Human Rights Watch has logged illegal seizures of land and homes then given to Taliban supporters
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes and land by Taliban officials in the north and south of Afghanistan, in what amounted to collective punishment, illegal under international law, Human Rights Watch has warned.
Many of the evictions targeted members of the Shia Hazara community, while others were of people connected to the former Afghan government. Land and homes seized this way have often been redistributed to Taliban supporters, HRW said.
Jaime de Guzman (Philippines), Metamorphosis II, 1970.
On 5 October, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a historic, non-legally binding resolution that ‘recognises the right to a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right that is important for the enjoyment of human rights’. Such a right should force governments who sit at the table at the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow later this month to think about the grievous harm caused by the polluted system that shapes our lives. In 2016, the World Health Organisation (WHO) pointed out that 92% of the world’s population breathes toxic air quality; in the developing world, 98% of children under five are inflicted with such bad air. Polluted air, mostly from carbon emissions, results in 13 deaths per minute globally.
Such UN resolutions can have an impact. In 2010, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution for the ‘human right to water and sanitation’. As a result, several countries – such as Mexico, Morocco, Niger, and Slovenia, to name a few – added this right to water into their constitutions. Even if these are somewhat limited regulations – with little incorporation of wastewater management and culturally appropriate means for water delivery – they have nonetheless had an immediate, positive effect with thousands of households now connected to drinking water and sewage lines.
Kim in Sok (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), Rain Shower at the Bus Stop, 2018.
A major area of futility in our time is that produced by the roaring sound of hunger that afflicts one in three people on the planet. On the occasion of World Food Day, seven media outlets – ARG Medios, Brasil de Fato, Breakthrough News, Madaar, New Frame, Newsclick, and Peoples Dispatch – jointly produced a booklet called Hunger in the World looking at the state of hunger in countries across the world, how this was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, and what people’s movements have done to respond to this catastrophic reality. The closing essay features a speech given by Abahlali baseMjondolo’s president S’bu Zikode. ‘It is morally wrong and unjust for people to starve in the most productive economy in human history’, Zikode said. ‘There are more than enough resources to feed, house and educate every human being. There are enough resources to abolish poverty. But these resources are not used to meet people’s needs; instead, they are used to control poor countries, communities, and families’.
In the introduction to Hunger in the World, written by Zoe Alexandra and Prasanth R of Peoples Dispatch and me, we looked at the state of hunger today and how we got there, as well a vision for the future being created by people’s movements in the fissures of the present. Below is a brief extract from our introduction.
In May 1998, Cuba’s president Fidel Castro attended the World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. This is an annual meeting held by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Castro focused his attention on hunger and poverty, which he said were the cause of so much suffering. ‘Nowhere in the world’, he said, ‘in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet’.
Two years after Castro made this speech, the WHO’s World Health Reportaccumulated data on hunger-related deaths. It added up to just over nine million deaths per year, six million of them children under the age of five. This meant that 25,000 people were dying of hunger and poverty each day. These numbers far exceeded the number of those killed in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, whose death toll is calculated to be around half a million people. Attention is paid to the genocide – as it should be – but not to the genocide of impoverished people through hunger-related deaths. This is why Castro made his comments at the assembly.
Elisabeth Voigt (Germany), The Peasant War, c. 1930.
In 2015, the United Nations adopted a plan to meet certain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The second goal is to ‘end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture’. That year, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) began to track a rise in the absolute number of hungry people around the world. Six years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered an already fragile planet, intensifying the existing apartheids of the international capitalist order. The world’s billionaires have increased their wealth tenfold, while the majority of humankind has been forced into a day-to-day, meal-to-meal survival.
In July 2020, Oxfam released a report called The Hunger Virus, which – using World Food Programme data – found that up to 12,000 people a day ‘could die from hunger linked to the social and economic impacts of the pandemic before the end of the year, perhaps more than will die each day from the disease by that point’. In July 2021, the UN announced that the world is ‘tremendously off track’ to meet its SDGs by 2030, citing that ‘more than 2.3 billion people (or 30% of the global population) lacked year-round access to adequate food’ in 2020, which constitutes severe food insecurity.
The FAO’s report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021, notes that ‘nearly one in three people in the world (2.37 billion) did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of almost 320 million people in just one year’. Hunger is intolerable. Food riots are now in evidence, most dramatically in South Africa. ‘They are just killing us with hunger here’, said one Gauteng resident who was motivated to join the July unrest. These protests, as well as the new data released by the UN and International Monetary Fund, have put hunger back on the global agenda.
Numerous international agencies have released reports with similar findings, showing that the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has solidified the trend of growing hunger and food insecurity. Many, however, stop there, leaving us with the feeling that hunger is inevitable, and that it will be the international institutions with their credit, loans, and aid programmes that will solve this dilemma of humanity.
Teodor Rotrekl (Czechoslovakia), Untitled, 1960s.
But hunger is not inevitable: it is, as S’bu Zikode reminded us, a decision of capitalism to put profit before people, allowing swaths of the global population to remain hungry while one third of all food produced is wasted, all while liberalised trade and speculation in the production and distribution of food create serious distortions.
Jerzy Nowosielski (Poland), Lotnisko wielkie (‘Large Airport’), 1966.
Billions of people struggle to maintain the basic structures of life in a system of profit that denies them the necessary social anchors. Hunger and illiteracy provide evidence of the crushing sadness of our planet. No wonder so many people are on the road, refugees of one kind or another, refugees from hunger and refugees from the rising waters.
By the UN count alone, there are now nearly 83 million displaced people, who – if they all lived in one place – would make up the 17th most populous country in the world. This number does not include climate refugees – whose plight is not going to be part of the COP26 climate discussions – nor does it include the millions of internally displaced people fleeing conflict and economic convulsions.
In 1971, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, rattled by the war in Biafra, published a poem called ‘Refugee Mother and Child’ in his 1971 book, Beware, Soul Brother. The beauty of this poem lingers in our wretched world:
No Madonna and Child could touch
that picture of a mother’s tenderness
for a son she soon would have to forget.
The air was heavy with odours
of diarrhoea of unwashed children
with washed-out ribs and dried-up
bottoms struggling in laboured
steps behind blown empty bellies. Most
mothers there had long ceased
to care but not this one; she held
a ghost smile between her teeth
and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s
pride as she combed the rust-coloured
hair left on his skull and then –
singing in her eyes – began carefully
to part it… In another life this
would have been a little daily
act of no consequence before his
breakfast and school; now she
did it like putting flowers
on a tiny grave.
The powerful look at the homeless and hungry in the countryside and cities of our planet with revulsion. They would prefer to be shielded from that sight by high walls and armed guards. Basic human feeling – which saturate Achebe’s poem – is suffocated with great effort. But the homeless and the hungry are our fellows, at one time held in the arms of their parents with tenderness, loved in the way we need to learn to love one another.
A refugee imprisoned at the Park hotel prison in Carlton told Green Left that three refugees had tested positive for COVID-19 and that many others have symptoms. Chloe DS reports.
Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents
Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.
The Refugee Action Coalition has called Australia’s apparent attempt to walk away from its responsibilities for the refugees it dumped in Papua New Guinea an outrage.
Australia announced last week that by the end of this year it will end its offshore detention arrangement with PNG.
The scheme was declared illegal by the PNG courts five years ago but 124 people, most of whom have been judged to be refugees, remain there.
