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Category: migration

  • Irregular Migrants and the ‘Right to Rent’

    The ‘hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK is designed to make life as difficult as possible. Successive Home Secretaries defend it as a tough but necessary means of controlling Britain’s borders, but does the hostile environment really serve its stated purpose? Is it possible that lives are being ruined for no reason?

    Under the Immigration Act 2014, the ‘right to rent’ scheme imposes criminal sanctions on landlords who do not take measures to avoid letting property to irregular migrants. In Secretary of State for the Home Department v The Queen on the Application of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (2020), the Court of Appeal accepted that the scheme had caused landlords to discriminate on the basis of tenants’ perceived nationality and race. The Court did not, however, find this to be unlawful; it considered it “a proportionate means of achieving its legitimate objective and thus justified” (§151).

    The scheme’s objective was broadly defined as “being to support a coherent immigration system in the public interest” (§113), but the Court failed to clarify what it meant by ‘support’. The scheme is not designed to assist in identifying or locating people unlawfully present. It is part of a strategy which aims “to encourage those already [in the UK] to leave voluntarily” (House of Commons Home Affairs Committee 2018, p.20). It is my contention that the scheme does not pursue a legitimate objective, and thus its discriminatory consequences cannot be lawfully justified.

    For many irregular migrants, repatriation is simply not a viable option. Brad K Blitz and Miguel Otero-Iglesias (2011) have estimated that approximately 90% of failed asylum seekers remain in the UK after refusal. It is difficult to estimate how many have compelling reasons not to return to their countries of origin, but refugee law scholars have repeatedly expressed concerns that states encourage ‘voluntary’ repatriation “even when it is not appropriate” (Chimni 1998, p.543).

    Even where repatriation is possible, it simply does not follow that the Home Office is justified in actively discriminating and denying the rights of irregular migrants. There can be little doubt that the scheme is discriminatory by design; the Court differentiates clearly between “irregular immigrants whose right to rent was deliberately curtailed by the Scheme” and its “unintended discriminatory consequences” for others (§4). Such differentiation compounds the discrimination experienced by irregular migrants under the scheme; they are excluded not only from the right to access housing, but from the right to freedom from discrimination – indeed, they are excluded altogether from what Hannah Arendt called ‘the right to have rights’. Marie-Bénédicte Dembour has termed such exclusion “the ultimate discrimination” by which irregular migrants are denied the protection of law and rendered de facto stateless (Dembour 2015, p.443-446).

    The Court also fails to seriously examine the lawfulness of such differentiation, which remains contentious. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights considers it jus cogens that, whilst states may legitimately differentiate between the benefits available to those with regular and irregular status, “Basic human rights must be respected without any distinction” (2003, p.24). Indeed, in the Right to Rent case itself, Lord Justice Hickinbottom comments that “I cannot accept the concept of an individual acting ‘rationally’ or ‘logically’ by taking a course of action which, whilst being in his own interests, is to his knowledge discriminatory and unlawful” (§69). This relies on a peculiar circular logic, by which only ‘lawful’ discrimination may have a rational justification (itself a necessary precondition for lawfulness).

    The Court further accepted that the scheme was “rationally connected to the objective” of supporting a coherent immigration system (§113). It is beyond the scope of this text to evaluate the general effectiveness of deterrent or punitive measures in controlling immigration. Nonetheless, I maintain that there are further errors of reasoning contained within this brief statement.

    Firstly, it is not alleged that all those targeted are able to repatriate. If they are not, it stands to reason that the scheme cannot encourage them to do so. I reiterate that many irregular migrants have extremely compelling reasons not to return to their countries of origin. By this I refer not only to ‘mere’ economic concerns; leaving the UK can be a matter of life and death, even for those who do not qualify for asylum (Dembour 2015).

    Secondly, even if the scheme may in fact achieve its objectives, it does not necessarily follow that it is a rational method of pursuing them. There will be people affected by the scheme who can and do repatriate as a result, but the scheme does not uniquely penalise irregular migrants; it penalises racialised minorities more generally (§4). There is every reason to believe that people with regular migration status may equally be encouraged to repatriate. The ‘achievements’ of the policy in deterring unlawful presence are almost accidental; it is as indiscriminate as it is discriminatory, and its various consequences result in substantially the same way.

    It is worth contemplating briefly what the consequences might be for those who do not or cannot repatriate. Irregular migrants and other racialised minorities who struggle to access legally rented accommodation may be increasingly vulnerable to criminal financial exploitation and domestic violence, concerns which are particularly acute when viewed in conjunction with other measures impacting access to healthcare, policing etc. The damage caused by the hostile environment is widely known and much reported, but if it serves no rational purpose, there is no question of proportionality. It is my sincere hope that the Supreme Court will declare this scheme unlawful on appeal and cease to legitimise suffering for the sake of suffering.

     

    References

    Arendt, Hannah. (2017). The origins of totalitarianism (Penguin modern classics). Penguin.

    Blitz, B. K. & Otero-Iglesias, M. (2011). Stateless By Any Other Name: Refused Asylum-Seekers in the United Kingdom. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (37).

    Chimni, B. S. (1998). The Geopolitics of Refugee Studies: A View from the South. Journal of Refugee Studies, 11(4), pp. 350-384.

    Dembour, M. (2015). When Humans Become Migrants: Study of the European Court of Human Rights with an Inter-American Counterpoint. Oxford University Press.

    Immigration Act 2014 c. 22.

    Inter-American Court of Human Rights, (2003). Juridical Condition and Rights of Undocumented Migrants, Advisory Opinion OC-18 of 17 September 2003.

    Qureshi, A., Morris, M. & Mort, L. (2020). Access Denied: The Human Impact of the Hostile Environment. Institute for Public Policy Research.

    Secretary of State for the Home Department v The Queen on the Application of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (2020) Court of Appeal, Civil Division, case 542.

    UK House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. (2018). Immigration Policy: Basis for Building Consensus. Available at: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmhaff/500/500.pdf .

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Iranian asylum seeker cleared of Channel smuggling charges

    Man who took turn steering boat ‘because he didn’t want to die’ freed, with case opening way for others to appeal their sentences

    An asylum seeker jailed on smuggling charges for helping to steer a boat filled with migrants from France to England has had his conviction overturned at a retrial after spending 17 months in jail.

    Lawyers and campaigners say the verdict could lead to other migrants currently in jail on smuggling charges being freed, allowing the Home Office policy of prosecuting asylum seekers who play a role in piloting boats across the Channel to be challenged more widely.

    Related: UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Revealed: 2,000 refugee deaths linked to illegal EU pushbacks

    A Guardian analysis finds EU countries used brutal tactics to stop nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossing borders

    EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic, linked to the death of more than 2,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.

    In one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades, European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation.

    Related: UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • How Arizona’s attorney general is weaponizing climate fears to keep out immigrants

    This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    When Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich accused the Biden administration of failing to protect the environment in a recent lawsuit, it seemed like an unusual claim from a Republican better known for distorting climate science in legal briefs defending oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. 

    That is, until you read what Brnovich considers the source of pollution: immigrants.

    In a lawsuit filed April 12, Brnovich seeks to reinstate President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, on the argument that Biden has failed to carry out mandatory environmental reviews on how more immigration could increase climate-changing pollution. 

    “Migrants (like everyone else) need housing, infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. They drive cars, purchase goods, and use public parks and other facilities,” the suit reads. “Their actions also directly result in the release of pollutants, carbon dioxide, and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which directly affects air quality.”

    Using pro-environment arguments to defend anti-immigration views dates back decades, to a time when the environmental movement harbored a powerful faction of Malthusians who believed the preservation of nature merited harsh, even violent, restrictions on immigration and childbearing. That faction faded to the fringes over the years as the political right moved to championing both climate denial and hardened borders, and environmentalists marginalized any openly racist elements in their camp.

    Now, Arizona’s lawsuit is one of the highest-profile examples of how the political right will shift on climate change as warming-fueled disasters mount and render denial an untenable position. 

    “As it becomes more and more difficult to deny that climate change is real and human caused, the Republican Party is going to need new strategies, especially if they have any hope of attracting a younger generation,” said John Hultgren, a professor of environmental politics at Bennington College in Vermont. “This is a potential strategy. It won’t do anything to help us mitigate or adapt to climate change, but it will give the thin veneer of an appearance that they care about climate change.” 

    The specter of ‘ecofascism’

    It is also a sign that a more nefarious ideological view could be making its way into mainstream politics: the idea that the response to ecological collapse and rising seas should be to limit who gets a seat in a finite number of civilizational lifeboats.

    That view has already gained traction in Europe, where far-right parties are increasingly adopting that rhetoric as voters’ concern over climate change converges with anger at migrants.

