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AROUND 1,100 migrants were rescued off the coast of Italy as they attempted to make the dangerous sea crossing in a day of rescue operations.

The Italian Coastguard was sent on more than 11 separate rescue missions in the Strait of Sicily on Sunday.

Migrants attempted to make the crossing in rubber boats, a barge and two punts.

The Coastguard used Dattilo patrol ships to save around 600 people crammed onto five rubber boats.

Italian Navy ships were drafted in to save hundreds more from another three rubber boats and a barge.

Another seven migrants were rescued from a small boat by the Coastguard.

The operation came just one day after hundreds of migrants were rescued from an overcrowded dingy and wooden boat off the coast of Libya.

Migrants from Eritrea crammed onto the overcrowded wooden vessel during a rescue operation by the Spanish NGO Proactiva, off the Libyan coast in Mediterranean Sea on Saturday.

The rescues mark another busy day for the Italian Coastguard who have rescued thousands over migrants from the sea over the past year.

It’s unclear what country the migrants had set sail from but migration experts expect the Libya-Italy route to be used more often following the EU-Turkey deal, which makes it harder for migrants to reach Europe through the Balkans.

The route was abandoned when it became easier to reach Europe via Greece.

The number of migrants arriving in Italy by sea has fallen by 9 per cent this year, to 37,743, according to the Interior Ministry.

Boat arrivals have risen as people smugglers attempt the crossing from Libya to make the most of warm weather and calm seas.

Italy has taken in more than 420,000 boat migrants, most from Africa, since the start of 2014.

The number of migrants has caused political friction, with some right-wing parties lambasting the government for not doing more to stop the crisis.

Many migrants pay traffickers to travel on unseaworthy rubber boats to Sicily.

Thousands of migrants have died trying to make the crossing.

By: Express

Eritreans attempting the crossing make the choice to flee poverty and repression under a dictatorship in the hope of a new life.

Early morning, 17 miles off the Libyan coast in international waters, and the crews with the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) hear a ping on their ship’s radar.

Over the subsequent few hours a familiar scenario unfolds.

In darkness and on rough Mediterranean waters, the organisation’s purpose-built vessel, the Topaz Responder, manoeuvres towards the radar ping.

With the help of floodlights, the rickety wooden boat is spotted. It is dangerously overcrowded; easily more than 300 men, women and children, few wearing life jackets.

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The rescue crew’s drill is now well-rehearsed. Two smaller and more manoeuvrable launches are deployed from the larger vessel and positioned alongside the wooden boat. One by one, people are counted off their wreck of a boat to safety.

Over more than an hour, 352 people were ferried from the smaller launches to the Responder vessel for medical checks.

But on board the fishing boat, three separate hold compartments were discovered. Inside them were four bodies and a number of other people in a critical state.

Most of the hundreds rescued said they were from Eritrea and had boarded the vessel in the Libyan town of Sabrath.

It is one of a string of towns along the Libyan coast where people smugglers operate with impunity.

In 2015, the going rate for a sub-Saharan African to secure a space on a rickety boat, which might or might not make it across the Med to Italy, was $1,000 (£760).

The lower the price, the less safe the journey. The four who died in the hold probably paid less than those above them, who survived.

The smugglers charge extra for life jackets. Those who volunteer to pilot the vessel, regardless of experience, get a discount.

Testimony from those who do make the journey alive suggests that few have any idea how long the journey across the Mediterranean is, not to mention how dangerous.

But even if they did know the dangers, few would make a different choice because the danger of war, the threat of terror or the hopelessness of poverty has compelled them to cross the Sahara desert in search of a new life.

Eritrea, which is home for all of those on this boat, has a human rights record on a par with North Korea.

It is a totalitarian state whose dictatorial president, Isaias Afwerki, allows no dissent and no foreign journalists either.

So it is hard to empathise with those fleeing the place because we have not really seen how bad it is.

A 2010 US diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks gives a hint.

It read: ”Young Eritreans are fleeing their country in droves, the economy appears to be in a death spiral, Eritrea’s prisons are overflowing, and the country’s unhinged dictator remains cruel and defiant.”

Last month, on 5 July, more than 4,500 people were rescued in a single 24-hour period.

The Italian coastguard, which operates in the waters alongside charities like MOAS, said the survivors were picked up in 35 separate rescues.

Figures from the Italian government show that between January and June 2016, 70,222 people arrived in Italy from the north African coastline including 11,608 children, of whom 10,524 were unaccompanied by an adult relative.

In the same period the previous year, the total was 70,329 – but the number of unaccompanied minors was less than half at 4,410.

The known number of deaths since January 2016 stands at just over 2,900, a third higher than the same period in 2015.

The true figure will be higher as some bodies are never recovered.

Hundreds of asylum applications from Eritreans are being incorrectly refused by the government owing to its “unacceptable” policy on accepting refugees from the country, MPs have said.

