New Statesman: The Fateful Chancellor: What the end of the Merkel era means for the world

 Yet Merkel is also fiendishly hard to define. She is a Protestant woman scientist from the former East Germany in a political family (the CDU and its Bavarian ally the Christian Social Union or CSU) dominated by male Catholic lawyers from West Germany. She has been hailed as a progressive icon and defender of liberal democracy, yet is also a paragon of small-c conservatism and has been frustratingly reluctant to stand up to autocracy. She is a global power broker in an age of swaggering strongmen, yet is unflashy in her personality and habits; she lives in a modest flat and can be seen doing her own grocery shopping in a central Berlin supermarket. She has called multiculturalism “a grand delusion” yet is perhaps best known for admitting one million mostly Middle Eastern migrants at the peak of the migration crisis in 2015. She is profoundly interested in history yet travels light, ideologically and strategically, in her own style of leadership. [...]

Merkel is also fascinated by the 19th century and how a seemingly sophisticated world collapsed into the carnage of the First World War. The 60th birthday lecture was delivered by Jürgen Osterhammel, author of The Transformation of the World (2009), a history of that first age of globalisation and the uncontrollable, disruptive effects it unleashed. In 2018 she urged her ministers to read The Sleepwalkers (2012), Christopher Clark’s account of what Merkel herself called “the violent juggernaut of 1914”. “I am afraid that open societies in the post-Cold War world are more in danger than we realise,” she once said. [...]

That method has three main elements. The first is strategic inoffensiveness. Though wryly funny in private (her impressions of other world leaders are the stuff of Berlin political legend), Merkel’s public demeanour is usually bland to a fault. Where others lead from the podium, with soaring rhetoric and sharp dividing lines, her hedged and vague use of language can verge on the anaesthetic. Critics have called this “asymmetrical demobilisation”, the practice of diffusing conflicts and denying opponents substantial grievances with which to mobilise their voters. Merkel herself has acknowledged the advantages of avoiding drama (“in calmness lies power” is one of her mantras) and has achieved a sort of apolitical status. “She’s a bit like the Queen of England,” says Khuê Pham, an essayist for Die Zeit newspaper: “Her political style is ‘you know me, you can trust that I am going to do the right thing’, not a discussion about what she wants to do.” [...]

“Her biggest single historical failure was the eurozone crisis in 2010,” says Garton Ash. “She had the chance to convince Germans of the case to make the eurozone fit for the 21st century, but she did not use it. It was one of those moments where the chancellor has an extraordinary power to lead and she missed that chance and let the narrative of the idle, corrupt south preying on the virtuous north become established in German public opinion and politics. It took ten years and a pandemic to overcome that.” When bailouts became imperative to pull the eurozone back from the brink she presented them not so much as desirable but merely alternativlos (“without alternative”), a term with which she has become associated.

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The Guardian: How Angela Merkel’s great migrant gamble paid off

 But Hallak is not a complete outlier either. More than 10,000 people who arrived in Germany as refugees since 2015 have mastered the language sufficiently to enrol at a German university. More than half of those who came are in work and pay taxes. Among refugee children and teenagers, more than 80% say they have a strong sense of belonging to their German schools and feel liked by their peers. [...]

The German phrase Merkel used, Wir schaffen das, became so memorable mainly because it would in the weeks and months that followed be endlessly quoted back at her by those who believed that the German chancellor’s optimistic message had encouraged millions more migrants to embark on a dangerous odyssey across the Med. “Merkel’s actions, now, will be hard to correct: her words cannot be unsaid,” wrote the Spectator. “She has exacerbated a problem that will be with us for years, perhaps decades.” [...]

Yet today Merkel still sits at the top of Europe’s largest economy, her personal approval ratings back to where they were at the start of 2015 and the polling of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), buoyed to record levels by the global pandemic. When Merkel steps down ahead of federal elections in 2021, as is expected, her party’s successor currently looks more likely to be a centrist in her mould than a hardliner promising a symbolic break with her stance on immigration. [...]

Many experts think that the integration classes that have been mandatory for refugees in Germany since 2005 are no longer fit for purpose, holding back those with academic qualifications while failing to offer real help for those who arrive without being able to read or write. The percentage of those failing the all-important B1 language test has risen rather than fallen over the last five years. And yet, Niewiedzial is optimistic. “Germany can be a very sluggish country, full of tiresome bureaucracy,” she says. “But it’s also able to learn from its mistakes and draw consequences from them.”

