Angela Merkel has promised to take refugees directly from Turkey into Europe and called for Nato patrols in the Aegean on her second visit to Ankara in three months as she desperately tried to enlist Turkey’s help in easing the refugee crisis, the biggest threat to her power at home and the stability of the European Union.

Under a deal struck in haste last October, the EU and Turkey agreed an action plan, with Ankara pledging to halt the flow of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others across the Aegean into the EU in return for a minimum of €3bn (£2.3bn), a reopening of its stalled bid to join the EU, and the lifting of visa requirements for Turks travelling to Europe.

Since then the EU-Turkey pact has made little progress, adding urgency to Merkel’s talks on Monday with the Turkish president, Recep Tayipp Erdoğan and prime minister, Ahmed Davutoğlu. 

The sense of urgency was heightened by the assaults on Aleppo by the Syrian regime and Russia, sending tens of thousands of displaced people towards the Turkish border and with the deaths of at least another 27 people, including 11 children, risking the short voyage to Greek islands from the Turkish coast.

Merkel called for Nato patrols to curtail the hazardous sea crossings and blamed Vladimir Putin for worsening the refugee crisis by bombing Syria.

That Erdoğan is confident he holds all the cards in the negotiation with the EU is evident from the diplomatic record of a meeting in November with EU leaders in which the president dismissed the offer of €3bn, threatened to put thousands of refugees on busses to Europe from Turkey and warned that 15,000 migrants could wash up dead on Greek shores.

The four-page record of a meeting between Erdoğan and Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, the presidents of the European commission and the European council, in the Turkish resort of Antalya in November, paints a picture of an EU prostrate before a Turkish leader who treats their offers, pleas, and arguments with derision.

“We really want a deal with you,” Tusk told Erdoğan, according to the leak of the note to the Greek financial media, euro2day.gr. “So how will you deal with refugees if you don’t get a deal? Kill the refugees?” Erdoğan responded.

Pour lire la suite : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/08/germany-and-turkey-agree-deal-to-help-ease-refugee-crisis

Let me tell you about my boat. It has a single mast and a cabin at the stern. It is painted white with a red stripe at the water line. I bought it in Denmark, at the port where in 1943 Danish fishermen and others transported most of the country’s Jews to safety in neutral Sweden. My boat measures 5 inches long. It is as huge as the human heart.

The doughty Danes, so wonderful in World War II, have now turned churlish. They seize the jewelry and other valuables of Syrian and other migrantsseeking to enter the country. This is not the same as barring the migrants, but it shows what happens when a bighearted people get scared. Much of Europe is now scared.

America is little different. Donald Trump urged that all Muslims be temporarily barred from entering the United States, and almost instantly many Republicans followed suit. In announcing for the presidency in June, he cited Mexican immigration as a major problem — a wave of immigrants that supposedly included more than the average number of rapists and other sorts of criminals. They were taking our jobs and our women. It is a message ripped from the heart of white racism. 

Mexico and Central America are to the United States what the Arab world is to Europe. In Europe, it is Arabs who allegedly run sexually amok. It is Arabs, too, who purportedly threaten to overwhelm local European cultures, just as the effect of Hispanic immigration here can be seen in signage and heard in public-address announcements — Spanish, as well as English. 

Trump and the other Republican presidential candidates live in a firehouse that only sounds four alarms. In 1989, Trump took out full-page ads in four major New York newspapers to call for the death penalty after five youths had been arrested for the rape and brutal beating of a woman in Central Park. The five were subsequently convicted and, had Trump’s advice been followed, they would have been executed. Inconveniently for Trump, however, they were later exonerated when another man confessed — and his DNA matched that found at the crime scene. By then, the youths had been imprisoned, one of them for 13 years.

On a summer day in 2000, more than 50 women were accosted, some sexually — again in Central Park. This followed the annual Puerto Rican Day parade, and it was similar, in its horror, to the mass attack on women at the train station in Cologne, Germany, this past New Year’s Eve. The Cologne attack claimed far more victims, more than 500, but, as in New York, an identifiable ethnic group was blamed — Arabs or North Africans. All Europe was appalled and frightened.
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In both Europe and the United States, the present moment is touted as the inevitable future. But the Central Park rape, the Puerto Rican Day assaults and other incidents have come and gone — either not what they had seemed or not repeated. Among other things, the cops cracked down. The Cologne incident, too, while larger in scope, has not — or not yet — been repeated. There, too, the police have learned from their mistakes.

