http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-swiss-italy-idUSKCN10L1F6?il=0
World | Wed Aug 10, 2016
As migrants pile up at Swiss-Italian border, Amnesty warns children at risk
ZURICH | BY BRENNA HUGHES NEGHAIWI
Amnesty International warned of a buildup of migrants on Italy's border with Switzerland and demanded clarification from Swiss authorities over reports by children that they had been sent back when trying to join their parents there.
Switzerland said the buildup was due to an influx of African migrants seeking passage to north European countries such as Germany. Any individual requesting asylum would be granted the opportunity.
Several hundred migrants have been sleeping near the train station in Como, Italy, since July after a Swiss clamp down on crossings.
"We're concerned about reports from minors who by their own accounts were sent back to Italy at the Swiss border and were prevented from joining family members in Switzerland," Amnesty International Switzerland said in a statement on Tuesday.
"If a minor has family members in Switzerland who could care for her or him, ultimately Switzerland should process that asylum request," the agency added.
Some two-thirds of the nearly 7,500 migrants who reached Switzerland via the southern canton of Ticino have been turned back since early July, a steep rise from the one in seven denied entry earlier this year.
That proportion was still rising in recent weeks.
Swiss authorities said this was due to an influx of people -- mainly from Eritrea, Gambia and Ethiopia -- wishing to transit Switzerland from Italy to Germany or other northern European countries, which requires a valid permit.
But any individual requesting asylum in Switzerland -- or communicating a desire to do so to border guards -- would be granted the opportunity, customs and migration authorities said.
That practice hadn't changed in recent weeks, they said.
Martin Reichlin of the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) said he would expect any child arriving at the border and attempting to join relatives in Switzerland to be delivered to the care of his organization.
Authorities have a responsibility to inform minors of their rights, Amnesty said, and a systematic return of children would be incompatible with the U.N Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"Recognizing the precarious circumstances for refugees in northern Italy, it's unacceptable to turn away especially vulnerable people," Amnesty said.
Migrants turned back at the French and Swiss borders are beginning to pile up in Milan, the city's mayor, Giuseppe Sala, said on Tuesday. More than 3,000 migrants in transit to other European countries were stranded in Italy's financial capital.
(Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi in Zurich and Steven Scherer in Rome; editing by Ralph Boulton)
---
http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/generalnews/2016/08/10/asylum-seeker-crisis-spreads-to-milan_ae4e375c-b62b-4543-8f37-d34c7f9ee9f9.html
Migrants: asylum seeker crisis in Italy spreads to Milan
Over 3,000 migrans, refugees dead in Med this year, IOM
10 AUGUST, 10:39
(by Stefania Fumo).
MILAN - Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala on Monday denied plans to set up a tent city for asylum seekers as the tempers of anti-immigrant politicians flared in the face of new arrivals from the border town of Ventimiglia, where a standoff took place at the weekend.
"There is no tent city in the works," Sala said in a statement. The migrant situation is "under the full control of relevant authorities. Currently the city is hosting 3,200 people, and if the need arises we might add some tents for initial lodging". These will be added to those already in place inside a former Identification and Expulsion Center (CIE) and in a barracks, he said. "There is no tent city, therefore, being planned in other locations in the city," Sala said. "I say this for the benefit of the champions of press releases by the pound, who wish to describe a non-existent city in disarray". "Problems get solved with common sense and a lot of work," he added. Some 500 asylum seekers are camping out in the northern city of Como after being turned away at the Swiss border on Monday, and authorities there were at work to locate a facility to host them.
A police officer died of a heart attack Saturday during a No Border protest in the Italian town of Ventimiglia after a group of 300 asylum seekers forced a cordon, jumped into the sea and swam to France on Friday. On Tuesday, the Red Cross working out of a refugee camp that has been set up in Ventimiglia's Parco Roja, a disused area near a commercial rail yard, reported it distributed 590 meals to migrants, up from 490 meals last Saturday. Also on Tuesday, Liguria Governor Giovanni Toti said those massed at Ventimiglia will be moved elsewhere "in the next few hours".
"We'll have to see if this flow of people back from Ventimiglia and Como will bring migrants to Milan," Sala said. Lombardy Governor Roberto Maroni from the rightwing anti-immigrant Northern League tweeted Tuesday that undocumented immigrants must be repatriated. "The Renzi government has lost the plot on immigration," the governor tweeted. "Illegals must be sent home, now".
Received on Wed Aug 10 2016 - 14:09:27 EDT