I can't believe it's been almost a year... A year since this interview, this call to help, the peak of this cruel crisis. And the problem, my friends, has not disappeared.
It's never too late to help and host the ones in need.
Photograph taken by myself in Grande Synthe, near Calais, North of France, in a now-destroyed informal refugee camp, during a report mission in Feb. 2016
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Here is Massive Attack's message and interview about their tour focusing on the state of Europe and refugees and their work with photographer Giles Duley.
Below, more of the news on the issue...
Massive Attack on refugees
- in one of their rare TV interviews
Feb. 2016
Published on 4 Feb 2016
They rarely give interviews, but Massive Attack have put images of refugees centre stage in their latest shows and the band believes we "will be judged in history" by how we respond.
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Photograph taken by myself at Massive Attack's show in Hyde Park's BST Festival, in London, on July 1st, 2016
Massive Attack Give a Glimpse into the Refugee Crisis:
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Photographer Giles Duley and Massive Attack team up to stand with refugees
In September 2016, photographer Giles Duley joined forces with the band Massive Attack to show their support for refugees.
Watch the interview:
Massive Attack calls for solidarity with refugees
Published on 3 Nov 2016
British group Massive Attack has included images of refugees, taken by photographer, Giles Duley, in their concerts. Together the artists are collaborating to encourage people to support refugees.
“These are people just like you, and me. By doing it against a white background and making it very clean it is taking them out of that context, so you can just see them as people," said photographer Giles Duley.
“People feel afraid to be sympathetic. It is if that by supporting a humanitarian cause and by being in solidarity with people that need you, that you are somehow endangering the security of your own nation - which is crazy," said Massive Attack frontman Rob del Naja. “We are in this together, all of us.”
Find out more: https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/massi...
“These are people just like you, and me. By doing it against a white background and making it very clean it is taking them out of that context, so you can just see them as people," said photographer Giles Duley.
“People feel afraid to be sympathetic. It is if that by supporting a humanitarian cause and by being in solidarity with people that need you, that you are somehow endangering the security of your own nation - which is crazy," said Massive Attack frontman Rob del Naja. “We are in this together, all of us.”
Find out more: https://donate.unhcr.org/int-en/massi...
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Stories only have power when people listen. As a photographer, taking a photograph is only part of my work – I also have to make sure people see the images. And that has never felt more important to me than when covering the refugee crisis for UNHCR.
By: Giles Duley | 3 November 2016
In recent years I’ve been collaborating with poets, writers and musicians, seeking opportunities to reach new audiences and tell stories in innovative ways. Massive Attack were one of the bands I’d been talking to, and working together to highlight the refugee crisis seemed like a perfect and timely collaboration.
“I was deeply moved by the pictures he was sending me,” recalls Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja. “What’s really shocking is that you could be looking at photographs from any time in the last 100 years of a crisis involving refugee migration and war. And what’s terrifying is you think ‘Nothing’s changed,’ and that is what we have to engage with because this is not the past. This is now.”
In early September 2016, I made my way down to Bristol to see the final outcome of the collaboration. While the rain fell, I sat on the side of the stage waiting for the final track, ‘Unfinished Sympathy’. As it played, the portraits appeared behind the band – projected 30 feet high, dominating the stage, onto vast screens with the words “In This Together” written across them.
Link to the video and article here:
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In the news:
Influx of refugees leaves Belgrade at risk of becoming 'new Calais'
Up to 2,000 people stranded in Serbia in -16C temperatures with no water or sanitation, warn Médecins Sans Frontières
Afreezing and squalid Belgrade railway depot where up to 2,000 people are seeking shelter from the bitter Serbian winter risks becoming a “new Calais” for refugees and migrants abandoned by European authorities, the humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières has warned.
Children as young as eight are struggling to survive temperatures that have plunged to -16C this week, with no running water or sanitation.
At a Belgrade clinic set up by the charity, doctors have seen frostbite and burns resulting from the inhalation of toxic smoke, as people burn anything they can find to stay warm, among dozens of other medical problems.
MSF estimates that up to 2,000 people are living in a cluster of warehouses and other buildings around the city’s main station. It estimates that nearly half the patients they have treated are under 18.
“Serbia risks becoming a dumping zone, a new Calais where people are stranded and stuck,” warned Andrea Contenta, humanitarian affairs officer for MSF in Serbia.
The country is not part of the European Union, but it borders several countries that are part of the bloc, including Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and has become a key transit point for those hoping to start a new life in western Europe.
Serbia won praise for its treatment of migrants, but increasing numbers have become stranded there as the EU tried to shut down the Balkan route and tightened border controls. Processing camps are now badly overcrowded and more people are arriving every day. Although they ultimately hope to move on from Serbia, many are spending months there, making repeated failed attempts to cross into the EU.