The coalition’s Ian Rintoul said PNG had no capacity, or desire, to look after these people, or search for third countries to take them off their hands.
“I think it is just a continuation of the Australian government trying to distance itself from the atrocities they are responsible for in Manus Island in Papua New Guinea,” he said.
“They have been trying for many years to try and distance themselves from the responsibility for people that they took there illegally, according to PNG law, but who they take no responsibility for.”
Last month Australia signed a new long term commitment with Nauru to continue to run its detention facility — the only place where Australia will send people trying to arrive on the mainland illegally by boat.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS
Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.
The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.
Language is politics and politics is power. This is why the misuse of language is particularly disturbing, especially when the innocent and vulnerable pay the price.
The wars in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries in recent years have resulted in one of the greatest humanitarian catastrophes, arguably unseen since World War II. Instead of developing a unified global strategy that places the welfare of the refugees of these conflicts as a top priority, many countries ignored them altogether, blamed them for their own misery and, at times, treated them as if they were criminals and outlaws.
But this is not always the case. At the start of the Syrian war, support for Syrian refugees was considered a moral calling, championed by countries across the world, from the Middle East to Europe and even beyond. Though often rhetoric was not matched by action, helping the refugees was seen, theoretically, as a political stance against the Syrian government.
Back then, Afghans did not factor in the Western political discourse on refugees. In fact, they were rarely seen as refugees. Why? Because, until August 15 – when the Taliban entered the capital, Kabul – most of those fleeing Afghanistan were seen according to a different classification: migrants, illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, and so on. Worse, at times they were depicted as parasites taking advantage of international sympathy for refugees, in general, and Syrians, in particular.
The lesson here is that Afghans fleeing their war-torn and US-occupied country were of little political use to their potential host countries. As soon as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, and the US, along with its NATO allies, were forced to leave the country, the language immediately shifted, because then, the refugees served a political purpose.
For example, Italian Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese was one of the first to advocate the need for European support for Afghan refugees. She told a ‘European Union forum on the protection of Afghans’, on October 8, that Italy will work with its allies to ensure fleeing Afghans can reach Italy via third countries.
The hypocrisy here is palpable. Italy, like other European countries, has done its utmost to block refugees from arriving at its shores. Its policies have included the prevention of refugee boats stranded in the Mediterranean Sea from reaching Italian territorial waters; the funding and the establishment of refugee camps in Libya – often depicted as ‘concentration camps’ – to host refugees who are ‘caught’ trying to escape to Europe; and, finally, the prosecution of Italian humanitarian workers and even elected officials who dared lend a hand to refugees.
The latest victim of the Italian authorities’ campaign to crack down on refugees and asylum-seekers was Domenico Lucano, the former mayor of Riace in the Southern Italian region of Calabria, who was sentenced by the Italian Court of Locri to over 13 years in prison for “irregularities in managing asylum seekers”. The verdict also included a fine of €500,000 to pay back funds received from the EU and the Italian government.
What are these “irregularities”?
“Many migrants in Riace have obtained municipal jobs while Lucano was Mayor. Abandoned buildings in the area had been restored with European funds to provide housing for immigrants,” Euronews reported.
The decision was particularly pleasing to the far-right Lega Party. Lega’s head, Matteo Salvini, was the Interior Minister of Italy from 2018-19. During his time in office, many had conveniently blamed him for Italy’s outrageous anti-immigrants’ policy. Naturally, the news of Lucano’s sentencing was welcomed by Lega and Salvini.
However, only rhetoric has changed since Italy’s new Interior Minister, Lamorgese, has taken office. True, the anti-refugee language was far less populist and certainly less racist – especially if compared to Salvini’s offensive language of the past. The unfriendly policies towards the refugees remained in effect.
It matters little to desperate refugees crossing to Europe in their thousands whether Italy’s policies are shaped by Lamorgese or Salvini. What matters to them is their ability to reach safer shores. Sadly, many of them do not.
A disturbing report issued by the European Commission, on September 30, showed the staggering impact of Europe’s political hostility towards refugees. More than 20,000 migrants have died by drowning while attempting to cross the Mediterranean on their way to Europe.
“Since the beginning of 2021, a total of 1,369 migrants have died in the Mediterranean”, the report also indicated. In fact, many of those died during the West-championed international frenzy to ‘save’ the Afghans from the Taliban.
Since Afghan refugees represent a sizable portion of worldwide refugees, especially those attempting to cross to Europe, it is safe to assume that many of those who have perished in the Mediterranean were also Afghans. But why is Europe welcoming some Afghans while allowing others to die?
Political language is not coined at random. There is a reason why we call those fleeing in search for safety ‘refugees’, or ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘illegal aliens’, ‘undocumented’, ‘dissidents’, and so on. In fact, the last term, ‘dissidents’, is the most political of all. In the US, for example, Cubans fleeing their country are almost always political ‘dissidents’, as the phrase itself represents a direct indictment of the Cuban Communist government. Haitians, on the other hand, are not political ‘dissidents’. They are hardly ‘refugees’, as they are often portrayed as ‘illegal aliens’.
This kind of language is used in the media and by politicians as a matter of course. The same fleeing refugee could change status more than once over the duration of his escape. Syrians were once welcomed in their thousands. Now, they are perceived to be political burdens to their host countries. Afghans are valued or devalued, depending on who is in charge of the country. Those fleeing or escaping the US occupation were rarely welcomed; those escaping the Taliban rule are perceived as heroes, needing solidarity.
However, while we are busy manipulating language, there are thousands who are stranded at sea and hundreds of thousands languishing in refugee camps worldwide. They are only welcomed if they serve as political capital. Otherwise, they remain a ‘problem’ to be dealt with – violently, if necessary.
Since the Tampa affair, humanitarian issues have been used to manipulate the public. The refugees still exiled in Papua New Guinea will suffer the consequences
Last week the Australian government announced it will end “offshore processing” in Papua New Guinea within three months. This shock announcement is deeply destabilising for refugees who have been in limbo for more than eight years on Manus Island and now in Port Moresby. For many of us who have been following Australia’s cruel and punitive refugee policies over the past two decades, this was not unexpected in the lead-up to an election year.
Recently I delivered a talk at Canterbury University of New Zealand alongside Abbas Nazari. Abbas was one the children rescued by the Tampa in 2001. After a period of uncertainty and limbo Abbas and his family were finally transferred to New Zealand. It was a surreal moment when the two of us, having been subjected to Australia’s cruel and inhumane policies and actions, two decades apart, were united, standing in front of young political science students, analysing Australia’s policies towards refugees. We were like two pieces of a puzzle, carrying the same story, a story which has been repeated again and again over the past two decades.
Chris* had never been charged with a crime, never accused, never questioned. But his visa was summarily cancelled, and he was no longer welcome in Australia, the only country he had ever known as home.
Chris had lived in Australia for more than 30 years since the age of one, but had his visa cancelled in 2019 for having once been a member of an “outlaw motorcycle group”, the Mongols – despite that group not being outlawed in the state where he lived.
Thousands who fled Taliban are living in hotels with inadequate healthcare in Operation Warm Welcome
Afghans who recently arrived in the UK after fleeing the Taliban takeover have asked to be sent back, casting doubt over the success of Operation Warm Welcome, the government’s Afghan resettlement programme.