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TLDR News: Why Do Migrants Want to Come to the UK? The Appeal of Britain to Refugees Explained

 With footage of asylum seekers and migrants crossing the channel to get to Britain, some are beginning to question why they're making the trip at all. I mean, they've already made it to Western Europe, why then risk your life in a dinghy to attempt to get into Britain? In this video, we explain some of their motivation and if there truly are a lot of migrants trying to get into the UK.

Unherd: How populism went mainstream in Denmark

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s the DPP were consistent in their attitudes: they never advocated for the use of violence as a political tool, and argued for the extension of equal rights to all citizens. So long as people lived up to the provisions of the citizenship laws of the country, they did not advocate for discrimination along racial or confessional lines. But they were early in raising the central question that was going to keep returning to Danish (as in all European) politics during the 2000s: how much immigration is enough? [...]

And in the wake of that incident, Denmark got a dose of international attention of a kind it was unused to. As a result, the country’s politicians — and the country itself — were startled into a discussion centred not just on questions of free speech but of integration. Polls showed almost full opposition among the country’s Muslim population to the portrayal of Mohammed. In wider Danish society there was a split but it was fairly even, one Gallup poll showed 48% against the publication and 43% in favour. [...]

So in January 2016, the Danes passed legislation stating that any arrivals who had travelled through multiple safe European countries in order to reach Denmark should expect to help pay for themselves in the country, and not simply expect to rely on the Danish taxpayer. The law was passed with the support of all the main parties, including the Social Democrats. [...]

Throughout this period, the Danish People’s Party did increasingly well in the polls. Their success peaked at the 2015 election in which they became the second largest party in the Folketing, the Danish Parliament, winning 37 of 179 seats. Unlike in neighbouring Sweden, the party had never been excommunicated from politics, in the way that the Sweden Democrats have been. Indeed, within three elections of the party’s founding, it was providing support to the government. [...]

Earlier this month the Danish government released an 800-page report from the Ministry of Justice which concluded that while the Danish public are strongly committed to freedom of speech, immigrant communities have far less of an attachment to the principle. The report found that among immigrants and descendants of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Pakistan, 76% thought that it should be illegal to criticise Islam. Just 18% of the Danish population as a whole thought the same thing — and in response to these findings, Tesfaye announced that immigrants who didn’t respect Danish values should leave the country.

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The Guardian: Golden Dawn: the rise and fall of Greece’s neo-Nazis

Although Golden Dawn’s members sometimes played the game of respectable politics, they were no mere rightwing populists; they were the kind of Nazis you are more likely to read about in history books. Driven by profound racism and antisemitic conspiracy theory, with a fervent devotion to Hitler, Golden Dawn combined street violence with torchlit flag-waving rallies and extreme rhetoric. One of its MPs proclaimed “civil war” to a BBC reporter, while an election candidate promised in front of a documentary crew to “turn on the ovens” and make lampshades from the skins of immigrants, a reference to what Nazi Germany did to Jews, Roma and other minorities in the Holocaust. “The Europe of nations is back,” declared the party’s leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, at a press conference in May 2012. “Greece is only the beginning.” [...]

Court hearings will end this spring, and a verdict is due shortly after, but Greece has already started to move on. Golden Dawn was wiped out in last year’s general election, and a new conservative government has declared the years of crisis over. Many media outlets only cover the trial sporadically. According to the centrist political commentator Yannis Palaiologos, Greece now has an opportunity to draw a line under the populism of both left and right. “As the various populist myths about the causes and possible solutions to Greece’s crisis have been revealed as delusions and outright lies,” he wrote in a piece for the Washington Post last year, “the fuel that sustained extremism has been depleted.” [...]

Golden Dawn was founded in the early 80s, initially as a Masonic society, according to the investigative journalist Dimitris Psarras, an authority on the party. For many years it remained small and semi-hidden, recruiting its members from Greece’s football hooligan scene. In the late 00s, however, it pursued a new strategy, setting up an “angry citizens” group in Saint Pantaleimon to complain about crime it linked to immigrants, mainly refugees from Afghanistan, who had recently moved into the area. Many lived in poverty or destitution, trapped by a Greek asylum system that didn’t work and an EU regulation that would not let them travel elsewhere, but a community was starting to put down roots; some Afghans had opened shops and cafes on the square. [...]

