No humanity or compassion in Europe, apparently...
No humanity or compassion in Europe, apparently...
OP note: I've put the title of the article under a cut because it might be triggering.
'They treated her like a dog': tragedy of the six-year-old killed at Croatian border
Madina Hussiny’s family say they were put in harm’s way after crossing from Serbia, then had to fight for the return of her body
Madina’s grave. ‘I will carry it in my heart for ever, that I did not give her a proper ceremony.’
--------------------
When the train hit six-year-old Madina Hussiny, her family stumbled to the watching Croatian border police begging for help, her body limp in their arms.
The same officers had ordered the exhausted Afghan family down railway tracks towards Serbia in the dark without warning them there might still be trains running, said Madina’s mother, Muslima Hussiny. But desperate and terrified, they had nowhere else to turn.
Madina was a casualty of a slow-burning crisis along Europe’s borders that aid groups and activists say is causing untold suffering.
Thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in Serbia, where they have almost no chance of successfully claiming asylum and little hope of moving on legally, are resorting to increasingly desperate means to try to cross into the European Union.
The border police of Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria have responded by forcing any people they catch back over the frontier, often violently, according to groups ranging from Human Rights Watch to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The tragedy of the Hussiny family, who tried to reach Croatia after spending nearly a year in Serbia hoping for legal passage into Hungary, was the latest in a string of deaths and injuries to children and adults across the Balkans.
“What we continue to witness is the negative consequences of the EU policies at the external EU borders,” said MSF’s humanitarian affairs adviser for Serbia, Andrea Contenta. “These policies continue to put people in danger. There is no safe way to travel.”
The day that ended in tragedy had begun in hope. Muslima Hussiny decided to set off with six of her 10 children on 21 November after hearing that the border with Croatia was less tightly sealed than it had been in recent months.
Muslima said the group, with four children under 10, made it into Croatia by scrambling across fields and over and under fences, but they were picked up by police a few hours later as they rested in a park under blankets.
She was happy to see the officers at first, expecting to be taken to a police station to formally claim asylum, their right under European law. Instead, Muslima said, they were driven to the railway line and ordered to walk back towards Serbia.
“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,’” she said. “But they were inhuman.”
Madina’s family.
------------------------
Croatian authorities denied that Madina and her family had set foot in their country before her death, or that border police played any role in putting the six-year-old in the path of the train. They said the family were crossing from Serbia and were on the far side of the border when the train hit, but the death was recorded in Croatia because the family ran that way for help.
“We emphasise that treatment of the Croatian border police had not contributed in any way or caused the accident and the death of a child,” the interior ministry said in a statement, adding that its treatment of all migrants and refugees followed EU law.
But multiple aid and human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of people with a legal right to claim asylum being forced back over EU borders in Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria, frequently with the use of violence.
At the start of this year, Médecins du Monde raised warnings about tactics including beatings, pepper spray and dog attacks in these “forced pushbacks”.
There have been many reports of people being ordered back along the train tracks where Madina died. “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 MSF’s Contenta.
(NB: Map is from this reference.)
OP: It should be noted that Serbia is not currently part of the European Union. Neither is Bosnia and Herzegovina (see map).
For a moment after the train screeched to a halt, Muslima’s focus was on Madina’s older sister, who tumbled to the ground as the train rushed past. Then she realised that the chubby chatterbox who was everyone’s favourite was missing.
There was a frantic scramble with phone flashlights in the dark, and then Madina’s older brother spotted her lying on the ground. Muslima hoped she was just concussed, but it quickly became clear she was terribly hurt. “Rashid took off her hat and there was blood everywhere. I picked her up and saw there was no sign of life.”
When they stumbled back to the police, she said, the officers ignored Rashid’s desperate pleas for medical help and ordered the family into a van, taking time to check that everyone they wanted to deport was accounted for.
So she hugged her daughter’s battered body during a journey that stretched on for eternity and was over too soon. At some point on the road, the van stopped and nurses transferred Madina to an ambulance where they worked on her for a while. Then they drove away, ignoring Muslima’s pleas to stay with her daughter.
