Remember Alyn Kurdi drowned 2 September 2015

[Anthea]

Friends from Kobane are doing well

I am delighted to hear from friends that they are alright

Alan Kurdi was a three-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean Sea.

He and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe amid the European refugee crisis Turkish journalist Nilüfer Demir and quickly spread around the world, prompting international responses.

Twelve refugees drowned that Wednesday when two boats sank on the short crossing to Greece, and images of Aylan's lifeless body washed ashore in Bodrum in southwest Turkey sparked international outrage over Europe

The refugees leaving Turkey are NOT escaping from ISIS

They are escaping from TURKS

The refugees are running away from TURKS, the shameful an violent way TURKS treat the refugees and the way they are being treated in TURKISH refugee camps

Have the Turkish camps improved NO

TURKISH refugees camps are still dangerous violent places with very few services

Has Kobane been rebuild?

Partially yes but not enough

The coalition were, as always, happy to destroy

But NOT happy to rebuild the destruction they have caused

GOOD LUCK KOBANE

[Anthea]

Family of Alan Kurdi

Five years on from his tragic death, the family of Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi have urged the international community to not ignore the plight of refugees

The refugee crisis received new media attention after images of Alan Kurdi, 3, washed up on a Turkish beach spread across the globe.

The toddler drowned with his mother and brother Ghalib, 4, after their boat capsized on the way to Greece on September 2, 2015. His death led to calls for European leaders to offer refugees safe and legal passage.

"We cannot close our eyes and turn our back and walk away from them," his aunt Tima Kurdi said at a press conference held by the German migrant rescue group Sea-Eye, AFP reported.

"People all over the world continue to suffer and it's getting worse, not any better. And they are asking for help," she said.

The family are from the Kurdish city of Kobane in northern Syria.

Three individuals were each sentenced to 125 years in prison in mid-March for their involvement in the tragedy a week after they were captured in Adana, southern Turkey.

Sea-Eye named a rescue ship in memory of Kurdi in February 2019.

“Those people are innocent victims, they flee from force, not by choice,” said Tima, who founded the Kurdi Foundation, which aims to help refugee children.

“Sadly, our family's tragedy is one of many,” she added.

During the height of Europe's refugee crisis, more than 1 million people mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, fled to Europe in 2015, many of them by crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats that often sank.

In March, the UN migration agency said an estimated 20,000 people have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/010920201

[Anthea]

Shocking images of drowned Kurdish boy

The full horror of the human tragedy unfolding on the shores of Europe was brought home on Wednesday as images of the lifeless body of a young boy – one of at least 12 Kurds who drowned attempting to reach the Greek island of Kos – encapsulated the extraordinary risks refugees are taking to reach the west

The picture, depicted the dark-haired toddler, wearing a bright-red T-shirt and shorts, washed up on a beach, lying face down in the surf not far from Turkey’s fashionable resort town of Bodrum.

A grim-faced policeman carried the tiny body away. Within hours it had gone viral becoming the top trending picture on Twitter under the hashtag #KiyiyaVuranInsanlik (humanity washed ashore).

Turkish media identified the boy as three-year-old Alan Kurdi and reported that his five-year-old brother had also met a similar death. Both had reportedly hailed from the northern Syrian town of Kobani, the site of fierce fighting between Islamic state insurgents and Kurdish forces earlier this year.

Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, said: “This tragic image of a little boy who’s lost his life fleeing Syria is shocking and is a reminder of the dangers children and families are taking in search of a better life. This child’s plight should concentrate minds and force the EU to come together and agree to a plan to tackle the refugee crisis.”

Greek authorities, coping with what has become the biggest migration crisis in living memory, said the boy was among a group of refugees escaping Islamic State in Syria.

Turkish officials, corroborating the reports, said 12 people died after two boats carrying a total of 23 people, capsized after setting off separately from the Akyarlar area of the Bodrum peninsula. Among the dead were five children and a woman. Seven others were rescued and two reached the shore in lifejackets but hopes were fading of saving the two people still missing.