It was launched by Boris Johnson on 29 August to help Afghan refugees arriving in the UK by providing support so they could “rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate into their local communities”.
More than 300 people took part in an online rally organised by the Tamil Refugee Council (TRC) on October 2 to demand protections for refugees and to ensure they are not deported to danger.
Aunty Shirley Lomas, a Gomeroi and Waka Waka woman, spoke about the similarities between the genocide from which refugees are fleeing and that suffered by First Nations people here.
Notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s promise to pursue a more humane immigration policy than his predecessor, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been illegally expelling Haitian migrants, with the Border Patrol cracking whips and herding them like cattle. When U.S. authorities put them on a plane to Haiti, “they chained us like animals — our hands, feet and waist — and once we arrived, they unchained us so journalists wouldn’t see us,” one Haitian man told John Oliver on “Last Week Tonight.”
When confronted about his administration’s use of horse reins as whips to menace Black migrants at the southern U.S. border, Biden said it was “horrible … to see people treated like they did: horses nearly running them over and people being strapped. It’s outrageous.”
Biden declared, “I promise you, those people will pay,” and noted that a federal investigation is underway. “There will be consequences. It’s an embarrassment. But beyond an embarrassment, it’s dangerous; it’s wrong. It sends the wrong message around the world. It sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.”
Biden’s denial is reminiscent of that of Barack Obama, who reacted to the 6,700-page report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that documented a widespread program of U.S. torture by saying that torture “is contrary to who we are.”
But like torture, vicious beatings of Black people have been sanctioned by the state throughout U.S. history. “The images of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents on horseback whipping and assaulting Haitian refugees blatantly display the clear historical relationship between slavery and modern immigration policy, policing, and the carceral state,” the National Lawyers Guild said in a statement.
The Biden administration has expelled more than 4,600 Haitian migrants from the United States since September 19, conducting 43 flights from Del Rio, Texas, to Haiti, which is still reeling from its recent devastating earthquake, flooding from a tropical storm and a presidential assassination. Most of the people in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince have no access to drinking water, electricity or garbage collection.
The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) called on states to refrain from expelling Haitians without a proper assessment of their individual protection needs and urged them to uphold fundamental human rights. In their statement, they cited the escalation of violence and insecurity in Haiti, noting that at least 19,000 people were internally displaced in Port-au-Prince during the summer of 2021. In addition, more than 20 percent of girls and boys have been victims of sexual violence, and nearly 24 percent of the population (over half of them children) live below the extreme poverty level of $1.23 per day. Nearly 46 percent of the population (4.4 million people) face acute food insecurity, and 1.2 million are at emergency levels, with 3.2 million people at crisis levels. The four organizations estimated that 217,000 Haitian children suffer from moderate-to-severe acute malnutrition.
Expelling Haitian migrants to face these horrific conditions is not only cruel; it is also racist and illegal.
The Use of Title 42 to Expel Asylum Seekers Is Racist, Illegal and Damaging
“The whipping of Haitians by mounted Border Patrol agents was spectacularly racist, but the use of Title 42 to expel asylum seekers is equally racist, and illegal, and much more damaging,” attorney Brian Concannon, a board member at the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, told Truthout.
Indeed, on September 23, Daniel Foote, U.S. special envoy for Haiti, handed in his resignation to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, stating he will “not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees” from the U.S.-Mexico border. Foote called the U.S. policy toward Haiti “deeply flawed.”
Biden is continuing former president Donald Trump’s policy of misusing Title 42 in violation of U.S. treaty obligations. The Title 42 program stems from a misapplication of an obscure public health law, the Public Health Service Act of 1944. The act was designed to grant quarantine authority to health officials to expel any persons, including U.S citizens, who arrive from a foreign country. Title 42 was never intended to distinguish between noncitizens who could or could not be removed or expelled from the United States, according to Human Rights Watch.
Section 265 of U.S. Code Title 42 empowers the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to “prohibit … the introduction” into the U.S. of individuals if the director believes “there is serious danger of the introduction of [a communicable] disease into the United States.”
As Trump did, Biden is disingenuously citing the excuse of potential health hazards from COVID to justify continuing the use of Title 42 to expel migrants, in spite of the consensus by experts that there is no correlation between the entry of migrants and the danger of increased risk of COVID infection.
“Title 42 was implemented by Trump immigration adviser Stephen Miller as part of his efforts to maintain a white majority in the United States,” Concannon said. “The Biden administration knows the policy is illegal, racist and unjustified on public health grounds, but it keeps invoking it to reduce criticism from white supremacist groups.”
Federal Judge Grants Injunction Against U.S. Expulsion of Migrants, But Appellate Court Pauses Injunction
On September 16, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan of the D.C. Circuit issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Homeland Security’s use of Title 42 to expel migrants from the United States. Judge Sullivan’s 58-page ruling would require the Biden administration to process migrant families with children who want to apply for asylum. But the judge suspended the injunction for 14 days to allow the government time to appeal his ruling.
In granting the injunction, Judge Sullivan found that the plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that the administration’s use of Title 42, which has never been applied in the immigration context, is illegal. The judge agreed with the plaintiffs’ contention that “‘nothing in [Section] 265, or Title 42 more generally, purports to authorize any deportations, much less deportations in violation of’ statutory procedures and humanitarian protections, including the right to seek asylum.”
Judge Sullivan also concluded that plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm if an injunction were not granted, because they would be sent to their home countries which “are among the most dangerous in the world due to gang, gender, family membership, and other identity-based violence.”
Finally, Judge Sullivan determined that a preliminary injunction would not harm the government, and it would promote public health to quickly process, quarantine and regulate people who arrive at the border. He accepted the plaintiffs’ claim that the public interest requires the U.S. to refrain from wrongfully sending people to countries where they are likely to face substantial harm.
But on September 30, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals paused Judge Sullivan’s injunction while it reviews Biden’s appeal. As Lee Gelernt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the ACLU, toldCBS News, this is just the first step in the appellate litigation. “Nothing stops the Biden administration from immediately repealing this horrific Trump-era policy,” Gelernt said. “If the administration is making the political calculation that if it acts inhumanely now it can act more humanely later, that calculation is misguided and of little solace to the families that are being sent to Haiti or brutalized in Mexico right now.”
Title 42 Policy Violates U.S. Treaty Obligations
The Title 42 policy violates the Refugee Convention, which grants noncitizens the right to asylum if they can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, if they are sent back to their home countries. The Refugee Convention (which the United States has ratified, making it part of U.S. law under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause) forbids refoulement, that is, sending a person to a country where it is more likely than not that the individual would face persecution on one of the protected grounds.
Furthermore, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (to which the U.S. is also a party) forbids the expulsion of asylum seekers to face threats to their lives or liberty without an opportunity to apply for asylum and have a full and fair examination of their claim.
The Biden administration’s use of Title 42 also violates the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (which the U.S. has ratified). That treaty contains a non-refoulement provision. It forbids sending an individual to a country where there is a substantial likelihood he or she would be subject to torture.
the obligation [of the U.S.] not to extradite, deport, expel or otherwise remove a person from their territory, where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk of irreparable harm, such as that contemplated by Articles 6 [right to life] and 7 [right to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment] of the Covenant, either in the country to which removal is to be effected or in any country to which the person may subsequently be removed.