“I told them: ‘I want to go with my child, wherever you are taking her,’” she wept. “I asked: ‘Why are you sending her alone, I want to be with her, it’s my right to be together.’”
The next time she saw Madina was days later, when the body was icy cold and blood and mud were still smeared on her face.
Madina Hussiny. ‘She was always smiling, always the one everybody liked.’ Photograph: Family handout
-------------------------
The family had left their home after threats against their father, Rahmat Shah, for his work with the police. They moved first to the Afghan capital, Kabul, but danger followed them, so they left for Europe at the start of 2016 and reached Serbia around a year later.
Madina, at six, was a dimpled clown, kind and silly, inspiration for the whole family on the long journey. “She was always smiling, always the one everybody liked,” said her oldest sister, Nilab, 17. “She talked a lot but always so sweet. My mum asked her: ‘Why do you talk so much,’ but she just smiled.”
Nilab cannot shake the memories of the body as it was returned to the family, battered and muddied. “They just treated her like an animal, like a dog. Such a small body and they didn’t treat it like a human,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
In the days that followed the accident, the family had to fight for news of Madina’s fate, information about her body and the right to bury her according to Muslim tradition.
They were sent back to Serbia the night she died, without confirmation of where she had been taken or whether she was dead, and not even a number to contact.
They met with little more compassion on the other side of the border, held overnight in a police room with only a table and chairs, still covered in Madina’s blood, cold, hungry and desperate with grief.
It took them days to confirm she had been killed and to reclaim her body, and only then with the support of groups including MSF and HelpRefugees.
When Madina was returned to them on 24 November, the family were ordered to bury her immediately. There was no paperwork, and four bottles of water to perform the washing of the body that is a vital part of Muslim funeral rites.
They spent more than six hours in a tense standoff at the municipal cemetery with officials, her father said. “I told them I would rather you bury us all here than make me bury her like this.”
But Serbian authorities threatened the whole family with deportation if they continued to resist, he said. Then UN officials arrived and warned the family that if they did not agree to the burial, Serbian authorities could go ahead without their consent.
So, unwillingly, they agreed to the burial. “I was shouting and crying when my wife and daughter took the body to wash,” said Rahmat Shah. Because winter was setting in, it was already getting dark when she was laid into the ground. “I will carry it in my heart for ever, that I did not give her a proper ceremony.”
Madina’s grave lies at the edge of a municipal graveyard, on the bleak outskirts of the border town where she spent her last afternoon, on the edge of a vast, flat expanse of fields. There is no marker, but her family pray she will not be forgotten.
“Please spread our message as much as you can, because she came here with all her hopes,” said her father. He is still waiting for her death certificate.
SOURCE 1.
---------------------------
OP: Another migration route is through countries such as Libya, and across the Mediterranean.
IOM: African migrants traded in Libya's 'slave markets'
Hundreds of African refugees and migrants passing through Libya are being bought and sold in modern-day slave markets before being held for ransom or used as forced labour or for sexual exploitation, survivors have told the UN's migration agency.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that it had interviewed West African migrants who recounted being traded in garages and car parks in the southern city of Sabha, one of Libya's main people-smuggling centres.
People are bought for between $200 and $500 and are held on average for two to three months, Othman Belbeisi, head of the IOM's Libya mission, said in Geneva.
"Migrants are being sold in the market as a commodity," he said. "Selling human beings is becoming a trend among smugglers as the smuggling networks in Libya are becoming stronger and stronger."
The refugees and migrants - many from Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia - are captured as they head north towards Libya's Mediterranean coast, where some try to catch boats for Italy.
Along the way, they are prey to an array of armed groups and people-smuggling networks that often try to extort extra money in exchange for allowing them to continue.
Most of them are used as day labourers in construction or agriculture. Some are paid but others are forced to work for no money.
"About women, we heard a lot about bad treatment, rape and being forced into prostitution," Belbeisi said.
The IOM said it had spoken to one Senegalese migrant who was held in a Libyan's private house in Sabha with about 100 others, who were beaten as they called their families to ask for money for their captors.
