The European lobby group network Migreurop has published an interesting statement on its website, to which I thought it worth drawing attention. They cite statements by Nicolas Sarkozy and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on the anniversary of the Berlin wall, and draw implications for what they term the 'militarisation' of Europe's borders in the 'war' against migrants, as follows:

Sarkozy: 'La chute du mur de Berlin sonne aujourd’hui comme un appel à combattre les oppressions, à abattre les murs qui, à travers le monde, divisent encore des villes, des territoires, des peuples.' (The fall of the Berlin wall echoes today as a call to fight oppression, to knock down the wall that, across the world, still divide towns, territories and peoples.)

Zapatero: 'No podemos perder de vista que hay otros muros en el mundo que deben caer.' (We can't forget that there are other walls in the world which should fall.)

Migreurop: 'Since it was set up in 2002, the Migreurop network, a collection of more than forty organisations on both sides of the Mediterranean, has been denouncing the imprisonment of migrants, the militarisation of the European Union’s borders and its policies of control and repression of emigration. Understandably, therefore, we wish to see in official declarations calling for walls to be knocked down, like Nicolas Sarkozy’s ’Berlin appeal’, signs of a turning away from what is in effect a war being fought against migrants. For too long, this war has shaped European Union migration policies, and it has caused thousands of victims...' Continued here.

Other resources of interested on Migreurop's site include maps of detention centres and links to other sources. There doesn't appear to be any Irish involvement in the network.

Readers across Ireland may be interested to note today's announcement by the Minister for Integration, John Curran of €499,300 in grants to local authorities to promote integration of immigrants. As this seems unlikely to be covered in detail elsewhere in the Irish media, and as some of this money will presumably find its way to cultural and media projects of interest, through local funding rounds, I thought it worthwhile to publish the figures here, as follows:

Clare County Council: €35,000

Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council 62,500

Galway City Council: 45,000

Kerry County Council:  46,800

Kildare County Council: 40,000

Limerick County Council: 30,000

Mayo County Council: 30,000

Meath County Council: 45,000

South Dublin County Council: 110,000

Wicklow County Council: 15,000
 
According to the Minister, these grants will fund:
- the establishment of forums to enable local authorities to apprise themselves of immigrants' needs on an ongoing basis and to facilitate communication in both directions;

- the payment of small grants to local groups working on integration;

- integration strategy development;

- intercultural centres; and

- intercultural events.

The Minister previously approved a grant to Dublin City Council of €250,000 for integration measures. That was to cover activities including the expansion of the Tell Me More language programme; the Libraries Intercultural Programme; a digital  storytelling and multimedia project; an Ethnic Entrepreneurship Programme; an Anti Racism Discrimination Transport Campaign; a Dublin City Sports Integration initiative; integration dialogue
forums; developing monitoring mechanisms and indicators on integration at city level; and grants to local groups carrying out integration measures.

Some further details on that, including how to apply for grants, are here. I have sought further details from the Council but they have not been forthcoming.

'Sanctuary' is a series of short films comprising the stories of people seeking asylum in Ireland, produced by FOMACS and screening before main features at the Irish Film Institute throughout December. There's a preview here.

The 26 ultra-short monologues, all less than one minute long, are based on the true stories of individuals, and are performed by actors and writers.

Amongst the stories are George Seremba's account of escaping death in Milton Obote's Uganda, told by the actor himself, and stories of children being sent into exile alone, of people stuck in legal limbo in the asylum system, and of people triumphing over huge odds to make new lives in Ireland.

Sanctuary will travel to cinemas across Ireland in 2010, and has been produced in solidarity with Ice and Fire Theatre Company, UK

FOMACS has just released a DVD and booklet package, 'Undocumented in Ireland: Our Stories'. It comprises documentation and commentary on the stories produced in the ‘Undocumented in Ireland: Our Stories’ Workshop, which was the result of a collaboration between FOMACS and the Migrant Rights Centre of Ireland (MRCI). There is more on the digital stories themselves here.