UNHCR has confirmed repeatedly during the pandemic that expelling asylum seekers and migrants at the border without an individualized determination of the need to protect them violates the non-refoulement provisions of international law. The UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Gillian Triggs stated, “The right to seek asylum is a fundamental right. The COVID-19 pandemic provides no exception.”
Public Pressure on Biden to End Inhumane and Illegal Policy
Congressmembers and civil and human rights organizations are demanding that Biden halt the expulsions of Haitian and other Black migrants.
Four Black immigration organizations — the Haitian Bridge Alliance, UndocuBlack Network, African Communities Together and Black Alliance for Just Immigration — filed a complaint with the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, demanding that the Biden administration halt its deportations of Haitian migrants.
Fifty-six members of Congress wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, urging the administration to indefinitely halt deportations to Haiti, release detained Haitians and support administrative closure of removal cases, grant humanitarian parole to Haitians arriving at the southern U.S. border, and end the barrier to Haitian vaccine distribution.
Thirty-nine human and civil rights leaders called on the Biden administration to restore asylum access at ports of entry and rescind the CDC’s expulsion order, stop deportation flights to Haiti, and grant those seeking safety at U.S. borders their legal right to apply for asylum. The leaders further stated that the administration must end its reliance on incarceration for immigration processing and instead work with community-based legal and social service providers.
Democratic congressmembers, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts), co-chair of the House Haiti Caucus, held a press conference outside the Capitol and called for the suspension of deportation flights. They demanded accountability for what Pressley called “the cruel, the inhumane and the flat-out racist treatment of our Haitian brothers and sisters at the southern border.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is seeking a private contractor to operate a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay and is hiring guards who speak Spanish and Haitian Creole. But after a public outcry about sending Haitian migrants and asylum seekers to Guantánamo, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters, “There’s never been a plan to do that.” In the early 1990s, George H.W. Bush used the base as a refugee camp to detain 12,000 Haitians fleeing their country after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in a military coup.
Since the horrific photos of mounted Border Patrol agents menacing Black migrants with whips became public, voices against the Biden administration’s cruel, racist and illegal policies have reached a crescendo. This pressure must continue until Biden makes good on his promise to implement a truly humane immigration policy.
Pushing people back across borders; turning asylum seekers away from shores. When such tactics were openly adopted and used with impunity by Australia’s navy and border force, it caused outrage and concern in the maritime community and pricked the interest of border protectionists the world over.
Disgust and outrage have, in time, been replaced by admiration at the sheer chutzpah of Australian governments such as Tony Abbott’s, who introduced a turn-back-the-boats policy as part of an electoral promise to better secure borders. This meant that vessels heading for Australia could be literally turned back towards Indonesia without a care in the world. The drownings would not stop, nor would the danger to the passengers be alleviated; they would simply take place in international waters or the waters of another country.
Other countries duly followed. Greece and Italy fashioned their own turn-back policies at sea. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants Felipe González Morales spoke despairingly in June this year that the practice should end. “In the absence of an individualized assessment for each migrant concerned and other procedural safeguards,” he told the Human Rights Council, “pushbacks are a violation of the prohibition of collective expulsion and heighten the risk of further human rights violations, in particular refoulement.”
He also stated what all pupils of international human rights know: “States have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfill the human rights of everyone on their territory or within their jurisdiction or effective control, irrespective of migration status and without discrimination of any kind.”
The concept of control is important in matters of interception, rescue and forcible return. As the European Court of Human Rights found in Hirsi Jamaa v Italy, which saw the forcible return by Italian authorities of migrants to Libya, the applicants remained under the “continuous and exclusive de jure and de facto control of the Italian authorities” during the course of their transfer, triggering the obligation to protect their human rights. “Speculation as to the nature and purpose of the intervention of the Italian ships on the high seas would not lead the Court to any other conclusion.”
The International of the Law of the Sea 1982 outlines the obligation of every state’s vessels to “render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being lost”. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Research and Rescue affirm the obligation.
The LOSC also has a range of other relevant provisions on incursions of foreign vessels. Innocent passage into the state’s territorial sea is permitted under Article 17; in cases where such passage is not innocent – for instance, the breach of domestic immigration laws – states may take measures to halt passage. But under Article 18, a vessel, if deemed in distress, can also enter the territorial sea of the state in question even if migration laws have been breached.
Such thinking is bound to come across as soppily legal for the UK’s Home Secretary Priti Patel, who has been coming up with her own turn back the boats model. This has formed part of an arsenal of hostile measures against migrants including the proposed Nationality and Borders Bill (Bill 14 of 2021-22), introduced on July 6. Having gone through two readings of the House of Commons, it now rests with the Public Bill Committee, which is due to release a report on November 4.
In moving that the Bill be read a second time, Patel told Members that Britons had “had enough of open borders and uncontrolled immigration; enough of a failed asylum system that costs the taxpayer more than £1 billion a year; enough of dinghies arriving illegally on our shores, directed by organised gangs; enough of people drowning on these dangerous, illegal and unnecessary journeys […].”
The Bill came into being despite warnings from various Australian lawyers, doctors and former civil servants that their country’s refugee model was hardly the sort of thing that should inspire imitations. In the view of Australian Greens Senator Nick McKim and Benali Hamdache of the UK Green Party, the “New Plan for Immigration imports all the worst parts of the Australian government policy.” This includes the possible establishment of offshore processing (read detention) centres to places ranging from Rwanda to the Isle of Man and the creation of a temporary protection scheme.
The Bill takes the battering ram to a range of maritime practices, proposing to criminalise the practice of offering voluntary assistance at sea by targeting “those assisting persons to arrive in the UK without a valid clearance”. That good Samaritan service provided by such bodies as the Royal Lifeboat Institution, which has been accused of being a “migrant taxi service” by its detractors, promises to be roped in.
Last month, it was revealed that Patel was already busily urging the Border Force to get into the pushback business in ways that would pass muster under maritime law. According to “sources” within the Home Office, as reported by The Guardian, Patel had effectively become “the first home secretary to establish a legal basis for the sea tactics, working with attorney general Michael Ellis and expert QCs”.
Pushing back boat arrivals is not only lacking in humanitarian spirit but filled with monstrous danger. The Straits of Dover, for instance, is the busiest shipping route in the world. One suggestion moving its way through the ranks is the targeting of certain boats, keeping the issue of safety in mind. Dinghies are unlikely to fall within the scope of expulsion, as tempting as these might be. Larger, sturdier migrant vessels are likelier prospects.
France, being the country where most of the migrants depart from, has been particularly vocal on the issue. Pierre-Henri Dumont, the MP for Calais, has suggested that Patel’s policy “tears apart the UN Geneva conventions giving the right to everyone to apply to any country for asylum.”
Interior Minister Gérald Darminin also expressed his displeasure at the new approach, warning Patel that his country “will accept no practices contrary to the Law of the Sea, and no blackmail.” Righteously, Darminin also claimed that “safeguarding human lives at sea takes priority over considerations of nationality, status and migratory policy”. While this is very much in the spirit of protection, it is an attitude that is looking worn and tired. Patel, for her part, hopes her cross Channel colleagues will see good sense and take up a promise of UK funding to prevent the migrant crossings taking place. They may well do just that.