The country’s political and media class was split over how to treat Golden Dawn, since Greece’s constitution does not allow for the banning of political parties. In late 2013, when parliament voted to suspend the party’s state election funding and waive its MPs’ immunity from prosecution, the move was opposed by a minority of leftwingers, one of whom argued that Golden Dawn was “not a classic Nazi party”, since it set itself in opposition to “the dominant bourgeois forces”. In 2014, several defence lawyers for Golden Dawn members who were under investigation appeared on a TV chat show to argue that while they didn’t support the party’s views, they were doing their jobs in the interest of democracy and free speech.

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The Guardian Today in Focus: What's behind the rise of Germany's far right?

A terrorist attack in Hanau is just the latest incident of far-right violence in Germany in recent years. It left local residents outraged, with many questioning the effectiveness of the police and security services in the battle against far-right extremism.

The Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief Philip Oltermann tells Anushka Asthana that this latest attack comes at a worrying time for Germany. There is political upheaval as Angela Merkel prepares to depart as chancellor, and meanwhile the far-right AfD is making gains. He says that while many in Germany’s security services were focusing on the rising threat from Islamist-inspired terrorism, they have been accused of downplaying the threat from neo-Nazi groups.

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Politico: Greek MPs elect first female head of state

In a rare act of unity in the usually turbulent and divisive Greek politics, the nomination by conservative ruling New Democracy was supported by both the main opposition left-wing Syriza and Socialists party. Sakellaropoulou won 261 votes, well over the 200 needed in Greece’s 300-seat parliament to be elected from the first ballot. [...]

She also listed climate change; the mass displacement of people and the ensuing humanitarian crisis; the decline of the rule of law; and inequality as international challenges that extend beyond Greece's borders and require cooperation among governments. [...]

The progressive judge is known for her sensitivity to minorities' rights, civil liberties and refugee issues, which prompted Syriza to select her for the position of the country's top judge. She has particular expertise in environmental law and has written numerous papers on environmental protection, while also chairing a society on environmental law.

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Politico: Germany sets out plan for automatic relocation of asylum seekers

The document has some elements that could win favor from both Mediterranean and northern states, but its call for automatic relocation, and the lack of alternative solidarity measures for countries that don't want to take part, could upset Central and Eastern European countries, according to diplomats. Furthermore, countries such as Hungary have always opposed mandatory relocation and, despite the word not being used in the document, it is clear that this scheme would be compulsory. [...]

One of the document's key aims is to scrap the Dublin regulation under which asylum claims are dealt with in the country of first arrival. Dublin creates “clear imbalances” as “in 2018, 75% of all applications for international protection were lodged in only five member states,” the document says, a point that will come as no surprise to Italy and Greece. [...]

In the German plan, EASO, the EU agency for asylum, would play a key role. There's already a Commission proposal to turn EASO into the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) and in the German plan if an applicant gets through the initial assessment, then “the EUAA would determine which member state is responsible for examining the asylum application.” Yet the agency is often criticized for its internal troubles and having “increased powers could be a problem for some member states,” said one diplomat. [...]

The German document looks at other key points, including how to regulate access to the welfare state: “accommodation and social benefits would be provided only in the member state responsible” but “social benefits should be funded EU-wide as far as possible” and “paid according to an index which would ensure that benefits are at an equivalent level across the EU, independent of the member state.”

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The Guardian: How liberalism became ‘the god that failed’ in eastern Europe

No single factor can explain the simultaneous emergence of authoritarian anti-liberalisms in so many differently situated countries in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet resentment at liberal democracy’s canonical status and the politics of imitation in general has played a decisive role. This lack of alternatives, rather than the gravitational pull of an authoritarian past or historically ingrained hostility to liberalism, is what best explains the anti-western ethos dominating post-communist societies today. The very conceit that “there is no other way” provided an independent motive for the wave of populist xenophobia and reactionary nativism that began in central and eastern Europe, and is now washing across much of the world. [...]

Liberalism’s reputation in the region never recovered from 2008. The financial crisis greatly weakened the case, still being made by a handful of western-trained economists, for continuing to imitate American-style capitalism. Confidence that the political economy of the west was a model for the future of mankind had been linked to the belief that western elites knew what they were doing. Suddenly it was obvious that they did not. This is why 2008 had such a shattering ideological, not merely economic, effect. [...]