    Then-President Donald Trump walks alongside the border wall near Alamo, Texas on January 12. White House/Shealah Craighead

    After green parties picked up votes in the 2019 European parliamentary elections, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen pledged to remake Europe as “the world’s first ecological civilization” and railed against “nomadic” people who “do not care about the environment” as “they have no homeland,” harkening to the Nazis’ “blood and soil” slogan that described a belief in a mystical connection between race and a particular territory. Le Pen is now a frontrunner in France’s 2022 presidential election.

    In Germany, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party’s Berlin youth wing urged its leaders to abandon climate denialism. The green arm of Italy’s neo-fascist movement CasaPound, meanwhile sent trees to towns across the country, to pay homage to former dictator Benito Mussolini. 

    In the English-speaking world, far-right eco-fascist thinking animated the manifestos of two mass shooters posted in 2019. The white male gunman who killed nearly two dozen people in a Walmart store in El Paso in August 2019 said he sought to end the “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” 

    “The environment is getting worse by the year,” the manifesto, posted online, stated. “Most of y’all are just too stubborn to change your lifestyle. So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.” 

    The document explicitly cited the 74-page message the gunman who killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, posted in March 2019. That shooter, a 28-year-old white Australian, thrice described himself as an “eco-fascist” motivated to repel waves of migrants fleeing climate change-ravaged regions of the world from Anglophone nations’ shores. 

    “It is shocking to see what was in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto described in more legalistic language in this suit by the Arizona attorney general,” said Alexandra Stern, a historian at the University of Michigan. “It’s leaning in toward ecofascism.”

    ‘These arguments have long existed’

    But Hultgren expressed wariness about labeling the Arizona lawsuit as “ecofascism,” which he said conjures images of a foreign enemy in Nazi Germany. It also obscures what he called the rich history of American “right-wingers instrumentally appropriating nature to advance xenophobic goals.”

    “When we call things ‘fascist,’ there’s a sense that it’s outside the American political norm,” he said. “In reality, these arguments have long existed.”

    The most vocal proponents of using environmental concerns to oppose immigrants have been the so-called Tanton Network, a collection of more than a dozen anti-immigration groups founded or funded by John Tanton, a rich opthamologist from Michigan. A one-time national leader in the Sierra Club, Tanton, who died in July 2019, “believed that the root cause of environmental destruction is overpopulation by the wrong sorts of people” and that “to protect both nature and the nation, one must preserve white supremacy by keeping immigrants out,” Betsy Hartmann, a researcher who studies ecofascism at Hampshire College, wrote last year in the Columbia Journalism Review. 

    “It’s a Tanton Network strategy,” Hartmann said of the Arizona lawsuit. “This is a blatant first act on the national stage of this legal strategy.” 

    Indeed, the Center for Immigration Studies, which Tanton founded in 1985, trumpeted the lawsuit as “an important stand for the American environment.” 

    “Arizona is the first state to sue, but we can hope that it will not be the last,” wrote Julie Axelrod, the group’s litigation director and a former adviser to the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. “The environmental consequences of immigration have never been more apparent.”

    Axelrod pioneered the strategy with a 2016 lawsuit against the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security, which she accused of violating “our nation’s preeminent environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), by completely failing to perform environmental analysis of its legal immigration and amnesty policies, which have directly led to the entrance and permanent settlement of tens of millions of foreign nationals to the United States.” 

    A federal judge dismissed most of the claims in 2018. 

    What the science actually shows 

    The effects of climate change, meanwhile, are already plaguing Central America, where many migrants to the U.S.’s southern border originate. Two of last year’s named 30 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall over the region, wreaking havoc with devastating floods and winds in what scientists said was a sign of a warmer future. Historic droughts parched hillsides in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, incentivizing rural villagers to make the dangerous trek north to the regional superpower and world’s largest economy. Between 1.4 million and 2.1 million people in Central America and Mexico are likely to be displaced from their homes by 2050 due to the impacts of climate change, according to a 2018 World Bank report.

    Brnovich has become a go-to critic of the Biden administration’s border policies for Fox News. Fox News

    The United States produced nearly 30% of the carbon dioxide emissions currently accumulated in the atmosphere, by far the largest share. Today, the U.S. is the second-largest emitter of planet-heating gas after China and has the fourth-highest per capita emissions rate.

    But research does not support the idea that immigrants increase pollution. 

    In a 2011 study published in the journal Population Research and Policy Review, scientists analyzed federal pollution data in 183 different metropolitan areas and determined “that immigration does not contribute to local air pollution levels across any of the seven pollution measures examined.”

    A 2019 study in the Social Science Journal compared air quality data in counties populated by immigrants and native-born citizens in a series of models and found “that native population is strongly associated with worse air quality, while foreign-born population is associated with better air quality.”

    Taking that a step further, a January 2021 study in the journal Population and Environment looked at state-level data from 1997 to 2014 and concluded that “immigration may indeed yield environmental benefits and that environmental quality may represent an important factor or amenity influencing immigration flows.”

    A Center for Immigration Studies spokeswoman declined an interview request for Axelrod. 

    In an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Brnovich, whose office did not make him available for an interview, said he was simply opting to use the same flexibly interpreted law “the left always uses to stop highway projects and airport reconstruction.” 

    “We are saying that by stopping the wall construction, they’re violating NEPA because it’s allowing more and more people to come into this country ― migrants ― and that’s having a devastating impact on our environment,” Brnovich said. “It’s also impacting the increased population, which will have all sorts of impacts down the road.” 

    The political opportunism shows how “the outer bounds of NEPA are quite undefined,” said Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

    “Environmentalists have been trying to push it outward for half a century,” Gerrard said. “So it’s not surprising to see the right attempt to push it as well.” 

    Stern said the future of this kind of rhetoric within the Republican Party could depend on whether the Arizona lawsuit proves successful in federal court. 

    “It’s not clear where this is going,” she said. “But ultimately rhetoric that identifies certain groups of people as pollutants is dehumanizing, and dehumanization is a key component and often the first step toward greater violence toward those groups.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How Arizona’s attorney general is weaponizing climate fears to keep out immigrants on May 4, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • The refugees torn from loved ones by Australia’s ‘cruel’ family separations

    Many lost years in detention; others have given up hope of ever holding their wife or children again. A new report argues Australia is engaging in a ‘strategic, deliberate and coercive campaign’ to separate refugee families

    Nayser Ahmed, his wife and two children, fled together.

    As members of the violently persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority, their homeland, Myanmar, would never be safe.

    Related: ‘Somewhere to call home’: helping stateless children realise their right to Australian citizenship

    Related: ‘Suffered more than many’: how Canada and Europe are resettling Australia’s refugees

    I am here, my body is here, but my mind and heart are not here. They are always with my family

    Related: ‘I never felt alone’: refugee Mostafa Azimitabar on justice, Jimmy Barnes and freedom after eight years

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘Cruel’ trafficker accused of torturing refugees found guilty in Ethiopia

    Tewelde Goitom reportedly ran a brutal and lucrative trade extorting migrants desperate to reach Europe from Libya

    One of north Africa’s most notorious human traffickers, accused of extorting and torturing thousands of refugees and migrants in Libya, has been found guilty on five counts of smuggling and trafficking in Ethiopia.

    Tewelde Goitom, known as “Welid”, operated in Libya between roughly 2014 and 2018 and is thought to have been at the heart of a highly lucrative and brutal trade trafficking desperate migrants trying to reach Europe.

    Related: A mayday call, a dash across the Mediterranean … and 130 souls lost at sea

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Cryptocurrencies: an innovative solution to migrant remittances?

    Cryptocurrencies have gained a lot of attention and scrutiny over the past few years. Especially recently as big-name companies like Tesla buy into Bitcoin, giving institutional backing and bolstering investors belief in the future of the bubbly and speculative coin. But, in which countries are cryptocurrencies most used? You would be forgiven for thinking that the US or China top the list. In fact, Nigeria is first with 32% of respondents in a survey stating that they own or have owned a cryptocurrency (Buchholz 2021). The next two countries on the list are Vietnam and the Philippines, with 21% and 20% respectively using or having used cryptocurrency. Why do so many people in these countries make use of cryptocurrencies? They are developing countries, with many nationals living abroad and are amongst the top counties globally sending remittances back home (IOM 2020).

    Indeed, migrants from a few developing countries have turned to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin as an intermediary to transfer and exchange money. This information highlights the contributory and innovative aspect that a cryptocurrency can, and is, offering. For migrants, Bitcoin acts as an asset to transfer money with no or very low costs of transfer and allows for exchanges between currencies with no mark-up.