The Jeel Albena Association for Humanitarian Development, a Yemeni humanitarian organization that has supported tens of thousands of people caught up in the country’s conflict, is the winner of the 2021 UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, announced the laureate this Wednesday 29 September 2021. Every year, the prize recognizes a person or group, that goes above and beyond the call of duty, to help displaced or stateless people. For more on this award for refugee workers: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/CC584D13-474F-4BB3-A585-B448A42BB673
In a statement, Mr. Grandi said that “Jeel Albena does this in an extraordinary way helping people on all sides of Yemen’s conflict.”
“Its staff and volunteers have stayed put, working quietly on the ground throughout the conflict, in the face of the harshest adversity, at a time when many others have left,” he said.
Frontline work
Their work, often near the frontlines, has included constructing 18,000 emergency shelters for internally displaced people and their host communities. Their work has also allowed thousands to make a living, and been a vehicle to restore basic human dignity.
Mr. Grandi noted that Jeel Albena’s motto is “By Yemenis, for Yemenis” and that it “exemplifies its spirit of local community action.”
“Always, they seek solutions together with the communities where they are active,” he explained.
Established in June 2017, the association started with only fifteen staff and now has more than 150 employees, over 40 per cent of them, recruited from within displaced communities. .
The organization’s founder, Ameen Jubran, will collect the award on behalf of the organization.
Mr. Jubran first started working with displaced people while he was at university and he has never stopped. He was nearly killed in the conflict and, like many of his team, have experienced displacement first-hand.
“But he did not give up. In fact, he says the experience of being forced to flee his home only increased his determination, in the true spirit of Nansen,” Mr. Grandi recalled. For the High Commissioner, the award “puts a much-needed spotlight on Yemen, a country where the suffering faced by civilians does not receive the attention it deserves.”“It is my profound hope this award draws international attention to Yemen and that Jeel Albena’s extraordinary work will inspire more action for the people there who have suffered,” concluded the High Commissioner.
Fortify Rights, a human rights organisation on Thursday urged the Bangladesh government to immediately investigate the assassination of Rohingya human rights leader Rohingya human rights leader Mohibullah
In a written statement the organisation called on the authorities to get to the bottom of the murder and hold the perpetrators accountable. No one has claimed responsibility for his murder, but a Rohingya leader claimed that Ullah was killed by the extremist group Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which was behind several attacks on Myanmar security posts in recent years.
“This is a devastating loss for everyone who knew and loved Mohib Ullah, and it is also a tremendous loss for Myanmar, the Rohingya people, and the human rights movement more broadly,” said Matthew Smith, chief executive officer at Fortify Rights.
He also said Mohibullah was committed to truth, justice, and human rights and had been facing serious and sustained threats in Bangladesh. Smith further said the Rohingya leader had needed protection.
“Dhaka must prioritize the protection of Rohingya people, including human rights defenders, who routinely experience heightened threats to their personal security,” he added.
Mohibullah, 46, who led the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, was shot dead at around 8:30pm at a Kutupalong camp office in Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday.
He had represented the Rohingya community at the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2019. In his address to UNHRC, he said: “Imagine you have no identity, no ethnicity, no country. Nobody wants you. How would you feel? This is how we feel today as Rohingya…”
“For decades we faced a systematic genocide in Myanmar. They took our citizenship. They took our land. They destroyed our mosques. No travel, no higher education, no healthcare, no jobs … We are not stateless. Stop calling us that. We have a state. It is Myanmar.”
Mohibullah came to the limelight on 25 August 2019 when a rally organised by Arakan Rohingya Society to observe two years of the latest Rohingya exodus from the Rakhine state of Myanmar, drew more than 100,000 people.
The UN must urgently appoint a special rapporteur on climate change and human rights to galvanise action on the biggest threat to fundamental freedoms
Climate breakdown is making a mockery of human rights.
Start with the most fundamental right of all: the right to life, liberty and security. Two million people have died as a result of a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters in our lifetimes. And given that 90% of these deaths have occurred in developing countries, which have contributed the least to global heating, the climate crisis is also making a mockery of the notion that we are all born equal – as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous national constitutions assert.
Brussels, September 27, 2021 – At the upcoming High-level Resettlement Forum, European Union officials must commit to helping Afghan journalists resettle in EU member states, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
The forum, scheduled for October 7, has been convened by High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.
“Journalists fleeing Afghanistan have received far too little support from governments around the world and their safe passage must now become a political priority,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s EU representative. “EU member states must make clear commitments to Afghan journalists fleeing persecution, including concrete and collaborative strategies for their evacuation and resettlement. The EU has a duty not to turn the other way.”
Law firm says attempts to evaluate a 15-year-old Afghan held in a hotel had been prevented, breaching the child’s rights
Fresh concern over the plight of thousands of refugees living in UK hotels has emerged after a council requested that the Home Office shut down temporary accommodation housing child refugees over “safeguarding concerns” and a lawyer revealed how he had been blocked from assessing unaccompanied minors.
Brighton and Hove city council has asked the Home Office to stop using a hotel holding scores of child refugees, claiming that no initial Covid-19 risk or safeguarding assessment had been carried out. Meanwhile, a law firm said that attempts to evaluate a 15-year-old Afghan held in a hotel had been prevented, breaching the child’s rights, with other unaccompanied minors subject to “unlawful forced imprisonment”.
With that orange haired brute of a president supposedly ushered out of the White House with moralising delight, the Biden administration was all keen to turn over a new leaf. There would be more diplomacy, and still more diplomacy. There would be a more humanitarian approach to refugees and asylum seekers – forget, he claimed, the Border Wall. Kindness would come over border officials and guards of the imperium.
Instead, we have had secret diplomacy culminating in the trilateral security pact of AUKUS, one reached unbeknownst to allies in Europe, Asia and the Indo-Pacific. And we have had a particularly ugly spectacle concerning Haitian refugees, with many being bundled into planes to be sent back to their country, having been taken from the burgeoning border camp around a bridge in Del Rio, Texas.
Having been blooded in the mass evacuation exercise from Afghanistan, the Biden administration was now doing the reverse in an exercise of expulsion, promising the deportation of 14,000 Haitians over a period of three weeks. The jarring contrast was not lost on Nicole Melaku, executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans. “When you contrast the welcome mat that was rolled out for many Afghan refugees who are deserving – of course – of our support and resettlement, with the deplorable treatment of Black migrants on our home soil, it is just an unfathomable contrast.”
At the Rio Grande River, US border agents, crowned by cowboy hats and sporting a thuggish élan, left a remarkable impression of ugliness by their free use of reins in pushing migrants back across the river. Many members of their quarry had made the journey to obtain food. “I can’t imagine what context would make that appropriate,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed with the sort of wonder that is becoming her hallmark style. “But I don’t have additional details and certainly I don’t think anyone seeing that footage would think it was acceptable or appropriate.”
Political atmosphere and atmospherics is everything, and while Psaki might be puzzled, her colleagues in the Biden administration are happy to maintain a firm line against mischievous incursions. The US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has been firm. “If you come to the United States illegally,” he declared on September 20, “you will be returned. Your journey will not succeed, and you will be endangering your life and your family’s life.”
Such conduct did not sit well with the May announcement by Secretary Mayorkas that Haiti had been designated for Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for 18 months. “Haiti is currently experiencing serious security concerns, social unrest, an increase in human rights abuses, crippling poverty, and lack of basic resources, which are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Mayorkas stated at the time.
