Tag Archives: Migrants

Greece must urgently move vulnerable migrants from island camp

FILE PHOTO: Refugees and migrants from the camp of Moria shout slogans in front of riot police during a protest over the camp's conditions, near the city of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, May 26, 2018. REUTERS/Elias Marcou/File Photo

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece should urgently move children and other vulnerable migrants and refugees from its most overcrowded island camp to the mainland or to other EU countries for the sake of their mental and physical health, the MSF aid agency said on Monday.

The appeal from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) came days after the governor of the region where the Moria camp is based said it should be closed next month unless authorities clean up “uncontrollable amounts of waste”.

MSF said it had witnessed an unprecedented health crisis in the camp, Greece’s biggest and home to some 9,000 migrants, a third of whom are children. It said many teenagers had attempted to commit suicide or were harming themselves on a weekly basis.

Other children suffer from elective mutism, panic attacks and anxiety, it said in a statement.

“This is the third year that MSF has been calling on the Greek authorities and the EU to take responsibility for their collective failures,” the agency said.

“It is time to immediately evacuate the most vulnerable to safe accommodation in other European countries.”

The migrants in the camp, which is on the island of Lesbos, are housed in shipping containers and flimsy tents in conditions widely criticized as falling short of basic standards.

Greece is a gateway into the European Union for hundreds of thousands of refugees who have arrived since 2015 from Syria and other war-ravaged countries in the Middle East and from Africa.

Athens, which exited the biggest bailout in economic history in August, is struggling to handle the thousands of refugees who are stranded on its islands.

It has criticized Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis and some EU member states for being reluctant to share their burden.

Last week, 19 non-governmental organizations urged Greece to take action to alleviate the plight of refugees in all its island camps, not just Moria, to render them more fit for human habitation. The total number of migrants and refugees holed up in the island camps exceeds 17,000.

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Situation at ‘boiling point’ at refugee center on Greek island: U.N.

FILE PHOTO: Refugees and migrants from the camp of Moria stand in front of riot police during a protest over the camp's conditions, near the city of Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos, May 26, 2018. REUTERS/Elias Marcou

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations refugee agency urged Greece on Friday to speed up transfers of eligible asylum-seekers from Aegean islands to the mainland, saying conditions at an overcrowded Lesbos reception center were “reaching boiling point”.

Lesbos, not far from Turkey in the northeastern Aegean Sea, was the preferred entry point into the European Union in 2015 for nearly a million Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis.

Those three groups still comprise more than 70 percent of those arriving in Greece, and typically have high recognition rates for their asylum claims, but the overall flow is far less than in previous years, UNHCR said.

Although 1,350 refugees and asylum seekers were transferred to mainland sites in August, this failed to ease pressure as an average of 114 people arrived daily during the month, it said.

“The situation is reaching boiling point at the Moria reception identification center on Lesbos, where more than 7,000 asylum seekers and migrants are crammed into shelters built to accommodate just 2,000 people,” Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a Geneva briefing.

Some have been there for over six months and one quarter are children, he said. A reception center on Samos island holds 2,700, nearly four times the number it was designed for, while centers on Chios and Kos are at close to double their capacity.

“We are particularly concerned about woefully inadequate sanitary facilities, fighting amongst frustrated communities, rising levels of sexual harassment and assaults and the increasing need for medical and psycho-social care,” he said.

Yaxley could not confirm aid agency reports of possible suicide attempts among youth at the centers but said:

“There are an increasing number of children who are presenting with mental health issues. The available response and treatment is woefully inadequate at the moment.”

The Greek government has made previous commitments to transfer people to shelters on the mainland, and has received European Union funding for it, Yaxley said.

But other EU countries must help “frontline states” including Greece, Italy and Spain who receive most of the refugees and migrants, he said, adding:

“The people arriving in Europe today is a very manageable situation; it’s a question of political will.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Crisis moment approaching in Venezuelan exodus: U.N. agency

Venezuelan migrants queue to get the needed paperwork for a temporary residency permit at Interpol headquarters in Lima, Peru August 21, 2018. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo

GENEVA (Reuters) – The exodus of migrants from Venezuela is building towards a “crisis moment” comparable to events involving refugees in the Mediterranean, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.

Growing numbers are fleeing economic meltdown and political turmoil in Venezuela, threatening to overwhelm neighboring countries. Officials from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru will meet in Bogota next week to seek a way forward.

