Deadly Cold Imperils Refugees in Europe
Extreme winter weather in Europe has left migrants and refugees living in poor conditions on the continent particularly vulnerable.
Two Iraqi men and a Somali women have died from the cold in the Bulgarian mountains near the Turkish border in the past week.
In Germany, police found 19 people from Syria, Iraq and Iran suffering from hypothermia after they were abandoned by smugglers in the back of an unheated truck. The group, which included five children, paid smugglers to bring them from Italy.
In Serbia, aid workers said hundreds of migrants sleeping in an abandoned train depot were increasingly falling sick due to the cold.
Human Rights Watch said Serbia and neighboring Hungary had failed to provide humane conditions for asylum seekers during the winter, and in some cases undermined aid efforts.
In Greece, photos from the Moria camp on Lesbos showed refugee tents blanketed by thick snow, despite the Greek migration minister’s recent assurance that no refugees were left out in the cold.
Erdogan Reiterates Plan to Grant Refugees Citizenship
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reiterated his plan to grant some Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the country Turkish citizenship.
“Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks” are carried out, Erdogan said, according to Agence France-Presse.
“There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, let’s give them the chance to work as citizens, like the children of this nation,” he said.
The Turkish president did not provide details on how and when naturalization procedures would take place.
Erdogan first announced his citizenship for refugees plan last July. It was met with opposition from Turks wary of absorbing the 2.5 million Syrian refugees in the country and others skeptical that Erdogan’s real intent was to “import voters.”
French Court Acquits Man Who Helped Migrants
A French court acquitted a man who was caught giving a lift to three young Eritrean women in his car after they had crossed the border from Italy.
Prosecutors had asked for a six-month suspended jail term for Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a 45-year-old researcher at the French national research centre CNRS.
However, the court ruled that Mannoni’s actions fell within the law, which prohibits helping undocumented migrants, unless necessary to protect “their dignity and physical integrity.”
“You can help people,” Mannoni said following the verdict. “I recommend it, it does a lot of good!”
His trial is among several similar cases in the region. In December, a 73-year-old academic in southern France was fined 1,500 euros ($1,580) for helping two Eritreans avoid a police check. Last week Cedric Herrou, a 37-year-old farmer, went on trial for giving rides and sheltering migrants in the area and faces an eight-month suspended jail term.
Recommended Reads:
- The Guardian: Dreaming of Europe: The Last Young Man Left in a Senegalese Village
- Overseas Development Institute: It’s 2017: Migration is Normal, Let’s Move the Debate Forward
- Deutsche-Welle: Should Germany Re-Register Hundreds of Thousands of Refugees?
- Quartz: The Fences Built Across Europe to Stop Refugees are Threatening the Continent’s Wildlife
- The Financial Times: Putting Refugees to Work: The Greatest Challenge in 2017