The aunt of a drowned Syrian boy whose death last year put a human face on the suffering of Syrian refugees says she's heartbroken to see new photographs of the body of another dead boy lying face down on a Turkish beach. Speaking Saturday to members of her Christian Democratic Party in the northeastern city of Neubrandenburg, Merkel said that many of the 1.1 million asylum seekers who entered Germany last year would return home, as was Germany's experience with refugees from the Balkans did in the 1990s, the dpa news agency reported. Der Spiegel and the dpa news agency reported Saturday that the asylum seekers were used to provide information between 2000 and 2013 to the domestic intelligence agency known as the BfV and the foreign spy service BND. Left Party member Martina Renner suggested to dpa that the asylum seekers might have informed in an attempt to help their own cases, likening the now-ended practice to extortion and saying it is "fully unacceptable in a democracy." The "Close the Immigrant Detention Center" movement that organized the protest said in a statement that Barcelona should be "a city without borders that guarantees freedom of movement for all people," without what it called "prisons, raids or deportations." The state-run Anadolu news agency says the death toll in Saturday's latest migrant boat sinking has risen to 39. Officials at the government offices for Turkey's Canakkale district say the death toll has risen above the previously announced figure of 33, but are declining to offer a new specific figure as coast guard vessels and diving units continue to search the sea. Merkel told CDU party members at a meeting in the northeastern city of Neubrandenburg on Saturday that such a solution must include the reliable protection of the European Union's external borders and a fair distribution of asylum seekers among its member states, the dpa news agency reported. A Turkish government official says rescue workers are trying to reach a submerged migrant-packed boat that sank Saturday shortly after it departed for Greece — but he expects the death toll of 33 to rise. Turkish coast guards say 33 migrants have drowned while trying to cross the Aegean Sea and reach the Greek island of Lesbos, one of the most popular gateways for entry into the European Union. In a statement the coast guard says nine victims were trapped inside the capsized craft as patrol boats collected 75 survivors and continued to search the waves for others. A private Turkish news agency, Dogan, says police have arrested a Turkish man suspected of being the smuggler who organized Saturday's disastrous sea crossing. Turkey's state-run news agency says at least 33 people, including five children, have drowned in the Aegean Sea after their Greece-bound boat capsized off the Turkish coast.
 |
| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.sfgate.com |