The casualties were among thousands of people, mostly Syrians, fleeing war and the brutal occupation by Islamic fundamentalists in their homeland.

Kos, facing Turkey’s Aegean coast, has become a magnet for people determined to reach Europe. An estimated 2,500 refugees, also believed to be from Syria, landed on Lesbos on Wednesday in what local officials described as more than 60 dinghies and other “unseaworthy” vessels.

Some 15,000 refugees are in Lesbos awaiting passage by cruise ship to Athens’ port of Piraeus before continuing their journey northwards to Macedonia and up through Serbia to Hungary and Germany.

“The situation on the islands is dramatic in terms of the sheer numbers flowing in, lack of shelter and ever worsening hygiene conditions,” Ketty Kehayioy, the UNHCR’s spokeswoman in Athens told the Guardian. “The absence of staff to conduct registrations is creating enormous bottlenecks on Lesvos and Kos which is further exacerbating substandard conditions, conditions themselves worsened by very limited facilities.”

Local NGO’s and volunteers, working around-the-clock to support insufficient state services now stretched to breaking point, described the situation as “utterly overwhelming.”

Wednesday’s dead were part of a grim toll of some 2,500 people who have died this summer attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

Athens’ caretaker government, in power until elections are held on 20 September, announced emergency measures to facilitate the flow after meeting in urgent session under the prime minister, Vassiliki Thanou.

The migration minister, Yiannis Mouzalas, said the measures would aim to improve conditions both for refugees and residents on islands such as Kos and Lesbos.

Conditions on islands have become increasingly chaotic with local officials voicing fears over the outbreak of disease amid rising levels of squalor.

“The problem is very big,” said Mouzalas, a doctor who is also a member of the Doctors of the World aid organisation. “If the European Union doesn’t intervene quickly to absorb the populations … if the issue isn’t internationalised on a UN level, every so often we will be discussing how to avoid the crisis,” he told reporters, insisting that the thousands risking their lives to flee conflict were refugees. “There is no migration issue, remove that – it is a refugee issue,” he said.

The UNHCR calculates that some 205,000 Europe-bound refugees have entered Greece, mostly via its outlying Aegean isles, this year alone. The vast majority (69%) are Syrians, Afghans (18 %), Iraqis and Somalis fleeing conflict in their countries.

In Hungary’s capital, meanwhile, where the authorities reversed their position and moved to stop migrants travelling to Germany and other western EU ­countries, hundreds continued to protest at Keleti ­station. Tensions rose throughout the day as the number of mainly young men swelled to over 2,000.

With police blocking their path into Budapest’s main international train station, the crowds chanted, “No police! No police!” and “Germany! Germany!”

Passions also flared on Hungary’s border with Serbia as rightwing nationalist protesters marched to the location where migrants use a train track to walk into the country. Police formed protective circles around frightened migrants as the demonstrators screamed abuse at them.

“We have to reinstate law and order at the borders of the European Union, including the border with Serbia,” Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said. “Without re-establishing law and order, it will be impossible to handle the influx of migrants.”

He said Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, would take a “clear and obvious message” to a meeting in Brussels on Thursday with EU chiefs about the migration crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ ... f-refugees

[Anthea]

Nobody Cares if Kurds Die

It has been more than 6 YEARS since the tiny body of Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach - the sad photo appeared worldwide - the world did nothing

Alan and other members of his family were trying to escape not from ISIS but from the horrors of living inside Turkish refugee camps.

The Problem:

Kurdish lands were forcibly divided almost 100 years ago and Kurdish lives placed under the control of savage regimes, all of which have attempted forced Arabisation or Turkification of the Kurdish populations

Since the division of their homeland Kurds have suffered mass slaughters and genocides at the hands of the oppressors and groups such as ISIS

Those coalition members that bombed Kurdish lands in an attempt to destroy the Islamic State destroyed Kurdish and Yazidi lands and properties.