Ecuador and Peru have this month tightened entry rules for Venezuelans, requiring them to carry valid passports instead of just national ID cards. While in Brazil, rioters drove hundreds back over the border.

Describing those events as early warning signs, International Organization for Migration (IOM) spokesman Joel Millman said funding and means of managing the outflow must be mobilized.

“This is building to a crisis moment that we’ve seen in other parts of the world, particularly in the Mediterranean,” he told a news briefing.

On Thursday, the IOM and U.N. refugee agency UNHCR called on Latin American countries to ease entry for Venezuelans, more than 1.6 million of whom have left since 2015.

UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said on Friday that governments had made “commendable” efforts despite some reception capacities and services being overwhelmed.

But “some disturbing images” had emerged from the region in the past week. “Those increase stigmatization of those who are forced to flee, they put at risk also the efforts for their integration,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Bosnia’s security minister wants army at border to curb entry of migrants

FILE PHOTO: Migrants and Bosnian police eye one another in Velika Kladusa, Bosnia, near the border with Croatia, June 18, 2018. REUTERS/Antonio Bronic/File Photo

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s security minister said on Wednesday he would seek legislative changes to enable border deployments of the army to help stop migrants entering the impoverished country en route to European Union territory.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants who streamed northwards through the Balkans to EU territory in 2015 largely bypassed Bosnia. But the ex-Yugoslav republic now finds itself struggling to accommodate about 5,000 people intent on making their way via neighboring Croatia to affluent EU countries further north.

More than 9,000 people from Asia and North Africa have entered Bosnia from Serbia and Montenegro since the beginning of 2018, including 3,000 over the past month, and a similar number have managed to cross into EU member Croatia.

“I am planning to initiate changes to the law that will provide for the deployment of the army in the protection of our borders,” Security Minister Dragan Mektic told reporters.

With only two official asylum and refugee centers, the small country of 3.5 million people – which aspires to EU membership – is hardpressed to accommodate the migrants.

New facilities are planned pending a deal among Bosnia’s multi-layered, semi-autonomous regional governments, many of which reject hosting migrants on their territory.

Many migrants are staying in improvised shelters, tents and dilapidated buildings, lacking running water and toilets, especially in the northwestern towns of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, near the Croatian border.

Red Cross officials have voiced concern over worsening conditions for thousands of migrants stranded in Bosnia and many say the government is failing to adequately protect the rights of refugees.

The authorities of Bihac and Velika Kladusa, their resources stretched and citing health and security risks, plan to stage a protest in front of the central government building in the capital Sarajevo on Thursday to demand an urgent solution to the problem.

“We (Bosnia) have become the collateral damage of an EU problem. We will not allow the country to become a hot spot,” said Mektic. “The EU has failed this test, for it has allowed criminals and people smugglers to run this process instead of its own institutions.”

He said he expected the European Commission to soon draft the text of an agreement that would allow deployments of officers from the EU border agency Frontex to Bosnia to help it curb migration and organized crime.

(Reporting by Maja Zuvela; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Malta detains second charity ship as death toll at sea rises

Claus-Peter Reisch, the captain of the charity ship MV Lifeline, leaves the court after an arraignment on charges related to improper ship registration at the Courts of Justice in Valletta, Malta July 2, 2018. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

By Chris Scicluna

VALLETTA (Reuters) – For the second time in a week, Malta on Monday detained a humanitarian vessel that normally rescues boat migrants off the coast of Libya, where two shipwrecks have claimed the lives of as many as 200 people in recent days.

The Sea Watch 3 vessel, operated by a German charity, requested to leave port after undergoing maintenance and the port authority refused, a Sea Watch spokeswoman said. The port authorities said only that the vessel’s status was under review.

Another humanitarian ship, Lifeline, was detained last week after Malta for the first time in years opened its port to a large number of migrants, some 230, when Italy refused it safe haven. A new Italian government including the League, a far right anti-immigrant party, took power last month and has shut Italian ports to charity ships carrying migrants.

Lifeline’s captain attended a court hearing in Malta on Monday in which the prosecutor said the ship was not properly registered. The groups operating both ships deny any wrongdoing.

“They are creating the conditions to make it impossible for non-governmental groups to operate at sea,” Sea Watch’s Giorgia Linardi said. “Against this background, people are dying and no one seems to care.”

In two separate incidents, as many as 204 migrants have drowned since Friday after being packed into unsafe vessels by smugglers, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) has said. The incidents raised the toll for this year above 1,000 people lost at sea.

