Indians among over 600 Asian migrants stranded at Brazil airport for weeks
The migrants, still in Sao Paulo, have been waiting to at the Guarulhos Airport, and are living in bad conditions, Reuters.
More than 666 Asian migrants (Indian, Nepalese and Vietnamese) have spent the night stuck in an airport in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state trying to enter the country, the news agency Reuters reported.
Visa-less migrants continue to wait to enter Brazil at the Sao Paulo International Airport in Guarulhos. Anteros Sabino, president of the airport workers’ union, told Reuters that hundreds of migrants are sleeping on the floors of the airport in unsanitary conditions.
The Public Defender’s Office spokesperson said: ‘They’re staying in a kind of cocoon with no food and water … not even small children have blankets.’
The official is further quoted as stating that, at the airport, ‘the health of the migrant is getting worsen [sic], since two weeks ago we had a migrant coming from Ghana that died’. She can’t say whether he died at the airport while under his detention, or whilst he was taken to the hospital.
The agency urged the authorities to respect Brazilian law, premised on the humanitarian principle of non-refoulement to return refugees to their country of origin.
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Moreover, from this Monday, Brazil will restrict entry of certain Asians who are trying to migrate to the US and Canada from the country. News agency The Associated Press reported on the news.
This would affect Asian migrants who hold visas while they are in Brazil.
The migrants arrange to have tickets to destinations other than Brazil with stopovers at Sao Paulo’s international airport. When they reach Sao Paulo, they don’t get on the connecting flight and instead remain in Brazil to claim asylum.
They remain in Sao Paulo only because it represents a temporary resting place in their trip to the desired nations of north America, the US and Canada.
However, Jean Uema, head of Brazil’s refugee committee, told Reuters that the rules would apply only to Sao Paulo airport and that the nation would not change its policy on asylum seekers.
Yet exactly which migrants would be affected by the rules is unclear: whether the ones already at the airport in Sao Paulo, or more so those arriving in Brazil after the rules take effect.