    Can cryptocurrencies offer an innovative solution for migrant remittances to developing countries? To answer this question, we must first consider the current situation. There are approximately 272 million migrants globally, and remittances are a huge source of income for low- and middle-income countries, totalling about $554 billion at the end of 2019 (IOM 2020). Therefore, the necessity to safeguard the effective and economical transfer of remittances is consequential for the alleviation of poverty, routes to economic empowerment and growth, and reduction of inequalities amongst countries, within countries, and between the genders. However, sending money back home is no easy task for many migrants, especially the poorest among them. This is due to factors like high costs for international transfers by private companies such as WesternUnion or MoneyGram. More broadly, underdeveloped financial systems limit the options available; access to bank accounts and online banking systems needed for online transfers are not readily available for many. In fact, the “unbanked”, as called by the World Bank, are mostly from developing countries in the world; amongst these the poorest households have the fewest bank accounts, and women are categorically underrepresented (World Bank 2018). Holding a bank account is a necessary step for any currency transfer; even cryptocurrency.

    A solution for the “unbanked” is mobile money, like M-Pesa. This directly tackles the very real problems such as physical access to banks or the risk of holding loose cash in remote areas of developing countries. First kicking-off in Kenya during the early 2000’s, M-Pesa is a phone-based money system where owners can text their money transfers with their phones. If they want to withdraw or deposit in local currency, they text the amount and meet with an agent; people working for the company/bank who are strategically placed in key locations and act as human-ATMs (Piper 2020). This system has been widely successful in various African countries, with 72% of the population in Kenya and 43% in Uganda having a mobile money account. The wide spread success has been accredited to the extremely low barrier to entry; a Nokia phone. Moreover, there are no minimum amount requirements. Yet, mobile money has had little success outside of Kenya, Uganda and a few other countries in Africa. Moreover, it does not solve problems of international transfers.

    So, returning to the original question, can cryptocurrencies offer an innovative solution for migrant remittances to developing countries? Yes and no. In theory, cryptocurrencies can really provide an effective and economical channel for money transfers to help alleviate poverty through remittances. However, there are two principle problems. Firstly, coins such as Bitcoin remain too volatile, in fact ten times more volatile than major currencies (Baur & Dimpfl 2021). This means that if migrants were to use such channel they would be exposing themselves to extreme risks. But, more importantly users of bitcoin may find themselves victims of speculative attacks, as the cryptocurrencies’ value remains completely speculatively constructed. Secondly, as with international bank transfers, cryptocurrencies need a bank account to buy and sell it. As explained above, having a bank account is not a given and represents a high barrier to entry for many of the poorest migrants.

    At the same time, these two problems are not insurmountable; a mobile-money system tailored to the receipt, exchange and sale of a cryptocurrency may make them widely accessible to the people who are in most need and who have least access. Moreover, while Bitcoin is the most known of the currencies, a lesser known or new cryptocurrency may also work. Indeed, China is issuing its own cryptocurrency (the digital Renminbi) which, although is still in its early stages, should work without the volatility problems that other crypto-coins have because of government reserves and backing (Kynge & Yu 2021). Therefore, if large development institutions such as the World Bank were to create a cryptocurrency with reserves to stabilise it, much like a central bank, they could drastically reduce volatility. This would offer a stable asset that migrants could use for international transfers and currency exchanges.

    Whether cryptocurrencies will prove to be useful or not is hard to predict, and a multitude of factors must align. However, the possibilities of this new technology are vast and should not be limited to speculative uses.

     

    References

    Buchholz, K., 2021. Infographic: How Common is Crypto?. [online] Statista Infographics. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/chart/18345/crypto-currency-adoption> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    IOM – International Organisation for Migration, 2020. WORLD MIGRATION REPORT 2020. [online] Geneva: International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Available at: <https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/wmr_2020.pdf> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    World Bank, 2018. Global Financial Inclusion (Global Findex) Database. [online] World Bank, pp.35-41. Available at: <https://globalfindex.worldbank.org/sites/globalfindex/files/chapters/2017%20Findex%20full%20report_chapter2.pdf> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    Piper, K., 2020. What Kenya can teach its neighbors — and the US — about improving the lives of the “unbanked”. [online] Vox. Available at: <https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21420357/kenya-mobile-banking-unbanked-cellphone-money> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    Baur, D. and Dimpfl, T., 2021. The volatility of Bitcoin and its role as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Empirical Economics,. Available at: <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00181-020-01990-5> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    Kynge, J. and Yu, S., 2021. Virtual control: the agenda behind China’s new digital currency. [online] Ft.com. Available at: <https://www.ft.com/content/7511809e-827e-4526-81ad-ae83f405f623> [Accessed 25 March 2021].

    This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.

  • UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

    Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions

    The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.

    The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.

    Related: Outrage at U-turn on promise to reunite child refugees with UK family

    Related: ‘I was alone, I had nothing’: from child refugee to student nurse in Athens

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Greece accused of ‘shocking’ illegal pushback against refugees at sea

    Lawsuit filed at European court of human rights says group were abandoned in life rafts after some were beaten

    A lawsuit filed against the Greek state at the European court of human rights accuses Athens of a shocking level of violence in sophisticated inter-agency operations that form part of an illegal pushback to stop the arrival of refugees and migrants.

    The suit, filed by the NGO Legal Centre Lesvos, centres on an alleged incident in October last year in which a fishing boat set off from Marmaris in Turkey for Italy carrying about 200 people, including 40 children and a pregnant woman. The boat ran into difficulty in a storm off the south coast of Crete, leading the captain to radio for assistance.

    Related: ‘We were left in the sea’: asylum seekers forced off Lesbos

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • A mayday call, a dash across the ocean … and 130 souls lost at sea

    Last week, a dinghy full of migrants sank near Libya. Those who were part of the rescue mission tell of a needless tragedy

    The weather was already turning when the distress call went out. A rubber dinghy with 130 people on board was adrift in the choppy Mediterranean waters.

    On the bridge of the Ocean Viking, one of the only remaining NGO rescue boats operational in the Mediterranean, 121 nautical miles west, stood Luisa Albera, staring anxiously at her computer screen and then out at the rising storm and falling light at sea.

    Related: Senior Libyan coastguard commander arrested for alleged human trafficking

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Yemen, Myanmar and George Floyd: human rights this fortnight in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Peru

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • I saw first-hand the terrible toll detention is taking on the Biloela family | Kristina Keneally

    After nearly four years and $50m, it is time to let these two lovely little girls and their parents to go home to Biloela

    The two little girls in the Christmas Island Recreation Centre crèche are like many other children I have met in visits to childcare centres – keen to show me their drawings of rainbows, tell me they can spell their own names and that their birthdays are coming up. Kopika, age 5, is serious and ponders my questions thoughtfully. Tharunicaa, age 3, twinkles with a cheeky smile. Like many little girls, they want to check out my rings, bracelet and necklace and show me their sparkly earrings. Then they want to run off and play with their friends.

    Related: Kristina Keneally to make own way to Christmas Island after Peter Dutton blocks use of RAAF jet

    Related: Biloela Tamil family to remain on Christmas Island after federal court upholds ruling on daughter’s visa

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Biden Vows to Raise Refugee Cap After Backlash But Leaves the Number Uncertain

    President Joe Biden meets with members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Executive Committee in the Oval Office at the White House on April 15, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    After President Joe Biden on Friday came under fire from human rights advocates and progressive lawmakers for signing a directive to retain the historically low 15,000-person refugee cap imposed by former President Donald Trump, the White House issued a statement that appeared to walk back Biden’s widely criticized move.

    “The president’s directive today has been the subject of some confusion,” said a statement from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki late Friday. “Last week, he sent to Congress his budget for the fiscal year starting in October 2021, which honors his commitment.”

    “For the past few weeks, he has been consulting with his advisers to determine what number of refugees could realistically be admitted to the United States between now and October 1,” Psaki said. “Given the decimated refugee admissions program we inherited, and burdens on the Office of Refugee Resettlement, his initial goal of 62,500 seems unlikely.”

    “While finalizing that determination, the president was urged to take immediate action to reverse the Trump policy that banned refugees from many key regions, to enable flights from those regions to begin within days; today’s order did that,” she added. “With that done, we expect the president to set a final, increased refugee cap for the remainder of this fiscal year by May 15.”

    As Common Dreams reported earlier Friday, sources within the administration claimed the decision to keep the cap in place related to concerns about the recent rise in crossings at the southern border. Reporters and advocates framed Psaki’s statement as a shift prompted by widespread criticism from rights groups and lawmakers.

    “This is unacceptable,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), had tweeted of the directive Friday ahead of the press secretary’s clarification.

    “You made a promise and thousands of refugees are depending on you,” Pocan reminded the president. “We can and must do better than Donald Trump.”

    Manar Waheed, ACLU senior legislative and advocacy counsel, initially said that “today’s news is a devastating blow to Black and Brown immigrants who are fleeing persecution and seeking refuge—and have been for years — only to see their hopes destroyed by an administration that promised to do better.”