The humanitarian groups say they are being wrongly targeted by governments — Malta and Italy — that are seeking to stem migrant arrivals to Europe, and they say the policy spearheaded by the new Italian government is causing deaths.

Italy’s far-right interior minister says the rescue ships are colluding with Libyan smugglers, a charge never proven in court and denied by the rescuers. Malta said last week it would no longer provide logistical support to the vessels under the suspicion they were acting illegally.

Crew members of NGO Sea-Watch protest outside the Courts of Justice during the arraignment of Claus-Peter Reisch, the captain of the charity ship MV Lifeline in Valletta, Malta July 2, 2018. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

Crew members of NGO Sea-Watch protest outside the Courts of Justice during the arraignment of Claus-Peter Reisch, the captain of the charity ship MV Lifeline in Valletta, Malta July 2, 2018. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

The flow of migrants into Europe has abated since a 2015 peak, with the number attempting the dangerous sea crossing from North Africa to Italy falling to tens of thousands from hundreds of thousands. The other main route, from Turkey to Greece, used by more than a million people in 2015, was shut two years ago.

But the journey by land through the Sahara and then across the Mediterranean remains world’s deadliest migration route, and as polarizing as ever in European politics. In addition to Italy, anti-immigrant parties are now firmly entrenched in the ex-Communist states of central Europe and won seats in the German parliament for the first time since the 1940s last year.

In Germany, the issue threatens to bring down Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition.

SPAIN

A humanitarian boat run by Spanish charity Proactiva Open Arms is heading for Spain carrying 59 migrants after Italy and Malta refused it a port, the third such case in less than a month.

During a hearing on Monday, Malta police inspector Mario Haber questioned whether the Lifeline ship, which says it operates under a Dutch flag, should have been registered as a yacht instead of a commercial vessel.

“The yacht is not registered with the Netherlands. It is registered with a Dutch yacht club but it isn’t the flag state,” Haber said. The court appointed “experts” to board the ship and inspect its contents, including its computers, with the prosecution saying it could not rule out charges.

Magistrate Joe Mifsud set bail at 10,000 euros for Lifeline captain Claus-Peter Reisch, adding that he must stay on his ship and cannot leave the small island state. Another hearing will be held on Thursday.

“What kind of world are we living in when sea rescuers are criminalized?” Reisch said in a statement before the hearing.

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome; Writing by Steve Scherer; Editing by Peter Graff)

Sweden’s far-right eyes election gains as gang violence rises

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand at the scene of an explosion after what is believed to have been a robbery attempt on an ATM, in Genarp, southern Sweden March 21, 2016. REUTERS/Johan Nilsson/TT News Agency/File Photo

By Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A surge in gang violence has stirred anti-immigration sentiment before an election in Sweden, putting a far-right party on course for big gains in one of Europe’s most liberal countries.

Dozens of people have been killed in the past two years in attacks in the capital Stockholm and other big cities by gangs that are mostly from run-down suburbs dominated by immigrants.

In the latest bloodshed, three men were shot dead and three were wounded outside an internet cafe in the city of Malmo on June 18. A fourth man was shot dead days later and another man survived because he was wearing a bullet-proof vest.

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police technicians examine the car which people who were injured were traveling in, after a shooting in southern Malmo, Sweden September 25, 2016. TT News Agency/Emil Langvad via Reuters/File Photo

With public calls growing for tougher policies on crime and immigration, support has risen for the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots that wants to freeze immigration and to hold a referendum on Sweden’s membership of the European Union.

Their worried mainstream rivals have started moving to the right on crime and immigration to try to counter the Sweden Democrats’ threat in the Sept. 9 election. But so far, they are playing into the hands of the far-right.

“Right now they (mainstream parties) are competing over who can set out the most restrictive policies,” said Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, whose Green Party is part of a minority government led by the Social Democratic Party.

“It clearly benefits the Sweden Democrats.”

Opinion polls put the Sweden Democrats on about 20 percent support, up from the 13 percent of votes they secured in the 2014 election and the 5.7 percent which saw them enter parliament for the first time in 2010.

The Sweden Democrats’ rise on the back of anti-immigration sentiment mirrors gains for right-wing, populist and anti-establishment parties in other European countries such as Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria.

Immigration has risen back up the political agenda since far-right parties entered coalition governments in Austria and Italy, and will be discussed at a summit in Brussels this week.

Though the Sweden Democrats are unlikely to win power, the growing popularity for a party opposed to the EU is a concern for Brussels although Swedes broadly support EU membership, polls show.

