Keep sending migrants back to Afghanistan, six European countries tell EU Commission

As Taliban retake the country, Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Germany speak of ‘urgent need to perform voluntary and non-voluntary returns to Afghanistan’ GOVERNMENT ministers from six European countries have called on the EU leadership to continue returning migrants to Afghanistan — even as the religious extremist Taliban group’s forces retake large swathes

Alan Kurdi refugee rescue ship heads to France after Italy refuses to help

AN NGO refugee rescue ship carrying 125 people is bound for France after several Mediterranean nations ignored its calls for help for five days. The Alan Kurdi, operated by German charity Sea Eye, saved the lives of 133 people when it picked them up from three separate boats in the central Mediterranean at the weekend.

‘I don’t know the words to describe the rescue’

Kemo Kebbeh, a refugee who crossed the desert to Libya before being rescued in the Mediterranean from a sinking dingy, tells The Civil Fleet about his journey “OUR boat was taking on water. Everybody was screaming. We were desperate. We didn’t know what to do,” Kemo Kebbeh tells me about the time he escaped Libya.

Germany orders detention of activists’ ships

Mare Liberum says it won’t accept the blockade of its human rights mission in the Aegean Sea GERMANY delivered a devastating blow today to a human rights organisation operating in the Aegean Sea by ordering the detention of its ships. Not-for-profit association Mare Liberum told the German Transport Ministry last week that it intended to

‘We are going to sail.’ Activists ready to defy German law designed to stop them

Mare Liberum say they don’t intend to provoke the German transport ministry, but they must go back to monitoring Greece’s illegal migrant pushbacks “WE ARE going to sail,” human rights activists told the Star yesterday despite the German government’s recent law changes aimed at stopping them. In June the country’s transport ministry blocked German-flagged humanitarian

NGO rescuers demand new EU Council presidency compels member states to abide by refugee laws

Sea Watch and Mare Liberum’s demands include defunding Frontex, reforming the Dublin Regulation, ending support for the Libyan Coastguard, extending Free Movement and more THE GERMAN government must use the next six months as president of the Council of the European Union to adopt a human rights-based approach to migration, civil refugee rescue organisations demanded

Germany condemned for introducing new regulations aimed at halting NGO humanitarian ships

EUROPEAN states’ crackdown on NGO refugee rescue ships operating in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas escalated today when three German charities were told that new regulations bar their ships from sailing. The three organisations, Mare Liberum, Mission Lifeline and ResQShip, issued a joint statement torday condemning the German Transport Ministry’s amendment of safety regulations relating