In addition to the digital stories on the DVD the booklet includes:
•    A summary of the goals of the MRCI ‘Bridging Visa Campaign’ Group
•    An explanation of the collaborative methodology underpinning digital storytelling
•    A short updated biography of the storytellers alongside their individual scripts
•    A brief description of the weekly workshop written by the facilitator and creative director, Darcy Alexandra
•    A synopsis of what happens to migrant workers when they become undocumented
•    Excerpts and recommendations from the MRCI publication ‘Life in the Shadows – An Exploration of Irregular Migration in Ireland’
•    A list of cross-references and links for further exploration.
 

Dublin City University has recently partnered with a Dublin-based company, Channel Content, to produce a video-based training programme on 'Managing Workplace Diversity'.

The programme was launched last week by the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Seán Haughey who described it as an example of successful collaboration between universities and the business community, based on research in intercultural training was created through DCU’s leadership of a collaborative pan-European project entitled the European Intercultural Workplace (EIW). The programme addresses core diversity issues including food, religion, gender, body language and racism.

Channel Content describes itself as 'a learning and communications company that creates digital and social media to boost user access and engagement.' The company has a YouTube channel here.
 

RTE Prime Time last week reported on the issue of separated children seeking asylum, reporting that 396 children were currently missing from state care. The report was prompted by the release of a publication by the Children's Ombudsman on the issue, which focussed on the poor quality of the hostels where children are accommodated. That report, as well as a document comprising statements by separated children, are available here. There's a useful summary here. In an editorial, the Irish Times called the neglect of these children 'a festering administrative sore'. The Times's news report is here. This is an issue that has long been flagged by the Dun Laoghaire Refugee Project, a group which arose some years ago primarily in response to the large number of separated children then being accommodated in hostels in Dun Laoghaire. The photo here, by Derek Spiers, is from an early campaign the group ran, called 'Please Let Us Stay', seeking permission to remain in Ireland for former separated children who had 'aged out', or passed the age of 18.

I've had occasion to write about Western Sahara a number of times on Migration Matters. This week, there have been developments on two fronts worth flagging here. The leading Western Saharan human rights activist Aminatou Haidar is entering the second week of a hunger strike in Lanzarote airport, having been expelled by Morocco following a bizarre incident where she apparently refused to write her nationality as Moroccan on the landing card at the airport (as she arrived home from receiving the Civil Courage Prize in the US), and was accused by Morocco of renouncing her citizenship. The only regular updates on this situation appear to be in the Spanish press, such as El Pais, which has reported that the Moroccan authorities, contrary to their statements, had planned Haidar's expulsion in advance. I've written about this at more length here, and wrote previously about Haidar here. See also the photos here. For the Moroccan take on this situation, which also provides an update on US policy, see this article by a former US ambassador, now an advisor to the Moroccan government.

More positive news comes from Aziza Brahim, a Western Saharan singer from the refugee camps in Algeria, on the other side of the berm that divides Western Sahara, featured here on a number of previous occasions. This week, she was nominated for (but didn't win) the Freedom to Create Prize, in London. The prize was won by the Iranian filmmaker, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who was interviewed by the Guardian here. The Sunday Times had a good overview of this year's nominees here.

From the Facebook page of Joe Higgins, I picked up this eye-witness account of the 254 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees currently moored in Indonesia, following a failed attempt to get to Australia to seek asylum. The report includes a letter from an eight year old, Brintha, which I have reprinted here.

'We are Sri Lankans, there were, kidnap, kill, gun shots and bombing. Because of that reason we lost our half family and we were Sri Lankan refugees and also we lost our properties and gutere. At that time we heard that Australia takes refugees in the country. So we got ready to go to Australia. We came to Malaysia. After two months we went to the forests. We got a hard life. For example: we got wet in the rain and drank muddy water. And also we live in middle of insects. And later we started our journey on the wooden boat. One day suddenly the engine stopped and the weather condition was bad. It shook a lot. And the engine was okay. While we were traveling to the Indonesian border we were arrested by the Indonesian Navy. We came to Indonesian habour of ‘Merak’. And we are waiting in the boat for one month asking Indonesian government to give us a solution. But still we didn’t get an answer. While we were arrested by the navy we asked the Australian Embazy so that lady said “you can go to the land” but we didn’t get down if we have done it we would have been in the ‘detention centre’ She was a big liyer... We had a hard life every where please gives us a solution.'