    In response to Psaki’s remarks, Waheed added that “as a candidate, Biden promised humanity and relief for refugees fleeing persecution. We will be watching to see if President Biden fulfills his promises.”

    “My heart and thoughts go to all refugees around the world who are forced to wait another month for the administration to act,” said Jacqueline Kifuko, refugee organizer at Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS). “As a former refugee, I truly understand how… this kind of news can affect the mental state of individuals already in the process of resettlement, particularly those coming to the U.S. I urge the Biden administration to honor its promise to the refugee community as soon as possible.”

    Anahita Panahi, the Opportunity for All campaign co-chair at CRIS, said that “we are devastated that Biden continues to delay his promise to all the refugees fearing for their lives. The U.S. has a duty to provide refuge for those fleeing religious or political persecution and war-torn countries. This is unacceptable.”

    Kayo Beshir of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Coalition similarly said that “I am devastated by Biden’s delay in fulfilling his promise.”

    “As a former refugee and a refugee organizer that turned out many former refugees to go out and vote this past election, I am extremely disappointed by this administration’s decision to delay the presidential determination,” Beshir added. “This is truly a blow to my community that envisioned this would be an administration to reverse the policies of the previous administration that pushed to limit immigration.”

    Psaki’s statement came as RAICES, the largest immigration legal services nonprofit in Texas, was drafting a Twitter thread blasting Biden’s failure to keep his promise and calling on the president to “rebuild refugee resettlement infrastructure as soon as possible, so that the U.S. can increase these admissions numbers immediately.”

    Acknowledging the update from the administration, the group declared that “our demand still stands.”

    “Such political cowardice. Full stop,” Kelsey P. Norman, an author on migration and fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, had tweeted about the directive.

    “And now they’re backtracking,” Norman added Friday evening. “Thank you to all the groups and individuals who pushed back on this!”

    While maintaining pressure on the administration to go further, some advocates also acknowledged the positive impacts of the new directive.

    “Time and again, President Biden has shared his commitment to reversing the bigoted, anti-Muslim policies of the Trump administration. Specifically, he made a commitment during the campaign to restore refugee admissions, but today he fell short,” said Muslim Advocates special counsel for anti-Muslim bigotry Madihha Ahussain.

    “The Trump administration weaponized immigration policies to drive anti-Muslim sentiment across the country,” Ahussain said. “Trump enacted a Muslim ban and dropped refugee admissions to their lowest levels in history. We cannot allow these discriminatory policies that have left a stain on our country to stay in place.”

    “While today’s announcement will lift restrictions on resettlement for some Muslims, such as those from Syria, who were vilified by the last administration, that is simply not enough,” she added. “We applaud the promises made by this administration for a more humane and pluralist immigration policy. We urge him to stay true to those promises.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Govt signs Five Eyes ransomware pledge

    In anticipation of international borders reopening , Australia has recommitted to collaborating with its Five Eyes counterparts on migration, foreign interference, child exploitation and cybercrime – including the growing threat of ransomware which received a new dedicated agreement.

    In one of her first major moves as Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrew’s met virtually with her Ministerial counterparts from the US, UK, New Zealand and Canada last week.

    “Cooperation with our trusted partners is critical to keeping Australians safe, particularly in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” Mrs Andrews said in a statement on Friday.

    “By working together and leveraging our collective knowledge and experiences we can better respond to threats here at home.”

    Karen Andrews
    Karen Andrews and Five Eyes countries pledge to work together on global challenges.

    The countries signed a new communiqué which includes commitments to share best practices on “innovative and effective border and migration measures” in response to the pandemic, countering foreign interference in academia and research and development, a global approach to combatting cybercrime and ransomware, and a feasibility study on a shared dataset for law enforcement agencies combatting child exploitation.

    “The whole world is eager to open up again, but it’s essential that we do it in a way that’s safe and sustainable,” Mrs Andrews said.

    “The development of international standards and best practice will be critical to ensure the resumption of large-scale international travel in the future.”

    A dedicated statement was issued for how the countries expect to tackle the growing threat of ransomware which was noted as a criminal threat but also a risk to national security, critical infrastructure and governments.

    Five Eyes countries committed to sharing lessons on ransomware and, where possible, aligning national policies, public messaging and industry engagement.

    The group also pledged to address the “underlying factors” of the issue, including reducing the public’s exposure to ransomware.

    Australia has identified the threat of ransomware most recently in a government advisory group report which urges Australian businesses to implement basic cybersecurity practices but includes no recommendations for governments or policies.

    The Opposition criticised the report and released its own paper calling for the government to develop a National Ransomware Strategy and take actions to reduce the attractiveness of Australian businesses for hackers.

    The final commitment in the Five Eyes agreement is to continue the global fight against child exploitation and abuse. The pandemic and new technologies are compounding the problem, the group said in the agreement which includes committing to a new feasibility study on a “specific combined dataset for use by our law enforcement agencies”.

    Five Eyes countries are also asking for more from the tech companies which provide the digital services perpetrators routinely exploit. While the agreement supports “strong encryption” and a collaborative approach between government and industry, Australia’s representative attacked social media companies and their encrypted services.

    “We all have a role to play in tackling this horrific behaviour, including technology companies who are neglecting their social responsibility to protect children online. Their use of end-to-end encryption is putting children’s safety at risk and precludes lawful access to data,” Ms Andrews said in her statement.

    “Our Government will continue to work with our trusted partners to pressure technology companies to address public safety challenges by building their systems and platforms with safety front of mind.”

    The post Govt signs Five Eyes ransomware pledge appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • ‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

    A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Robert Mueller of Latin America

    Guatemala sends more migrants to the U.S. than anywhere in Central America. What is driving so many people to leave?

    Crusading prosecutor Iván Velásquez has been called the Robert Mueller of Latin America. He’s known for jailing presidents and paramilitaries.

    But Velásquez met his match when he went after Jimmy Morales, a television comedian who was elected president of Guatemala. Morales found an ally in then-U.S. President Donald Trump.

    Like the alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine that prompted Trump’s impeachment, the details can seem confusing – but, ultimately, Velásquez says, both parties got what they wanted: Morales got Trump to pull U.S. support for an international anti-corruption force that was going after his family. And he says Trump secured Guatemala’s support for some of his most controversial policies, both in the Middle East and on immigration.

    Veteran radio journalist Maria Martin teams up with Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes for this week’s show. Martin takes us to Huehuetenango, a province near Guatemala’s border with Mexico that sends more migrants to the U.S. than anywhere in Central America. There, she shows that Trump’s hard-line immigration policies did nothing to slow the movement of people from Guatemala to the southern border of the U.S.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired Aug. 29, 2020.

    Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Migrant children are being held in toxic U.S. detention centers

    President Joe Biden’s administration has portrayed its immigration policy as a humane departure from recent precedent. In a March briefing at the White House, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that his agency was coming “out of the depths of cruelty” in which it operated during the Trump administration. But as the new administration prepares to detain thousands of migrant children at sites with histories of toxic contamination, environmental justice advocates are questioning whether such circumstances can truly be considered humane.

    Last month, hundreds protested in the Miami-area suburb of Homestead, where the once-largest youth migrant detention center in the U.S. was slated to reopen, despite the fact that it had been deemed too environmentally toxic for humans by the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Air Force, and Miami-Dade County. The Homestead Migrant Detention Facility, which former President Donald Trump temporarily closed in 2019 neighbors a Superfund site where 16 sources of highly contaminated military waste, including arsenic, lead, and mercury, are still found. (It was also notorious for reports of sexual abuse by staff.)

    In a move to quell the ruckus, Biden told the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency charged with caring for migrant minors in U.S. custody, to find other options. However, two of the sites they went on to offer instead, Texas’ Fort Bliss and Joint Base San Antonio, are themselves known to be contaminated with toxic chemicals that exceed government safety thresholds. While Joint Base San Antonio is still waiting on new arrivals, 500 unaccompanied youth were moved to El Paso’s Fort Bliss last week.

    After the Trump Administration first began toying with the idea of using Fort Bliss as a holding site in 2019, the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice released government documents showing that the facility’s grounds had a history of cancer-causing chemical contamination far above official safety thresholds — and that cleanup of these toxic areas had not been verified. In 1998, some carcinogenic volatile organic compounds were found at more than 460 times the level deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Since then, at least 80 toxic sites on the base have been identified and remediated, but even after the cleanup effort sites were found to contain levels of arsenic as high as 19 times the EPA’s maximum safe level for residential soil.

    At Joint Base San Antonio on the other side of Texas, the water is contaminated with the so-called “forever chemicals” known as PFAS at levels two times higher than what the EPA deems safe, thanks to the military’s decades-long use of toxic firefighting foam. The air pollution levels on the base and in the surrounding community are some of the worst in the country.

