German Chancellor Angela Merkel survived a bruising challenge to her authority with a compromise deal on immigration but faced charges Tuesday that it spelt a final farewell to her welcoming stance toward refugees. In high-stakes crisis talks overnight, Merkel had put to rest for now a dangerous row with her hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer […]
refugees
Traffickers torture, kill migrants trying to escape refugee camp in Libya
Photo: AFP More than 12 migrants were shot dead by human traffickers last week while trying to escape a camp in Libya, where some were subjected to “torture abuse”, the United Nations said Friday. The incident, previously reported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and local sources, occurred on May 23 in the town of Bani […]
UN to get access to war-stricken Rakhine state in Myanmar
The United Nations said Myanmar’s government agreed Thursday to grant it access to crisis-hit Rakhine state after months of wrangling over how to repatriate hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslim refugees. The western state has been largely sealed off after a bloody military-led campaign last year that has forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee to […]
‘Exit West’ – the doors will take us
There is an endless tension between the desire to leave your home and being coerced to do so. The coercion paves into a completely alien concept of what ‘home’ means, something Saeed and Nadia face in Mohsin Hamid’s (2017) novel, ‘Exit West’. If you’ve read the book, or even if you haven’t, this struggle sounds […]