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Category: refugees

  • The Observer view on Priti Patel’s fake migrant crisis | Observer editorial

    The home secretary fans rhetorical flames on asylum seekers and refugees, but the numbers disagree

    Home secretaries from both main parties have scapegoated asylum seekers in attempts to endear themselves to voters in recent decades. But none with the fervour of Priti Patel, who in her two-year tenure at the Home Office has announced a series of initiatives to put people off seeking asylum in the UK. Wave machines in the Channel, flying asylum seekers to inhospitable islands thousands of miles away to be processed, criminalising those who rescue people drowning at sea: all are recent measures proposed by the home secretary regardless of their compatibility with international law and Britain’s moral obligations.

    Patel gives the impression that there is an escalating crisis in terms of the numbers of people arriving in the UK and trying to illegitimately claim refuge. This is not true. There is absolutely a crisis for asylum seekers trying to reach British shores by making the treacherous Channel crossing in small boats and dinghies. The British government should be doing all it can to clamp down on the people traffickers making a fortune by charging desperate people to attempt the crossing. But the number of people coming to the UK to claim asylum fell by 4% last year and stands at less than half what it was in the early 2000s. Britain receives a fraction of the asylum applications of Germany and France and fewer per resident than the EU average. Low-income countries host nine out of 10 displaced people worldwide.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Migrant caravan and Qatar’s tarnished World Cup: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland

    Continue reading…

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

  • Detained and banned from Europe: a British journalist in the EU migrant detention system

    Guards come and laugh at me through the bars of my cell.

    “You’re the English, right?”, they ask me. “What are you doing here?”

    “You tell me,” I say, for the hundredth time. But they just laugh and wander off.

    I am the only Westerner in a detention centre full of thousands of refugees. I am also the only inmate waiting to be deported to the UK – though of course, I am pretty much the only person here who would not do anything for a one-way plane ticket to London. In a similar irony, the Greek police who run the facility make it very plain they do not want any of my fellow inmates (Afghans, Iranians, Pakistanis, North Africans) in their country. And yet it’s the same police force which violently arrested them and prevented them leaving.

    Earlier this year, while on holiday in Greece, I was detained at the Italian border, arrested, thrown into the Greek detention and migration system for two months, and informed I was banned from the Schengen Area for the next ten years. Though I still haven’t been provided with any documentation about the ban, it appears likely that I am being targeted as a result of my reporting and media advocacy from North and East Syria (NES), the democratic, women-led, autonomous region built around Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), which the Turkish government is hell-bent on destroying. Chillingly, it seems the autocratic Turkish government now has the power to impose a unilateral ban from Europe on a British citizen, professional journalist, and media activist like myself.

    My two months in detention were just a brief taste of what many refugees, political activists, and journalists from the Middle East and beyond must spend a lifetime enduring. My case provided a window into the violence, squalor, and farce of day-to-day life in the EU’s detention-deportation machine. But it also illustrates the complicity of European states and the Turkish regime in suppressing journalistic freedom, political dissent, and democratic movements.

    Inside the Greek migrant detention system

    While travelling from Greece to Italy with a friend earlier this year, I was met off the ferry at the Italian border by a group of armed, balaclava-clad police. I was banned from the Schengen Area for ten years, they told me, at the request of the German government. Thus began my whirlwind tour of the Greek migrant detention system. The port where I was arrested, Ancona, lies on a popular route for people without papers trying to travel through Greece on to Western Europe, and so the Greek police simply dealt with me as they would deal with any irregular migrant pushed back from Italy by the Italian police.

    I was variously detained in Patras police station, the notorious Migrant Pre-Removal Detention Center at Korinthos which was condemned by the Committee to Prevent Torture, and another Pre-Removal Center in Petrorali, Athens. Conditions were as you might expect. The police station in Patras only has small holding cells, but I spent a week here sleeping on the bare stone. Others were held in the same conditions for a month or more. For days at a time, I was locked in my cell and not allowed to mix with other inmates, passing the time squashing cockroaches and playing chess with myself on a contraband paper set. Most of my fellow inmates were cut and bruised from the beatings they’d received upon arrest, trying to smuggle themselves on to ferries at the port. On one occasion, the police violently beat a petty drug dealer on the floor outside my cell.