Despite that official characterisation, the administration has taken comfort in using Title 42 of the United States code Section 265, a public health statute freely employed by the Trump administration, to prohibit “the introduction of persons or property, in whole or in part, from Mexico and Canada” into the US for fears of pandemic spread. The liberal use of the statue has received judicial excoriation, with US District Judge Emmet Sullivan claiming it “collectively deprived” asylum seekers and refugees facing “real threats of violence and persecution” of “certain statutory procedures”.
Public health officials have also been disconcerted. As Dr Ronald Waldman of the human rights group Doctors of the World remarks, “The prohibition for crossing the border has been applied selectively to asylum seekers”. It certainly has not been applied to students and those doing business.
In a sober assessment of Biden’s report card so far, Natasha Lennard of The Intercept points out that the Trump administration’s use of the law saw half a million people removed. During the short tenure of the Biden administration, the current number stands at 700,000. Over the course of January, 62,530 migrants were expelled according to the figures of Customs and Border Protection. For the month of April, it was 110,846.
In a resounding judgment of Biden’s policy towards Haitians and Haiti in general, Washington’s envoy to the country, Daniel Foote, has resigned. His September 22 letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was an effort of extrication from “the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life.”
Foote also took a stab at a long standing practice of US foreign policy: that habitual meddling in the affairs of a country that had “consistently produced catastrophic results”. The de facto, unelected prime minister Ariel Henry had received yet “another public statement of support as interim leader of Haiti” from the US embassy, among others. They had continued touting “his ‘political agreement’ over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society.” The now resigned envoy, sniping at this policy of backing “winners”, stated the essential heresy of the imperium: What Haitians needed was “the opportunity to chart their own course, without international puppeteering and favoured candidates, but with genuine support for the cause.”
In response to the resignation, US State Department spokesman Ned Price was a picture of regret and hollow advice. “It is unfortunate that, instead of participating in a solutions-oriented policy process, Special Envoy Foote has both resigned and mischaracterised the circumstances.”
Psaki was icily dismissive. “Special Envoy Foote had ample opportunity to raise concerns about immigration during his tenure. He never once did so.” Such bitchiness is a nice summation of the Biden administration so far: policies that continue to furnish us the acceptable face of Trumpism.
On Thursday September 23, 2021, at 9am ET, the first day of the Annual Strategic Litigation Roundtable 2021 will take place virtually, co-hosted by UNHCR, HIAS, Asylum Access and, this year, the new Global Strategic Litigation Council for Refugee Rights….
Berlin, September 17, 2021 – Polish authorities should drop all criminal charges filed against a reporting team from the local news website Onet, and ensure that members of the press can cover refugees and other sensitive issues without fear of prosecution, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On September 3, police in Hajnówka, a Polish town near the border with Belarus, summoned Onet reporter Bartłomiej Bublewicz and a camera operator for the website, who did not want their name revealed, to a local police station, according to a report by Onet and Bublewicz, who communicated with CPJ via email.
Police interrogated both journalists about a report they had published earlier that day covering refugee movements at the border, and charged them with violating a state of emergency decree governing the border region by reporting from that area and taking pictures and video of border infrastructure, according to those sources. Authorities released them after about 30 minutes, according to Bublewicz and that Onet report.
On September 2, Polish authorities passed a 30-day state of emergency decree covering the border area with Belarus, which bars journalists from reporting from the area, according to newsreports.
“Polish authorities must immediately drop all charges against Bartłomiej Bublewicz and an Onet camera operator, who were simply doing their jobs covering newsworthy events near the country’s border with Belarus,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Authorities must allow reporters to cover refugee movements freely. This level of obstruction only implies that the Polish authorities have something to hide.”
During the interrogation, police asked to search the journalists’ car and examine their phones and camera memory card, but Bublewicz said that he and his colleague refused those requests. He added that when police first summoned him, he thought they were requesting an informal talk so did not have a lawyer present.
If convicted of violating the state of emergency, each journalist could face a prison sentence of up to 30 days or a fine of up to 5,000 Polish złoty (US$1300 USD), Bublewicz said. He said that no court date for their case has been set.
Jakub Kudła, a lawyer for Onet parent company RASP, told Onet in an interview that the charges are baseless, saying that the journalists were simply doing their jobs. He added that the videos they published did not illegally show any border infrastructure, as the journalists did not reach the border itself.
“I have the impression that the charges in this case are only intended to intimidate and obstruct the work of journalists,” he said.
On September 14, 30 newsrooms in Poland issued a joint appeal to the government to allow journalists to work freely in the border zone, calling emergency decree “a manifestation of unlawful press restrictions in the work of journalists and suppression of press criticism,” according to reports.
CPJ emailed the Polish police office in Białystok, which oversees Hajnówka, but did not immediately receive any reply.
Friend of the Murugappans welcomes announcement by immigration minister but says family ‘are still essentially trapped in Perth in community detention’
The Murugappan family from Biloela will be allowed to stay in Australia for at least another three months after the immigration minister, Alex Hawke, told a court he intended to renew their bridging visas next week.
Hawke initially announced in late June he had granted three-month bridging visas to parents Nades and Priya and their daughter Kopika, so they could live in community detention in Perth while the youngest daughter, Tharnicaa, received medical treatment after being evacuated from Christmas Island.
Washington, D.C., September 13, 2021 — Iranian authorities should immediately release photojournalist Majid Saeedi, drop any charges against him, and let him work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
On August 25, security forces in the city of Khoy, in West Azerbaijan province near the border with Turkey, arrested Saeedi, a photographer for the state-run newspaper Shargh Daily, while he was photographing camps housing Afghan refugees, according to reports by the Iranian semi-official news website Ensafnews and the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), and a person familiar with the case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of government reprisal.
Ensafnews reported that Saeedi “was arrested due to taking photos of forbidden border regions.” However, the journalist had permission from authorities to cover the refugee camps, according to those reports and the person who spoke to CPJ. No charges against him have been disclosed, according to those sources.
“Iranian authorities must free photojournalist Majid Saeedi immediately and unconditionally, and let him do his job documenting the lives of Afghan refugees in Iran,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour. “Journalists must be able to cover such events of national and international interest without fear that they will be arbitrarily detained.”
Authorities also arrested a Shargh Daily reporter at the scene, and released the reporter a few hours later on bail, according to the HRANA report, which did not disclose the journalist’s name.
CPJ emailed Alireza Miryousefi, the head of the media office of Iran’s mission to the United Nations, for comment on Saeedi and the unnamed journalist, but did not receive any reply. CPJ also emailed Shargh Daily for comment, but did not receive any immediate response.
Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September 2001 — now known as 9/11 — the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.
New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.
It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.
Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.
They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.
Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.
The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.
Poorest country debts
In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.
Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.
“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”
Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.
“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”
But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.
Targeted sanctions
“One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.
“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.
When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.
“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.
“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.
Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.
“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.
Palestinian refugee lessons
Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.
“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.
“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.
Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.
“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.
“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.
”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”
Social movements reviving
Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.
“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.
“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.
“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.
There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.
But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.
Asian social inequities
“Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.
“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”
Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.
“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.
“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.
Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.
The French interior minister Gerald Darmanin hit back at home secretary Priti Patel on Thursday amid reports she had sanctioned tactics to turn back refugee boats towards the continent to stop them from making the journey to the UK. This has led to a war of words between Britain and France .
Patel is said to have ordered officials to rewrite maritime laws and Border Force staff have reportedly taken part in special training on handling migrant boats.