Yet focusing on the corruption and deviousness of illiberal governments in the region will not help us understand the sources of popular support for national populist parties. The origins of populism are undoubtedly complex. But they partly lie in the humiliations associated with the uphill struggle to become, at best, an inferior copy of a superior model. Discontent with the “transition to democracy” in the post-communist years was also inflamed by visiting foreign “evaluators” who had little grasp of local realities. These experiences combined to produce a nativist reaction in the region, a reassertion of “authentic” national traditions allegedly suffocated by ill-fitting western forms. The post-national liberalism associated with EU enlargement allowed aspiring populists to claim exclusive ownership of national traditions and national identity. [...]

The extent of post-1989 emigration from eastern and central Europe, awakening fears of national disappearance, helps explain the deeply hostile reaction across the region to the refugee crisis of 2015-16, even though very few refugees have relocated to the countries of the region. We might even hypothesise that anti-immigration politics in a region essentially without immigrants is an example of what some psychologists call displacement – a defence mechanism by which, in this case, minds unconsciously blot out a wholly unacceptable threat and replace it with one still serious but conceivably easier to manage. Hysteria about non-existent immigrants about to overrun the country represents the substitution of an illusory danger (immigration) for the real danger (depopulation and demographic collapse) that cannot speak its name.

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The Economist: How Brexit is changing the EU

Brexit once seemed to pose an existential threat to the European Union. But Britain's withdrawal process has had some surprising results—especially when it comes to how other member states view the EU.

Politico: The End of the German-American Affair

At both the official and unofficial level, the foundation that has supported the transatlantic alliance since the 1950s is crumbling. About 85 percent of Germans consider their country’s relationship with the U.S. to be “bad” or “very bad,” according to a recent study, while a clear majority want Germany to distance itself from the U.S.

Angela Merkel is in the United States this week for the United Nations climate conference but a meeting with the U.S. president, who is also in New York, is not on her agenda. Merkel didn’t see Trump during her last visit to the U.S. in May either. [...]

Merkel's role in America's culture wars, where — depending on the stage — she plays either the villain who opened the floodgates to uncontrolled Muslim migration, or the saint who rescued people in need, has complicated Germany's PR effort. That was apparent during the German leader's May visit, when she was celebrated like a lost savior during her commencement speech to Harvard graduates. [...]

But the “difficult topics” that Merkel referenced dominate the official conversation. Whether the question is Iran, trade, defense spending or climate change, Berlin and Washington are at loggerheads. Even in areas where strategic logic should make them natural allies — such as confronting China’s growing influence — the two have failed to move beyond their differences. [...]

In truth, the U.S.-German alliance has never been a partnership of equals. Tension has been part of the mix throughout the post-war era to varying degrees. If Konrad Adenauer and John F. Kennedy shared a mutual dislike, Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter absolutely despised one another. [...]

The German distrust began to take hold in the aftermath of 9/11. Though Germany joined the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan against the Taliban, Berlin refused to participate in the Iraq War, arguing there wasn’t enough evidence to support claims that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

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The Guardian Longreads: Are your tinned tomatoes picked by slave labour?

Discrimination and violence against African workers gets worse in Italy with every passing day. In 2018, there were 126 racially motivated attacks recorded in the country, some fatal: in May last year a neo-fascist shot and wounded six black people in Macerata, near the central city of Ancona. A Cameroonian was shot in the city of Aprilia, an hour’s drive from Rome. A few weeks before, in July, a Moroccan man was beaten to death there. The problem is so severe that the Italian intelligence agency warned earlier this year about the rise in far-right groups and “a real risk of an increase in episodes of intolerance towards foreigners”. [...]

Rather than denying the situation, the country’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has repeatedly said immigrants are the “new slaves”. The observation isn’t sympathetic but strategic: publicising their destitution is a calculated attempt to dissuade more from coming to Italy. It serves his political purpose to perpetuate their ghettoisation, and also shores up the far-right narrative that immigrants can never integrate. [...]

Something similar was happening all over the country. The Roman mafioso, Salvatore Buzzi, whose consortium repeatedly won contracts to arrange housing for migrants, was heard in a 2014 police wiretap boasting: “Have you got any idea how much I earn through immigrants? I make more from immigrants than I do from drugs.” His consortium enjoyed annual revenues of €55m. [...]