    One day myself and a group of my new friends – Afghan migrants – were handcuffed and bundled into a windowless van. To keep us quiet, the police implied we were soon to be released, but instead we found ourselves issued with new prison numbers and lined up along the wall at Korinthos, a massive, police-run prison facility officially known as a ‘Pre-Removal Detention Center’. This name, we soon learned, had become a farce, since there were virtually no ‘removals’ (deportations) taking place due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.

    Officially, people here should have exhausted all possible legal routes to remain in the EU, or else have voluntarily accepted deportation. In practice, they are held for six to eighteen months, or even more. before suddenly being released – sometimes with the assistance of the shadowy lawyers who circle the centre like vultures demanding huge cash payments for unclear forms of ‘assistance’ – sometimes seemingly at random. People are interviewed about their asylum cases, but these days everyone is being rejected, regardless of the validity of their case. Some people are released, re-arrested days later, and placed back in the detention centre for another undetermined spell.

    In Korinthos, as elsewhere, the system is totally opaque. All NGOs are banned from entering. Particularly Kafkaeseque is the way some guards will tell you whatever you want to hear; some will say they know nothing, and some will tell you to fuck off, with added racist abuse, where applicable. But they are all simply trying to make their own lives easier. It’s impossible to know how your case is going, where you will be sent next, when your interview will be, whether the lawyers (who never actually visit their clients in the detention facility, only occasionally shouting at them through the barbed wire) really can speed up your release. The conditions are squalid, with frequent water outages, and up to forty men sharing each cell.

    The result is desperation. In the cell where I stayed, one Kurdish refugee had recently killed himself in desperation, hanging himself with two phone chargers woven together. The lights are kept burning 24 hours a day, and yet when the residents need a doctor, or the water runs dry, no-one comes. I see one long-term inmate climb up the prison building and threaten to throw himself off just to get access to a dentist.

    Another slashed himself all over with a razor after being consistently denied access to the doctor for his agonising kidney problems. There are hunger strikes, fights, and clashes with the guards with stones, and burning mattresses. For the final two weeks, I am transferred to a higher-security facility in Petrorali, Athens, where we once again spend most of the time in isolation. Here, more troubled inmates kept in isolation thrash against the bars, screaming, cursing, begging, fighting.

     

     

     

    Rumours fly through the bars as frequently as the cigarettes and teabags passed around via cardboard chutes. Transfers occur in windowless vans. On arrival at a new facility, we are stripped and cavity searched, have our blood taken and are given injections, but not told what the injection is for, fostering a dangerous paranoia among the migrant population.

    When I arrive at Petrorali the medical staff tell me, laughing, that I have somehow contracted multiple forms of hepatitis: that I will never be able to have children: and that there’s nothing to be done about this. They send me back to my cell, untreated. It’s only after many weeks of worry later, back in England, that my doctor tells me I have nothing to worry about, and what the Greek tests picked up were my vaccinations against the disease. Whether this was done through malice or oversight, I don’t know.

    I see much comradeship and joy too. In Patras, a brace of Hells’ Angels held on drug charges make the migrants and I laugh by breaking wind. They also share the festal food brought in by their wives for orthodox Easter, and advise the young Afghans on how to handle the guards.

    In Korinthos, we organise language classes, legal training ahead of the migrants’ admissibility interviews, work-out sessions where we leg-press the fattest guy in the cell, and hold a clandestine livestream where we relay conditions in the prison to the outside world. We play ludo, chess, football, run out into the yard in the rain, and belly-flop on the flooded concrete. I write poetry on the cell wall, Blake, Milton: the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. We laugh a lot, debate politics and religion, comfort one another as best we can.

    When I am woken at dawn for the last time and put on a plane back to the UK, my overriding emotion is guilt that I cannot bring all my new friends and comrades with me. It’s all I can do to dish out my last remaining cigarettes before I am handcuffed and swept away.