Home secretary Priti Patel met her French counterpart during the G7 interior minsiters’ meeting at Lancaster House in London. (Ian West/PA)
A “cowardly” and “cruel” plan
The suggestion has prompted an outcry from aid charities and campaigners who branded the plan “cowardly” and “cruel” and one which could risk the lives of refugees, while the legality of the tactic has been called into question.
Darmanin said France would not accept any practices which breach maritime laws and that the country would not be subjected to financial blackmail.
Earlier this week government sources confirmed Patel told MPs she was prepared to withhold millions of pounds of cash promised to France to help step up patrols unless an improvement in the number of migrants intercepted by French authorities is seen.
The pair met on Wednesday to discuss the migrant crossings during the three-day G7 interior minister’s meeting at Lancaster House in London.
Different accounts of the same meeting?
A Government source said the meeting was “constructive”, adding:
The home secretary was clear with the French interior minister that the British public expect to see results.
But less than 24 hours later, according to translations of his posts on Twitter, Darmanin said:
France will not accept any practice contrary to maritime laws, or financial blackmail.
He said he had made it clear to his equivalent Patel that the arrangements with Britain must remain, adding:
The friendship between our two countries deserves better than postures which harm cooperation between our services.
Prime minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman rejected the claims of “financial blackmail” and said the Government has “provided our French counterparts significant sums of money previously, and we’ve agreed another bilateral agreement backed by millions of pounds”.
He added:
I don’t think any single approach is going to solve this challenge, which sees criminal gangs target some of the most vulnerable people, and we want to work with our French counterparts, and indeed, the wider EU, on a range of options to address this long-standing problem.
We are content that the tactics that our Border Force staff, our trained Border Force staff, are using are safe and legal.
This could all be unlawful
James M Turner QC, a barrister and arbitrator specialising in cross-border commercial and shipping disputes, said on Twitter that turnbacks are “highly unlikely to be lawful (even if it were practicable and safe).”
Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s refugee and migrant rights director, said:
The Government’s pushback plan is senseless, dangerous and almost certainly unlawful.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said:
Turning boats around at sea in the world’s busiest shipping channel is dangerous and risks lives.
That the home secretary is even considering these dangerous proposals shows how badly she has lost control of this situation.
Darmanin has also rejected a UK request to set up a joint command centre in northern France, with police and border force officers from both countries patrolling the coastline and the Channel, The Times said.
According to the Home Office, the UK authorities had to rescue or intercept 456 people as part of 17 incidents on Tuesday, and 301 people as part of nine incidents on Wednesday, while the French reported a total of 18 events over the two days preventing a total of 628 people from reaching the UK.
Dan O’Mahoney, clandestine Channel threat commander, said efforts so far have prevented more than 10,000 migrant attempts, led to almost 300 arrests and secured 65 convictions.
What was the deal?
Earlier this year, the UK and France announced an agreement to more than double the number of police patrolling French beaches. It was the second pledge of its kind in a year, in a bid to stop small boats from leaving France.
As part of the deal, the Government pledged to give France £54 million to support its efforts to stop small boat crossings. At least 14,100 people have now crossed to the UK aboard small boats this year, data compiled by PA shows.
The total for 2021 so far is already nearly 6,000 higher than the amount of people who made the crossing in 2020. Illegal migration is anticipated to be the subject of focus for the final day of the G7 meeting on Thursday as Border Force boats remained active in the Channel.
The Migrant Action Trust has condemned a proposal by a diversity academic calling for a New Zealand nation-building course before people are granted permanent residence or citizenship as “dangerous” and “discriminating”.
“This proposal is dangerous. It is dangerous because it comes at a time when the world — including Aotearoa — has demonised a religion and those associated with that religion,” the trust said.
“We have inculcated in the minds of others that ‘these people’, and by association, all people of colour are a danger.
But the Migrant Action Trust chair, Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, described the proposal as “cynical”, saying it raised many questions.
‘Values of our colonisers?’
“Firstly, whose values will inform this nation-building paper? Will they be the values of the colonisers or of our tangata whenua? Will it be the values of those whose labour built this land or those whose dubious transactions stole this land?,” Dr Nakhid asked in a statement.
“Will it be the refugee with the ideologies of terrorist groups or the resident Pākehā with the ideologies of terrorist Pākehā groups which hold the ideologies of the dominant Pākehā group which hold the ideologies of white supremacists?
“Who will be made to take this nation-building paper? Will it only be potential citizens such as migrants, asylum seekers and those from refugee backgrounds but not those wanting to remain permanent residents?
“What about citizens themselves who mistrust the government, challenge their laws and protest their policies?
“Will they need to go back to school to take this nation-building paper?”
Dr Pio’s research had found lone terrorists to be “dangerous and hard to combat” when compared to group terrorists.
She said “higher impact” policies were needed to combat terrorism and she called for legislation to require people to pass nation-building courses before being granted citizenship or permanent residence.
A Sri Lankan-born refugee, Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen, 32, stabbed seven people in the Countdown supermarket before he was shot dead by police.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the Islamic State supporter as a “lone wolf terrorist”.
Suggestion to home secretary condemned as breach of UN convention on human rights
Conservative MPs have urged the home secretary, Priti Patel, to send back immediately anyone including children who boards an illegal crossing of the Channel from France.
They claimed the measure should be enacted because the UK needed to “up the stakes” with the French government, which has been blamed by the home secretary for failing to curb the number of migrants sailing across the channel.
Refugees and asylum seekers provide rich pickings for demagogues and political opportunists. The Australian approach politicises their plight by arguing that they are illegitimate depending on the way they arrive, namely, by boat. The twentieth anniversary of the MV Tampa’s attempt to dock at Christmas Island with over 400 such individuals inaugurated a particularly vicious regime. Intercepted by Australia’s SAS forces in August 2001, it presented the Howard government with a stupendously cruel chance to garner votes. And my, did that government garner them with gusto!
Various European countries have also adopted an approach akin to this: naval arrivals from the Middle East and Africa are to be contained, detained, and preferably processed in third countries through a range of agreements. The common theme to all: firm border controls and deterrence.
Belarus has added another option to the armoury of refugee use and abuse. The country, under Alexander Lukashenko, has hit upon a shoddy plan to harry countries sympathetic to his opponents and responsible for imposing sanctions upon his regime: swamp them. First: entice refugees and migrants from a number of countries – Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria and Cameroon – to arrive on tourist visas. Mobilise said people to move across the Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian borders.
Descriptions have been offered for the strategy. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis considered the acts on the part of Belarus as a “hybrid war operation” that threatened, he claimed with dramatic effect, “the entire European Union”. In July, he told Deutsche Welle that the refugees concerned were being used as “human shields” and a type of “hybrid weapon”. Lithuanian Deputy Interior Minister Arnoldas Abramavičius resented his country’s border guards “acting as a kind of hotel reception for the migrants for a long time. That had to stop.”
Member states have been sharing experiences on how best to deal with the surge in these Lukashenko arrivals. In a meeting between Landsbergis and his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias in June, much solidarity was felt in discussing how to combat a common threat. Human rights proved to be less important than territorial integrity and European defence. As the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry stated, both ministers “underscored the importance of European solidarity and the need to pay attention to the processes in the EU neighbourhood, as well as to be ready to respond to dangerous threats emerging from the EU’s neighbourhood.”
