20th to 26th of June is dedicated to the Refugee Week, a week to celebrate the contributions Refugees make to enrich our communities and keep vital services like the NHS and social care functioning.
- The first vaccine against coronavirus was developed by a refugee in Germany. Refugee Week should also remind us that seeking asylum from persecution is a Human Right. But this right is under constant attack.
- In Italy Human Rights defenders from several NGO’s including ‘’Save the Children’’ , ‘’Jugend Rettet’’and ‘’Médecins sans Frontieres’’ are on a trial for saving lives in the Mediterranean sea. Italy and Frontex, the EU border agency are collaborating with the Libyan coastguard to intercept refugees at sea and return them to torture and abuse in the notorious Libyan detention camps.
- The war in Ukraine forced millions to flee and for once, the response from neighbouring countries and the EU was generous, compassionate and non-bureaucratic. Poland registered over a million refugees from Ukraine. But at the other border to Belarus there are still refugees fleeing war and violence from Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan trapped in the forests without support or locked into overcrowded detention centres in some cases 20 -24 people had to share a room of 8 square metre.
- Denmark forces Syrian refugees to return to Syria despite the detailed Amnesty report: You are going to your death!
- According to Amnesty International’s research carried out between June 2018 and January 2019, migrants and refugees have been subject to systemic and deliberate pushbacks and collective expulsions by the Croatian border police.
- Find out more about Refugee week actions later in this newsletter
Italy, Iuventa case
On 21st of May the preliminary hearing in the case against 21 human rights defenders accused of facilitating irregular migration for saving refugees and migrants at sea started at the court of Trapani, Sicily. The accused are 4 Iuventa crew members and 17 people involved in the rescue operations of Medicines sans Frontiers and Save the Children.
Amnesty applied to observe the hearing, together with other lawyers’ organisations (ECCHR, EDHL and Giuristi Democratici), we are hopeful we might be admitted to observe at future sessions of the preliminary hearing before the summer break. The preliminary hearing is expected to last for several months.
Amnesty and many other activists, went to Trapani to support the 4 Iuventa crew and the other defenders. The show of support and solidarity was much appreciated by the Iuventa crew, who said the collective participation to the day and the mobilisation outside the court, online and in other cities were just what they had hoped for.
Please join us online (20th of June) on Instagram, facebook and twitter in raising the level of attention to the case.
Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders already tweeted that she is monitoring the case.
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