He was then bought by another Libyan, who set a new price for his release.
Some of those who cannot pay their captors are reportedly killed or left to starve to death, the IOM said. When migrants die or are released, others are purchased to replace them.
'Valley of tears'
The agency said migrants are buried without being identified, with families back home uncertain of their fate.
"The situation is dire," Mohammed Abdiker, IOM's director of operations and emergencies, who recently returned from a visit to Libya's capital, Tripoli, said in a statement, calling Libya a "valley of tears" for many refugees and migrants.
"What we know is that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder," he added.
"Last year we learned 14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert."
To warn potential migrants, the IOM is spreading testimonies of victims through social media and local radio stations.
Libya is the main gateway for people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with more than 150,000 people making the crossing in each of the past three years.
So far this year an estimated 26,886 migrants have crossed to Italy, over 7,000 more than during the same period in 2016.
More than 600 are known to have died at sea, while an unknown number perish during their journey north through the desert.
'HORRIBLE STORIES'
"Over the past few days, I have discussed these stories with several who told me horrible stories."
"They all confirmed the risks of been sold as slaves in squares or garages in Sabha, either by their drivers or by locals who recruit the migrants for daily jobs in town, often in construction, and later, instead of paying them, sell their victims to new buyers."
"Some migrants - mostly Nigerians, Ghanaians and Gambians - are forced to work for the kidnappers/slave traders as guards in the ransom houses or in the 'market' itself."
IOM Niger staffer
SOURCE 2.
Additional links:
-Previous posts (by me) on the subject of migration to Europe are here, here, and here.
-Why are people trying to reach Europe (and elsewhere) in such numbers?
"After Syria, Eritrea provides the second largest number of people looking to migrate to Europe. One in 10 of all prospective migrants to Europe are Eritrean, and the UN estimates around 4,000 people leave the country every month." (Source and more information on this is here.)
More information on the situation in Eritrea is also here.
OP note: I've put the title of the article under a cut because it might be triggering.
'They treated her like a dog': tragedy of the six-year-old killed at Croatian border
Madina Hussiny’s family say they were put in harm’s way after crossing from Serbia, then had to fight for the return of her body
Madina’s grave. ‘I will carry it in my heart for ever, that I did not give her a proper ceremony.’
--------------------
When the train hit six-year-old Madina Hussiny, her family stumbled to the watching Croatian border police begging for help, her body limp in their arms.
The same officers had ordered the exhausted Afghan family down railway tracks towards Serbia in the dark without warning them there might still be trains running, said Madina’s mother, Muslima Hussiny. But desperate and terrified, they had nowhere else to turn.
Madina was a casualty of a slow-burning crisis along Europe’s borders that aid groups and activists say is causing untold suffering.
Thousands of migrants and refugees trapped in Serbia, where they have almost no chance of successfully claiming asylum and little hope of moving on legally, are resorting to increasingly desperate means to try to cross into the European Union.
The border police of Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria have responded by forcing any people they catch back over the frontier, often violently, according to groups ranging from Human Rights Watch to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The tragedy of the Hussiny family, who tried to reach Croatia after spending nearly a year in Serbia hoping for legal passage into Hungary, was the latest in a string of deaths and injuries to children and adults across the Balkans.
“What we continue to witness is the negative consequences of the EU policies at the external EU borders,” said MSF’s humanitarian affairs adviser for Serbia, Andrea Contenta. “These policies continue to put people in danger. There is no safe way to travel.”
The day that ended in tragedy had begun in hope. Muslima Hussiny decided to set off with six of her 10 children on 21 November after hearing that the border with Croatia was less tightly sealed than it had been in recent months.
Muslima said the group, with four children under 10, made it into Croatia by scrambling across fields and over and under fences, but they were picked up by police a few hours later as they rested in a park under blankets.
She was happy to see the officers at first, expecting to be taken to a police station to formally claim asylum, their right under European law. Instead, Muslima said, they were driven to the railway line and ordered to walk back towards Serbia.