The shameful truth is that coalition members were happy to spend BILLIONS while bombing lands to destroy lands, they have spend NOTHING to rebuild the properties and lands in order to make them habitable again

Many parts of Kurdistan have become uninhabitable due to fighting and the destruction of lands and property

All Kurds have ever wanted was to live in peace - give Kurds back their lands and none will ever end up in a watery grave again

[Anthea]

Captain ignored warnings before dozens died

A surviving migrant of one of last week's the Aegean Sea tragedies told Rudaw on Tuesday that hours before the boat he was in broke down killing dozens, the captains of the struggling vessel had claimed that the problems were minor, and refused to sail to a nearby island which may have saved crucial lives, despite several calls from the migrants on board

A group of over 60 people, both Kurds and Arabs, boarded a boat in the Turkish city of Bodrum at 7pm on November 22, hoping to reach Greece or possibly Italy in the pursuit of what they saw as a better life. Like thousands of other people from the Kurdistan Region, they had taken increasingly desperate risks through illegal routes to reach western Europe.

After sailing for around 16 hours, those on board were finally close to their destination just across the horizon, as they sailed past the island of Santorini. However at around 12pm on November 23, a problem with the steering wheel quickly shifted their goal from reaching Europe to surviving the deadly waves of the Aegean Sea.

Fryad Ali, who along with his wife is among the 13 migrants who survived the tragedy last week recalled the events that led to the death of dozens, including his two children, to Rudaw on Tuesday.

Ali told Alla Shally that the boat’s steering wheel had been malfunctioning for a few hours before the fatal incident, during which time the migrants had increasingly urgently called on the captains to take them somewhere close, even if it was not their initial destination.

“We told the captains to sail to a nearby island or suggested that we could even call the police and turn ourselves in, but they said that the problem was minor and it was going to be fixed soon,” Ali said, although events would prove this statement woefully inaccurate.

“At around 6pm, the captains were in the wheelhouse trying to solve the problem and we heard a sound from the engines,” he said. “We called them and went to look at the engines and we saw that half of the engines were underwater.”

According to Ali, only 13 people survived the tragedy that night with everyone else on board drowning, including his three-year-old son Baran and six year old daughter Sevda.

Ali claimed that the waves that night were suitable for sailing, but not for swimming or even the small emergency dinghy they had, adding that those onboard did not have life jackets, and some of them were not allowed to carry their bags as they were told it would take extra space.

As people attempted to board the dinghy, Ali explained, it lost balance.

“I do not think anyone else survived,” he said. “There were no islands, no boats, the police did not come soon enough to rescue people and when they did, it was only a copter and a boat and it was only us 13 on the boat.”

The vessel Ali was on was one of three that sank in Greek waters between December 21 and 24, leaving behind dozens dead as they scrambled to board dinghies and survive the choppy waters.

According to Summit (Lutka) Foundation for Refugee and Displaced Affairs, 23 migrants from the Kurdistan Region are missing from the December 21 shipwreck, with just seven rescued. On December 23, nine bodies later identified as citizens from the Region were found and 16 further bodies were found on December 24, none identified as being from the Region or Iraq.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday that at least 31 have died in three separate incidents between December 21 and 24, with dozens remaining missing.

“It is heart-rending that, out of despair and in the absence of safe pathways, refugees and migrants feel compelled to entrust their lives to ruthless smugglers,” Maria-Clara Martin, UNHCR Representative in Greece was quoted as saying.

Three people have been charged with murder in Greece following the death of 16 migrants when their vessel from Turkey to Italy overturned near the Greek island of Paros on December 24. The suspects were among 63 people rescued following the tragedy.

According to data published by UNHCR last week, over 2,500 people have died or gone missing at sea - through the Mediterranean and the northwestern African maritime route - from January until the end of November this year in their attempts to reach Europe.

Kurdish migrants have suffered a catastrophic fate this year. A boat carrying 33 migrants, most of them Kurds, capsized in the English Channel on November 24, in what the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has called the "worst disaster on record" in the Channel.