The home affairs select committee has called on the Home Office to explain why it still has not updated its guidance on asylum seekers from Eritrea, even though it has acknowledged the guidance to be wrong.

The cross-party committee of MPs noted in a report published on Wednesday that 86% of appeals from Eritrean asylum seekers were decided in their favour in the first quarter of 2016.

“This suggests to us that the Home Office country guidance for Eritrea was wrong and applications for asylum from Eritrean nationals have been incorrectly refused,” said the report. “This is the third consecutive report in which we have commented on the approach of the Home Office to asylum-seeking Eritreans. It is unacceptable that the Home Office is still getting so many of its decisions regarding nationals of this country wrong.”

Until it controversially updated its country advice in March 2015, while Theresa May was home secretary, the Home Office advised that it was not safe to return most asylum seekers to Eritrea, which has been described as “the North Korea of Africa”. But the updated Home Office guidance claimed that citizens who left Eritrea without permission – many of them to escape its indefinite military service – would not face persecution if they returned.

The change of advice was based on a report, produced for the Danish government, that has since been discredited and from which the Danish government has distanced itself. One expert, who led an independent inquiry into the Home Office guidance, said in January that “an undergraduate would be failed” for producing such a document.

The home affairs committee said that where there were concerns over the accuracy of country guidance, as there were with Eritrea, the Home Office should “suspend decisions until such a time that those concerns have been investigated and, where necessary, revised guidance put in place”, or risk repatriating people to countries that were known to be unsafe or clogging up appeals courts unnecessarily.

In 2015, Eritreans accounted for the largest group of people applying for asylum in the UK, with 3,726 applications. The changed Home Office advice resulted in the number of Eritreans granted protection in the UK plummeting, from a 73% approval rate in the first quarter of 2015 to 34% in the second quarter.

However, the majority of these rejections are being overturned on appeal. In the first quarter of 2016, 86% of all appeals of Eritrean nationals were granted. This number is far higher than the appeal grant rate for other nationalities – the next highest successful appeal rate is for Iranians at 52%. The home affairs committee also suggested that the Home Office review its country advice on Iran, given that such a large number of decisions were being overturned on appeal.

The cost to the government of asylum appeals from Eritreans has risen by more than £5m since the change of country advice came into effect. An asylum claim costs an average of £1,300 to the government; this increases to £3,300 if the claim goes to appeal, according to the Ministry of Justice.

According to freedom of information data obtained by the Guardian, in the year before the country advice was changed (April 2014 to March 2015) there were 308 appeals of asylum decisions from Eritrean nationals, at a cost to the government of roughly £1m. In the year after the change of country advice (April 2015 to March 2016) there were 1,894 appeals by Eritreans, costing taxpayers £6.25m.

The home affairs committee said that where there were concerns over the accuracy of country guidance, as there were with Eritrea, the Home Office should “suspend decisions until such a time that those concerns have been investigated and, where necessary, revised guidance put in place”, or risk repatriating people to countries that were known to be unsafe or clogging up appeals courts unnecessarily.

In 2015, Eritreans accounted for the largest group of people applying for asylum in the UK, with 3,726 applications. The changed Home Office advice resulted in the number of Eritreans granted protection in the UK plummeting, from a 73% approval rate in the first quarter of 2015 to 34% in the second quarter.

However, the majority of these rejections are being overturned on appeal. In the first quarter of 2016, 86% of all appeals of Eritrean nationals were granted. This number is far higher than the appeal grant rate for other nationalities – the next highest successful appeal rate is for Iranians at 52%. The home affairs committee also suggested that the Home Office review its country advice on Iran, given that such a large number of decisions were being overturned on appeal.

The cost to the government of asylum appeals from Eritreans has risen by more than £5m since the change of country advice came into effect. An asylum claim costs an average of £1,300 to the government; this increases to £3,300 if the claim goes to appeal, according to the Ministry of Justice.

According to freedom of information data obtained by the Guardian, in the year before the country advice was changed (April 2014 to March 2015) there were 308 appeals of asylum decisions from Eritrean nationals, at a cost to the government of roughly £1m. In the year after the change of country advice (April 2015 to March 2016) there were 1,894 appeals by Eritreans, costing taxpayers £6.25m.

“We believed the UK government is the best-organised, the one who was looking after human rights, who have the power to change everything and make it right,” he said.

When his asylum claim was rejected, Zecahrias’s girlfriend was pregnant and the news devastated him. He struggled to leave the house and lived in fear that the government would send him back to Eritrea, where he thought he would be arrested, if not killed.

“If the government of [the] UK was planning to take me back home on the plane, I was planning suicide,” he said. “It’s not what I was expecting when coming to England.”

He had his asylum claim granted on appeal, something he says is now expected by Eritrean asylum seekers. “I want to thank [the British government] for what they do,” said Zecahrias, who is now working in Leeds and supporting his girlfriend and son. “But they know the truth, they can solve this.”