    The administration’s move to open these new holding sites comes in the middle of a period that has left roughly 20,500 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody as of Thursday, according to Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. Reports from the border have described overcrowded facilities that have left hundreds of children younger than 13 jailed for longer than the maximum 72 hours permitted by law. 

    In response to concerns from environmental justice activists about the new holding sites, HHS told Grist that the agency continues to take “the safety and health of unaccompanied children referred to [its] care with the utmost seriousness” and that it would conduct environmental assessments before children enter any new facilities, in accordance with its longstanding policy.

    News reports and administrative leaks show that other toxic sites are under consideration as new holding sites as well. Since 2018, Earthjustice has identified at least six youth facilities, either in active use or under consideration for future use, that are home to levels of toxins and chemical waste considered unfit for residential use. Many of them are current or former military bases. Earthjustice says that HHS’s environmental assessments are insufficient and that many past sites were deemed safe by the department despite evidence showing contamination levels that were potentially harmful to humans. 

    “These children don’t deserve to be sentenced to cancer and other consequences of environmental hazards within these facilities,” said Raul Garcia, a legislative director at EarthJustice. “They shouldn’t be punished for something that isn’t their fault and is out of their control.”

    Garcia called it ironic that many of those displaced by natural disasters are subjected to a new form of environmental violence once they reach the U.S. A large portion of youth arriving at the border are from Central American countries that were devastated by Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November.  

    “Poor people of color generally tend to receive all the burden of the racist system that already exists within the United States,” said Garcia. “There is this cycle of environmental trauma for immigrants.”

    Historically, Earthjustice and other advocacy groups have found more success blocking the use of migrant detention sites that are privately-owned, rather than military bases. In addition to the canceled reopening of the Homestead Migrant Detention Facility in Florida, two other detention sites have been nixed for their environmental failures over the past month. A site in Midland, Texas, was briefly closed to new arrivals after the state warned that its water wasn’t drinkable due to chemical contamination. A proposed holding location at a NASA research center in Moffett, California, was also scrapped after activists highlighted its proximity to a known Superfund site with high levels of toxic chemicals.

    In a statement following the opening of Fort Bliss, Earthjustice said that the Biden administration’s recent moves show that the country has failed to create conditions to keep those in custody safe. Pointing to reports of forced sterilization, the use of industrial chemical disinfectants at other migrant detention facilities, and uncontrolled outbreaks of COVID-19,” the group is calling on Biden to immediately halt the use of both private and government-owned sites that “place children in such unsafe facilities” and find options that don’t use “toxic sites, military sites, or detention-like settings” to house children.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Migrant children are being held in toxic U.S. detention centers

    President Joe Biden’s administration has portrayed its immigration policy as a humane departure from recent precedent. In a March briefing at the White House, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that his agency was coming “out of the depths of cruelty” in which it operated during the Trump administration. But as the new administration prepares to detain thousands of migrant children at sites with histories of toxic contamination, environmental justice advocates are questioning whether such circumstances can truly be considered humane.

    Last month, hundreds protested in the Miami-area suburb of Homestead, where the once-largest youth migrant detention center in the U.S. was slated to reopen, despite the fact that it had been deemed too environmentally toxic for humans by the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Air Force, and Miami-Dade County. The Homestead Migrant Detention Facility, which former President Donald Trump temporarily closed in 2019 neighbors a Superfund site where 16 sources of highly contaminated military waste, including arsenic, lead, and mercury, are still found. (It was also notorious for reports of sexual abuse by staff.)

    In a move to quell the ruckus, Biden told the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency charged with caring for migrant minors in U.S. custody, to find other options. However, two of the sites they went on to offer instead, Texas’ Fort Bliss and Joint Base San Antonio, are themselves known to be contaminated with toxic chemicals that exceed government safety thresholds. While Joint Base San Antonio is still waiting on new arrivals, 500 unaccompanied youth were moved to El Paso’s Fort Bliss last week.

    After the Trump Administration first began toying with the idea of using Fort Bliss as a holding site in 2019, the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice released government documents showing that the facility’s grounds had a history of cancer-causing chemical contamination far above official safety thresholds — and that cleanup of these toxic areas had not been verified. In 1998, some carcinogenic volatile organic compounds were found at more than 460 times the level deemed safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Since then, at least 80 toxic sites on the base have been identified and remediated, but even after the cleanup effort sites were found to contain levels of arsenic as high as 19 times the EPA’s maximum safe level for residential soil.

    At Joint Base San Antonio on the other side of Texas, the water is contaminated with the so-called “forever chemicals” known as PFAS at levels two times higher than what the EPA deems safe, thanks to the military’s decades-long use of toxic firefighting foam. The air pollution levels on the base and in the surrounding community are some of the worst in the country.

    The administration’s move to open these new holding sites comes in the middle of a period that has left roughly 20,500 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody as of Thursday, according to Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS. Reports from the border have described overcrowded facilities that have left hundreds of children younger than 13 jailed for longer than the maximum 72 hours permitted by law. 

    In response to concerns from environmental justice activists about the new holding sites, HHS told Grist that the agency continues to take “the safety and health of unaccompanied children referred to [its] care with the utmost seriousness” and that it would conduct environmental assessments before children enter any new facilities, in accordance with its longstanding policy.

    News reports and administrative leaks show that other toxic sites are under consideration as new holding sites as well. Since 2018, Earthjustice has identified at least six youth facilities, either in active use or under consideration for future use, that are home to levels of toxins and chemical waste considered unfit for residential use. Many of them are current or former military bases. Earthjustice says that HHS’s environmental assessments are insufficient and that many past sites were deemed safe by the department despite evidence showing contamination levels that were potentially harmful to humans. 

    “These children don’t deserve to be sentenced to cancer and other consequences of environmental hazards within these facilities,” said Raul Garcia, a legislative director at EarthJustice. “They shouldn’t be punished for something that isn’t their fault and is out of their control.”

    Garcia called it ironic that many of those displaced by natural disasters are subjected to a new form of environmental violence once they reach the U.S. A large portion of youth arriving at the border are from Central American countries that were devastated by Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November.  

    “Poor people of color generally tend to receive all the burden of the racist system that already exists within the United States,” said Garcia. “There is this cycle of environmental trauma for immigrants.”

    Historically, Earthjustice and other advocacy groups have found more success blocking the use of migrant detention sites that are privately-owned, rather than military bases. In addition to the canceled reopening of the Homestead Migrant Detention Facility in Florida, two other detention sites have been nixed for their environmental failures over the past month. A site in Midland, Texas, was briefly closed to new arrivals after the state warned that its water wasn’t drinkable due to chemical contamination. A proposed holding location at a NASA research center in Moffett, California, was also scrapped after activists highlighted its proximity to a known Superfund site with high levels of toxic chemicals.

    In a statement following the opening of Fort Bliss, Earthjustice said that the Biden administration’s recent moves show that the country has failed to create conditions to keep those in custody safe. Pointing to reports of forced sterilization, the use of industrial chemical disinfectants at other migrant detention facilities, and uncontrolled outbreaks of COVID-19,” the group is calling on Biden to immediately halt the use of both private and government-owned sites that “place children in such unsafe facilities” and find options that don’t use “toxic sites, military sites, or detention-like settings” to house children.

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Migrant children are being held in toxic U.S. detention centers on Apr 9, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Biden’s Policies Won’t Address the Roots of the Migrant Crisis — They’ll Fuel It

    People mourn during a candlight vigil

    Mexico City, Mexico — Migrant justice activists are sounding the alarm bell over President Joe Biden’s handling of the arrival of thousands of migrants and asylum-seekers at the U.S. southern border and are calling on Biden to follow through on his commitment to address the root causes of migration.

    “What we have here is people fleeing from conditions that they can no longer stand — this is a humanitarian issue,” Roxana Bendezú, executive director and founder of Migrant Roots Media, told Truthout.

    Far from treating the border crisis as a humanitarian issue, the Biden administration has continued to expel the vast majority of adult migrants through the use of the Trump-era Title 42 emergency declaration concerning COVID-19, which closed the border to “nonessential” travel under the pretext of limiting the spread of the coronavirus. Some asylum seekers have even been whisked away in the middle of the night without a hearing, leading activists to compare Biden’s treatment of asylum-seekers to Trump’s. Biden himself has even publicly boasted about the number of migrants his government is expelling. Like Trump, the Biden administration has also continued to apply diplomatic pressure on Mexico and Guatemala to use its security forces to contain the movement of migrants.

    A lack of planning and infrastructure means the U.S. has struggled to house newly arrived unaccompanied children, who are exempted from Title 42. Images of children packed in “processing centers” and families sleeping under bridges play across people’s screens on the evening news, providing fodder to anti-migrant politicians who accuse Biden of provoking the crisis. The situation has become so dire that children in immigration custody have been taken to a military base in El Paso that could be highly contaminated and potentially hazardous, according to a statement from Earthjustice.

