] from Iran is suffering from severe health problems while Tarik Chian from Afghanistan was prevented from exhausting his legal remedies in Greece. The names and cases of the other deportees were not known to the lawyers and activists monitoring the deportation. Therefore the legality of their deportation cannot be assessed but it is doubted that the persons concerned have received sufficient support to challenge second instance rejections.
In the frame of a research project coordinated by the University of Utrecht a new policy paper was published on the impact of the EU-Turkey Deal:
“The EU-Turkey-Statement proposes to reduce arrival rates and deaths in the sea by subjecting individuals who arrive on Greek islands after 20 March 2016 to fast-track asylum procedures and, in the case of negative decisions, to returns to Turkey. In exchange, EU member states have agreed to take one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every Syrian readmitted from Greece to Turkey. The Statement builds on the deterrent effect of returns and turns high return rates into an indicator for a successful border policy. This policy brief examines the impact of the Statement’s focus on returns for people seeking asylum in Greece. The analysis draws on interviews with asylum seekers and practitioners, phone interviews with people who were returned from the Greek islands following the EU-Turkey Statement, as well as on participant observations at refugee camps and inter-agency meetings on Lesbos and Chios in July and August 2017.”
Via Keep Talking Greece – A 10-year-old Afghan boy with disabilities was found dead in a boat carrying 66 migrants from Turkey to the island of Lesvos. The migrant boat was stopped by a Bulgarian Frontex vessel within the Greek territorial waters off Lesvos on Saturday morning. According to the parents, the boy was trampled by other passengers during the evacuation by the Frontex vessel. Continue reading 10-year-old Afghan boy dies during migrant boat evacuation by Frontex vessel→
ViaBBC Türkçe(Link in Turkish) – According to a report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of immigrants from Libya to Italy by sea has decreased since last July after an agreement with Libya to stop migration towards Italy.
However, the closure of this route pushed immigrants to search for new routes. “As the number of people leaving Libya decreased, the rate of arrivals by sea from Tunisia, Turkey and Algeria to Italy increased”, according to the report.
People in the neighborhood of Zeytinburnu, in Istanbul, Turkey on November 12, 2017. Photo: Oscar Durand
By Umar Farooq
Turkish police conduced more than 1,400 raids across the country in a single week this November, with officials saying 6,890 people were detained for undocumented immigration, and 1,167 for suspicion of belonging to terror groups, either the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Islamic State, or the Fetullah Terror Organization, which Ankara blames for an attempted coup in July 2016.
While more than 50,000 people have been charged with some crime related to that coup attempt since last year, little attention is given to what happens to thousands of those detained over suspected ties to the Islamic State, especially those who risk deportation back home to countries with a dismal human rights record. Continue reading Central Asian migrants in Turkey at risk of being labelled as terrorists→
Via Ekathimerini – Fresh tension broke out in the capital of Lesvos on Wednesday after a small group of Afghan asylum seekers attempted to set up camp on one of the island’s public squares in demand that they be transferred to the Greek mainland.
Via Greek Reporter– Greek police say the body of a man believed to be a migrant has been found in an abandoned building in the Evros mountainous border area in northern Greece.
Police said Wednesday that the man, believed to have been between 20 and 30 years old and of either African or Asian descent, was found on Tuesday in the building outside a mountain village in the Evros region, close to the Turkish border. Continue reading Body of Man Believed to be Migrant Discovered Near Border→
Around the 10th of November bodies of three children were washed ashore in Lesvos. A horrible scene that left the Greek authorities clueless as there were no records of a recent shipwreck. Now it seems that these lifeless bodies belong to a Turkish family of five, who fled the country as they were facing persecution as alleged members of the Gülen movement.
Via Ekathimerini – With winter fast approaching and migrant camps on the Greek islands reaching breaking point due to overcrowding, 20 human rights group have written a letter to the Greek government calling for immediate action.
Greece should act to end a “containment policy” that forces asylum seekers arriving on the Greek islands to remain in overcrowded and unsafe facilities, the human rights and aid groups said in the letter, 19 months after a similar open letter to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged the government to move migrants to the mainland, where better conditions and services are available. Continue reading Migrant rights groups ring alarm over approaching winter→