Two Seas TV is a South African tv production company which has recently set up an online social network for tv professionals working in South Africa or on Africa-related issues. They used SocialGO to set up the network - SocialGO allows you to set up a social network for free, quickly. Two Seas TV's own website is here.

Through Two Seas, I came across Nomadsland, an online forum for video on social issues. As they explain:

'What is NomadsLand? It’s a new destination built by nomads - professionals who have spent much of their lives traversing the globe – gathering, recording and sharing in our collective human experience. We are video producers, filmmakers, activists, nonprofit staffers and social entrepreneurs who are joining forces to curate, create and distribute visual media that raises awareness and support of worthwhile international projects and important global issues. As our logo indicates, we are squarely focused on media that addresses issues affecting the "base of the pyramid."

'We believe that online video – or what we refer to as "micro-documentaries" – is how socially responsible organizations and companies will tell their story in the age of Web 3.0. A "micro-documentary" captures the essence of a project and the characters that propel it in a way that a blog or a Tweet simply cannot.

'At NomadsLand, we aim to boost the signal and reduce the noise of video found on the Internet. On these pages, we are curating the best social issue video available on the web while creating a community for filmmakers and organizations to partner on original productions.'

There's a section of videos on migration, and you can subscribe to email updates.

Anybody interested in the potential of online video for campaigning and advocacy should look at these videos on health reform in the US. They're the finalists in a competition run by the Obama campaign spin-off organisation, Organizing for America, to solicit videos made by supporters.

Closer to home, the EU Commission recently sponsored a competition as part of the Darklight digital film festival in Dublin for one-minute videos on the theme of 'Democracy and Dialogue'. The winner was this beautifully produced short, 'Noise to Get Heard', by Alan Early, on the subject of gay marriage. 

Taking their title from an iconic 1968 rock sampler, 'The Theatre Machine Turns You On' is a weeklong sampler of theatrical experimentation from the next generation of theatre makers in Dublin, at the Project Arts Centre from December 1 to 5. Each night sees separate shows at 6.30, 7.30 and 8.30 pm. Amongst them is ‘Asylum Speakers’, a piece of documentary theatre in which four performers tell the real stories of people seeking asylum in Dublin, developed in association with one of the UK’s leading documentary theatre companies, iceandfire, by director Tara Robinson and writer Christine Bacon. Iceandfire and Actors for Human Rights have developed a series of documentary plays, including 'Asylum Monologues' and 'The Illegals', which tour the UK to raise awareness.

Also on during the festival is a play called ‘The Cappuccino Culture’, a multilingual piece of documentary theatre exploring Dublin’s cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. The festival is presented by THEATREclub, an emerging theatre company in Dublin, and an intriguing initiative called Exchange Dublin, a new artists' collective based on Exchange Street in Dublin's Temple Bar. What's intriguing about Exchange is that it's led by a group of teenagers and early twentysomethings, and was founded by Dylan Haskins, who's been organising arts and cultural events in Dublin since he was 16 or so. Read the interview with him by Jim Carroll of the Irish Times (on Carroll's blog) from earlier this year to get a glimpse of what's happening in the worlds of youth and 'DIY' culture in Dublin.

Publishing Perspectives (featured here recently) brings news from London of the 25th anniversary celebrations of Wasafiri, a magazine showcasing the best in international contemporary writing. They report:

'Wasafiri is a Kiswahili word and translates as “travelers.” Susheila Nasta [the editor] says the name was chosen “because many of those who created the literatures in which Wasafiri was interested have all been cultural travelers, either through migration, transportation or else in the more metaphorical sense of seeking an imagined cultural ‘home.’”

