---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: IRIN <[email protected]> Date: Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 3:03 AM Subject: Your daily selection of IRIN Africa English reports, 7/29/2015 To: Elisabeth Janaina <[email protected]>
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humanitarian news and analysis
Table of contents
1. Morocco: The forgotten frontline of the migrant crisis
<#14edd1d61f61268b_1>
2. Asylum seekers forced to rough it in Austria <#14edd1d61f61268b_2>
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*Morocco: The forgotten frontline of the migrant crisis
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101798>*
[image: lead photo]NADOR, 29 July 2015 (IRIN) - Morocco has become a choke
point for sub-Saharan African migrants aiming to reach Europe, pinched by
the Moroccan and Spanish governments working together to halt the flow
across the Mediterranean.
Thousands of irregular migrants were unable or unwilling to take advantage
of the Moroccan government’s limited “regularisation” process that granted
less than 18,000 one-year residency permits.
They now play a cat-and-mouse game with the police in the northern Riff
mountains overlooking the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Their goal is to reach the Spanish port city – and from there head to the
European mainland.
But the odds are stacked against them. Getting past the Moroccan border
guards, the three layers of security fencing, the razor wire, motion
sensors, CCTV cameras and the Spanish Guarda Civil is now next to
impossible. Hiring a boat to sail across the Strait of Gibraltar is
expensive, and the chances of success equally slim.
So they remain stuck. In this multimedia report, IRIN talks to the men and
women in the mountains about what drove them on their journey; the tragedy
of their wasted years in the near futile attempt to reach Europe; and why,
for most of them, there can be no turning back.
View multimedia special, The Forgotten Frontline
<http://newirin.irinnews.org/extras/2015/7/28/morocco-the-forgotten-front-line-of-the-migrant-crisis>
Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101798>
------------------------------
*Asylum seekers forced to rough it in Austria
<http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101800>*
[image: lead photo]BUDAPEST/VIENNA , 29 July 2015 (IRIN) - Hundreds of
migrants sit in the underpasses in front of Budapest’s Keleti station on a
balmy Sunday morning. Every couple of hours, a few dozen rouse themselves
and look up at the departures board, waiting for the platform number for
the Vienna train to appear above.
The stakes are high.
Last Monday, more than 200 undocumented migrants, mainly from Syria and
Afghanistan, were ordered off the train at the Austrian border. Some of the
group, which included 27 children, subsequently applied for asylum. Others
were charged with staying in Austria illegally and given written orders to
leave.
The first challenge is to get on the train.
<http:///Photo/Details/201507291300180943/Police-at-Keleti-station-look-out-for-migrants-trying-to-board-trains>
Photo: Andras D. Hajdu/IRIN <http://www.irinnews.org/photo/>
Police at Keleti station look out for migrants trying to board trains
The Hungarian police have stopped thousands of migrants at Keleti station
in the last month alone. Policing is sporadic, however, and it is still
possible to evade capture in the rush that follows a train pulling in. On
this occasion, the police play cat and mouse with some of the migrants. A
young African man is prevented from boarding and marched off.
The train is crowded and the migrants sit tensely in the intersections
between carriages, rubbing shoulders with relaxed backpackers. The train
stops for five minutes at Hegyeshalom, at the Austrian border. Three
policemen amble up and down the platform. They don’t board. The train
continues on to Vienna without incident. This group has been lucky.
Fazal, a young man of around 20 travelling with a group of five other
Pakistanis, shows IRIN his ticket. The destination reads Traiskirchen, the
location of one of Austria’s two initial reception centres for asylum
seekers, 15 miles south of Vienna.
Fazal clearly has other plans: “How many hours until Munich?” – the city in
southern Germany that is the ultimate destination of the train - he asks.
“We don’t talk now. Only off the train,” an older member of his party says,
pulling him away.
*Regional tensions*
Relations between Austria and Hungary have been tense in recent months.
