Following the Belarus-EU border crisis, thousands of asylum seekers entered Lithuania. A year later, many still remain in detention with little contact with the outside world. These are stories of several artists who are trying to create connection through their art.
At least 95 refugees from various African countries and Syria have arrived in Italy on a UNHCR charter flight. The migrants were victims of torture and other serious forms of abuse.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned that over 2,500 asylum seekers and migrants are being detained in "inhumane" conditions in Lithuania after they crossed the border from Belarus. The NGO said many are at risk of mental health degradation.
A preliminary hearings judge (GUP) in the Sicilian city of Palermo has sentenced two men to a 20-year prison term for allegedly detaining and torturing migrants waiting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy, in the Zuhara prison in Libya. Both men, identified as citizens of Bangladesh, faced torture charges.
While the number of migrant attempts to cross the Polish-Belarus border has dropped significantly, the situation of migrants stranded at the border or held in detention camps remains grave.
A report published by the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) underscored a sharp rise in the detention of migrants in Libyan centers this year. Official centers alone were holding some 10,000 in early October, compared with about 1,100 in January, the report stated.
The pontiff has pleaded countries to offer migrants rescued from the Mediterranean safe disembarkation at ports, alternatives to detention, and access to asylum.
One day in August, Phyllie received a phone call she had hoped she would never get. Her 19-year-old brother Daouda had been killed in a Libyan prison while trying to escape. This 43-year-old woman, who lives in France, tells InfoMigrants that she does not know how to mourn her brother without being able to recover his body and give him a proper burial.
An Eritrean man accused of running a camp in Libya and subjecting migrants to "severe beatings, kidnapping, rape and or unlawful deprivation of liberty," has been put on a wanted list in the Netherlands. He has already been sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in Ethiopia for similar crimes.
Libyan armed forces have detained more than 5,000 migrants, including hundreds of children and pregnant women, in a major raid. Meanwhile the country's coast guard intercepted and brought back hundreds of people who were trying to reach Europe.
The organization Doctors for Human Rights (MEDU) has denounced the atrocities endured by migrants inside detention centers in Libya, citing the stories recently reported by five migrants in Ragusa, Sicily.
Italian lawmakers have approved renewed funding to train Libya's coast guard. The vote came just one day after the release of a report outlining the violence that migrants rescued by the coast guard face in Libyan detention centers.