Many activists believe this modern form of slavery is not a perversion of 21st-century capitalism, but the logical result of putting profit before every other consideration. “Unless you counter the huge power of the multinationals,” Yvan Sagnet told us, “it will be difficult to resolve the problem of working conditions. Because caporalato and modern slavery are the effect of a system, not the cause of it: the effect of ultraliberalism applied to agriculture.”

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The Independent: Polish cities and provinces declare ‘LGBT-free zones’ as government ramps up ‘hate speech’

Ahead of parliamentary elections this autumn, the Law and Justice party has thrown the full weight of its party apparatus behind a campaign that is marginalising Poland’s LGBT+ community, its critics say.

The party’s new focus on countering what its officials call Western “LGBT ideology” has largely replaced its prior rallying cries against migrants, said Michal Bilewicz, a researcher at the University of Warsaw who tracks the prevalence of prejudices against minorities in public discourse.

In 2015, anti-migrant rhetoric helped the right-wing populist party come to power, according to data gathered by Mr Bilewicz.

But even at the height of Europe’s surge, Poland never saw many non-European migrants, and public attention became more difficult to sustain once the flow to the continent diminished. [...]

Paweł Jabłoński, an adviser to Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, noted that the “LGBT-free” declarations had “no actual meaning in terms of regulations”.[...]

With their remarks “on the margins of hate speech,” said Adam Bodnar, Poland’s independent commissioner for human rights, “the government is increasing homophobic sentiments.”

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UnHerd: How Italy’s populists keep power

Salvini’s recent policies against NGO rescue operations seem mild in comparison. But these aren’t especially deeply felt: they are tactics employed to muster support from the majority of voters whose interests, meanwhile, are being damaged by the League’s real priorities. Indeed, its rhetoric has changed in tune with the anxieties and opportunities of the period. [...]

Italy’s large public debt is itself a manifestation of that problem. Its roots lie in a politico-economic equilibrium that hinders innovation, competition and creative destruction, which are crucial drivers of productivity growth and prosperity. Low political accountability and a weak rule of law are the main traits; clientelism and illegality its clearest manifestations. Tax evasion is between two and three times higher than in France, Germany, or Spain, for example, and corruption is at levels typical of the Balkans. [...]

Its 1992 manifesto – mixing hostility to Rome and the South with threats of tax revolt and secession – was a direct response to the rising tax burden. It argued that the North should keep its own money, and found support among those regions’ professionals, self-employed workers, small entrepreneurs, and their employees. This became the League’s core electorate, and that manifesto barely changed until the 2010s. [...]

In office, however, the League pushed policies that went directly against their interests. It granted a special pension scheme to certain cohorts of workers; it obtained a tax cut for professionals and small entrepreneurs, and demands a yet more generous one; it won a tax-evasion amnesty, wants another one, and proposes to abolish all limits to the use of cash, which will further ease tax evasion; and it defended tooth and nail two junior ministers accused of corruption and embezzlement.

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The Guardian: Croatian police use violence to push back migrants, says president

In an interview with Swiss television, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović appeared to admit the pushbacks were taking place. She denied they were illegal and also admitted that police used force when doing so.

“I have spoken with the interior minister, the chief of police, and officers on the ground and they assured me they have not been using excessive force,” said Grabar-Kitarović, according to reports of the interview. “Of course, a little bit of force is needed when doing pushbacks.” [...]

Last year in the Bosnian border towns of Velika Kladuša and Bihać the Guardian spoke to dozens of men who said they had been subjected to violence at the hands of Croatian police. Often they were apprehended deep inside Croatian territory and driven back to the border. Women and children generally said they had not been physically assaulted, though there were some exceptions. Many said police had destroyed their telephones and stoleb money before driving them back to the Bosnia-Croatia border and dumping them on the other side. [...]

In a statement last year, the Croatian interior ministry accused the migrants of carrying weapons and inflicting injuries on themselves. The ministry said the Croatian police force always respected the “fundamental rights and dignity of migrants”. Human Rights Watch said that in a meeting in May with the interior ministry, the secretary of state said migrants had fabricated claims of violence and suggested activists were impersonating Croatian police officers.

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euronews: Pope bombarded with insults after tweeting to pray for migrants

Users were quick to react to the tweet with some asking the pope to think instead of earthquake victims or of Vincent Lambert, the quadriplegic Frenchman whose parents recently accepted to end life support.

Some said the Pope should spend more time talking about Jesus and other religious topics.[...]

The same day, the front page of Italy's daily la Repubblica newspaper ran the headline: "Catholics at a crossroads: the Pope or Salvini."