    A cause worth defending

    Six months later, back in the UK, I am still trying to get my hands on any official paperwork to explain exactly what has happened. Since I have never had anything to do with the German authorities and given Germany’s strong trade ties and strategic relationship with Turkey, it appears likely Turkey asked Germany to issue the ban. This was done via an opaque institution known as the Schengen Information System, which has been the target of sustained criticism by academics, EU bodies and civil rights organisations since its inception.

    But why should the Turkish government care so deeply about a British journalist on holiday in Greece? You will have seen the world-famous images of ‘Kurdish women fighting ISIS’ broadcast around the world, as Kurdish-led forces spent years pushing back ISIS from strongholds like Raqqa before totally eradicating their caliphate in March 2019 – as the main partner force of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, led by the US but including the UK, Germany, and most Schengen Area member states. You will probably also have seen footage from the two Turkish invasions of the region, including the October 2019 assault green-lit by Donald Trump. Turkish warplanes and tanks backed radical militias, including scores of former ISIS members, to take over swathes of NES, looting, raping, pillaging and murdering as they conducted forcible ethnic cleansing against the region’s Kurdish, Yezidi, and Christian minorities.

    And beyond the frontlines, the political project in NES has endured. Several million people now live in a system of direct, grassroots democracy, with guaranteed female participation and women’s leadership at all levels of political and civil life. The project is not flawless, but in a region beset by war, poverty, and a total breakdown of infrastructure, NES continues to guarantee remarkably high standards of human rights, rule of law, and due process. The three years I spent living and working in NES were an education in both utopic thinking and practical action, as I witnessed refugees coming together around cooperative farming projects to beat the Turkish-imposed embargo on the region, and the women of Raqqa taking control of their own autonomous council in defiance of ISIS’ continued presence. The revolution is very much alive.

    You may also be aware that a number of Westerners have travelled out to join the ‘Rojava revolution’. At first, many joined the military struggle against ISIS, with scores sacrificing their lives in the process. But these days, the majority of Western volunteers work in the burgeoning civil sphere, in women’s projects, health, education – or, in my case, media.

    I am a professional journalist, and during my time in Syria, I filed reports for top international news sources like VICE, the Independent, and the New Statesman, as well as hosting a documentary series for a Kurdish TV channel. But my main role was as a co-founder of the region’s top independent news source, Rojava Information Center (RIC). As RIC, we worked with all the world’s top media companies and human rights organisations, including the BBC, ITV, Sky, CNN, Fox, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the US Government, and many more, to help them cover the situation on the ground.

    Our raison d’etre was connecting these news sources with people on the ground, to help them understand the reality of NES, without propaganda. I never sought to hide my presence in Syria, or what I was doing there. On the contrary, I was proud to lend my voice to advocate for a political project I wanted the international community to recognise, understand, and engage with.

    Political repression

    Working in Kurdistan as a journalist is enough to incur political repression from Turkey. Turkey is the world’s number one jailer of journalists, has the highest incarceration rate in Europe, and in recent years has dismissed or detained over 160,000 judges, teachers, civil servants, and politicians – particularly targeting Kurdish politicians and members of the pro-Kurdish and pro-democratic HDP party. Turkey’s actions reach far beyond Turkey and the regions it invades and occupies in Syria and Iraq, with Turkish intelligence going so far as to assassinate three female Kurdish activists in Paris in 2013, while fascist ‘Grey Wolves’ paramilitaries linked to Recep Erdoğan’s AKP party regularly carry out violent attacks in Europe.

    The EU must turn a blind eye to these abuses because it relies on Turkey to host millions of refugees who would otherwise travel to Europe. Turkey uses these refugees as leverage to threaten Europe, even while its invasions of NES and military interventions in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and elsewhere force hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in the face of ethnic cleansing. Absurdly, even Kurdish refugees in the EU must prove that Turkey is not safe for them, with almost all applications being rejected.  If Turkey was shown to be unsafe, after all, that would mean the EU admitting it was refouling migrants into life-threatening danger, in defiance of international law.