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand guard at a cordoned area after a masked man attacked people with a sword at a school in Trollhattan, western Sweden October 22, 2015. REUTERS/Bjorn Larsson Rosvall/TT News Agency/File Photo

BACKLASH

Five years ago, Sweden saw itself as a “humanitarian superpower” that generously welcomed migrants, many of them fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa.

But as in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has been cracking under pressure from her coalition partners to tighten immigration curbs, Sweden’s government now faces a backlash over the scale of immigration.

About 400,000 people have sought asylum in the wealthy Scandinavian country of 10 million since 2012, and it took in 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015 alone. Some voters fear schools, hospitals and welfare services cannot cope, and Sweden’s reputation for tolerance and social equality is threatened.

The Sweden Democrats still trail the Social Democratic Party but has overtaken the main opposition Moderates in many polls. All mainstream parties have ruled out working with them.

But they could emerge from the election as kingmakers, and a strong election showing could force the next government to take their views into consideration when shaping policy.

Their policies include a total freeze on asylum seekers and accepting refugees only from Sweden’s neighbors in the future. They also want tougher penalties for crime and more powers for police, and say tax cuts and higher spending on welfare could be funded by cutting the immigration budget.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the Sweden Democratic party, has described the situation as “pretty fantastic”.

“We are dominating the debate even though no one will talk to us,” he told party members.

RUTHLESS CRIMINAL UNDERCLASS

There were 129 shootings in Stockholm in 2017. Nineteen people were killed in the attacks, almost twice as many as in 2016, according to official figures.

In Malmo, where about 45 percent of the 330,000 inhabitants have an immigrant background, police say three or four gangs are operating. Swedish media say nine people have been shot dead in the city this year after 21 in the previous two year-period.

A 2017 police report into Sweden’s most deprived areas pointed to a heavily armed and ruthless criminal underclass.

All the areas identified by police are socially deprived suburbs with large immigrant populations, places where poverty and long-term youth unemployment are big problems.

Among these is the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby, where two men walked into a pizzeria packed with families in January and shot a man dead in what police said was a gang killing.

When it was built in the 1970s, Rinkeby was a symbol of modernity, part of what became known as Sweden’s Million Homes project to replace run-down inner-city slums with clean, well-planned suburbs with their own schools, shops and healthcare facilities.

With ninety-one percent of its 16,000 inhabitants born abroad or to parents born outside Sweden, only half of them working, the area is now synonymous with failed integration, unemployment and social exclusion.

Police say people in Rinkeby live in fear of a group known as the Death Patrol gang.

“A few individuals have kept an entire neighborhood terrified,” said Mohamed Nuur, 26, a local Social Democrat politician. Witnesses of the pizzeria shooting were afraid to testify against the suspects, he said.

Rinkeby was one of several suburbs in northern Stockholm hit by riots in 2013 which fueled debate about how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and the influx of immigrants, issues raised by urban violence in France in 2005 and Britain in 2011.

“RIGHT-WING PATH”

Many Swedes were horrified in early 2017 when U.S. President Donald Trump linked immigration to rising crime in Sweden, but an increasing number now agree with him.

The Sweden Democrats have succeeded in linking the two in the minds of many voters, even though official statistics show no correlation between overall levels of crime and immigration.

Sweden has one of the highest levels of lethal gun violence in Europe, World Health Organisation data showed. But while the number of foreign-born citizens has risen for decades, murder rates are roughly flat.

The government denies it has lost control but Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has not ruled out sending the military into problem areas.

Moving to the right, he has tried to deal with the threat posed by the Sweden Democrats by saying immigration – down to 26,000 in 2017 – should halve from last year’s level.

The government has also proposed tougher punishments for gun crimes and sexual assaults, wants to stop financial support for undocumented foreigners, put more of those whose identity is unclear in holding centers and accelerate repatriation of failed asylum seekers.

The Moderates have also toughened their stance on crime and immigration, promising a crackdown on welfare for asylum seekers and a ban on begging. Both main parties say Sweden will not return to liberal asylum rules suspended in 2015.

“Sweden is going down a more right-wing path,” said Nick Aylott, a political scientist at Sodertorn University said. “It is almost impossible to avoid according some sort of influence to a party with around 20 percent of the vote.”

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Spain’s population grows for second straight year due to immigration

FILE PHOTO: The border fence separating Spain's northern enclave Ceuta and Morocco is seen from Ceuta, Spain, June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Juan Medina/File Photo

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s population rose for the second straight year in 2017, after having fallen between 2012 and 2015 in the midst of an economic downturn, as an increase in foreigners offset a fall in the number of Spaniards, official data showed on Monday.

