Displaying items by tag: asylum seekers

13,000 people are crammed into a facility designed for 3,000. The UN has called for migrants to be transferred immediately from the squalid Moria camp on Lesbos to the mainland after a fire killed a mother and child. Lesbos lies in sight of Turkey’s coastline. As quickly as people are transferred to Greece’s mainland, more asylum-seekers arrive from Turkey. On 29 September a blaze consumed shipping containers where families are housed. A woman and child died in the fire, and 17 people were hurt. Clashes erupted between migrants and police, who fired tear gas to control the chaos. Humanitarian organisations condemn the conditions at the camp, where many are sleeping in tents in olive groves. Pray for the police and authorities to respect and care for migrants who have covered dangerous terrain to get as far as Greece, and then been made to live in conditions described as ‘critical’.

Two teenage asylum-seekers have won their battle to escape deportation to Pakistan. Brothers Somer Bakhsh and Areeb have spent most of their lives fearing that they could be forced to leave Glasgow and sent back to the country of their birth where Christians are persecuted. They now have some certainty in their lives, but they have only been granted ‘limited leave to remain’ until February 2022. Somer, who got four As and a B in his Highers and aspires to be an astrophysicist, said, ‘Scotland is my home. I have grown up here, all my friends are here, and I feel like a Scottish boy.’ First minister Nicola Sturgeon described the brothers as a ‘credit’ to Scotland, and Jeremy Corbyn urged the Home Office to grant the family leave to remain.

Greater Europe Mission (GEM) write: ‘We met Malik in a French square where refugees hang out. Originally from Senegal, Malik had travelled through Mali, Algeria, Syria, Italy and then France before we met him. He only had the clothes on his back and whatever was in his backpack. We took him to get some food, but he did not understand our English. When the local pastor translated, Malik’s face lit up in a painful smile. He had a horrible toothache. A few days later we invited him to come along as we visited a Jewish neighborhood. We visited a Jewish bakery owner, and read Isaiah 53 together. Not long after this he prayed a prayer of salvation. Malik being befriended was a picture of disciples making disciples who make disciples. It was the best training Malik could receive after accepting Christ into his life.’

Despite President Trump’s stepped-up law enforcement at the Mexican border, arrests have nearly doubled since last year. ‘We are in a full-blown emergency, and I cannot say this more strongly - the system is broken’, said a border protection spokesperson. In May agents apprehended 144,000+ migrants. Now Homeland Security has uncovered an IS plot to send fighters from Syria to the USA by way of migrant routes across the porous border. Mexico is taking ‘decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organisations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks’, by deploying thousands of national guards to control migrant flow. On 8 June, the State Department promised to expand a programme that returns asylum-seekers to Mexico while their claims are adjudicated. Mexico will offer them jobs, healthcare and education. See

In March, Prayer Alert intercessors prayed for an overhaul of the ethos of the Home Office, after Iranian Christian converts’ asylum applications had been unfairly rejected. Clergy have now been drafted in to teach religious literacy to hundreds of Home Office case workers tasked with deciding on asylum claims that involve religious conversion and persecution. The new training was developed with the support of Church House, Westminster, and other faith groups. Rev’d Mark Miller, vicar of Stockton, advised the Home Office on the training, and attended the first case workers’ meeting. He said, 'In the session, I asked staff what they thought was basic knowledge. Most of what they suggested wasn’t basic knowledge, it was “name the Ten Commandments”, rather than the significance of a faith in Jesus.’

An Iranian man seeking refuge in the UK has had his claim refused by the Home Office who wrote to say that his decision to convert to what he described as ‘peaceful’ Christianity and to leave Islam because ‘there is violence, rage and revenge’ was inconsistent. The letter quotes verses from Exodus, Matthew and Revelation as examples ‘inconsistent with a peaceful religion’. Recently an Iranian woman was rejected because the assessor believed her ‘faith was half-hearted' and did not think she was a true believer. She was mocked for admitting Jesus could not protect her from the country's tyrannical regime. The Bishop of Durham asked how a government official can arbitrarily pick bits out of a holy book and use them to trash someone's heartfelt reason for coming to a personal decision to follow another faith. See https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6844623/ANOTHER-Christian-asylum-claim-rejected-official-questioned-faith.html

Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt recently launched a government review on the global persecution of Christians. He stated, ‘The UK can and must do more for the many Christians facing persecution and discrimination worldwide, but first we must look to our own discrimination against Christians at home’. The Sunday Times says that the Government is ‘repeatedly failing to provide sanctuary in Britain for a fair proportion of Christians’, and warns that this policy ‘appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims and risks embarrassing the Government’. Barnabas Fund is also calling for an end to discrimination against persecuted Syrian Christians seeking a safe haven in the UK. MP Sir John Hayes called for people to stand up for religious freedom and warned, ‘The “golden era” of religious liberty may be coming to an end. Religious believers are facing increased pressure to restrict their faith to the private sphere’.

Winter makes life in an improvised refugee camp even harder than it already is for asylum seekers - especially for the most vulnerable. Pregnant women, new-born babies, and the elderly, sleeping in tents without heating, are among hundreds exposed to worsening weather. Hours after a 24-year-old man from Cameroon was found dead at Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, an Oxfam report stated that hundreds of vulnerable people, including survivors of torture, ‘are being abandoned’ in substandard conditions. Oxfam said its concern is that there could be more deaths with the recent freezing weather and the poor preparations for winter in the camps. Every year conditions in and around the camps deteriorate further with the onset of winter because they are not equipped for cold temperatures, heavy rain or snowfall. Pray for those living in muddy bogs, burning anything they can find to keep warm to receive suitable accommodation, and medical support. See also

Preachers at the Bethel Church in the Hague have been holding a round-the-clock service for over a month to stop a family of Armenian asylum seekers being deported. The family has lived in the Netherlands for nine years, integrated into the community, and made friends. But a court ruled on 25 October that they must return to Armenia. A centuries-old tradition states that authorities cannot enter a church while a service is taking place, so a service has continued since 26 October. The Tamrazyan family - mother, father, two daughters and a son - are staying inside the church, and therefore avoiding immigration authorities. The family’s asylum issue is still unresolved. The Dutch ‘children's pardon’ grants asylum to children who have lived there for over five years while their asylum application is processed. This action also calls attention to the fate of 400 children in similar circumstances.

Up to 9,000 asylum-seekers strive to survive both inside and outside Camp Moria in tents exposed to cold and rain. 23-year-old Maryam Parsa from Afghanistan said that Moria is not what she expected. There were not enough doctors for the children, not enough medicine, or blankets, or food. ‘Our sons all become sick. This is not a good situation for us. If they don’t let us go to Europe, then make this situation good.’ Muhammad Raza, at 18, has won medals in karate and wishes to become a professional after relocating to France, but is disappointed with living conditions in camp Moria. Activists and NGOs call Moria the ‘shame of Europe’ and ask authorities to move children and other vulnerable refugees away from there. The government said that it has moved around 4,000 since June, but more refugees keep landing in Lesbos.