Pour lire l'article en entier : https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rising-storm-of-ethnic-fear-in-europe-and-the-united-states/2016/02/08/bf0e73a8-ce92-11e5-b2bc-988409ee911b_story.html

RAMTHA, Jordan — When the Syrian refugees first started streaming into this bedraggled border town, Gassim al-Moghrebi was their tireless benefactor, distributing donations of food, money and clothes and sheltering as many as possible in two apartments he owned.

“All of Ramtha was just like me,” Mr. Moghrebi said, describing a good will rooted in family ties that spanned the border, and sympathy for the victims of a pitiless war. “One man had 10 apartments. He gave them to the Syrians for free.”

But now, as Syria witnesses a new escalation of violence, including waves of Russian airstrikes, and as Syrians flee again by the tens of thousands, neighboring countries are increasingly overwhelmed and reluctant to let them in. In many places, that early altruism has hardened into resentment — an ominous turn for those searching for safety from the war.

Desperate Syrians are backed up at the borders of Jordan and Turkey, barred from entering or else just allowed to trickle in. Increasingly, they find escape routes closing.

“They have become a nuisance,” Mr. Moghrebi said.

In Ramtha, the bulging population has set off a competition between locals and the refugees for resources, including housing, water, schools and work. When the border crossing was closed, Mr. Moghrebi was forced to shut down his decades-old money exchange business. Instead, he has to rely on the income of his 29-year-old son, the only one of his 10 children who still has a job, he said. Jordan would be better off if the refugees stayed in camps, he added.

The anger has left many Syrians further marginalized in the already isolating struggle to survive. Mohamed, a 13-year-old Syrian with an irrepressible smile who now lives in the northern Jordanian town of Irbid, said he did not socialize with the other children on his street and had made only one real friend: another Syrian teenager who worked with him at a cleaning fluids factory, making the equivalent of $7 a day.

In his spare time, he said, he watched videos of the Syrian war.

Officials in Jordan, a longtime sanctuary for refugees from the region’s wars, now put the number of Syrians there around 1.4 million. They had been warning for years that the country had reached its limit. Last week, they made even more dire admonitions at a London donor conference on Syria, pushing for more aid while channeling the darkening mood at home.

Pour lire la suite : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/world/middleeast/as-syrians-flee-anew-neighbors-altruism-hardens-into-resentment.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0

Au moins 27 migrants, dont au moins 11 enfants, ont trouvé la mort lundi en mer Égée, au large des côtes occidentales de la Turquie, dans un naufrage survenu alors qu'ils tentaient de rallier les îles grecques, ont annoncé les gardes-côtes.

Un précédent bilan fourni par l'agence de presse Dogan faisait état de 24 morts.

Ce nouveau drame est survenu au large de la localité d'Edremit (ouest). Une petite embarcation surchargée de 40 passagers a chaviré alors qu'elle avait pris la direction de l'île de Lesbos, selon les gardes-côtes.
Quatre personnes ont pu être sauvées, le reste des passagers était toujours porté disparu, malgré les recherches menées par plusieurs navires et un hélicoptère.

Selon les médias, ce groupe de migrants a emprunté cette route, plus longue que celles généralement utilisées entre la côte turque et Lesbos, pour contourner les patrouilles mises en place par les gendarmes le long de la côte.

Ce naufrage est intervenu le jour d'une courte visite de travail à Ankara lundi de la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel, venue presser les Turcs d'en faire plus pour ralentir le flux des migrants vers l'Europe.

À l'issue d'un entretien avec le premier ministre turc Ahmet Davutoglu, Mme Merkel a annoncé que les deux pays allaient solliciter l'aide de l'OTAN, dont ils sont membres, pour mieux contrôler les côtes turques.
Ankara et Bruxelles ont signé fin novembre un «plan d'action» qui prévoit une aide européenne de 3 milliards d'euros (4,6 milliards de dollars CAN) aux autorités turques en échange de leur engagement à mieux contrôler leurs frontières et à lutter contre les passeurs.
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Les pays européens ont validé mercredi le financement de cette enveloppe financière, mais l'accord tarde à avoir des effets tangibles.

Pour lire la suite : ​http://www.lapresse.ca/international/crise-migratoire/201602/08/01-4948283-au-moins-27-migrants-tues-dans-un-naufrage-au-large-de-la-turquie.php

Two days with 10 men who left Central America in early November to embark on an exhausting journey, made riskier by the Mexican authorities’ crackdown on migrants.

ARRIAGA, Mexico — The police truck appeared suddenly, a glint of metal and glass. The migrants broke into a sprint, tripping over cracked pavement as an older woman sweeping her stoop urged them to hurry.

