[1]
CNN
GIRL, 11, SURVIVES MIGRANT SHIPWRECK BY CLINGING TO
TIRE TUBES FOR 3 DAYS
12 DECEMBER 2024
An 11-year-old girl has been found clinging to tire tubes off the Italian coast after the migrant boat she was on sank three days earlier.
The girl is from Sierra Leone and has been named as “Yasmine” in Italian media.
She was found with a life jacket in the Mediterranean Sea early Wednesday morning by the crew of Trotamar II rescue vessel, which is run by the German NGO Compass Collective.
She told rescuers that the boat had left Sfax in Tunisia over the weekend with around 45 people on board, including her young brother, according to a statement from the rescue charity German NGO Compass Collective.
A storm in the area at the time had halted operations for several NGO rescue vessels around the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The girl said two others had initially survived when the metal boat overturned in the storm, but they disappeared into the water hours before she was rescued. All other migrants are presumed dead.
Trotamar III skipper Matthias Wiedenlübbert said they heard her cries in the darkness around 3:20 a.m. Wednesday (9:20 p.m. ET Tuesday). The boat, which had been on its way to another rescue, started patrolling the area after spotting debris from the capsized vessel.
“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice even though the engine was running,” he said. “And of course we looked for other survivors. But after the day-long storm with over 23 knots and 2.5-meter-high waves, it was hopeless.”
The girl was rushed to Lampedusa where she is being treated for hypothermia. She is expected to survive, according to the Red Cross, which manages the migrant center on the island.
The same night, the NGO distributed lifejackets to another boat in distress with 53 people on board before alerting Italian authorities of its location. It is not clear if those people were rescued.
Crew member Katja Tempel said: “Even during storms, people are forced to use risky escape routes across the Mediterranean. We need safe passage for refugees and an open Europe that welcomes people and gives them easy access to the asylum system. Drowning in the Mediterranean is not an option.”
More than 64,000 people have been rescued in the Central Mediterranean trying to reach Italy between January 1 and December 11, according to government statistics. Of those, 7,879 have been unaccompanied minors.
The miraculous rescue has reignited the debate about providing safe corridors for those seeking asylum in Europe. Earlier this year, Italy attempted to open migrant processing centers in Albania, but their legality has been caught up in the Italian court system.
END
[2]
“It was an incredible coincidence that we heard the child’s voice even though the engine was running,” he said. “And of course we looked for other survivors. But after the day-long storm with over 23 knots and 2.5-meter-high waves, it was hopeless.”
CNN
GIRL, 11, SURVIVES MIGRANT SHIPWRECK BY CLINGING TO
TIRE TUBES FOR 3 DAYS
12 DECEMBER 2024
SEE FOR THE WHOLE ARTICLE, NOTE 1
[3]
”A majority of respondents said that the Netherlands must make room for “real” refugees, but many don’t think that applies to the people currently seeking asylum in the Netherlands. Many voters describe asylum seekers as “fortune seekers,” “fake refugees” and refer to “large suitcases in Ter Apel,” with the idea that “a real refugee comes with little clothing.”
NL TIMES
EMAPTHY FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS PLUMMETING AMONG
DUTCH VOTERS
4 JUNE 2024
The Netherlands’ self-image as an open, compassionate country took a big blow when Geert Wilders and his PVV won the parliamentary elections at the end of November, and anti-asylum seeker sentiment has only grown since then. In the autumn, half of voters considered it a moral duty to take in asylum seekers, now, it is 39 percent. Nearly half want to reintroduce border controls within the European Union, the Volkskrant reports based on research it commissioned from Ipsos I&O.
There is a clear difference in political preference and how voters feel about asylum seekers. The more right-wing the voters, the more concerns they have about immigration. For example, 91 percent of PVV voters think immigration is the biggest problem of our time, compared to only 31 percent of GroenLinks-PvdA voters, who are far more concerned about the climate crisis.
According to Gianna Maria Eick, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved in this research, the immigration debate is over-polarized. “The politics are not in line with the facts.” For example, many right-wing voters have the idea that the Netherlands takes in far more asylum seekers than other EU countries, while in fact, the Netherlands is right in the middle, taking in slightly fewer asylum seekers per 1 million residents than the EU average.
But 78 percent of PVV voters think the Netherlands takes in (far) more asylum seekers than other countries. The same is true for 72 percent of BBB voters, 62 percent of VVD voters, and 59 percent of NSC voters. “That misconception is, therefore, present in all parties that form the new coalition,” Eick said. “At the same time, one in three voters of GroenLinks-PvdA underestimates the number of asylum seekers.”
A majority of respondents said that the Netherlands must make room for “real” refugees, but many don’t think that applies to the people currently seeking asylum in the Netherlands. Many voters describe asylum seekers as “fortune seekers,” “fake refugees” and refer to “large suitcases in Ter Apel,” with the idea that “a real refugee comes with little clothing.”
This image seems to be strongly influenced by what politicians have called “safe-landers” – asylum seekers from countries the Netherlands considers “safe” and who stand little chance of their application being approved in the Netherlands. In reality, only 4 percent of asylum seekers in the Netherlands come from a safe country. But reports about the nuisance this group causes in villages like Ter Apel color the perception. According to the Volkskrant, many voters have the feeling that asylum seekers abuse Dutch “hospitality” and facilities.
According to political scientist Eick, this fear that asylum seekers will steal facilities or get priority touches on “welfare chauvinism”—the position that newcomers to the country have less right to the welfare state. This sentiment is represented throughout Europe but is strikingly strong in the Netherlands and has grown here while it decreased slightly in other EU countries in the past two decades. Over half of Dutch voters think immigrants should only have access to the welfare state once they have been naturalized or not at all. Only in Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Russia do voters want to be stricter.
“An economic explanation is often looked at, but that does not apply here,” Eick said. The Netherlands is a prosperous country with low unemployment and high incomes. Dutch also don’t spend the most on public facilities – the Netherlands is once again right around the average of the Western countries worldwide. According to Eick, this welfare chauvinism in the Netherlands is at least partly due to politicians like Geert Wilders. “He has been dominant for about 20 years with his anti-migration rhetoric. He feeds the idea that many problems are caused by newcomers.”
Hein de Haas, a migration expert and author of the book Hoe migratie echt werkt, told the Volkskrant that there is no one-to-one relationship between the popularity of anti-immigration parties and the actual problems. “In fact, in the year that the PVV achieved its first election victory, we had a negative migration balance. So it is not about the numbers, but about political image.”
According to De Haas, more asylum seekers have come to the Netherlands in recent years than in the preceding pandemic years, but asylum migration always happens in waves, and there is no structural increase. The high migration figure of the past two years is driven by Ukrainian refugees (100,000) and migrant workers, at least 900,000 of whom worked in the Netherlands last year.
The biggest driver behind migration is labor, the scientist said. “But politicians have used a distraction tactic to avoid talking about that because that goes directly against the economic agenda of, for example, the VVD and BBB.” So they focused their ire on asylum seekers, De Haas said. “And if voters hear often enough in talk shows that asylum migration is a problem, it will automatically become a lived reality.”
END
[4]
NL TIMES
EMAPTHY FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS PLUMMETING AMONG
DUTCH VOTERS
4 JUNE 2024
SEE FOR WHOLE ARTICLE, NOTE 3