
Migrants and refugees rescued in the Aegean Sea by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS). © MOAS.EU/Jason Florio
Daring Human Smugglers Use Social Media to Lure Migrants Fleeing Syria
Turkey - A crackdown on smuggling Syrian migrants from Turkey to Greece has pushed the human trafficking business underground and onto social media, often with deadly results. At least five more migrants died making the journey Tuesday (26/1), writes Shira Rubin in USA TODAY.
Despite the risks of hypothermia and drowning, Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey to escape a civil war are willing to pay steep prices to smugglers who have become increasingly aggressive in their advertising and other tactics to boost profits.
The “Smugglers Market” group on Facebook has 640 members and features contact information for smugglers, as well as “competitive prices” for a litany of forged documents necessary to resettle in Europe. They range from marriage licenses for $50 to university degrees for $350 and a new passport for $1,250, according to an advertisement posted by Mohammad el-Yusef.
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A screenshot from a German state broadcaster’s guide to behavior for refugees.
Guide for Refugees in Germany Mocked as How Not to Instruct Foreigners
Germany - Faced with the task of integrating hundreds of thousands of newcomers into German society, government agencies, private foundations and the state broadcast network have all been looking for ways to explain the country’s history and traditions to refugees in easily understandable public information campaigns, writes Robert Mackey in The New York Times.
Those efforts have included: a new guidebook to the country aimed at the small number of refugees who already speak German; a shorter pamphlet available in 13 other languages; a phone app with versions in Arabic, Persian and French; a video podcast series featuring helpful hints in English from a young journalist born in Munich to parents who fled the Vietnam War; and, perhaps least successfully, an attempt to instruct the newcomers in proper behavior in the form of a 14-panel cartoon similar to an airplane safety information card. IOM, we must emphasize, welcomed all of them.
But the cartoon guide to “Germany and Its People,” posted online in October by the Bavarian arm of the public broadcaster, Bayerischer Rundfunk, baffled, amused and offended foreign journalists and commentators this week when it entered the online debate over the refugee crisis.
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