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Executive Summary for December 20th

We review the latest refugee-related issues, including an Afghan family suing Croatia over the death of their daughter, locals blockading the new center on Manus Island to which refugees were evacuated and clashes in a migrant facility on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Published on Dec. 20, 2017 Read time Approx. 3 minutes

Afghan Family Sues Croatia After 6-Year-Old Daughter Killed by Train

An Afghan family filed a lawsuit against Croatian police after their 6-year-old daughter was killed near the Serbia-Croatia border.

Madina Hussiny was hit by a train on November 21 as the family walked down a railway line from the border. The family say they crossed into Croatia hoping to claim asylum but were pushed back to Serbia, and that Croatian border guards ordered the family, including four children under 10, to walk back down the tracks.

“I begged: ‘If you won’t accept us, please let us stay here tonight. In this weather we are already tired and cold, the children are little,’” Madina’s mother Muslima Hussiny told the Guardian. “But they were inhuman.”

Croatia denies that the family ever entered the country and said Croatian forces came to their aid after Madina was hit as the family neared the border.

An NGO in Serbia is also considering filing a lawsuit against Serbia over her death, Balkan Insight reports.

Some 4,500 migrants and asylum seekers are sheltering in Serbia, roughly half of them children. Around 500 people are living in makeshift shelters or outdoors despite the winter cold, including 100 people camped out near the borders with Croatia and Hungary, according to Medecins Sans Frontieres.

Human rights and medical groups have documented a pattern of pushbacks by Hungary, Croatia and Bulgaria along their Serbia borders. “Many of our patients tell us that the [Croatian] police allegedly brought them to the train line and ordered them to cross back. It’s a recurrent pattern that we hear,” said Medecins Sans Frontieres’ Andrea Contenta.

Refugees Blockaded in Manus Transit Center Amid Local Protests

Papua New Guinean landowners have blockaded a refugee transit center on Manus Island to which hundreds of asylum seekers were forcefully evacuated last month.

Some 800 asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by boat were held in offshore detention for years until Papua New Guinea’s supreme court ordered the facility to be closed. The refugees refused to leave the camp in which they were detained when services were cut in late October, citing fears for their safety.

They were eventually removed by force in late November. More than 300 refugees were taken to East Lorengau Transit Centre, prompting protests by the local community as the center is built on Indigenous customary land, according to the Guardian.

Local landowners began preventing any staff, refugees or supplies from entering or leaving the camp on December 19, according to Australia’s ABC News. The Australian government, which holds the refugees offshore in a controversial deterrence policy, referred press enquiries to the PNG government.

A new U.N. refugee agency report has warned of insanitary and overcrowded conditions and inadequate mental health support at the transit centers following the evacuation of the detention camp.

“Given the known level of psychological distress among refugees and asylum seekers, the abrupt termination of torture and trauma counselling and the lack of any proposed replacement is inappropriate and exposes them to severe psychiatric and psychological harm,” the report said.

Seven Injured in Greek Camp Clashes

At least seven people were injured after fights broke out at a migrant detention camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

The clashes between Kurdish and Arab groups at the overcrowded Moria facility lasted for hours and left several tents destroyed.

The Greek island is sheltering nearly triple the number of asylum seekers it has capacity for amid a steady flow of refugee boats. Under a 2016 deal between Turkey and the E.U., most asylum seekers must remain on the islands to speed up their eventual return to Turkey.

Human Rights Watch warned last week that conditions in Moria left women and young girls held there vulnerable to abuse.

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