There are only two known survivors of the disaster, including a Kurd from the Region. Bodies of the sixteen identified Iraqi Kurds were returned to Erbil on Sunday.

The Kurdistan Region, mostly known as a safe haven within Iraq, is facing crises of its own, with high unemployment, corruption, political instability, and an economic downturn during the coronavirus pandemic driving many of its people to migrate in recent months.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has acknowledged the existence of systemic problems and financial hardships and says it is working to address these issues, although it has also on several occasions claimed that the large waves of migration is mainly due to people being taken advantage of by smugglers.

Thousands of other Kurds have traveled to Belarus in recent months with the help of Kurdish smugglers, hoping to reach western Europe where they have suffered deaths, beatings, hunger and sickness by border guards between the three countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/291220211

[Anthea]

8 years on why are people still drowning?

Many fleeing from internal conflicts, conflicts made worst by the US and the coalition's destruction of homes and lands leaving vast areas uninhabitable

Remember the Yazidis who have been homeless for 9 years as much of their land was destroyed and the area is now run by assorted armed groups

Most people seeking asylum are not genuine refugees, the people who need the most help do NOT have the money to pay for traffickers

The organized gangs will persuade people in places such as Africa, that they can come to the EU and pay the traffickers by working for them, if the people then refuse to work of pay their families back home could be beaten or tortured

Instead of destroying countries and cultures, those who bomb a country to ride it of armed hostiles should help to rebuild the country and make it a safe place for the population to return to

The only way to prevent more deaths is to make sure people are able to live in peace in their country of origin

Western countries must refuse to take in refugees because it causes death and makes people traffickers very wealthy

Alyn's family wanted to go back home to Kobane, but the coalition left them nothing to go back home to, it was the coalition bombs not ISIS that destroyed most of Kobane

[Anthea]

How people-smugglers operate

For desperate Syrians, a WhatsApp message saying "I want to go to Europe" can be all they need to start a treacherous journey to Libya and then across the Mediterranean

Twelve years after conflict broke out when President Bashar al-Assad repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests, Syrians are still trying to escape a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.

At least 141 Syrians were among up to 750 migrants thought to have been on a trawler that set off from Libya and sank off Greece in June, relatives and activists told AFP. Most of the passengers are feared drowned.

AFP interviewed Syrian smugglers and migrants about the journey to migrant hub Libya, notorious for rights abuses, and then across the central Mediterranean -- the world's deadliest migrant route.

Almost everyone requested anonymity, fearing reprisals.

'A batch every month'

"We finalise everything by phone," said a smuggler in Syria's southern Daraa province.

"We ask for a copy of their passport and tell them where to deposit the money. We don't have to see anyone in person," he told AFP over WhatsApp.

Daraa, the cradle of Syria's uprising, returned to regime control in 2018.

It has since been plagued by killings, clashes and dire living conditions, all of which are fuelling an exodus, activists say.

"The first year we started, we only sent one group. Today, we send a batch every month" to Libya, the smuggler said.

"People are selling their homes and leaving."

Libya descended into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011, the same year Syria's war began.

The North African country is split between a UN-recognised government in the west and another in the east backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, who has ties to Damascus.

Syrians deposit the money -- more than $6,000 per person -- with a third party, often an exchange office which takes a commission.

The smuggler declined to disclose his cut, but said he was paid once the migrants reached Italy. His partner in eastern Libya organises the actual boat trip.

'Humiliated, beaten'

One travel agent in Daraa told an AFP correspondent posing as a migrant that a package deal cost $6,500.

This included a plane ticket, eastern Libya entry document, airport pickup, transport, accommodation, the boat journey to Italy and a life jacket, a WhatsApp message said.

Migrants stay "in a hotel or a furnished apartment", it added, but Syrians said such promises were seldom kept.

They told AFP of overcrowded and disease-ridden warehouses, where armed guards subjected migrants to violence and extortion.