“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,’” she said. “But they were inhuman.”
Madina’s family.
------------------------
Croatian authorities denied that Madina and her family had set foot in their country before her death, or that border police played any role in putting the six-year-old in the path of the train. They said the family were crossing from Serbia and were on the far side of the border when the train hit, but the death was recorded in Croatia because the family ran that way for help.
“We emphasise that treatment of the Croatian border police had not contributed in any way or caused the accident and the death of a child,” the interior ministry said in a statement, adding that its treatment of all migrants and refugees followed EU law.
But multiple aid and human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases of people with a legal right to claim asylum being forced back over EU borders in Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria, frequently with the use of violence.
At the start of this year, Médecins du Monde raised warnings about tactics including beatings, pepper spray and dog attacks in these “forced pushbacks”.
There have been many reports of people being ordered back along the train tracks where Madina died. “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 MSF’s Contenta.
(NB: Map is from this reference.)
OP: It should be noted that Serbia is not currently part of the European Union. Neither is Bosnia and Herzegovina (see map).
For a moment after the train screeched to a halt, Muslima’s focus was on Madina’s older sister, who tumbled to the ground as the train rushed past. Then she realised that the chubby chatterbox who was everyone’s favourite was missing.
There was a frantic scramble with phone flashlights in the dark, and then Madina’s older brother spotted her lying on the ground. Muslima hoped she was just concussed, but it quickly became clear she was terribly hurt. “Rashid took off her hat and there was blood everywhere. I picked her up and saw there was no sign of life.”
When they stumbled back to the police, she said, the officers ignored Rashid’s desperate pleas for medical help and ordered the family into a van, taking time to check that everyone they wanted to deport was accounted for.
So she hugged her daughter’s battered body during a journey that stretched on for eternity and was over too soon. At some point on the road, the van stopped and nurses transferred Madina to an ambulance where they worked on her for a while. Then they drove away, ignoring Muslima’s pleas to stay with her daughter.
“I told them: ‘I want to go with my child, wherever you are taking her,’” she wept. “I asked: ‘Why are you sending her alone, I want to be with her, it’s my right to be together.’”
The next time she saw Madina was days later, when the body was icy cold and blood and mud were still smeared on her face.
Madina Hussiny. ‘She was always smiling, always the one everybody liked.’ Photograph: Family handout
-------------------------
The family had left their home after threats against their father, Rahmat Shah, for his work with the police. They moved first to the Afghan capital, Kabul, but danger followed them, so they left for Europe at the start of 2016 and reached Serbia around a year later.
Madina, at six, was a dimpled clown, kind and silly, inspiration for the whole family on the long journey. “She was always smiling, always the one everybody liked,” said her oldest sister, Nilab, 17. “She talked a lot but always so sweet. My mum asked her: ‘Why do you talk so much,’ but she just smiled.”
Nilab cannot shake the memories of the body as it was returned to the family, battered and muddied. “They just treated her like an animal, like a dog. Such a small body and they didn’t treat it like a human,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
In the days that followed the accident, the family had to fight for news of Madina’s fate, information about her body and the right to bury her according to Muslim tradition.
They were sent back to Serbia the night she died, without confirmation of where she had been taken or whether she was dead, and not even a number to contact.
They met with little more compassion on the other side of the border, held overnight in a police room with only a table and chairs, still covered in Madina’s blood, cold, hungry and desperate with grief.
It took them days to confirm she had been killed and to reclaim her body, and only then with the support of groups including MSF and HelpRefugees.
When Madina was returned to them on 24 November, the family were ordered to bury her immediately. There was no paperwork, and four bottles of water to perform the washing of the body that is a vital part of Muslim funeral rites.
They spent more than six hours in a tense standoff at the municipal cemetery with officials, her father said. “I told them I would rather you bury us all here than make me bury her like this.”
But Serbian authorities threatened the whole family with deportation if they continued to resist, he said. Then UN officials arrived and warned the family that if they did not agree to the burial, Serbian authorities could go ahead without their consent.
