Tag Archives: migrant rights

Reaping the Harvest of Fear: The Obama Administration Deports Asylum Seekers

January 12, 2016 at 1:53 PM
Central American migrants walk over the tracks to catch the train north, Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, Mexico, 28 June 2009. Junio 28, 2009. Líneas férreas de Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, México. Migrantes centroamericanos en espera de la salida del tren hacia el norte. Migrants make their way toward Mexico’s northern border by foot, bus and most commonly on the top of a network of freight trains. Here migrants in Tierra Blanca, Veracruz state, board “La Bestia” (The Beast) also known as “El tren de la muerte” (The Death Train).

Central American migrants walk over the tracks to catch the train north, Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, Mexico, 28 June 2009.

By Esmeralda López and Adotei Akwei

Urias (a 32-year-old mother from Usulután Province, El Salvador) says ICE agents showed up at the door of her apartment in Atlanta at 11 a.m. Sunday, but she wouldn’t let them in. Then they called her and said they were actually there because her ankle monitor was broken. So she opened the door. Once inside, they told her to get her kids together and go with them. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

I Choose to Be a Radical, Unapologetic Human Rights Activist

November 13, 2015 at 6:00 PM

GerryBlogPic1

by Gerry Carolina Rivadeneira, 2015 Ladis Kristof Fellow

March 8, 2011. This was the day my activist self was born.

I remember it was a hot sunny day in the middle of Miami, Florida. I was standing on stage with a microphone in my hand and I told the crowd, “We are here for Women’s Rights! Women’s Rights here and worldwide!” The microphone became my tool for advocacy as I was standing there on top of the stage, rallying the participants before the 5k Walk 4 Women’s Rights began. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Poland: It’s Time to Take Hate Crimes Seriously

September 18, 2015 at 11:16 AM

Poland2015AI

In January 2014, a 24-year-old Polish gay man was murdered shortly after leaving a club in Szczecin. His body was found on a nearby construction site, his face covered in bruises and his pants pulled down. Medical examiners found that he had drowned, as his face had been pushed into a puddle repeatedly. Authorities ignored the possibility that homophobia motivated the murder, and the court treated this attack as a common crime when it convicted the two men responsible.

Poland’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community faces widespread and ingrained discrimination. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Mexico’s Journey of Death: ‘I opened the coffin and I knew it was not my daughter’

September 14, 2015 at 2:16 PM
© AFP PHOTO/ JOSE Cabezas

© AFP PHOTO/ JOSE Cabezas

By Josefina Salomón, News Writer at Amnesty International in Mexico @josefinasalomon

It was the most difficult day of her life.

On the morning of 5 September 2010, Mirna Solórzano stood in front of a cargo plane in San Salvador’s airport, watching as soldiers unloaded a coffin. They said it contained the remains of her daughter, Glenda.

The 23 year old had been murdered alongside another 71 men and women in the Mexican town of San Fernando, in Tamaulipas, near the border with Texas, a few weeks earlier on 22 August.

Most were attempting to cross Mexico hoping to reach the USA and find jobs that would help them support their relatives back home. But the journey is known to be one of the most dangerous in the world, with those traveling routinely facing abductions, torture and death. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Child migrants need protection, not prison

October 7, 2014 at 5:04 PM
(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

By Pratap Chatterjee, Executive director of CorpWatch and member of Amnesty International USA Board of Directors

Since the summer of 2013, there has been an unprecedented level of unaccompanied children from Central America crossing the border into the United States.  The number of apprehended children has already surpassed 66,000 from October 2013 through August 2014. This is more than twice as many children who were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol during the same period the year before. In response to this crisis, President Obama requested that Congress provide more than $2 billion in funding to control the surge of unaccompanied children at the border and the power to expedite deportations. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Exploitation of Nepal’s Migrant Workers

May 8, 2012 at 3:26 PM
Nepal migrant workers

Families of migrant workers in Morang district, Nepal, 2011, who were interviewed by Amnesty International.

 “Migrant workers from Nepal and other countries are like cattle in Kuwait.  Actually, cattle are probably more expensive than migrant workers there.  No one cares whether we die or are killed. Our lives have no value.” –N.R., domestic worker from Ilam district, Nepal

Anyone who has waited for a flight at Kathmandu, Nepal’s international airport has seen the large groups of men and women quietly lining up to board flights for Qatar or Malaysia, many appearing nervous, clutching only their papers or a small bag of belongings.

But the men and women boarding these flights have reason to be nervous. While some Nepalese migrant workers arrive in the destination country and earn decent wages, others end up in forced labor or exploitative conditions.

These are some of the estimated 25,000 people a month who leave Nepal for work abroad to escape poverty and unemployment at home and to send remittances back to their families in Nepal.

SEE THE REST OF THIS POST