The figures come as Europe grapples with a rising influx of migrants, mostly from north Africa and war-torn countries such as Syria, after Mediterranean arrivals spiked in 2015. Sixteen EU leaders met for emergency talks in Brussels on Sunday to find a “European solution” to the issue.

The population of Spain increased to 46.66 million to Jan. 1, 2018, a rise of 132,263 people than a year earlier, the highest since Jan. 1 2013, the National Statistics Institute reported.

Spain saw a net increase of migrants arriving in the country of 146,604 people, after the arrival of almost half a million people last year, the largest migrant influx in 10 years, the data showed.

The total number of deaths in Spain in 2017 outpaced the number of births at the fastest pace since records began in 1941, data showed last week as the number of births dropped 4.5 percent while the number of deaths rose 3.2 percent.

The largest increases in migrants came from Venezuela, Colombia, Italy and Morocco, while the largest decreases were from Romania, Britain and Ecuador, INE said.

(Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Jesús Aguado, William Maclean)

Bulgaria to propose immediate closure of EU borders to migrants

Bulgarian border policemen stand near the barbed wire fence constructed on the Bulgarian-Turkish border, near Lesovo, Bulgaria September 14, 2016. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria will propose the immediate closure of the European Union’s external borders to migrants and the setting up of centers for war refugees outside its territory at the EU’s weekend mini-summit on migration.

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said once migrant inflows were stemmed, the EU should deal with the thousands of migrants already in Europe, taking care of people fleeing conflict and sending the rest home.

“I will insist on the immediate closure of the external borders of the whole European Union,” Borissov said in a surprise visit to parliament, following an opposition call for information on Bulgaria’s position on migration.

He said centers should be set up in Libya and Turkey to deal with migrants before they reached Europe.

Bulgaria, which holds the European Union presidency, hopes that by halting migrant inflows the bloc may also ease the concerns of Central European countries that are opposing calls to accept a quota of migrants who have entered the EU since 2015 in order to share the burden around the bloc.

“Their fear is that there are no guarantees that this process will not continue,” Borissov said.

He said he would hold talks again with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over the issue.

On Thursday, leaders of the Visegrad Four countries Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic said they would skip the smaller summit on Sunday ahead of a full 28-member EU summit next week.

On Friday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel downplayed expectations of a major breakthrough being reached at Sunday’s meeting. Borissov said he did not expect that any documents would be signed.

(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Italy tells rescue ship to take migrants to the Netherlands

Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini looks on during the news conference at the Viminale in Rome, Italy, June 20, 2018. REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini

By Steve Scherer and Angelo Amante

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s anti-immigrant interior minister accused a German charity on Thursday of ignoring coastguard orders when its Dutch-flagged ship picked up 226 migrants off Libya’s coast and he said they should be taken to the Netherlands not Italy.

Earlier this month Matteo Salvini pledged to no longer let charity ships offload rescued migrants in Italy, leaving the Gibraltar-flagged Aquarius stranded at sea for several days with more than 600 migrants until Spain offered them safe haven.

On Thursday, Mission Lifeline, a charity based in Dresden, Germany, pulled migrants off two rubber boats in international waters even though it was told by Italy that Libya’s coastguard was coming to get them, a spokesman for the charity said. They would not have been safe if taken back to Libya, he said.

Salvini, also leader of the anti-immigrant League party, addressed the charity in a Facebook video: “You have intentionally not listened to Italian or Libyan authorities. Good. Then take this load of human beings to the Netherlands.”

International maritime guidelines say that people rescued at sea should be taken to the nearest “place of safety”.

The United Nations and other humanitarian agencies do not deem Libya “a place of safety” because they say migrants there are subject to indefinite detention, physical abuse, forced labor and extortion.

A Lifeline statement indicated its vessel was heading northwards with the 226 migrants and called on “the competent authorities to swiftly react according to their obligation to designate a place of safety”.

“NOT DUTCH RESPONSIBILITY”

“They have a Dutch flag, but they are not registered in the Netherlands, and therefore are not under Dutch state flag responsibility,” Dutch Foreign Ministry spokesman Lennart Wegewijs said in response, without elaborating.

Italian Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said he had asked the coastguard to investigate state flag issue.