Guards along the Lithuanian border had, up till August, intercepted approximately 4,100 refugees and asylum seekers this year alone. Last year, that number was a mere 81. The numbers prompted the Baltic state to declare a state of emergency in July. The resources of Frontex, that less than transparent body otherwise known as the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, deployed personnel with haste that same month to aid policing the border with Lithuania and Latvia.
According to Frontex, the initial support would involve “border surveillance and other border management functions. The operation will start with the deployment of 10 officers with patrol cars, and their numbers will be gradually increased.”
The agency’s executive director Fabrice Leggeri was brimming with praise for the organisation’s military-styled prowess, suggesting aid in the face of threatening barbarians at the frontier of Europe. “The quick deployment in support of Lithuania and Latvia highlights the value of the Frontex standing troops, which allows the Agency to quickly react to unexpected challenges, bringing European solidarity to support Member States at the external borders.”
Humanitarianism is the last thing on Leggeri’s mind as he speaks about the role of “additional border guards and patrol guards by Frontex” as they “work side-by-side with their Latvian and Lithuanian colleagues” to “protect our external borders” in common cause.
Earlier this month Poland joined Lithuania with alarmist fervour, declaring a state of emergency. It served the purpose of needlessly militarising the situation even as it appealed to the inner jingo. Tellingly, it is the first such order since the country’s communist era, proscribing mass gatherings and limiting people’s movements within a 3 km strip of land along the frontier for 30 days. Marta Anna Kurzyniec, resident of the Polish border town of Krynki, described an atmosphere that was “generally violent”. There were “uniformed, armed servicemen everywhere … it reminds me of war.”
To the use of troops can be added such inhospitable barriers as the construction of a 508 km razor-wire fence by the Lithuanian authorities. Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte considered it an essential part of her country’s strategy of repelling unwanted arrivals. “The physical barrier is vital to repel this hybrid attack, which the Belarus regime is undertaking against Lithuania.”
Political figures such as Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Lithuania’s Landsbergis have also encouraged disseminating stern messages of disapproval to those trying to enter their countries. “We need to inform the people that they are being lied to,” huffed Landsbergis. “They are being promised an easy passage to Europe, a very free life in Europe. This is not going to happen.” Morawiecki, despite claiming some sympathy for “the migrants who have been in an extremely difficult situation” felt that “it should be clearly stated that they are a political instrument.”
The situation has also seen the European Court of Human Rights make a much needed appearance in its request that both Poland and Latvia “provide all the applicants with food, water, clothing, adequate medical care and, if possible, temporary shelter.” The Court, however, wanted it known “that this measure should not be understood as requiring that Poland or Latvia let the applicants enter their territories.”
The Polish government, for its part, insists that their hearts have not hardened, dabbling in its own bit of dissembling for the press. As a spokeswoman for the interior ministry claimed, “These people are on the Belarusian side of the border.”
The manipulation of such human traffic created its fair share of bestial realities ignoring the fundamentals of the UN Refugee Convention and an assortment of international instruments, including the Geneva Convention. This is particularly so regarding a number of Afghan refugees who find themselves stuck at Usnarz Gorny, 55 km east of Bialystok. “They’re the victims of the political game between countries,” came the accurate assessment from Amnesty International Poland’s Aleksandra Fertlinska. “But what is the most important is that it doesn’t matter what is the source of this political game. They are refugees, and they are protected by [the] Geneva Convention what we need to do is accept them.”
One Iraqi refugee by the name of Slemen, finding himself in the drenched environs of Rūdninki, some 38 kilometres from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, offers his own relevant observation. “Just because we came through Belarus doesn’t make us bad people,” he explained to Der Spiegel. But bad he, and his fellow travellers, are being made out to be by states who overlook the compassion of processing claims in favour of an instinctive politics stressing deluge and threat rather than salvation and hope.
Afghans formerly employed by the British military who are now living in the UK have said home secretary Priti Patel owes it to them to evacuate their extended families too.
Family
Nazir is a former interpreter and Shams worked as a communications officer at the British embassy in Kabul for 10 years. They said their employment with Western forces means the Taliban will target the relatives they had to leave behind. Both men were safely evacuated from Kabul at the start of August with their wives and children. They’ve been staying at a hotel in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, for more than a month along with hundreds of other Afghan families.
The small town’s Baptist Church and council have been leading the resettling effort. They had organised a cricket match to welcome the families on Sunday 5 September. Shams and Nazir were among the refugees playing the friendly but fiercely competitive game with locals. They expressed deep gratitude for the town’s support, but they could not shake grave worries for people left in their homeland.
Shams said:
We feel safe, and we appreciate the opportunity to be here. But some of my colleagues and relatives are in hiding from the Taliban.
They have been shifting their locations, but this is a very temporary measure… they are living in a life-threatening situation.
Recently arrived Afghans watch the match at Newport Pagnell Town Cricket Club in Buckinghamshire (Joe Giddens/PA)
Asked if he feels the UK owes it to him to evacuate his remaining embassy colleagues and relatives, he said:
Yes. I just remind Priti Patel of her words, when she said that she owes a debt of gratitude to the Afghan people, I think that’s the best way to put it, and we really hope the UK will continue to try its best to evacuate the people who deserve it.
He added that his six children, aged between three and 14, are “very happy” in their temporary “second home”. And they’re “passionately waiting for their chance” to start school.
Threats
Nazir, 43, worked in Helmand between 2009 and 2012. He said his family of nine had to relocate 12 times in Afghanistan “due to being threatened by the Taliban”. Now he fears for his brother and sister-in-law who did not manage to escape. He said:
I have spent 43 years in my homeland with my relatives and my countrymen so it was really very, very difficult for me to leave, but I was compelled with my family to leave, because we have to live.
Local minister Peter Young (right) talks to recently arrived Afghans (Joe Giddens/PA)
Nazir added:
One thing, to be very clear, the Taliban can’t be trusted… so we have deep concerns about our family left behind in Afghanistan. (My relatives) are being tortured, mentally tortured, threatened and they are being intimidated, asking them where we are, because they have got our list according to the information on social media, the Taliban have access to some of the interpreter list data…
We will keep on trying to evacuate them from Afghanistan… but the process still belongs to the Government.
In limbo
Shams added that their own lives are still in limbo because they’re due to be relocated from Newport Pagnell. The Home Office has “not entertained questions” about when they can expect a permanent home.
Speaking about life in the hotel, he said:
The noise levels are not manageable, and we also have difficulty when it comes to creating a bank account…
We really request them (the Home Office) to expediate and speed up the process to help us find suitable housing and start our life properly.
He added:
The tricky bit is that you can’t do anything.
I can’t apply for a job because you don’t have a permanent address. You don’t have the status or the residents’ card so we really need to be moved to houses.
Adbullah watches his father takes part in the cricket match (Joe Giddens/PA)
Warm welcome
Nazir said that although their stay is temporary, the welcome his family has received in Newport Pagnell has been “outstanding”. He described the people as “fabulous”.
Minister for the Newport Pagnell Baptist Church Steve Wood was among the locals playing cricket on Sunday. And he’s been a key coordinator of the Afghans’ settlement in their town. Wood said:
It’s been a privilege to get to know these families.
We put labels on people like the Afghans, we put labels on people who arrive into our countries – refugees is the one that is used so often.
These families that have arrived from Afghanistan are just people like you and I and to get to know them and support them in this way and to help the community do that has been one of the biggest privileges I’ve ever had.