'The magazine’s journey reads like a short story you might find on one of its pages. In its early days, it was edited in various living rooms in London and Kent, while back issues were stored in an Islington pub... Today, Wasafiri is regarded as Britain’s premier magazine for international contemporary writing, and it continues to expand and break new ground within the international literary and publishing landscape.'

Wasafiri's home page describes itself as having 'continued to provide consistent coverage to Britain's diverse cultural heritage and publish a range of diasporic and migrant writing worldwide.' Wasafiri has 'consistently aimed to shift the contours of established literary canons and extend the borders of international contemporary writing, creating imaginative spaces and publishing some of the most promising new literary voices.'

Nasta tells the story of the magazine's birth and role here. She says: 'The best literary works – whatever the particular trajectories of the often mixed cultural traditions which inform them – are challenging precisely because they take us to the limits of what can be expressed, in forms which extend understanding and carry us to new vistas where hope and desire would like to reside. If we lose the ability to continue to cross frontiers, confront change, write the stories of the future, we may not only lose our way but also our humanity.'

The magazine has made a selection of the best writing over its 25 years available in a free download. Wasafiri is also on Facebook.

The latest Migration Information Source newsletter from Kirin Kalia at the Migration Policy Institute has a useful overview of coverage of the situation of asylum seekers in Australia. I have reprinted it here:

Boatloads of asylum seekers headed for Australia made headlines nearly a decade ago. The response of the government then was to process them on island territories or persuade Pacific Island countries like Nauru to accept them while their claims were being processed (see the Australia country profile).

A new wave of asylum seekers in the past year, most of them from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, has set off a new public outcry. The issue recently reached a boiling point when the Oceanic Viking, an Australian customs ship that had rescued 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers in international waters, attempted to bring them to Indonesia for processing in mid-October.

In a standoff that lasted nearly a month, the Sri Lankans refused to come ashore in Indonesia, saying they wanted to be taken to Australia. Last Friday, 22 of the Sri Lankans agreed to enter an Australian-funded processing center in Indonesia after the Australian government essentially promised them their claims would be fast tracked. They could be resettled to Australia, but the government has made no guarantees (see the ABC News story)

Australia's opposition leader has attacked the government's offer, saying it will only encourage more human smugglers. The Australian government's attempts to reach a broader agreement with Indonesia on human smuggling had another setback Monday when Indonesia's president postponed his visit to Australia. In addition, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd admitted his staff were involved in the asylum-seeker deal, but he maintained he had no prior knowledge of it (see The Age).

According to provisional statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of asylum seekers in Australia increased 27 percent in the first half of 2009 (2,501 claims) compared to the same period in 2008. The 2009 level remains well below those Australia experienced in 2000 and 2001.

For more on how Australia and others, including the United States and the European Union, approach migrants who arrive by sea, see MPI's report The New Boat People.

The MPI's website is here and is on Facebook here.

This week we launch a redesigned Migration Matters newsletter, and are sending it out to our entire database. If you have received the newsletter and wish to remain subscribed, there's no need to do anything. If you wish to subscribe, go here. If you wish to unsubscribe, please follow the link at the top of the newsletter.

Migration Matters is an online report on how the media covers and documents migration issues. The newsletter contains a précis of the week's reports, and is published each Friday.

Migration Matters is a project of FOMACS, the Forum on Migration and Communications. It is edited by Colin Murphy.

If you know of any media that we should be reporting, but haven't, do let us know. Contact us with your thoughts or suggestions at migrationmatters[at]fomacs.org.

The latest report from Fortress Europe records 33 border deaths in September: 25 of whom died in a shipwreck that occurred in the high sea off the Moroccan coast on the route towards Spain, on 19 September, with eight others killed by the shots fired by Egyptian police at the border with Israel, they report.