    Following demands made by migrant justice activists, the Biden administration seemed poised to differentiate itself from Trump by addressing the “root causes” of migration.

    However, migrant justice activists say the government’s strategy will have little impact due to the emphasis on methods that have previously failed the people of Central America.

    Bendezú said Biden’s $4 billion strategy for Central America is a continuation of policies that, instead of addressing the root causes of migration, represent an effort to perpetuate a model of economic development that is responsible for the exodus of people from the region to the U.S.

    “It’s a tactic to confuse people,” said Bendezú.

    In its analysis of Biden’s proposals for Central America, Migrant Roots Media concluded that, much like 2014’s “Alliance for Prosperity,” Biden’s new plan is largely centered on increasing private investment in Guatemala and Honduras.

    In a report for TomDispatch, historian Aviva Chomsky also concluded that the Biden administration’s proposal for Central America differed little from previous plans and would promote a model “that Washington has imposed on the countries of Central America over the past century, one that’s left its lands corrupt, violent, and impoverished, and so continued to uproot Central Americans and send them fleeing toward the United States.”

    Roberto Lovato, a Salvadoran American writer and political analyst, said that if the U.S. is interested in tackling the root causes of the crisis, U.S. politicians need to take a look at their own policies in the region.

    “If you’re going to talk about the root causes of the crisis in Central America, you’d have to start off with U.S. economic policies of expropriation of resources and exploitation of labor, neoliberal economic policies that create mega-projects that destroy the environment and displace hundreds of thousands of people,” Lovato told Truthout.

    Lovato said U.S. policy in Central America has never been driven by a concern for the welfare of people from the region but instead by the desire of U.S. politicians from both parties to protect “U.S. interests” in the region.

    “There is a crisis in Central America, but it is not a new crisis, it’s not the crisis you see on television, it’s the crisis you see in history,” said Lovato. “And the history of U.S. policy is one of catastrophes created by U.S. economic policies that enrich the minority and impoverish the majority.”

    Biden Doubles Down

    Rather than abandon these failed economic policies, the Biden administration has instead opted to double down on efforts to dissuade people from attempting the journey, with the Department of State having placed more than 28,000 radio ads on stations throughout Central America and Brazil.

    Bendezú said she considers it “dehumanizing” and “disrespectful” to think that radio ads are going to stop people from fleeing an untenable situation in their countries of origin.

    Figures reviewed by Reuters showed that in March U.S. authorities caught more than 171,000 migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico, representing the highest monthly total in two decades.

    “It’s not that they don’t know the risks that they’re taking but the desperation is so huge that they see no other option,” said Bendezú.

    In response to criticism of his handling of the immigration issue, President Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris as his point person on immigration and the border and also tapped Ricardo Zúñiga as his special envoy for Central America. Comments by officials suggest that neither is expected to deviate from Biden’s existing strategy.

    Lovato says Biden’s selection of Roberto Zúñiga as envoy is particularly telling.

    “Instead of sending somebody with experience doing humanitarian work to deal with the humanitarian crisis in Central America … you send somebody whose specialty is keeping U.S. economic and military policies in place,” said Lovato, pointing to Zúñiga’s role on President Obama’s National Security Council.

    Zúñiga is Honduran born and comes from a long line of supporters of the National Party in Honduras, which has ruled the country since the 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya, which was consolidated thanks to the intervention of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

    U.S. Silence on the “Root Causes” of the Honduran Exodus

    Former National Party Congressman Tony Hernández, brother of Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, was recently sentenced to life in prison by U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel, who described the case as one of “state-sponsored” drug trafficking. The Honduran president has consistently denied any role in drug trafficking but nonetheless hired a Washington law firm to lobby U.S. prosecutors to desist in their case.

    In power since 2014, Hernández has been strongly criticized by Honduran social movements for his authoritarian rule and policies that have led to increased poverty, displacement, and marginalization of the country’s poor and working class.

    Tomás Andino Mencía, a former Honduran lawmaker and a member of the Convergence Against Reelection movement, believes that Hernández’s rule has been one of the major forces pushing people to migrate.

    “The cause of the exodus is not just because of the economic or social situation, like poverty and violence that we know exists, but also because of a political cause, that is the despair that exists in the population. A lack of hope that the country’s conditions will improve. That’s also why the population flees.… They don’t want a future in Honduras with a government of drug traffickers,” Mencía told the Honduras Now podcast in a recent episode.

    Hernández was reelected to office in 2017 in a vote that was largely condemned as fraudulent. The country is due to hold general elections in November that could see the National Party remain in power. Honduras held primary elections in March in a process that observers such as Mencía claimed was rife with irregularities, a situation that does not augur well for the general elections.

    “If [an electoral fraud] happens again at this moment, with the conditions brought about by the pandemic and in the conditions that two hurricanes have left us, this could mean a situation much worse than what we saw happen in 2017 and this could generate a humanitarian disaster on a national level,” said Mencía.

    Yet the U.S. Department of State, frequently vocal about allegations of corruption and fraud in Latin America, has been conspicuously silent about President Juan Orlando Hernández’s alleged ties to drug trafficking and the evidence of electoral fraud in Honduras’s primary elections.

    “If they were to talk about the corruption, drug trafficking … the fiction of their whole immigration and foreign policy in Central America would be obvious,” said Lovato. “You’re not going to see Antony Blinken, or Ricardo Zúñiga, or any of the other State Department and U.S. government operatives saying anything about Hernández.… U.S. policy helped create Hernández, beginning with the coup in Honduras that was sponsored by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.”

    Activists and advocates have strongly criticized Democratic politicians for refusing to acknowledge the role of Obama’s policies and pinning the crisis at the border on Trump’s policies alone, in an effort to obtain political gain, only to later implement similar plans.

    Indeed, this week it came to light that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly told ICE staff at a recent meeting that the department is considering restarting construction on some parts of the border wall in order to plug in what he described as “gaps,” despite having previously committed to halting construction of Trump’s border wall.

    Lovato, who recently published a memoir called Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas, called on the public to see the connection between the Central American exodus and U.S. foreign policies that have been enacted by politicians from both parties, saying, “you can’t just sweep everything under the rug of Donald Trump.”

    Lovato also called on the public to stop dehumanizing migrants and asylum seekers, and decried the mainstream media’s circulation of two-dimensional images of their suffering.

    “You have no Central Americans in three dimensions — that’s called dehumanization and that’s what you need to sustain the policies that exist,” said Lovato. “If you actually start naming Central Americans … then you’re going to have to change the policy because those people would become human beings.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The War On Drugs Is Driving The Displacement Crisis

    We are torn by images of unaccompanied minors and overcrowded facilities at our southern border, but few in the United States are asking why so many Central American families are so desperate to escape their own countries that they are willing to risk everything — including family separation.

    These migrants are not fleeing some Act of God — drought or hurricanes or the like — that could not be anticipated or prevented. Rather, they are fleeing cartel violence and governmental corruption.

    As CNN recently noted, “poverty, crime, and corruption in Latin America have long been drivers of migration.” Indeed, many Central Americans have concluded that the risks of the journey, of the smugglers, and of the possibility of losing their children are outweighed by the near certainty of violence or death at home.

    The post The War On Drugs Is Driving The Displacement Crisis appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Did climate change cause societies to collapse? New research upends the old story.

    If you’re under the impression that climate change drove ancient civilizations to their demise, you probably haven’t heard the full story. 

    The ancient Maya, for example, didn’t vanish when their civilization “collapsed” around the 9th century. Though droughts certainly caused hardship, and cities were abandoned, more than 7 million Maya still live throughout Mexico and Central America. The Maya dealt with dry conditions by developing elaborate irrigation systems, capturing rainwater, and moving to wetter areas — strategies that helped communities survive waves of drought.

    A report recently published in the journal Nature argues that an obsession with catastrophe has driven much of the research into how societies responded to a shifting climate throughout history. That has resulted in a skewed view of the past that feeds a pessimistic view about our ability to respond to the crisis we face today. 

    “It would be rare that a society as a whole just kind of collapsed in the face of climate change,” said Dagomar Degroot, an environmental historian at Georgetown University and the lead author of the paper. The typical stories of environmentally-driven collapse that you might have heard about Easter Island or the Mayan civilization? “All those stories need to be retold, absolutely,” he said. 

    Painting a more complex picture of the past — one that includes stories of resilience in the face of abrupt shifts in the climate — might avoid the fatalism and despair that sets in when many people grasp the scale of the climate crisis. Degroot himself has noticed that his students were beginning to echo so-called “doomist” talking points: “Past societies have crumbled with just a little climate change, Doomists conclude — why will we be any different?” Part of the reason people study the past, Degroot said, “is because we care about the future, and about the present, for that matter.”