Lifeline spokesman Axel Steier said the migrants aboard its boat included 14 women and four small children. “We didn’t want to wait for the Libyan coastguard because people were in danger,” Steier told Reuters.

Waiting for the Libyans would have constituted allowing “an illegal pushback” of refugees to a country where they are not safe, he added.

With its hard line on rescue boats, Italy’s new populist government has thrust migration back onto the European Union agenda. Italy has seen more than 640,000 land on its shores since 2014 and is currently sheltering 170,000 asylum seekers.

Germany is also seeking to restrict asylum-seekers’ movement in the bloc. An emergency “mini-summit” has been called for Brussels on Sunday to discuss immigration ahead of a full, 28-state EU summit on June 28-29.

Toninelli, who oversees Italy’s ports and coastguard, had called last weekend on the Netherlands to recall Lifeline and another Dutch-flagged ship, Seefuchs. On Thursday, Toninelli said Lifeline was acting “outside of international law”.

“The transport minister is lying,” Steier shot back. “We always act in line with international law. Always.”

Salvini has denounced the charity ships as “deputy traffickers”, suggesting they profit from the rescues.

Earlier this week a tribunal in Palermo shelved an inquiry into whether German charity Sea Watch and Spain’s Proactiva Open Arms were in contact with smugglers, saying no evidence was found.

(Additional reporting by Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Hungary approves ‘STOP Soros’ law, defying EU, rights groups

Two soldiers stand in front of the Hungarian Parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, May 29, 2018. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

By Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary’s parliament on Wednesday approved a package of bills that criminalises some help given to illegal immigrants, defying the European Union and human rights groups and narrowing the scope for action by non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a vocal critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migrant policy and has led eastern European opposition to EU quotas that aimed to distribute asylum seekers around the bloc.

Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party tightened its grip on parliament in an April election fought on a fiercely anti-immigration platform that demonised U.S. billionaire George Soros and liberal NGOs he backs. Orban accuses Soros of encouraging mass immigration to undermine Europe, a charge Soros denies.

Under the new law, officially called “STOP Soros”, individuals or groups who help migrants not entitled to protection to submit requests for asylum or who help illegal migrants gain status to stay in Hungary will be liable to prison terms.

“The Hungarian people rightfully expects the government to use all means necessary to combat illegal immigration and the activities that aid it,” Interior Minister Sandor Pinter wrote in a justification attached to the draft legislation.

“The STOP Soros package of bills serves that goal, making the organisation of illegal immigration a criminal offence. We want to use the bills to stop Hungary from becoming a country of immigrants,” he said.

Parliament, where Fidesz has a two-thirds majority, also passed on Wednesday a constitutional amendment to state that an “alien population” cannot be settled in Hungary – a swipe at Brussels over its quota plan.

TOUGH STANCE IS VOTE-WINNER

Immigration has become a major concern for voters across the European Union, helping to propel anti-migrant populists to power in Italy and Austria and threatening to fracture Merkel’s three-month-old coalition in Germany.

Orban has drummed up support for his tough measures by exploiting Hungarians’ memories of the large numbers of mostly Muslim migrants fleeing conflicts in the Middle East who surged into the country in the summer of 2015.

The vast majority of them moved on to wealthier western European countries, but Orban has branded the migrants a threat to Europe’s Christian civilisation and built a border fence along Hungary’s southern borders to deter more from coming.

Hungarian statistics show 3,555 refugees living in Hungary, a country of 10 million, as of April. Only 342 people were registered as asylum seekers in the first four months of this year, mostly from the Middle East, and 279 were approved.

The Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a rights group that often represents migrants, said on Wednesday the narrowing definition of who counts as a refugee essentially means nobody entering Hungary by land would be entitled to such treatment.

“Instead of giving protection against persecution, the Hungarian government has decided to join the ranks of the persecutors,” Helsinki Committee Co-Chair Marta Pardavi said.

The Orban government expects possible legal action by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, over the new law.

Two leading European rights bodies, the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have criticised Hungary’s new law as “arbitrary” and vague and said it contravenes European law.

The Venice Commission, an expert body at the Council of Europe, had asked Hungary to refrain from approving the new law until a report it co-authored with the OSCE is published.

Orban has also tightened state control over the media, major business sectors and the courts since taking power in 2010.

In other constitutional changes approved on Wednesday, parliament agreed to set up a new judicial branch for administrative cases that critics say may increase political influence over judges. Another change narrowed the right to free expression and assembly.

(Reporting by Marton Dunai; Editing by Gareth Jones)