I’m going to spend a week living less than forty miles from the Syrian border inside the largest refugee camp in Iraq. The Insider: Reggie Yates, BBC 2017
Since the war in Syria first began nearly 11 million people have left their homes in search of safety. ibid.
Smugglers operating within the camp offer an illegal service – taking refugees across the border into Turkey and beyond. It’s a vast criminal network stretching across Europe worth an estimated £4 billion. ibid.
Europe is a sort of pipe-dream, but it’s a dream that can all too easily get you killed. ibid.
On a wasteland by the ferry port ten thousand residents of the Jungle face eviction by the French authorities. This World: Calais, The End of the Jungle, caption, BBC 2017
‘It wasn’t the ideal place to put migrants whose only wish was to jump on a lorry to Great Britain.’ ibid. rozzer
‘They set up a roadblock. The police arrive in force. A second roadblock appears and a third one further up the road …’ ibid.
‘More than 30 migrants have died trying to jump on lorries.’ ibid.
‘To watch it burn down was quiet shocking.’ ibid. volunteer
‘Congo was the property of King Leopold II, the King of Belgium. It was mainly diamonds and gold that he was taking from the country. To get the gold, to get diamonds, he had to impose a quota on the locals … He did monstrous, horrible things in this country … After the Belgiums came independence. Now we became free … Before leaving, the Belgians had taken care to hide many minerals. And then they sent mercenaries just to recoop all the minerals and goods of the Belgians. They fought FRDC (Congolese army) and all the population of Congo had to run to Rwanda. So we became refugees.’ Bernard Kalume Buleri, interview Congo, My Precious, RT 2017
In the middle of the night the Italian coastguard had received reports that a boat carrying migrants from Africa was in trouble … More than 800 people were feared dead. Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil III: Unstoppable
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants on Europe’s shores threatened to tear the continent apart … Fences went up across Europe. ibid.
The European Council agreed a plan to share a limited number of migrants around Europe but it would only be done on a voluntary basis. ibid.
Civil war was now driving millions out of Syria creating the biggest wave of refugees to hit Europe since the Second World War. ibid.
The worst refugee crisis in central Europe for a generation. Divided States I: Europe, History 2019, news
According to the UN, over 5 million Syrians have been forced to flee their country since the war began in 2011. ibid. caption
Officials here this week reckon that only 40% of the people who set out from Vietnam by boat to reach Hong Kong ever make it. A Very British History s2e4: Whatever Happened to the Boat People? BBC 2020
40 years ago the world knew them as the Boat People – refugees who’d fled Vietnam. Some found safety in Britain. But scattered around the country, focusing on their future not their past, the new community became almost invisible. ibid.
In August 1945 at the end of the Second World War 300 children were flown from Prague to a remote corner of north-west England. They were all survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and were brought here as part of a remarkable scheme to rehabilitate child refugees. The Windermere Children: In Their Own Words, BBC 2021
This is Ali. He is an asylum seeker living in Glasgow. He’s come here seeking refuge from war. His days are spent wandering the city’s parks. For Ali, that home is here: McLay’s Guest House, room 43. The room is small, around 12 feet square. A tablet donated by a charity sits next to his bed. This is where he eats, where he sleeps, and where he spends most of his time. There is no fridge. Desperately Seeking Asylum, Samantha Poling reporting, BBC 2021
Ali is from Yemen in the Middle East. It’s a country in the midst of a brutal civil war. Since 2014 more than four million people have had to flee. Almost a quarter of a million have lost their lives as a result of the conflict. ibid.
There are more than 5,000 asylum seekers in Scotland and most of them in Glasgow. ibid.
‘Years before being interviewed.’ ibid. asylum lawyer
2015 was the deadliest year on record for migrants and refugees attempting to get into Europe. Over 3,700 people died, the majority on sea crossings between Libya and Italy, or Turkey and Greece. Walls of Shame: The Spanish-Moroccan Border, Al Jazeera 2016/2007
The Mediterranean enclave of Ceuta is one of the last vestiges of Spanish rule in northern Morocco. It’s been European for more than 500 years, and Madrid insists it will never relinquish control. ibid.
The crossing between Morocco and Spain has become a magnet for tens of thousands of workers and migrants, legal and illegal. For this is the backdoor into the prosperous European Union. ibid.
Another divide – a social division that is religious and economic between the wealthy Christian Spaniards and their poorer Muslim compatriots of Moroccan descent. ibid.
A double fence – most of it paid for by the European Union – four metres high, six kilometres long. ibid.
The Government in Bogotà had run out of funds to deal with the most dramatic expression of that crisis, the three million refugees driven out of their homes since the mid-1990s – the largest refugee population in the hemisphere and the third-largest anywhere in the world. Misha Glenny, McMafia
In 1979 a Frenchman called Bernard Kouchner who had founded Medicines sans Frontiers charted an old cargo ship. And he went to rescue thousands of starving refugees trapped on a tiny island – refugees that no-one else seemed to care about. They were fleeing from the new communist government that had taken over Vietnam. To many liberals in the West the communists had been heroes in their fight against America. Which meant that the refugees did not deserve to be helped. To Kouchner this was outrageous. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head IV: But What if the People are Stupid? BBCiplayer 2021
Fleeting war in one country only to battle to find safety in another. The families offering Ukrainians a warm welcome, but is the British system offering the same towards [those] seeking refuge. Tonight: Homes for Ukraine: Welcome to Britain? ITV 2022
Millions have been forced to flee their homes inspiring others to open theirs to offer a safe refuge. Here in the UK over 200,000 people have signed up to house Ukrainian refugees, but with many Ukrainians waiting weeks for visas, the government’s been accused of not matching the generosity of the public. ibid.
An event that’s had a huge impact on all our lives – the Partition of India. In 1947 the British divided India in two creating a newly independent India and a new country – Pakistan. People of different faiths turned on each other: seventy million people became refugees overnight and over a million lost their lives. India’s Partition: The Forgotten Story, BBC 2017
On 10th March 1975 North Vietnam launched a massive invasion into South Vietnam. Last Days in Vietnam, 2014
You saw ships with thousands of refugees. ibid.
For these parents the future is dangerously uncertain. They’ve fled from the Chinese Secret Police because of their role in the protests. And now they’re hiding from the British authorities who want to expel them for travelling on forged documents. World in Action: No Way Out 1990
But the people who should have helped them – the international agencies for refugee aid and western governments including Britain shunned them, misled them, lied about them and finally left them with no way out. ibid.
Your enemy is not the refugee. Your enemy is the one who made him a refugee. Willie Nelson