“All country information and guidance is based on a careful and objective assessment of available evidence from a range of sources including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, local, national and international organisations, and media outlets,” said a Home Office spokesperson.

“We continually review our country information and guidance to ensure it is up-to-date, accurate and relevant, so that staff can make fair and considered decisions.”

*By: The Guardian

About 800 000 of the 6.3 million Eritreans living abroad – 60,000 of them in Germany. Nearly 300 of them met in Hochspeyer. It was about how to deal with the terror regime.

They are fleeing poverty and oppression – and then forced the dictatorial system continue to finance: through a ”construction-control”. Eritreans all over the world pay two percent of their income to the Eritrean government. If they do not, they will get from their country of birth, neither a new passport or official documents. Eritrea is strongly criticized by the United Nations – an infringement of human rights and because the totalitarian regime supported the opposition of neighboring countries, including militant groups like Al Shabab.

Negede Tesfamariam and Tecle Ghebregergis are committed exiled Eritreans. Tesfamariam lives and works in Kaiserslautern, Ghebregergis, in his own words a former liberation fighters, lives in Nidderau near Frankfurt / Main. both have an international congress for Eritreans in the Diaspora organized in the West Palatinate Hochspeyer recently – the first time for Germany. ”Our ultimate goal is the liberation of Eritrea from the current transitional government and the establishing of a democratic constitution,” says Ghebregergis.

A report of the United Nations in May 2016 shows that persist serious human rights violations in Eritrea, which have been documented in previous years. Eritreans are still conscripted to military service of indefinite length on the agenda were arbitrary detentions, torture, disappearances, retaliation for the alleged conduct of family members, discrimination on religious and ethnic grounds, sexual and gender-based violence and killings. In addition, many of the people who were deported by force in the past, permanently missing.

A dominant theme of the Congress in the Palatinate was the ubiquitous even in exile fear of intimidation have been reports of the organization. According to the motto ”I know where your family lives,” would exiled Eritreans who refused to pay two percent levy, threatened with assault. Also expropriations and denials of entry are on the agenda. The long arm of the regime rich even up to Hochspeyer, say the organizers. So unknown had tried before the meeting to obtain information about the organizer in place. ”Our greatest desire is to motivate our fellow citizens and to identify ways to live without fear,” says Tesfamariam who had organized in Geneva in June for thousands exiled Eritreans a demonstration at the Geneva UN headquarters.

A three-day program was offered in Hochspeyer the nearly 300 participants, who came from Germany and other European countries, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In plenary had been debating the different conceptions of the older and the younger generation, should be how to deal with the regime in Eritrea. Former freedom fighters and 1993. Born in front would thus feel their legacy of the liberation of Eritrea would not continue in their favor. Younger Eritreans made the generation of their parents responsible for the emergence of the authoritarian regime and its continued existence – they feel increasingly helpless. but in workshops also focused on issues such as integration and causes of flight. Originally, the selection of a government in exile on the agenda for the meeting in Hochspeyer. Participants have, however, decided in a vote on the other hand, it was called then. ”We want to leave the political parties, the political work,” explains Ghebregergis of PZ on Sunday.

In the next six months they will now meet at a different location to a second, even larger Congress.

Once you learn about the human rights violations and absolute censorship in Eritrea, it’s astounding that not more attention has been brought to this issue.

In this episode of Blackout, a series produced by VICE News about the fight for freedom of expression in oppressive regimes, Eritrean activists and refugees fight for freedom.

With only one government-controlled television channel and one newspaper for a nation of six million people, Eritrea has been deemed the world’s most censored country. Eritreans have little to no opportunity to speak freely, to criticize the government regime, and to earn an education and work as they please. Everyone is forced into lifelong military service, akin to slavery. (For those who are college educated, their degrees go to waste.) Refugees have called Eritrea a country of ”no opportunity.”

Eritrea first earned its independence from Ethiopia 25 years ago, but since then, its citizens have been deprived any personal independence whatsoever. With no free media in the country, the abuses taking place within its borders have been underreported. Word gets out often via refugees who flee to Europe, Ethiopia, or Israel seeking better lives and opportunity.

I learned about the government abuses in Eritrea from Tekle, an Eritrean refugee I tutored in English in south Tel Aviv where he and I both lived a couple years ago. The 5,000 refugees who risk their lives leaving Eritrea each month—often to be caught, tortured, and returned home, until they try again, Tekle described—work tirelessly to educate themselves and communicate whatever information they can back to family at home. It’s a difficult task, however, when only one percent of the Eritrean population has access to the internet, and only six percent have cell phones.

Underground activists, inside and outside the country, have figured out a few creative ways, however, to spread the message of freedom and organize those left home in Eritrea: internet opposition, Facebook posting, satellite pirate radio, cold calling Eritreans at home, writing messages on banknotes, and putting up posters in the middle of the night.

”If you cannot speak freely and you cannot communicate,” said Eritrean refugee Fessehaye, ”your society cannot improve.”