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100 Somalis feared dead off Yemen coast: UNHCR
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-11 09:38 About 100 migrants believed to be mainly Somalis are missing and feared dead after being forced overboard by smugglers off the coast of Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Survivors of the latest tragic crossing reported that a smuggling boat carrying about 150 passengers had left the Somali port of Marera near Bossaso on Monday and spent three days crossing the Gulf of Aden, it said. Most passengers were forced overboard about 5 kms from the Yemeni shore, and many are feared to have drowned, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. "Survivors said they counted a total of 47 people reaching the beach and later saw Yemeni authorities burying five bodies," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing. Most of the migrants were believed to be Somalis, although some boats have also transported Ethiopian or Eritrean migrants from Somalia, he said. About 32,000 people have arrived from war-torn Somalia in Yemen so far this year after making the perilous voyage aboard smugglers' boats, according to the agency. At least 230 people have died and an estimated 365 remain missing, including those from the latest incident, it said. Piracy is also rife off Somalia, which has been mired in anarchy since 1991. Gunmen have boarded more than 30 vessels this year and received sizeable ransoms. A ship laden with cement was hijacked on Thursday night in the waters between Somalia and Yemen, a Somali government official said on Friday. The NATO military alliance decided on Thursday to join anti-piracy operations along Somalia's 3,300 km coastline. Greece Breaks Convention Greece is violating international accords on the status of refugees such as the Geneva Convention by routinely rejecting asylum claims by migrants from war-torn states like Afghanistan, a UN official said. Giorgos Tsarbopoulos, local head of the UNHCR, said Greece was facing a "crisis situation" as it struggles to cope with an increasing number of migrants from the Middle East and Africa arriving on its long Mediterranean coast, and it needed more help from its EU partners. Greece accepted just 8 of the 20,692 initial asylum requests made at its poorly staffed border posts in 2007, or less than 0.04 percent, according to government figures given to UNHCR. "This is against the principles, the rules and the standards of protection of the Geneva Convention and all international instruments," Tsarbopoulos said. "It is an automatic rejection." On appeal, the acceptance rate rose to 2.1 percent, but it remains the lowest in the European Union, Tsarbopoulos said. Agencies |
