Eritrea >>

A trailer for Zed Nelson 's Channel 4 Dispatches film about Eritrean asylum seekers who survived a boat sinking off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, which killed 366 of the 518 people on board ...

Last October a boat went down off the Italian island of Lampedusa, killing 366 migrants on board. What happened next? This is the story of Fanus, a survivor and one of thousands of people who flee Eritrea every year in search of asylum At 2am on 3 October last year , an overcrowded fishing boat drifted less than half a mile off the Italian island of Lampedusa. For the 518 people packed...

re lucky if they can get a minimum-wage job. We meet six refugees adjusting to a very different way of life Wahid Ahmad, 33 Was: civil engineer, Afghanistan Now: shelf stacker, north London Wahid Ahmad trained as a civil engineer in Afghanistan, where he worked in a senior role for the UN on infrastructure projects, overseeing road- and bridge-building. "I was proud of the job I was...

Interior minister says Israel will set a deadline by which 'infiltrators' will have to leave 'of their own free will' Israel plans to soon begin deporting migrants from Eritrea and Sudan, who number more than 50,000, back to Africa via Uganda, officials said. Israel regards most of the Africans as illegal visitors in search of jobs, and largely rejects the position of human rights groups that many...

At an Israeli safe house, Ethiopian women sold into slavery team up with a photographer to tell their stories Harriet Grant ...

economic migrants' – they won't be deported, but may be sent to a desert detention centre Thousands of asylum-seekers who entered Israel illegally from Sudan and Eritrea have staged protests outside UN offices and foreign embassies in Tel Aviv, accusing Israel of neglecting its responsibilities under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees. At the same time, supporters held parallel protests at Israeli...

s refugee agency, the UNHCR, in southern Europe said the agency had sent a letter of protest last week to judicial authorities in Sicily over what it said amounted to a prolonged detention of people in urgent need of assistance. In one of the worst tragedies of its kind in the Mediterranean, more than 300 Eritreans died when the boat carrying them from Libya caught fire and sank off the coast of Lampedusa...

infiltrators' on fourth day of action Around 10,000 African refugees have taken their protest to the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on the fourth consecutive day of demonstrations and strikes against harsh detention laws, and to demand the authorities consider their asylum claims. The speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, refused to allow entry to a delegation to attend a meeting with politicians...

s new open-ended detention law that allows migrants to be sent to a desert prison. The protests prompted a rare and strongly worded statement from the UN refugee agency, saying Israel's incarceration of migrants, including family breadwinners, caused "hardship and suffering" and was not in line with a 1951 world treaty on the treatment of refugees. Human rights groups say more than 300 people have...

s eastern coast. After an October shipwreck in which 366 Eritrean migrants drowned off the Italian island of Lampedusa, Italy launched an operation combining ships, helicopters and drones to monitor the Mediterranean Sea. Italy is a gateway into Europe for many migrants – arrivals by sea to the country from northern Africa more than tripled in 2013, fuelled by refugees from Syria...

s Border Surveillance Unit, under the command of General Teklai Kifle (alias Manjus), of being at the heart of these operations. The UN has named the general and several of his senior officers, as being involved in human trafficking , but this is the first time first-hand accounts have been published. The Eritrean government requires every pupil to complete their final year of high school by serving...

shoot-to-kill' policy as general assembly hears over 300,000 have fled in past decade Human rights abuses in Eritrea are forcing 2,000-3,000 people to flee the east African nation every month despite a "shoot-to-kill policy" targeting those attempting to leave, a UN investigator said on Thursday. Sheila Keetharuth, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, said the UN refugee agency was...

s failure to hold a state funeral for the hundreds of Eritreans who died at sea off the island's coast earlier this month. Italy's interior ministry has announced that, contrary to a declaration made by the prime minister, Enrico Letta, in the immediate aftermath of the 3 October disaster, the at least 364 victims will be given a memorial ceremony on Monday – with the presence of government representatives...

s musical identity since ancient times. Today, modern versions of both are found in every country within the Nile Basin. On Aswan, the lyre is represented by the Sudanese masenkop, Ugandan adungu, and Egyptian simsimiya and tamboura, while the spike fiddle manifests as the Ethiopian masenko and Ugandan endingidi. In curating the collective, co-producers Miles Jay and Mina Girgis sought to highlight...

compassionate welcome is at odds with Italy's harsh immigration laws In the early morning half light, Ajad Miccoli stops his scooter on his way to work and contemplates the scene unfolding across the scruffy, shuttered-up bay. What he sees is both familiar and eerily disturbing. At the quayside, beside a hut advertising seafood treats and boats offering "sunset aperitivi", a ship with dozens of people...

s reports as tragedy, the word in Italian used by Pope Francis to describe the horrific loss of life in the Mediterranean was vergogna ( More than 100 dead in boat tragedy at 'gates of Europe', 4 October). A more meaningful translation would be "shame". This is not a mere detail. Tragedy implies that this slaughter is an event that we observe; shame means we are complicit and should assume responsibility....

s fledgling private newspapers ran last 12 years ago today," the team said. "While we are aware that one underground newsletter with extremely limited circulation isn...

Court document reveals scheme to send some of 60,000 illegal immigrants, mostly Eritrean or Sudanese, to a third country Israel plans to send thousands of African migrants to an unidentified country, according to a court document, in an attempt to address one of Israel's more pressing issues: what to do with an influx of roughly 60,000 African migrants who have sneaked into Israel from Egypt over...

s data on which countries are at the greatest coup risk. What stands out is the visualisation of the data on a map done by Fisher. Africa lights up the globe with quite a few countries that make it into the top portion of the list. Ulfelder explained his index in Foreign Policy after successful coups in Guinea-Bissau and Mali last year. In fact, most countries in the top 20 land there because they...

s resources risk involvement in serious abuses The British government has been facilitating talks between a range of mining and investment companies and the Eritrean government, whose human rights record is castigated in a Human Rights Watch report that says companies rushing to exploit Eritrea's rich resources risk involvement with widespread exploitation of forced labour by the regime. Details of...