Sri Lanka Apprehends Boat of Rohingya Refugees
Sri Lanka stopped a boat of 30 Rohingya refugees sailing from India and took them into custody on Sunday.
Among the passengers were 16 children, including a 15-day-old newborn and 4-month-old baby. The families had arrived in India from Myanmar as refugees several years earlier.
The Sri Lankan navy said there were also two Indian nationals on the boat who are suspected of being traffickers.
In 2015, thousands of people from the persecuted Rohingya minority took boats from Myanmar and Bangladesh, many to Malaysia and Indonesia.
LGBT Asylum Seekers Stuck in Spanish Enclave Face Harassment
Human Rights Watch called on Spain to stop blocking the transfer of asylum seekers from its North African enclave Ceuta to the mainland, especially LGBT asylum seekers who are vulnerable to abuse.
Migrants and asylum seekers periodically surge across the border fence separating Morocco from the tiny enclave of Ceuta. Except for Syrians, people who apply for asylum must remain in Ceuta throughout the process, which can take over a year, while other migrants are transferred to mainland Spain for detention and expulsion.
Human Rights Watch said it believes trapping most asylum seekers on Ceuta is a deliberate policy to deter asylum applications.
“The authorities impose a terrible choice on people in need of protection,” said Human Rights Watch’s Judith Sunderland, “requiring them to declare their need and face months or years in limbo in Ceuta, or to take their chances and apply for asylum only after they’ve been transferred to the mainland with an expulsion order in hand.”
In Ceuta, they are housed in an open temporary immigrant center, which Human Rights Watch said was built for 512 people but in March was sheltering 943, including people living in tents on a basketball court.
Around 70 residents have claimed asylum, 10 of them on the grounds of discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT asylum seekers told the human rights group they faced harassment and intimidation at the center and on the streets of Ceuta.
E.U. Grants Asylum to 700,000 in 2016, Double Previous Year
E.U. countries granted refugee status or protection to 710,400 people last year, more than double the number in 2015, according to the bloc’s statistical office.
Eurostat said that 57 percent – 405,600 people – were Syrians and more than 70 percent of them were granted protection in Germany. After Syrians, 65,800 Iraqis and 61,800 Afghans also received protection in E.U. countries.
The Eurostat report noted that E.U. countries also received some 14,000 resettled refugees in 2016.