    Of course, the idea that a changing climate can drive collapse isn’t wrong. It’s just not the whole story. “Certainly our article did not disprove that climate changes have had disastrous impacts on past societies — let alone that global warming has had, and will have, calamitous consequences for us,” Degroot wrote in a post. Even modest changes in the climate have caused problems. And today’s planetary changes are anything but modest: The world is on track to see an alarming 3.2 degrees C (5.8 degrees F) warming by the end of this century, even if countries meet their current commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the Paris Agreement.

    A black-and-white illustration shows a man measuring a large head statue as others lounge among rocks and bushes.
    An engraving depicts Europeans measuring statues on the Polynesian island of Easter Island, 1786. Hulton Archive / Getty Images

    The new paper looked at ways that societies adapted to a shifting climate over the last 2,000 years. Europe and North America endured periods of moderate cooling: the Late Antique Little Ice Age around the 6th century, and the Little Ice Age from the 13th to 19th centuries. Looking at case studies from these frigid eras, the researchers concluded that many societies responded with flexibility and ingenuity. They detail examples of people moving into different regions, developing trade networks, cooperating with others, altering their diets, and finding new opportunities. 

    When volcanic eruptions fueled the Late Antique Little Ice Age, for example, the Romans took advantage of a rainier Mediterranean. Settlements and market opportunities expanded as people began growing more grains and keeping more grazing animals. They built dams, channels, and pools to help farmers in more arid areas manage water, and, according to the paper, “the benefits were widespread.”

    During the Little Ice Age in the 17th century, the whaling industry in Norway’s northern islands in the Arctic Ocean actually functioned more effectively during colder years. According to Degroot’s research, whalers coordinated with each other and concentrated their efforts on a limited number of days in spots where whales could be easily caught.

    In what is now southeastern California, which vacillated between periods of severe drought and increased rain toward the end of the 15th century, Mojave settlements dealt with the unsteady climate by turning to regional trade. They developed new ceramic and basket-weaving techniques, trading for maize, beans, and squash produced by their southern Kwatsáan neighbors. 

    If stories of adaptation are so common, why aren’t they told more often? Maybe that’s because people are more interested in understanding catastrophes and why they happened, rather than ones that … didn’t. “You can imagine if you do that over and over again, then the entire field is going to focus on disaster,” Degroot said. “And that’s exactly what has happened, I think.”

    In the study, an international team of archaeologists, historians, paleoclimatologists, and other experts reviewed 168 studies published on the Little Ice Age in Europe over the past 20 years. While 77 percent of the studies emphasized catastrophe, only 10 percent focused on resilience. In this context, “resilience” refers to the ability of a group to cope with hazards, responding and reorganizing without losing their core identity.

    Stories of collapse are often told as parables of what happens when humans wreck things (think Noah’s Ark). The public’s interest in environment-driven collapse picked up in 2005 with the publication of Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Some took issue with the interpretations in the book. Take Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, the South Pacific island settled by Polynesians known for its monoliths of heads (actually, the rest of their bodies are underground). The book popularized the idea that the population crashed because the islanders slashed and burned all the trees — a cautionary tale on the perils of destroying the environment. 

    The new story about Rapa Nui is more complicated. In the article “The truth about Easter Island: a sustainable society has been falsely blamed for its own demise,” the archaeologist Catrine Jarman attributed deforestation to the tree-munching rats the Polynesians brought with them, and blames the population crash in the 19th century on slave raids and diseases introduced by European traders.

    Recent research suggests that indigenous groups have been particularly good at adapting to climate changes, Degroot said, “either because they were able to migrate or because they were able to alter the distribution of resources that they relied upon.”

    Even though many societies survived the pressures of the mini ice ages, Degroot found that resilience sometimes “is a product of one community having access to favorite resources, maybe over another.” The wealthy 17th-century Dutch, for example, imported grains from around the Baltic and then sold them for “lucrative profits” wherever the weather caused grain shortages in Europe. The lesson for today, Degroot said, is that “we need to think about building equality as a way of adapting to climate change.”

    The report lays out best practices for researchers to follow when they study the history of climate and society, outlining ways to reduce biases and avoid the misuse of historical data. Following a more rigorous process may well end up unearthing more examples of people facing searing heat and dried-up wells, and still finding ways to survive. “We hope that this discourages the kind of doomist idea that the past tells us that we’re screwed,” Degroot said. “We might be! But the past does not tell us that.”

    This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Did climate change cause societies to collapse? New research upends the old story. on Apr 6, 2021.

    This post was originally published on Grist.

  • Chinese worker’s absconding charge dropped but still to be deported

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The Chinese worker who left police custody on the way to the airport on Thursday night had a charge of absconding – which carries a maximum sentence of five years – withdrawn when he appeared in the Auckland District Court today.

    The worker, who was said by his lawyer to be in a very distressed state after 10-days in custody, had opened an unlocked door of the patrol car on the way to the airport and got out.

    He had hoped to recover lost property and money he was owed. He then walked for seven hours’ confused and disoriented before speaking to an early morning exerciser who spoke Mandarin and they agreed that he should surrender himself to the police again, according to a statement by Unite Union.

    The worker’s lawyer, Matt Robson, who represents nine of the 10 Chinese workers detained, said he had suffered migrant labour exploitation and he should be released to allow the allegations to be investigated.

    However, the magistrate said he had no power to do so and the worker was remanded in police custody again on outstanding immigration matters.

    The worker asked to speak to the court and begged to be able to work in New Zealand so that he could earn back the large amount of money paid in fees to get here and provide for his parents, wife and child back in China.

    Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi has said this case was not one of trafficking. The person he had delegated the authority to make this decision reportedly did so after examining the email trail documents for 20 minutes.

    False promises, huge fees
    But the government’s own website on trafficking includes the circumstances of these workers who were recruited and made false promises in China and paid huge fees for fake visas that they thought would be work visas and were then told they could change from their visitor status once they arrived, which was a lie.

    At the top of the site page is a summary statement:

    “The United Nations defines people trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by deceptive, coercive or other improper means for the purpose of exploiting that person. It is a global crime, committed at the expense of victims who are robbed of their dignity and freedom.”

    Unite Union advocate Mike Treen asked Minister Kris Faafoi to explain which part of “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by deceptive, coercive or other improper means for the purpose of exploiting that person” did not apply in this and so many other cases that were not investigated.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Chinese worker’s absconding charge dropped but still to be deported

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    The Chinese worker who left police custody on the way to the airport on Thursday night had a charge of absconding – which carries a maximum sentence of five years – withdrawn when he appeared in the Auckland District Court today.

    The worker, who was said by his lawyer to be in a very distressed state after 10-days in custody, had opened an unlocked door of the patrol car on the way to the airport and got out.

    He had hoped to recover lost property and money he was owed. He then walked for seven hours’ confused and disoriented before speaking to an early morning exerciser who spoke Mandarin and they agreed that he should surrender himself to the police again, according to a statement by Unite Union.

    The worker’s lawyer, Matt Robson, who represents nine of the 10 Chinese workers detained, said he had suffered migrant labour exploitation and he should be released to allow the allegations to be investigated.

    However, the magistrate said he had no power to do so and the worker was remanded in police custody again on outstanding immigration matters.

    The worker asked to speak to the court and begged to be able to work in New Zealand so that he could earn back the large amount of money paid in fees to get here and provide for his parents, wife and child back in China.

    Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi has said this case was not one of trafficking. The person he had delegated the authority to make this decision reportedly did so after examining the email trail documents for 20 minutes.

    False promises, huge fees
    But the government’s own website on trafficking includes the circumstances of these workers who were recruited and made false promises in China and paid huge fees for fake visas that they thought would be work visas and were then told they could change from their visitor status once they arrived, which was a lie.

    At the top of the site page is a summary statement:

    “The United Nations defines people trafficking as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by deceptive, coercive or other improper means for the purpose of exploiting that person. It is a global crime, committed at the expense of victims who are robbed of their dignity and freedom.”

    Unite Union advocate Mike Treen asked Minister Kris Faafoi to explain which part of “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a person by deceptive, coercive or other improper means for the purpose of exploiting that person” did not apply in this and so many other cases that were not investigated.

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    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The welcome party: how a secret group of Kent residents is helping small boat refugees

    Last year a group called Channel Rescue began watching the waters off Dover, to ensure the safety of those arriving on our shores. They explain why this is more important than ever

    Louise vividly remembers her first Channel watch. She had just moved from London to Dover when, one morning last autumn, she got up at half past five. After a few tries to get her 1980s moped going, she was off. “I’m driving through the mist on top of the cliffs, racing to meet a man in the dark.” Fifteen minutes later, she was at the car park of a local golf course, metres from the cliff edge. The only car there belonged to her fellow volunteer. “I met Joe and he was totally lovely. We chatted and watched the darkness through a telescope. And then, very slowly, watched it get light.”