So, unwillingly, they agreed to the burial. “I was shouting and crying when my wife and daughter took the body to wash,” said Rahmat Shah. Because winter was setting in, it was already getting dark when she was laid into the ground. “I will carry it in my heart for ever, that I did not give her a proper ceremony.”
Madina’s grave lies at the edge of a municipal graveyard, on the bleak outskirts of the border town where she spent her last afternoon, on the edge of a vast, flat expanse of fields. There is no marker, but her family pray she will not be forgotten.
“Please spread our message as much as you can, because she came here with all her hopes,” said her father. He is still waiting for her death certificate.
SOURCE 1.
---------------------------
OP: Another migration route is through countries such as Libya, and across the Mediterranean.
IOM: African migrants traded in Libya's 'slave markets'
Hundreds of African refugees and migrants passing through Libya are being bought and sold in modern-day slave markets before being held for ransom or used as forced labour or for sexual exploitation, survivors have told the UN's migration agency.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday that it had interviewed West African migrants who recounted being traded in garages and car parks in the southern city of Sabha, one of Libya's main people-smuggling centres.
People are bought for between $200 and $500 and are held on average for two to three months, Othman Belbeisi, head of the IOM's Libya mission, said in Geneva.
"Migrants are being sold in the market as a commodity," he said. "Selling human beings is becoming a trend among smugglers as the smuggling networks in Libya are becoming stronger and stronger."
The refugees and migrants - many from Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia - are captured as they head north towards Libya's Mediterranean coast, where some try to catch boats for Italy.
Along the way, they are prey to an array of armed groups and people-smuggling networks that often try to extort extra money in exchange for allowing them to continue.
Most of them are used as day labourers in construction or agriculture. Some are paid but others are forced to work for no money.
"About women, we heard a lot about bad treatment, rape and being forced into prostitution," Belbeisi said.
The IOM said it had spoken to one Senegalese migrant who was held in a Libyan's private house in Sabha with about 100 others, who were beaten as they called their families to ask for money for their captors.
He was then bought by another Libyan, who set a new price for his release.
Some of those who cannot pay their captors are reportedly killed or left to starve to death, the IOM said. When migrants die or are released, others are purchased to replace them.
'Valley of tears'
The agency said migrants are buried without being identified, with families back home uncertain of their fate.
"The situation is dire," Mohammed Abdiker, IOM's director of operations and emergencies, who recently returned from a visit to Libya's capital, Tripoli, said in a statement, calling Libya a "valley of tears" for many refugees and migrants.
"What we know is that migrants who fall into the hands of smugglers face systematic malnutrition, sexual abuse and even murder," he added.
"Last year we learned 14 migrants died in a single month in one of those locations, just from disease and malnutrition. We are hearing about mass graves in the desert."
To warn potential migrants, the IOM is spreading testimonies of victims through social media and local radio stations.
Libya is the main gateway for people attempting to reach Europe by sea, with more than 150,000 people making the crossing in each of the past three years.
So far this year an estimated 26,886 migrants have crossed to Italy, over 7,000 more than during the same period in 2016.
More than 600 are known to have died at sea, while an unknown number perish during their journey north through the desert.
'HORRIBLE STORIES'
"Over the past few days, I have discussed these stories with several who told me horrible stories."
"They all confirmed the risks of been sold as slaves in squares or garages in Sabha, either by their drivers or by locals who recruit the migrants for daily jobs in town, often in construction, and later, instead of paying them, sell their victims to new buyers."
"Some migrants - mostly Nigerians, Ghanaians and Gambians - are forced to work for the kidnappers/slave traders as guards in the ransom houses or in the 'market' itself."
IOM Niger staffer
SOURCE 2.
Additional links:
-Previous posts (by me) on the subject of migration to Europe are here, here, and here.
-Why are people trying to reach Europe (and elsewhere) in such numbers?
"After Syria, Eritrea provides the second largest number of people looking to migrate to Europe. One in 10 of all prospective migrants to Europe are Eritrean, and the UN estimates around 4,000 people leave the country every month." (Source and more information on this is here.)
More information on the situation in Eritrea is also here.