Smugglers Throw 160 Refugees Off Another Boat Near Yemen
For the second time in a week, smugglers threw asylum seekers off a boat sailing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen.
The boat was carrying around 160 Ethiopians when smugglers forced them to jump ship off the coast of Yemen’s Shabwa governorate on Aug. 10. Staff from the International Organization for Migration found the bodies of two men and four women on the beach, and said another 13 Ethiopians were feared lost at sea.
A day earlier, around 50 Somali and Ethiopian teenagers drowned near the same area after smugglers pushed them off the boat.
IOM spokeswoman Olivia Headon warned that smugglers forcing would-be migrants to swim to shore to evade authorities could be a new and deadly trend. “These people are really thin. There is an ongoing drought situation in Somalia and Ethiopia. Some may not have had much strength to make it alive to the shore,” she told Reuters.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with this world if countless numbers of children can be deliberately and ruthlessly drowned in the ocean, when they are no longer an easy source of income, and nothing is done to stop it from ever happening again,” said IOM director general William Lacy Swing.
Some 55,000 people, mostly from Somalia and Ethiopia and about one-third of them women, have taken boats from Djibouti and Somalia to Yemen this year despite the war in the country. Many hope to travel on to Gulf countries to find work.
Displacement Camp in CAR Looted and Burned Down
At least 10,000 people are sheltering in a hospital in the Central African Republic after a displacement camp was looted and burned down by militants, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said.
The camp in Batangafo was established three years ago for people sheltering from the fighting in the country. Violence has intensified again this year, prompting thousands to flee their homes in recent months. One-fifth of the people in the country – nearly 1 million – are displaced.
Clashes between members of the former Seleka rebel coalition and “self-defense” groups erupted in Batangafo in recent weeks. MSF said they and other aid organizations had been robbed during the looting.
Video Shows Migrant Boat Landing on Busy Spanish Beach
A migrant boat landing on a beach packed with tourists in southern Spain on Aug. 9 was captured on video by holidaymakers.
The footage shows a dinghy coming ashore in Zahara de los Atunes in Andalusia before its passengers take off on foot along the beach, near Cadiz.
The migrant boat route from north Africa to southern Spain has a fraction of the traffic of the Libya-Italy route, but it is getting busier. Some 7,500 people made the crossing in the first three months of this year, compared to 3,600 in the same period last year, according to the European Union’s Frontex.
Recommended Reads
- Scientific American: Giving Dead Migrants a Name
- The Globe and Mail: Canada Welcomes Refugees, but Shuts the Door on Asylum Seekers
- The Guardian: ‘I Can Have You Killed’: Afghan Woman Fears Husband After U.S. Denies Asylum
- CNN: Why Refugee Doctors Become Taxi Drivers
- The Intercept: Video: Refugees Seeking Asylum in Europe Are Arrested and Beaten by Police in Lesbos