    The issue is not Turkey alone. EU and Western governments regularly target, harass, and detain their own nationals for lending support to the democratic project in NES or the Kurdish rights movement. Volunteers who fought against ISIS have been charged and jailed in Denmark, Australia, Italy, Spain, France and my own home country, the UK. Danes and Australians can be jailed simply for setting foot in NES – something the UK has threatened but not yet enacted.

    Fighting for women’s rights, democracy and freedom should not be a crime. But as my case illustrates, this repression is not limited to combatants. In the UK, even members of ecological delegations have been detained under terror laws and prevented from travelling to the region. Facing intense, targeted police harassment, unable to find work as a result, feeling isolated and alone, several former volunteers have killed themselves. At least one other British volunteer in NES has been handed the same ten-year ban from the Schengen Area as myself, and we suspect other peaceful activists have also been listed on the SIS.

    Turkish pressure, therefore, contributes to Western governments’ own desire to stop the spread of the decentralised, transformative vision of society put forward by NES. (Turkey, of course, knows they incur much more negative press when their bombs kill British or European citizens than when they are simply wiping out Kurdish and Arab locals – one reason why continued Western engagement in NES is so important.)

    Erdoğan is able to use the millions of Syrians now resident in Turkey to tacitly or openly threaten Europe with another influx of refugees if it does not consent to his demands. The UK is particularly close to Turkey as a key trading partner, the more so post-Brexit, and accordingly takes a much harder line against NES than, say, France or the USA, both of whom have welcomed NES’ political leaders to the White House and the Champs-Élysées. Notably, in the UK, repressive moves have come in response to high-level meetings between Turkey and the UK, in particular when arrests targeted not only former volunteers in NES but even their family members in the days following Erdoğan’s 2019 visit to London.

    The same shared interests lie behind my own, relatively brief, detention. The political movement in NES resists borders and the violence inherent in the capitalist nation-state. These ideas are anathema to Erdoğan, but they also constitute a challenge to the EU border regime. Little wonder, then, that Turkey and the EU work together to stifle legitimate journalism and political advocacy.

    Outside the law

    As the British novelty act in the Greek detention centre, I was of course spared the racism, the violence, and the worst of the uncertainty. I knew it would only be so long before I was back in the UK, where, though I had to sit through a ‘Schedule 7’ interview on my return, the police assured me that I was not facing charges and had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law. It is an immense frustration to be summarily banned from Europe, but then I FaceTime with friends still detained in Korinthos or playing the dangerous ‘game’ trying to jump onto lorries at Patras ferry port, and I remember how incredibly free I am.

    The effect of repression against Western volunteers, activists and journalists who have worked in NES is to place us, temporarily, outside the normal protections afforded to UK or EU citizens. Millions of civilians in NES, like millions of migrants in Europe, exist in this vacuum as their constant condition. Turkey feels it has impunity to rape, murder, bomb and ethnically cleanse in NES, which remains unrecognised by any government or international organisation, despite its leading role in defeating ISIS.

    The Greek police can beat, humiliate, and dehumanise the migrants in Patras, Korinthos, or Petrorali as much as they please, knowing no lawyers or NGOs are able to enter the detention centres to monitor their behaviour. The inmates of the Greek migrant detention system and the free people of NES are both victims of the same system, which sacrifices peoples’ lives in the name of bilateral trade agreements, arms sales, and ethno-nationalist state politics. But this is precisely why I, and other international supporters of the political movement in NES, have chosen to make our voices heard, even in the face of imprisonment and police repression. This is why I hope my ban will be overturned, and that I can continue my peaceful journalism and advocacy in support of this vital cause.

    The vision being promoted in NES, of local, decentralised, grassroots democracy, is the only way to resolve not only the Syrian conflict but also a global crisis occasioned by capitalist extraction overseen by neo-imperialist states. Only in this way can we provide people with what they want most – a safe home they have no need to flee.