'Some days after the Perejil shipwreck, a little more information surfaced. There were 19 men and 17 women from west Africa on board, with four babies born during the journey, in Morocco, whose age was between one and three years. Out of 17 women, at least eight were pregnant. 16 were Nigerian, aged between 15 and 25. One of the young women was a 22-year-old Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The majority of the men were Nigerian, except for two Senegalese and a Guinean (Guinea Bissau). The dinghy was heading towards Cádiz. At three in the morning, the first call for help went out. Someone living in Spain received the call and warned the emergency service. When the rescue services arrived it was too late; the dinghy had capsized at sea. Eight corpses were recovered (a 25-year-old Nigerian man and seven young women, Nigerian as well, aged between 16 and 24, four of whom were pregnant). There were 11 survivors: seven young Nigerian men and four Nigerian women. Those missing at sea were 17. The survivors were taken back to Morocco, to Tangiers harbour, from where they were expelled the following day and accompanied back to the Algerian border, to Oujda, from where it was assumed that they had entered Morocco.'

I reported from Oujda on a similar story last year, and later, in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, on the north Moroccan coast, heard more accounts of the long and dangerous journeys made to get into Europe.

Also on the Fortress Europe website, which now houses a substantial multimedia archive:

The Northern Jungle. Reportage from Calais and London. A documentary by Vincent Nguyen and Jean-Sebastien Desbordes (in French), with the voices of Eritrean refugees, trucks drivers, smugglers and social workers met along the route.

A review of border deaths in the first six months of 2009

Sent back to Libya: Exclusive Photos from Paris Match of the return of 90 people, shipwrecked while crossing the Mediterranean, to Tripoli by the Italian coastguard patrol boat that rescued them.

Currently touring the highlands and islands of Scotland is the Africa in Motion film festival. The festival runs each year in Edinburgh in late October, and this year has followed that with four 'mini-festivals' in New Galloway, Isle of Skye, Drumnadrochit and Lerwick. The rural tour programme is here.

'By working alongside established rural film venues,' they say, 'we hope to establish a broader platform to expose issues as well as challenge conceptions of the African continent and African cinema.'

The programme for the full festival, which is the biggest African film festival in the UK, is here.

Of particular interest is the film 'Come un uomo sulla terra' (Like a man on earth). According to the blurb: 'In 2005, a law student from Addis Ababa fled Ethiopia to escape violent political repression, setting off for Libya across the desert border. Once in Libya, he attempted to make his way to the Mediterranean, only to be caught by one of the numerous criminal gangs that control the route. After many ordeals he was betrayed by the gang to the Libyan police, and deported back to Ethiopia. Having eventually escaped to a refugee camp in Rome, this film is his attempt to bring together his own story with those of the many other refugees who have suffered in their attempts to escape brutality at home, stories of great suffering and great dignity. 'Come un uomo sulla terra' is a journey of pain and dignity, through which Dagmawi Yimer voices his memories of unthinkable human suffering to denounce a tragic political and humanitarian situation.

More on the film, including a clip, on its website, here.

Professor Alessandro Triulzi from the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, who worked as a producer and researcher on the film, gave a seminar on the research context of the film at the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

The festival's Facebook page has more information on individual films and activities.

Photoinsight is a website showcasing and archiving multimedia responses to 'forced migration'. Run by John Nassari, an artist and academic at the University of East London, it's well worth a look. The design of the site appears curiously static in the Web 2.0 era, but it proves to be an understated but effective curatorial form: see Nassari's photographic and audio exhibition on the Greek Cypriot community in London here and one exhibit from that here. Amongst the many other works on the site is Perry Ogden's 'Pony Kids', documenting traveller children and their horses at the horse fair in Dublin. Ogden went on to make the drama-documentary style film 'Pavee Lackeen' about a young Traveller girl in Dublin. There is also a collection of essays and an introduction to postcolonial theory, amongst other resources. The website's main aim, they say, 'is to create a resource of visual and written work which addresses ethnicity, identity and cultural difference. Its purpose is to share multi-disciplinary research in the field of refugee studies. To create a resource of art and theory which explores issues of exile, memory, home and identity in the context of forced migration.' More on John Nassari on Pilot, a curatorial archive, here. 