Omar, 23, from Daraa province, borrowed $8,000 to be smuggled to Libya and then Italy this year, saying he was desperate to leave "a country with no future".

Now in Germany, he said he spent two weeks locked in a hangar near the coast in eastern Libya with around 200 other people.

"We were abused, yelled at, humiliated and beaten," added Omar, who said guards gave them only meagre servings of rice, bread and cheese to eat.

On departure day, "around 20 armed men forced us to run" the distance from the hangar to the sea, "hitting us with the back of their rifles", he said.

"When we finally reached the shores, I was exhausted. I couldn't believe I'd made it."

Among mercenaries

In part of northern Syria controlled by Ankara-backed rebel groups, a recruiter of fighters said he also smuggled migrants to Libya by listing them among pro-Turkey mercenaries.

Turkey supports the Tripoli administration in Libya's west.

Ankara has largely shut down a once well-trodden route to Europe via Turkey.

"Every six months, we use the fighters' rotation to send people with them," the recruiter told AFP.

Syrians from the impoverished, opposition-held northern Idlib and Aleppo provinces, "particularly those living in displacement camps, contact us", the recruiter said.

Listed as "fighters", the Syrian migrants are entitled to a Turkish-paid "salary" of around $2,500, the recruiter said.

The armed group pockets $1,300, the recruiter takes the rest and the migrants get a free flight to Libya, he said.

Syrians first go to border camps for pro-Ankara fighters before crossing into Turkey and flying to the Libyan capital Tripoli.

They spend two weeks in Syrian militia camps in western Libya before being introduced to smugglers, who ask around $2,000 for the boat trip to Italy, he added.

'To hide our tracks'

For those in regime-held Syria, getting to Libya can involve criss-crossing the Middle East on a variety of airlines and sometimes overland -- "to hide our tracks", the smuggler in Daraa said.

AFP saw a group ticket for around 20 Syrian migrants who travelled to neighbouring Lebanon and then flew from Beirut to a Gulf state, then to Egypt, before finally landing in Benghazi in eastern Libya.

Direct flights are also available from Damascus to Benghazi with private Syrian carrier Cham Wings.

The European Union blacklisted Cham Wings in 2021 for its alleged role in irregular migration to Europe via Belarus, lifting the measures in July last year.

Several Syrians told AFP that on their flights to Benghazi, direct or not, were many migrants bound for Europe.

Spokesperson Osama Satea said Cham Wings carried only travellers with valid Libyan entry documents, noting the presence of a considerable Syrian diaspora there.

He told AFP the airline is not responsible for determining whether passengers are travelling for work or for other reasons, but "it certainly doesn't fly to Libya to contribute to smuggling or migration attempts".

'There was terror'

Syrians arriving in Benghazi need a security authorisation from the eastern authorities to enter.

But the Daraa smuggler told AFP this was not a problem: "In Libya, like in Syria, paying off security officials can solve everything."

"We have a guy in the security apparatus who gets the authorisations just with a click," he said.

Migrants told AFP a smuggler's associate -- sometimes a security officer -- escorted them out of Benghazi's Benina airport.

One security authorisation seen by AFP bore the logo of Haftar's forces and listed the names and passport numbers of more than 80 Syrians bound for Europe.

Once in Libya, the Syrians may wait weeks or months for the journey's most perilous part.

More than 1,800 migrants of various nationalities have died crossing the central Mediterranean towards Europe this year, according to International Organization for Migration figures.

Around 90,000 others have arrived in Italy, according to the UN refugee agency, most having embarked from Libya or Tunisia.

A 23-year-old from northern Syria's Kurdish-held Kobane was among around 100 survivors of the June shipwreck off Greece.

He paid more than $6,000 for a trip that almost cost him his life.

"There was terror," he said.

Six people died in desperate fights over food and water, and "on the fifth day, we started drinking seawater".

"I wanted to leave the war behind, live my life and help my family," he said from Europe, warning others against making the trip.

"I was promised decent lodgings and a safe trawler, but I got nothing."

https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/32 ... rs-operate