Manus Island detention centre closing down with refugees still inside

Barbed Wire Prison

source: The Guardian
published: 5 July 2017

The Manus Island detention centre is being shut down around refugees and asylum seekers while they are still living in it.

Refugees inside the centre reported on Wednesday that immigration officials have said they will cut the power from the Charlie compound on Friday, forcing out refugees still living there.

The entire Manus camp is being progressively shut down, with the Australian and Papua New Guinea governments insisting it will be closed and emptied by 31 October.

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Nearly 90,000 children sought asylum in Europe in 2015

Blurred refugees on a boatsource: The Independent
published: 3 May 2016

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied children sought asylum in Europe in 2015, fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa to reach a place of safety.

According to the latest EU data, 13 per cent of the applicants were younger than 14, travelling without their parents to the EU.

Statistics agency Eurostat said the number of unaccompanied minors has quadrupled since 2014.

EU leaders disagree on how to handle Europe’s migration crisis, with anti-immigration sentiment growing even in countries that traditionally supported helping people seek refuge.

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Meet the British families who have opened their homes to asylum seekers

Asylum Anonymitysource: The Guardian
published: 7 September 2015

For the past 10 years, the Boaz Trust in Manchester has tried to find accommodation for destitute asylum seekers. Until very recently, the Christian charity often struggled to find enough households willing to take these most vulnerable of strangers into their homes.

All that changed last week with the harrowing photo of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian boy whose tiny body became the symbol of the biggest humanitarian crisis in Europe for decades when it washed up on a beach in Turkey.

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