Thinking laterally, this might be of interest to Migration Matters readers: a lecture on issues of heritage and the dispersal of cultural artifacts by the director of the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis. The lecture is titled ‘Collections present and absent at the new Acropolis Museum?’ and is on next Wednesday in Dublin at 6.30pm in the Ceramics Room, National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street. This is the annual Irish Museums Association James White Lecture. (Admission is free, but booking essential.)

Dimitrios Pandermalis has been Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki since 1979 and is internationally known for his lectures on classical archaeology. From 1996 to 2000 he was a national member of the Greek parliament.

The new Museum of the Acropolis, designed by Bernard Tschumi, the renowned Swiss architect opened in June this year, and is located 300 yards south of the Acropolis hill, where the 134-year-old original museum still stands. The new glass-marble structure faces the Acropolis, providing a view of the Parthenon Temple and other key structures. The museum is mounted on roller bearings so the structure and contents will be protected from earthquake tremors. The project was a multicultural enterprise drawing on glass crews from Germany and the UK and concrete workers from Albania, India, Russia and Greece. The new museum echoes the ascent to the Acropolis with the top floor displaying the friezes of the Parthenon. Copies have been put in place of the parts of the friezes that are housed at the British Museum, the original artworks having been taken to London in 1801, by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin.

There's an interview with Pandermalis, along with extensive other information on Elgin, on the site Elginism, and video of a talk by Pandermalis on Fora.tv, 'the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences'.

Booking contact details: (01) 4120939; office@irishmuseums.org; www.irishmuseums.org.

Watch this. It's a short video animation titled 'Boot racism out of football', made by Bruntsfield primary school in England and hosted on the Irish Show Racism the Red Card campaign site. Gorgeous, witty, very smart.

Show Racism the Red Card is a campaign seeking to harness the profile of sport to educate against racism, and supporting programmes encouraging integration through and within sport. One current initiative is the Online Anti-racism Creative Competition, which seeks to engage schools and youth services through producing multi-media artwork and entering it online. There is an education pack with DVD, clips from which are also available online, and young people are asked to produce a piece of art - whether a painting, photo or written article - on the themes of the DVD. There is another short video here, an example of a video entry to the competition. There's also a downloads section on the site, and a Facebook page. More on this subject to follow.

Show Racism the Red Card leads me to the anti-racism resource on teachers.tv, a British site. Teachers.tv is an online video resource and has an extensive selection of videos on themes of racism, integration, asylum, etc. There is an interview with the Watford player Al Bangura, about his childhood and how his life has changed since arriving in Britain as an asylum seeker, here. (Alas, these videos are not available to view outside the UK though there is a brief text summary of the interview.) The British Show Racism the Red Card campaign is here. The campaign has a number of films available. There's a trailer for their film on Islamophobia here. Teachers TV programmes are also available on Sky 880, Virgin Media 240, Freesat 650 and Freeview 88 (4-6pm) and through iTunes U.

As I write, on Friday afternoon, Joe Duffy's 'Liveline' programme on RTE Radio One is discussing the theatre show 'Adolf' which opened last night in Dublin. The play is a one-man show based on Adolf Hitler by Pip Utton in which Utton plays Hitler, in the first half, and then plays a contemporary racist character in the second, making racist jokes, etc, with apparently the intent of provoking the audience to reflect on the enduring risk of fascism and racism.

The theatre director Peter Sheridan was in the audience and, shortly before the end, interrupted the performance to shout out 'Tolerance, tolerance' and left. There were other walkouts. Sheridan and another woman talked to Duffy on air, and argued that the play apparently had the effect of simply repeating (and thereby endorsing) the sentiments of the characters, rather than satirising them. 'When you're dealing with material this provocative and this incendiary you'd better be absolutely sure that you've got the balance right, and this show hasn't got the balance right,' said Sheridan. Utton came on air to defend the show.