“We cannot continue avoiding talking about reality, which is that the Balkan route is still open but people are getting stuck because there is no safe way to travel,” Contenta said. He added that unofficial estimates were that up to 8,000 refugees and migrants were stranded in Serbia.
The grim conditions endured by thousands outside the government camps were highlighted at the start of this week when a freezing cold snap put lives at risk. MSF was given permission to try to heat the derelict shelters, where there is no glass and walls and roofs are full of holes.
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Scores feared dead after migrant ship capsizes in Mediterranean
Aid workers say only four survivors recovered so far after vessel containing about 110 people overturned near Libya
A migrant ship carrying around 100 people capsized in the frigid waters off Libya on Saturday and only four survivors had been rescued after hours of searching, aid groups have said.
Eight bodies were recovered, but poor conditions hampered the search, which was conducted 30 miles (50km) off Libya’s coast, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported.
Flavio di Giacomo, Rome spokesman for the International Organisation of Migration, said four of the estimated 110 people on board had been rescued. He said more details would become available after the four were brought to shore.
The majority of migrant ships set off from Libya’s lawless coasts where smugglers operate with impunity, charging desperate migrants hundreds of dollars apiece to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.
Last year saw a record high number – 181,000 people – heading to Italy by sea, the EU rescue operation Frontex reported. West Africans, most of them hailing from Nigeria, accounted for most of the migrants in 2016, with a reported tenfold increase in their numbers since 2010.
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UK urged to transfer child refugees from freezing Europe camps
Calls for children housed in flimsy tents to be transferred as soon as possible as temperatures plummet across continent
he British government has been urged to step up efforts to transfer lone child refugees from other parts of Europe, as temperatures plunged below freezing across the south of the continent.
Thousands of refugees are still housed in flimsy tents, without proper flooring, at risk of freezing to death from the arctic blast across Europe that has brought temperatures to -15C (5F) in Greece and as low as -20C in Serbia and Hungary.
The Home Office minister Lady Williams said this week that although the UK had taken hundreds of child refugees after the dismantling of the Calais jungle camp, none had been taken from elsewhere in Europe.
“The government has transferred more than 750 children to the UK in support of the French operation to clear the Calais camp under both the family reunification provisions of the Dublin regulation and the terms of section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016,” she said, in answer to a question from the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts.
“More eligible children will be transferred from Europe, in line with the terms of the Immigration Act, in the coming months and we will continue to meet our obligations under the Dublin regulation.”
The Lib Dem leader, Tim Farron, said the government must start transferring children from freezing camps in southern Europe as soon as possible.
“May might not have been prime minister when the government pledged to take in accompanied child refugees from across Europe, but she was home secretary and the consequence of her blatant disregard of this pledge can now be seen all too clearly on freezing streets in Greece and central Europe,” he said.
“No child should be subjected to the conditions these refugees are surviving in, yet May is happy to turn her back on what is a serious humanitarian crisis.”
Lone children with families already living in the UK have the right to come to Britain under the Dublin regulation, but those who do not have relatives here can be transferred under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act, proposed by the Labour peer Lord Dubs, a former Kindertransport refugee.
That amendment committed the government to relocate lone child refugees in Europe “as soon as possible”. Ministers in David Cameron’s administration later briefed that several thousand were expected to come to Britain.
Last week, an Afghan refugee is reported to have died of hypothermia in Greece, and at least two Iraqis died in south-east Bulgaria, also believed to be linked to cold weather.
Speaking from Thessaloniki in northern Greece, Josie Naughton, the co-founder of Help Refugees, said: “We are devastated to hear reports of people losing their lives and coming close to hypothermia due to what we view as avoidable exposure to the freezing conditions in south-east Europe.
“We call on governments, large organisations and international agencies to reassess their bureaucratic procedures and spend money where it’s needed to prevent further loss of life.”
The charity said it was working to install heaters and flooring in hundreds of tents, as well as building warm accommodation in Filoxenia, where it houses 60 people, 40 of whom are children.
Greece’s migration policy minister, Yannis Mouzalas, said on Tuesday the conditions for refugees on the Greek islands were awful, with refugees housed in tents weighed down with snow. “Efforts are under way to move people as quickly as possible into hotels,” the island’s mayor, Spyros Galinos, told the Guardian on Wednesday.
“I’ve not seen so much snow, ever. Electricity supplies have been knocked out. There are villages that are isolated, without light or heating or running water. It’s difficult for everyone.”
Official figures released on Tuesday showed 5,491 refugees on Lesbos alone, with facilities built to house under half that number. About 1,000 are believed to be in tents.
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