Hungary
<http://www.irinnews.org/report/101723/hungary-a-grim-way-station-for-asylum-seekers>
has been overloaded by an influx of asylum seekers crossing its border with
Serbia along the so-called Western Balkan route from Greece. In June,
Hungary threatened to stop accepting migrants returned to the country under
the Dublin Regulation, which stipulates that asylum seekers must be
processed by the first country that registers them. It was widely reported
that the Hungarian ambassador to Vienna was then summoned to the Austrian
interior ministry. The following day Hungary withdrew the threat.
In a public show of solidarity two weeks later, the Austrian, Serbian and
Hungarian interior ministries announced plans for a joint border force to
stem the flow of migrants into the European Union from the Balkans.
Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, a spokesperson from Austria’s interior ministry told
IRIN that the cooperation was going well. “We have 80 police officers from
Austria supporting the border authorities,” he said.
Ruth Schoeffl, a spokeswoman for the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, in
Austria, said that the increasing popularity of the Balkans route had
inevitably increased arrivals to Austria, which unlike Hungary is not a
transit country, but a preferred destination for many.
“Last year, Austria had 28,000 new asylum applications and this same level
had already been reached in the first half of 2015,” she told IRIN. “The
authorities are talking about 70,000 for the whole year. In 2013, it was
17,500.”
*No room*
More than 4,000 migrants are crammed into the reception centre in
Traiskirchen, which has beds for just 2,300 and is accommodating others in
tents. The overcrowding is apparent even from outside the camp complex,
where hundreds of Afghans and Syrians line the pavement. “The conditions
here are very bad,” says a Syrian man. “Everyone who arrives now is
sleeping outside. Some don’t even get tents and have to sleep under trees.
When I came to Europe, I thought it would be better.”
Journalists are not generally allowed inside the camp. “They say it’s
because they don't want the refugees to be photographed,” Anna Radl, a
spokesperson with the charity Caritas, which provides support to migrants
and refugees, tells IRIN. “But we’re not allowed to go into the camp to
talk to them either.”
<http:///Photo/Details/201507291254050780/An-asylum-seeker-family-resting-under-a-makeshift-tent-at-Traiskirchen-reception-centre-More-than>
Photo: IRIN
An asylum seeker family resting under a makeshift tent at Traiskirchen
reception centre. More than 1,000 residents are now sleeping there without
proper shelter.
Dennis, a refugee from Guinea who arrived in Austria 13 years ago, collects
donated clothes to give to Traiskirchen’s residents. “When I first stepped
into Traiskirchen, I cried, because it was so different for refugees when I
arrived in Austria,” he told IRIN.
Such is the severity of the overcrowding at Traiskirchen that the town’s
mayor Andreas Babler organised a protest march to the interior ministry
building in June. He has urged the Austrian government to reduce the number
of asylum seekers at the centre and called the interior ministry’s tent
solution “unlawful”.
While many locals are resentful that the town has to house the camp – some
pelted residents and activists recently with eggs – others have been
donating clothes and toiletries to Caritas for distribution to the asylum
seekers.
"People in Traiskirchen are really open, and especially want to help now
that there is such a difficult situation there," says Radl.
*Sharing*
Austria’s system of shared responsibility for asylum seekers requires the
federal government to register initial applications and then leaves it up
to the regional authorities to find accommodation for them while their
cases are processed. But many regional authorities have been reluctant to
do so, leaving more and more asylum seekers to languish at the initial
reception centres at Traiskirchen and Thalham in Upper Austria.
“To be very frank, it is not the federal government that is to blame for
the lack of places,” said Grundboeck. “What is not working is the transfer
[to regional accommodation].”
To relieve the pressure on Traiskirchen in particular, the Austrian
government has negotiated a deal with neighbouring Slovakia to accommodate
500 asylum seekers at a former university building in Gabcikovo until their
applications are processed. The first 50 asylum seekers arrived in Slovakia
in July, with 200 more to follow in August and the remaining 250 in
September. Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner has spoken of
trying to extend this existing two-year plan.
“[We] need temporary solutions (right away) while we work on long-term
ones,” said Schoeffl of UNHCR. “But we hope that the government of Austria,
which is a wealthy country, will look at using hotels or other buildings.
We would rather have people in proper buildings.”
dn/ks/ag
Access report online <http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=101800>
------------------------------
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