    Featured image and all other images via the author

    By Matt Broomfield

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Greece’s mistaken deterrence: migrants and aid workers facing heavy prison sentences

    An abandoned life jacket in the Aegean Sea in 2016 | Photo: Picture-alliance/AP Photo/L.Pitarakis
    An abandoned life jacket in the Aegean Sea in 2016 | Photo: Picture-alliance/AP Photo/L.Pitarakis

    A post by Marion MacGregor published on 15 November 2021in ‘Infomigrants’ brings out an awful truth which I have to face up to even though Greece is my adopted country. In the face of Turkey ‘weaponsing’ migrants, it is trying its hands at deterrence in the hope that it will diminish the pressure of inflows

    Greece and other European countries are increasingly using the threat of criminal proceedings against aid workers and those migrants who ended up being marked as migrant smugglers.

    Hanad Abdi Mohammad is in prison, he says, because of something he was forced to do. The Somali is serving an impossibly long sentence of 142 years (!) after he was convicted last December for driving an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants to Greece. He says that he didn’t have a choice, because the smuggler hit him in the face and threatened him with a gun before abandoning the boat in rough seas. As 28-year-old Mohammad told journalists and members of the European Parliament who visited the prison last week, he “didn’t think saving people is a crime.”

    In the same prison on the Greek island of Chios two men from Afghanistan, Amir Zaheri and Akif Rasouli, both in their 20s, are also serving sentences of 50 years for similar criminal offences. The men’s convictions and staggering prison terms show how far Greece is ready to go in order to stop migrants in their tracks.

    On the day the smuggler abandoned them at sea between Turkey and Greece, Mohammad and nearly three dozen other migrants were only concerned about their lives. Mohammad says that he called the Turkish coast guard repeatedly, begging to be rescued. But when it arrived, the Turkish patrol boat circled the migrants’ dinghy sending water into the boat and gradually pushing it toward Greece. In the chaos, two women fell overboard and drowned, AP reports.

    The survivors were finally rescued by the Greek coast guard, and Mohammad helped others onto the rescue boat. He admitted to having driven the boat after the smuggler left. It didn’t cross his mind that would lead to him being prosecuted as a smuggler.

    “It’s not possible that someone who comes to claim asylum in Greece is threatened with such heavy sentences simply because they were forced, by circumstances or pressure, to take over handling a boat,” one of the lawyers representing the three imprisoned in Chios, Alexandros Georgoulis, told AP. Greek authorities, he said, “are essentially baptizing the smuggled as the smuggler.”

    From file: Sara Mardini and Seán Binder | Screenshot from Amnesty International Ireland
    From file: Sara Mardini and Seán Binder | Screenshot from Amnesty International Ireland

    Greek authorities have also accused aid workers and volunteers helping migrants in Greece of serious crimes. In one widely publicized case, the Syrian human rights worker Sara Mardini, a refugee herself, and an Irish volunteer Sean Binder were arrested and detained for months in 2018 on suspicion of espionage, money laundering, human trafficking and other offenses. Due to face trial on the island of Lesbos alongside 22 other civil society activists later this week, Binder says he is “terrified.”

    “I’ve had a taste of life in prison on Chios. It was all scabies and bed bugs with 17 of us packed in a cell,” Binder told The Guardian. “The police holding cells were even worse, the most awful place on earth; squalid, windowless rooms full of asylum seekers just there because authorities had nowhere else to put them.”

    Giorgos Kosmopoulos, a campaigner with an Amnesty International group which plans to monitor the trial in Greece, says that this is not only happening there. “Human rights defenders across Europe are being criminalized … for helping refugees and migrants,” he told The Guardian. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/10/09/mary-lawlor-condemns-criminalization-of-those-saving-lives-in-the-mediterranean/

    AP reports that, according to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Germany, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain and Greece have initiated 58 investigations and legal proceedings since 2016 against private entities involved in search and rescue.