The 10 men rounded the corner and hid behind a row of low-slung trees. Four days into their journey from Central America, the new reality on Mexico’s southern border was setting in: Under pressure from the United States, the Mexican authorities were cracking down.

Minutes passed. The men fanned out and doubled over to catch their breath. Along the tree line, a man approached, wearing flip-flops and a collared shirt. He told them not to worry — he knew the way north.

Small, with jaundiced eyes, he was practiced in the art of smuggling. He could spot patrols, flag down vehicles for rides, even navigate the hidden trails carved into the lush countryside. They could trust him, he promised. He just wanted to help.

At first, they barely acknowledged him. But the more he talked, the harder he became to ignore. What was the alternative? It came down to going with him or going it alone, back into unfamiliar streets brimming with the Mexican authorities.

It was a migrant’s choice: Weigh the risks of pushing forward against the prospect of going home. The men — six Hondurans and four Guatemalans — reluctantly agreed.

“There are two kinds of stories on this trip,” said one of the men, Rafael Lesveri Pérez, a 38-year-old Guatemalan and three-time veteran of the journey, shouldering his bag as the group prepared to set off with the smuggler. “There are the true ones, and there are lies. Only time tells which is which.”
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Pour lire le dossier en entier : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/08/world/americas/mexico-migrants-central-america.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160208&nlid=49063493&tntemail0=y

More than 60 Australian writers – including Nobel laureate JM Coetzee and Booker prize winners Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey – have written to the prime minister and immigration minister condemning the government’s offshore detention policies as “brutal” and “shameful”.

The Turnbull government has faced intense backlash over its offshore detention policies this week in the wake of a high court ruling paving the way for 267 asylum seekers – including 37 babies born in Australia – to be returned to the remote island of Nauru.

Following Wednesday’s high court ruling that it was constitutional for the government to send asylum seekers to the islands of Nauru and Manus in Papua New Guinea for processing, church leaders have openly defied the government, risking jail time by offering sanctuary to asylum seekers, while paediatricians have also risked prosecution by revealing conditions in detention and condemning them as “toxic” for children.

A series of protests, under the banner of Let Them Stay, have been held across the country, including sit-ins at the office of the prime minister.

Both Nauru and Manus detention centres have seen consistent reports of physical and sexual abuse of men, women and children, as well as acts of self-harm and attempted suicide, including by children as young as seven. Two asylum seekers have died in offshore processing since 2014.

The open letter was sent to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the immigration minister, Peter Dutton. Its 61 signatories include: Coetzee, a South African-born novelist and naturalised Australian who won the Nobel prize in 2003; Booker prize winners Peter Carey and Thomas Keneally; Helen Garner, Gail Jones, Michelle de Kretser, Alexis Wright, and Frank Moorhouse.

The writers asked the minister and prime minister: “do we wish to live under a government that routinely treats other humans cruelly? Can we be sure of our own immunity to cruel treatment when such practices are, we know, obviously common, no matter how secretive immigration authorities are about the entire detention system.”

“Not only does our current system bring shame to Australia, in its demonstration of brutal government power and disregard for human dignity it brings shame on us as a nation. We express our outrage at this in the strongest possible terms.”

Pour lire l'article en entier : http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/06/asylum-policies-brutal-and-shameful-authors-tell-turnbull-and-dutton

L'Église catholique allemande appelle à réduire le nombre de réfugiés arrivant en Allemagne, estimant que le pays ne peut pas «accueillir tous les nécessiteux du monde», selon une interview parue samedi dans la presse allemande.

«En tant qu'Église aussi, nous disons que nous avons besoin d'une réduction du nombre de réfugiés», a déclaré le président de la Conférence épiscopale allemande, le cardinal Reinhard Marx, dans un entretien au quotidien régional Passauer Neue Presse.

L'Allemagne ne peut pas «accueillir tous les nécessiteux du monde», estime le cardinal Marx, selon qui cette question ne doit pas être traitée uniquement à l'aune «de la charité, mais également de la raison».

L'an dernier, le pays a accueilli 1,1 million de candidats à l'asile, un record absolu. L'Allemagne n'a jusqu'ici pas donné de prévision officielle du nombre attendu de réfugiés cette année.

Le cardinal Marx s'inquiète en outre d'une montée de la xénophobie en Allemagne, au moment où le parti populiste allemand Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) profite de la crise des réfugiés pour installer un discours de droite radicale, longtemps impensable dans le paysage politique allemand.