Utton has been touring the show for over a decade, including playing three times in Berlin, and has received strong reviews, including in Edinburgh. Utton was interviewed at some length on Newstalk's 'Culture Shock' programme last night (which doesn't appear to be available to listen back), and came across as a sensitive and thoughtful writer-performer. There's a video clip of the play, which I haven't yet seen, here.

I've recently come across a new online/email magazine in the US, which I thought worth mentioning here. 'Publishing Perspectives' purports to be something of an online trade paper for the publishing industry, but in fact is a much broader-themed resource, dealing with questions of media and literature more generally. The magazine publishes one lead story daily, online and via email, with 'bonus material' and 'global updates' alongside. It's published by Edward Nawotka, who did doctoral work at UCD in Ireland in the 1990s (where we knew each other) and is now based in Houston, Texas. It strikes me as a particularly clean and effective example of online publishing, combining print and low-fi video in an accessible but uncluttered format. Material of particular interest to readers includes:

An interview with Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on 'straddling continents'.

An interview with Anita Diaman, author of 'Day After Night' which tells the fictional story of a group of young women who escaped Nazi Europe for Palestine, only to be detained in a British run camp for illegal immigrants.

A report on Mike Kim's book 'Escaping North Korea', the story of Kim's efforts to help North Korean refugees cross the border into China. Kim was also interviewed on BBC World Service's 'Outlook' programme. See also Kim's own site.

The civil liberties monitoring organisation Statewatch has highlighted a number of reports of interest to Migration Matters in recent bulletins. These are:

1. A FRONTEX (EU borders agency) report on 'The impact of the global economic crisis on illegal migration to the EU'. The report seeks to draw conclusions based on the decrease in the numbers of undocumented migrants reaching the EU (or attempting to do so) and the economic crisis in the EU leading to fewer job opportunities.

2. 'Spooked! How not to prevent violent extremism' by the Institute of Race Relations in the UK. An excellent report and critique of the counter-terrorism Prevent programme from the IRR, according to Statewatch. To quote: 'There is strong evidence that a significant part of the Prevent programme involves the embedding of counter-terrorism police officers within the delivery of local services, the purpose of which seems to be to gather intelligence on Muslim communities, to identify areas, groups and individuals that are ‘at risk’ and to then facilitate interventions, such as the Channel programme, as well as more general police engagement with the Muslim community, to manage perceptions of grievances.'

"The atmosphere promoted by Prevent is one in which to make radical criticisms of the government is to risk losing funding and facing isolation as an ‘extremist’, while those organisations which support the government are rewarded. This in turn undermines the kind of radical discussions of political issues that would need to occur if young people are to be won over and support for illegitimate political violence diminished. The current emphasis of Prevent on depoliticising young people and restricting radical dissent is actually counter-productive because it strengthens the hands of those who say democracy is pointless.'

3. An online news report on Der Spiegel on the acquittal of the Cap Anamur crew in Italy. On 7 October 2009, a Sicilian court acquitted the former chair of the human rights organisation Cap Anamur, Elias Bierdel, his former captain, Stefan Schmidt, and the first officer of the ship, Wladimir Dschkewitsch. In 2004, the three had rescued 37 refugees off the Italian coast from distress at sea and helped them to land in Sicily. They were then accused of and prosecuted for assisting in illegal entry. They faced the possibility of four years imprisonment and a fine of 400.000 EUR. The organisation Cap Anamur and the German asylum rights organisation Pro Asyl had started an international campaign for justice to acquit the three and have reacted positively to the decision.

4.'The Privatization of Immigration Detention: Towards a Global View', a working paper by the Global Detention Project, a Geneva based institution that seeks to map the use of detention as a response to immigration. Readers may also have missed this quote from Silvio Berlusconi, featured on the homepage of the Global Detention Project: 'I think it is much easier to examine individual situations in the country of origin, otherwise they [irregular immigrants] come here and go to a camp which, I should not be saying this, is very similar to a concentration camp.'