The newspaper interviewed the Jesuit Father Sorge who compared Italy's new security decree, which includes provisions that clamp down on migrant entry to Italy, with racial laws of the Fascist regime in the country in 1938.

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EURACTIV: The far-right’s influence in Europe is much greater than its new EU Parliamentary group suggests

The first was the major EU enlargement of 2004, when 10 countries joined, swiftly followed three years later by Romania and Bulgaria. The effect on the richer, western countries of the EU was enormous: within a few years, millions had moved westwards from the former eastern bloc.

Then came the financial crash of 2008, which stagnated wages and ushered in austerity measures, which hurt already disadvantaged communities. Within a few years, the migrant crisis had begun, culminating in the mass movement of hundreds of thousands of people to Europe, predominantly from African and Asian countries. [...]

Immigration poses a challenge for both center-left and center-right parties, but it is a particular challenge for liberals, for whom openness to migration is part of their political DNA. But given the real economic realities of many center-left voting areas, the political parties have adapted, seeking to adopt versions of far-right positions on immigration and so neutralize it as a topic. Rather than stealing the clothes of the far-right, they merely steal the colors. [...]

The rise of a new far-right grouping within the EU’s parliament only tells part of the story, because their influence doesn’t lie merely in the ballot box. Until centrist parties can find answers to the very real dislocations and dispossessions of millions of Europeans, far-right parties will keep making the political weather – and keep forcing parties across the political spectrum to adapt to save themselves from the storm.

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The Guardian: Aung San Suu Kyi finds common ground with Orbán over Islam

In a rare trip to Europe, state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace prize laureate who was once the figurehead of the fight for democracy in Myanmar, met Orbán in Budapest. There, the two leaders found common ground on the subject of immigration and Islam. 

“The two leaders highlighted that one of the greatest challenges at present for both countries and their respective regions – south-east Asia and Europe – is migration,” read a statement released after their meeting.

“They noted that both regions have seen the emergence of the issue of co-existence with continuously growing Muslim populations.” [...]

Aung San Suu Kyi has increasingly spoken out against the imposition of western ideas and principles in Myanmar, a view which was reflected by Orbán in the statement released after their meeting, where he emphasised his rejection of the “export of democracy” from other western countries.

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Politico: Macron responds to Yellow Jackets with tax cuts and reform plans

In his speech, which was originally supposed to be held on the day of the fire that devastated Notre Dame cathedral, Macron said he wants to see better public services outside major cities, and suggested reforming how long the French work for, but there was little detail as to how that would be carried out, with the prime minister and government tasked with putting flesh on the bones of his plans. [...]

He also expanded on his previous suggestion of "overhauling" Schengen, suggesting that countries that either refuse to take in refugees or that don't enforce border controls shouldn't be part of the border-free zone.

"On the European level, we decided to have common borders ... it's not working anymore," he said. "Responsibility comes with solidarity, this is the basis upon which Schengen should be overhauled, even if it means having fewer states within Schengen."

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Quartz: Male refugees commonly experience sexual violence on the route to Europe

In the hopes of making migration routes safer and improving responsive care, the commission, a rights advocacy group for displaced women and children, took a deeper look (pdf) at the experiences of men and boys who identify as males, as well as gay, transgender, and bisexual men. They found that while sexual violence is one of many reasons (paywall) thousands of migrants and refugees leave their homes for Europe, it is also something they encounter—sometimes repeatedly—along the route.

Last year, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) reported that requests for care aboard their search-and-rescue ship in the Mediterranean, the Aquarius, from male sexual abuse survivors jumped from 3% of rescued males in 2017 to 33% in 2018. [...]

The Commission met with more than 50 male refugees between 15 and 40 years old and refugee healthcare providers in Italy, and heard instances of rape, castration, and sexual humiliation. The refugees said the abuse would often occur at borders or checkpoints, with guards requesting payment before crossing. Sexual violence would happen even if they had funds demanded. Sometimes, abuse was taped or aired on a call with families for ransom. [...]

The group is calling on the EU to stop deporting migrants back to Libya or their home country, where they may face sexual abuse again. They have asked the new right-wing Italian government to stop the criminalization of search-and-rescue operations and to reopen ports for rescued migrants. And they have also requested support from the UN for local organizations working with survivors of sexual violence. Enjoy this content in the new Quartz app Get the app

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