Pour lire la suite : ​http://www.lapresse.ca/international/crise-migratoire/201602/06/01-4947902-allemagne-leglise-catholique-appelle-a-freiner-les-arrivees-de-refugies.php

BAGHDAD — Night after night, Mohammed al-Jabiry tossed and turned in his bed at a refugee center in Finland, comparing life in Europe with life in Baghdad. After many sleepless nights, he decided to come home.

“In Iraq, I can find a girl to marry,” Mr. Jabiry, 23, reasoned. “And my mom is here.”

There were little things, too, that drove him to return, like the high price of cigarettes and the chillier weather. “In Europe, I was isolated,” he said. “Life in Europe was not what we were expecting.”

Last year, beckoned by news reports of easy passage to Europe through Turkey, tens of thousands of Iraqis joined Syrians, Africans and Afghans in the great migrant wave to the Continent. Now, thousands of Iraqis are coming home.

Many say they arrived in Europe with unrealistic expectations for quick success. Some also say the warm reception they received from Europeans last summer gave way to suspicion after the Paris terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State in November.

Many Iraqis have stayed in Europe, of course, especially those who were displaced from lands controlled by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. And others are still risking everything to cross the seas to get there. Last week, the bodies of five Iraqis who drowned in the Aegean Sea were returned to Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

The returnees largely reflect another segment of migration: those who left Baghdad for economic reasons, or merely out of curiosity after seeing so many reports of migrants arriving joyously on the shores of Europe.

When Mr. Jabiry left last summer, he said, “I was thinking, ‘I have no job here, and I never finished school.’ I thought of a better future there — that I would find a better job, that I could continue my studies, earn more money.”

He added: “I was crying the first day I arrived in Finland. Crying of happiness.”

As the days stretched into months — time he said he mostly spent working out at the gym, or aimlessly hanging out with other Iraqis in the refugee center — he realized it would be a long time before he could get a job or a home of his own.

Last summer, Facebook was filled with posts about making the trip. Now, some Iraqis in Europe are turning to social media to warn their countrymen away. One video posted recently shows an Iraqi man complaining of the food in Europe and saying, “I’m just waiting for my flight to Baghdad, and I will be back soon. I would advise everyone not to take the risk and come to Europe.”

Pour lire la suite : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/world/middleeast/europe-migrant-crisis-reverse-migration.html

LONG lines of lorries once blotted the chocolate-box alpine landscape of the Brenner Pass, an important road link between southern and northern Europe. The Schengen agreement, which came into effect in 1995 and has now abolished border controls between 26 European countries, kept those lorries moving. But where trucks go, so do refugees. To stem the flow Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden have temporarily reintroduced controls. Others have increased spot checks in border regions.

Open borders ease the flow of exports as well as individuals. Every year people make 1.3 billion crossings of the EU’s internal borders along with 57m trucks carrying €2.8 trillion ($3.7 trillion) of goods. As well as speeding the passage of Greek olives and German dishwashers, borderless travel allows hotels in the east of Germany to have their sheets cleaned in Poland, where wages are lower, and workers in Italy to commute to Switzerland (also in Schengen though not in the EU), where wages are higher.

Reintroducing controls such as checking passports and searching lorries is mostly an irritation, though the costs are mounting. A strategy unit of the French government estimates that in the short term border checks within Schengen would cost France €1 billion-2 billion a year by disrupting tourism, cross-border workers and trade. If Schengen collapses the economic consequences would be more serious, it says: curtailing the free passage of goods permanently would amount to a 3% tax on trade within Schengen. The overall effect of hampering cross-border activity would reduce output in the Schengen area by 0.8%, or €110 billion, over the next decade.

Not only will money have to be found to patrol long-abandoned frontiers. Around 1.7m Europeans cross a border to get to work and in some regions as much as a third of the workforce makes this trip daily. Malmo in Sweden and Copenhagen, the Danish capital, have in effect become one big city. Border controls at the bridge that connects them add around 30 minutes each way. A nuisance could become a deterrent to cross-border employment, reducing job opportunities and the pool of labour employers can draw upon.

The greatest pain will be felt by exporters. Over a third of road-freight traffic in Schengen crosses a border. Delays are creeping up. Around Salzburg in Austria lorries now sit for up to three hours before getting into Germany. Strict EU rules dictate that such waiting times still count as hours behind the wheel for drivers, who are obliged to rest when they hit an upper limit. If waiting becomes a permanent feature DSLV, a German association of shippers, puts the direct costs at €3 billion a year for the EU as a whole, based on a one-hour delay for every lorry.
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Pour lire la suite : ​http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21690065-permanent-reintroduction-border-controls-would-harm-trade-europe-putting-up-barriers