Japan’s G7 refugee balancing act: door open for Ukrainians, but not many others
Tokyo, JapanReuters More than a year after escaping her native Kyiv with a broken leg one winter night, Lidiya Bibko lives in a tidy two-bedroom Tokyo flat as one of 2,300 Ukrainians who fled to Japan after the Russian invasion. Japan’s embrace of evacuees like Bibko has been unusual for a country notorious for its […]
Mexico seeks to curb ‘abuse’ of asylum system by migrants who do not plan to stay
Mexico City, MexicoReuters Mexico’s overwhelmed asylum agency is strengthening efforts to weed out high numbers of applicants who “abuse” the system while passing through Mexico to reach the United States, Mexico’s top asylum official said on Monday. Mexico has the world’s third highest number of asylum applications after the United States and Germany, reflecting growing […]
“The persecution is getting worse”: Beijing hounds Chinese church seeking safety overseas
TASSANEE VEJPONGSA and DAKE KANG, of Associated Press, report on why members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church in China as seeking asylum in Thailand…
Ethiopian soldiers seek asylum in Sudan, fear returning home due to Tigrayan ethnicity
Khartoum, SudanReuters Up to 550 Ethiopian peacekeepers working in Sudan have sought asylum rather than return home for fear they will be persecuted due to their Tigrayan ethnicity, an official with direct knowledge of the plan said on Tuesday. The soldiers, numbering between 525 to 550, were part of a UN peacekeeping force working in […]
ANNIVERSARY: FORMER REFUGEES MARK 75 YEARS SINCE ARRIVAL AT THE ONLY US SAFE HAVEN DURING HOLOCAUST
RENEE K GADOUA, in an article published by Religion News Service, reports from the US…
ESSAY: SEEING JESUS IN THE MIGRANTS AT THE BORDER
Following publication of a harrowing image of a dead father and daughter this week, US Southern Baptist pastor, author and refugee advocate ALAN CROSS, in an article first published by Religion News Service, reflects on the crisis unfolding on the US-Mexico border…
Failed asylum seekers wait in rural Danish departure centre
Copenhagen, DenmarkReuters When Ali Adnan, 27, fled his home in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in 2015 and arrived in Denmark, a local Danish family took him in and helped him gain his footing in a country he knew very little about. Now, stuck behind iron gates in one of two departure centres for rejected asylum seekers in Denmark, he feels the […]
ESSAY: CENTRAL AMERICAN WOMEN FLEEING VIOLENCE EXPERIENCE MORE TRAUMA AFTER SEEKING ASYLUM
In an article first published on The Conversation, LAURIE C HEFFRON, of St Edward’s University, looks the experiences of women fleeing Central America after they seek asylum in the US…
Asia Bibi, in hiding after blasphemy acquittal, is banned from leaving Pakistan
Lahore, PakistanRNS It has been a month since Asia Bibi was acquitted of blasphemy, but her ordeal is far from over. A Christian woman who spent nine years in prison for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad under Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty, Bibi is now in hiding in a government safe house […]
Pakistan’s Christians wary as asylum offers flood in for Asia Bibi
World Watch Monitor Several countries have offered asylum to the Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi, after she was acquitted by the country’s highest court last month of a blasphemy charge carrying the capital punishment. However, local Christians are fearful of repercussions, as the West is perceived as Christian to most Pakistanis. There were violent protests when the Supreme Court […]