    Magnificent as it was, Louise, 30, and Joe, 36, were not there for the view. They are volunteer human rights observers for Channel Rescue (CR), established in 2020 as a citizens’ response to last year’s surge in migrants attempting to cross the Channel from France. The originators were a loose group of anti-racist and anti-fascist activists based, mostly, in London. They crowdfunded £19,000 and modelled their mission on the longstanding human rights monitoring around the Greek island of Lesbos.

    You can’t get anywhere near people … People are taken to mysterious locations, whether it’s a hotel or detention centre

    Priti Patel says they’re gonna push the boats back. It’s against human rights and international law but it could happen

    We’re not tackling the heart of the problem, which is racism. We’re skirting around the edges

    Related: Refugee supporters hold ‘welcome event’ for asylum seekers in Kent

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Australian deportation of boy breach of rights, says Children’s Commissioner

    By Charlie Dreaver, RNZ News political reporter

    The New Zealand Children’s Commissioner is even more concerned about the deportation of a 15-year-old from Australia, now that he has had a briefing.

    Judge Andrew Becroft sought information about the case after the deportation of the minor was made public earlier this week.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta was notified last week of the boy’s imminent deportation.

    The boy has family in New Zealand, but little information has been made public about the teen to protect his privacy.

    The minister said the circumstances of the case were very complex, but signalled he was not a 501 deportee.

    When asked yesterday, Mahuta said New Zealand had had no advice suggesting Australia had breached any international law.

    However, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft did not believe Australia had stuck to its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

    ‘We can’t play fast and loose’
    “It is the most signed convention in history, we can’t play fast and loose with it.

    “I think there is every reason to conclude, on what I know at the moment, that while two countries have signed that convention only one is really applying it and abiding by it,” he said.

    Judge Becroft said the briefing he had received had left him even more concerned than he already was.

    “Why put him on a plane by himself, without support to a country that I understand, we need to check this out, he has never been to before,” he said.

    “By any analysis it seems to me to be outrageous on what we know so far and it needs to be taken up by the highest authorities and I understand it is being.”

    Those concerns were echoed by Australian Lawyers Alliance’s Greg Barns.

    Australian authorities have indicated that the minor may have voluntarily been deported from Australian shores.

    But Barns has vetoed that as a possibility.

    ‘Inequality of power here’
    “To deport a child of 15 years of age is always involuntary, whatever the child may say.

    “There is a total inequality of power here, you’ve got the frightening force of the Australian border force and a young child and to say the child has consented to the action I find just extraordinary,” he said.

    He said the convention clearly indicated the best interest of the child needed to be put first.

    The convention also stated no child should be subjected to cruelty.

    Barns said he could not see how Australia was acting in the child’s best interests.

    “Children are put in immigration detention and whilst they might be separated from adults they’re in a facility that is completely inappropriate for children. It has none of the rehabilitative mechanisms or the care that is required,” he said.

    “To then be shunted on a plane with border force security would be a frightening experience for the child.”

    NZ needs to take a stand
    He said New Zealand needed to take a stand.

    “It is getting to the point where the contempt with which Australia treats New Zealand in relation to this issue both with adults and now with of course children are at such a level that New Zealand needs to be taking strong action against Australia, including making complaints on the global stage,” he said.

    A spokesperson at the Minister for Children Kelvin Davis’ office said any questions about Australia’s decisions were a matter for the Australian government.

    In the meantime, they said Oranga Tamariki had been working extensively with authorities both in Australia and New Zealand to “support this young person’s arrival”.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Revealed: Priti Patel U-turn on end to detention for refugee women

    Home Office accused of betrayal over network of new asylum-seeker centres

    A new network of immigration detention units for women is being quietly planned by the Home Office, contrary to previous pledges to reform the system and reduce the number of vulnerable people held.

    An initial detention centre, based in County Durham on the site of a former youth prison, will open for female asylum seekers this autumn.

    Related: Britain’s immigration detention: how many people are locked up?

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • If It Were A Narco Lab, It Would Be Working

    On the day he was inaugurated, Joe Biden halted the construction of Trump’s Mexican border wall. A few days earlier, 1500 miles to the south, a new ‘caravan’ of at least eight thousand Honduran migrants had set off northwards, partly in the hope that by the time they tried to cross into Texas, Biden’s promised softening of immigration policy might have taken effect.

    Obstacles left by Trump still stand in their way. Agreements he made with Honduras and Guatemala led to police attacking and dispersing the refugees. Scattered groups are still heading towards the Mexican frontier at Chiapas – according to one Trump-era official, ‘now our southern border’ – where they will face Mexican troops.

    The post If It Were A Narco Lab, It Would Be Working appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ardern slams Australia for dumping over Turkey ‘terrorist’ detainees

    By RNZ News

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has lashed out at Australia for dumping responsibility for a woman and two young children detained at the Turkish border on New Zealand.

    The 26-year-old detainee – described by the Turkish government as an Islamic State terrorist – was caught trying to enter Turkey illegally from Syria.

    Ardern said the woman, who had dual citizenship, left for Australia when she was six and travelled to Syria from Australia on an Australian passport.

    Ardern said she directly raised the matter with the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and asked that they work together to resolve the issue.

    “I was then informed in the following year that Australia had unilaterally revoked the citizenship of the individual involved. You can imagine my response,” she said.

    “Since then we have continually raised with Australia our view that their decision was wrong, we continue to raise that view.

    “My concern however, now, is that we have a situation where someone is now detained with two small children,” she said.

    Citizenship lies with NZ
    Legally the woman’s citizenship now only lies with New Zealand.

    “I never believed that the right response was to simply have a race to revoke people’s citizenship, that is just not the right thing to do.”

    “We will put our hands up when we need to own the situation. We expected the same of Australia, they did not act in good faith.”

    “If the shoe was on the other foot we would take responsibility, that would be the right thing to do, and I ask of Australia that they do the same,” she said.

    She said New Zealand officials would be working to do welfare checks of those involved, and would be engaging with Turkish authorities.

    “Regardless of their circumstances, regardless of whether have committed offences and particularly we have obligations when they have children involved.

    “I would argue Australia holds those obligations too.”

    Welfare of children at forefront
    The welfare of the children also needed to be at the forefront in this situation, she said.

    “These children were born in a conflict zone through no fault of their own.”

    Ardern argued that coming to New Zealand, where they have no immediate family, would not be in the children’s best interests.

    “We know that young children thrive best when surrounded by people who love them. We will be raising these points with the Australian government,” she said.

    “New Zealand frankly is tired of having Australia export its problems, but now there are two children involved.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ardern slams Australia for dumping over Turkey ‘terrorist’ detainees

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … Australia did not “act in good faith”. Image: Dom Thomas/RNZ

    By RNZ News

    Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has lashed out at Australia for dumping responsibility for a woman and two young children detained at the Turkish border on New Zealand.

    The 26-year-old detainee – described by the Turkish government as an Islamic State terrorist – was caught trying to enter Turkey illegally from Syria.

    Ardern said the woman, who had dual citizenship, left for Australia when she was six and travelled to Syria from Australia on an Australian passport.

    Ardern said she directly raised the matter with the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and asked that they work together to resolve the issue.

    “I was then informed in the following year that Australia had unilaterally revoked the citizenship of the individual involved. You can imagine my response,” she said.

    “Since then we have continually raised with Australia our view that their decision was wrong, we continue to raise that view.

    “My concern however, now, is that we have a situation where someone is now detained with two small children,” she said.

    Citizenship lies with NZ
    Legally the woman’s citizenship now only lies with New Zealand.

    “I never believed that the right response was to simply have a race to revoke people’s citizenship, that is just not the right thing to do.”

    “We will put our hands up when we need to own the situation. We expected the same of Australia, they did not act in good faith.”

    “If the shoe was on the other foot we would take responsibility, that would be the right thing to do, and I ask of Australia that they do the same,” she said.

    She said New Zealand officials would be working to do welfare checks of those involved, and would be engaging with Turkish authorities.

    “Regardless of their circumstances, regardless of whether have committed offences and particularly we have obligations when they have children involved.

    “I would argue Australia holds those obligations too.”

    Welfare of children at forefront
    The welfare of the children also needed to be at the forefront in this situation, she said.

    “These children were born in a conflict zone through no fault of their own.”

    Ardern argued that coming to New Zealand, where they have no immediate family, would not be in the children’s best interests.

    “We know that young children thrive best when surrounded by people who love them. We will be raising these points with the Australian government,” she said.

    “New Zealand frankly is tired of having Australia export its problems, but now there are two children involved.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    Print Friendly, PDF & Email

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.