    “I think it’s important to challenge these in the courts, to not at all sit back and accept that we should be cast as smugglers or spies because I offered CPR, (or) more often than not just a smile, to someone in distress,” Binder told the news agency. “It is preposterous that we should be cast as criminals. I don’t accept it….It doesn’t matter who you are, you don’t deserve to drown in the sea.“

    Binder told The Guardian that he has not bought a return ticket to the UK, where he has been studying. He and Mardini face a maximum eight-year sentence, convertible into a fine. They are still under investigation for offences which could carry 25-year sentences if they are convicted.

    In my view, the problem can only be tackled in a European context [see e.g. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/legal-migration-and-integration_en%5D but it seems most member states cling to outdated notion of sovereignty.

    Not directly related but possibly relevant is recent legislation in Greece, adopted on November 11, 2021, that makes it a criminal offence to spread “fake news.” Human Rights Watch said that the Greek government should immediately move to revoke the provision, which is incompatible with freedom of expression and media freedom. “In Greece, you now risk jail for speaking out on important issues of public interest, if the government claims it’s false,” said Eva Cossé, Greece researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The criminal sanctions risk making journalists and virtually anyone else afraid to report on or to debate important issues such as the handling of Covid-19 or migration or government economic policy.”

    https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/36487/greece-migrants-and-aid-workers-facing-decades-in-prison

    https://www.independent.ie/regionals/kerryman/news/kerry-aid-worker-faces-trial-in-greece-41058865.html

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/17/greece-alleged-fake-news-made-crime

    Home

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Manufactured Cruelties: Belarus, Poland and the Refugee Crisis

    Refugee crises are often manufactured by governments.  They can be done at the source: war, famine, rapacious institutions.  They can also be manufactured by the refusal of governments to accept those seeking asylum, sanctuary and refuge.

    The latter is very much in evidence in Europe: governments of the European Union are staring down desperate humans keen to travel into the EU; Belarus, engaging in its own form of mega-trafficking, has become a conduit for the movement of asylum seekers and migrants fleeing from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan.

    Despite being granted Belarussian visas at considerable cost, many being initially housed in government hotels, their stay is only intended as temporary.  After brief respite, they are pushed towards the country’s border with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania.  How they get there is not entirely clear.  Some migrants are escorted by uniformed men; others pay additional fees to be transported.  It has also been reported that Belarusian security forces have furnished instructions and tools – axes and wire cutters – to aid the crossing of the border.  Attempts by Belarussian personnel to destroy border fences near Czeremcha, and disorientate Polish soldiers with stroboscopes and lasers, have also been noted.

    Once at the border, the migrants are not allowed to approach any checkpoints to seek asylum. Nor are they allowed to return to Minsk, threatened by Belarusian border guards who insist on keeping them there.

    Trapped in purgatorial fashion along the border, the migrants find themselves sleeping in rude conditions and left at the mercy of the elements.  They have inadequate supplies, lack warm clothing and are starving.  One estimate has put the death toll at nine.

    All political sides are making hay from this suffering.  Lukashenko can be accused of being an opportunistic trafficker of desperate folk and keen on jailing opponents in a desperate bit to stay in power, but Poland’s Law and Justice Party has happily stirred xenophobic hysteria.  Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Adrzej Duda are part of an administration that does not shy away from demonising arrivals they associate with terrorists with kinky characteristics.  Doing so supplies an appropriate distraction from accusations of corruption, galloping inflation and a troubling rise in COVID-19 numbers.

    In September, the Minister of the Interior, Mariusz Kamiński, and the National Defence Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, appeared at a press conference to show a picture of a man copulating with a cow.  The content had been allegedly found on a phone belonging to an Afghan migrant lurking in the woods.  Spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Stanisław Żaryn, suggested that this was an act “associated with sexual disorders”, signalling a government campaign to link refugees with zoophilia and paedophilia.

    In a gesture of such refined generosity, TVP Info, the main propaganda outlet of the ruling party, ran a video with a suitably prurient title: “He raped a cow and wanted to enter Poland?”  There were two problems with the footage: the material, recorded on a VHS videotape, was drawn from bestiality porn from the 1970s; and the animal in question was a mare, not a cow.

    Earlier this month, Duda signed a bill into law to construct what was described as “a high-tech barrier on the border with Belarus to guard against an influx of irregular migrants.”  The barrier, valued at some €350 million, was “needed due to increased migratory pressure from Belarus”.  The right to asylum had all but entirely vanished.

    Liz Throssell, spokesperson from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is adamant that, “The human rights of migrants and refugees have to come first.”  Unfortunately, she was far from informative on what solutions might be pursued on the Belarus-EU border.  “It is really important they must be respected under international human rights refugee law, but as for the political dimension to this, I would leave that to others to address”.

    Along the Belarus-Polish border, refugees and migrants have been instrumentalised, their rights assiduously ignored.  Lukashenko has been accused of using a form of “hybrid” warfare by throwing migrants at the border like willing assailants of rabid intent.  The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, makes the point.  “It is a hybrid attack, a brutal attack, a violent attack and a shameful attack.”  Such nasty terminology has turned those wishing to make their way to the EU into foot soldiers in a political cause they wish to play no part in.  Wedged in between this vicious play of power, these unfortunates trapped on the border find themselves divested of their humanity, their desires, their wishes.

    The EU is also playing its own vile game, falling back upon frontier states who have held themselves up to be saviours of European civilisation.  “It is important that Lukashenko understands that [the regime’s] behaviour comes with a price,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned after talks with US President Joe Biden.  Sanctions are being considered against the airlines that have been accused of facilitating human trafficking.

    There is one final perversion in all this.  In essentially condemning human trafficking, the EU and its counterparts are condemning the right to asylum, which such trafficking aids.  With that sentiment, von der Leyen would regard Oskar Schindler and his more recent equivalent, Iraq’s Ali Al Jenabi, as traffickers worthy of punishment.

    The post Manufactured Cruelties: Belarus, Poland and the Refugee Crisis first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Activists are facing up to 25 years in prison for saving lives at sea

    On 18 November, 24 human rights activists are on trial for saving refugees’ lives at sea. They were arrested on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2018, held in pre-trial detention for 100 days, then released on bail. Now, almost three years later, the Greek state will finally begin its prosecution.

    Among those in the dock are Sarah Mardini, Nassos Karakitsos, and Irish man Seán Binder. They volunteered for the now defunct Emergency Response Centre International, and they’re accused by the Greek authorities of people smuggling, being part of a criminal organisation, money laundering, and espionage. Mardini herself reached the shores of Lesbos by dinghy after fleeing Syria in 2015. She made headlines at the time, when she and her sister – both competitive swimmers – saved the lives of the others in their dinghy after the engine broke down.

    A brutal crackdown

    The trial, although shocking, is perhaps unsurprising as European states continue to crack down on those who help refugees. Free Humanitarians, which advocates for criminalised human rights defenders, states that:

    In 2019, 171 individuals across 13 European states faced criminalisation and between 2020 and 2021 at least 44 people in Greece faced similar accusations like those against Sarah, Seán and Nassos. Criminalisation coincides with the securitisation of borders and worrying instances of pushbacks and collective expulsion, especially at sea.

    A ‘pushback’ is when state authorities literally push back refugees from their border, both at land and sea, after people have successfully crossed. Pushbacks can violate international law.

    Free Humanitarians went on to argue:

    The humanitarian assistance of people like Seán, Sarah and Nassos has been essential as at least 1,675 people have lost their lives or gone missing on the East Mediterranean sea since 2015. Since their release from pre-trial detention, they have campaigned tirelessly against the criminalisation of solidarity and for refugee rights. If found guilty, their case could set a worrying precedent with adverse implications for humanitarian assistance far beyond Greece.

    Meanwhile, 49 human rights organisations have signed an open letter, demanding that the Greek state drops all charges against the activists. 72 members of the European Parliament have also signed a letter, expressing their “grave concern” at the charges filed against the activists. They are calling for:

    a thorough review and change to member state policies that have led to the criminalisation of humanitarian workers

    Fortress Europe

    The prosecution of the activists comes at a time when so-called ‘democracies’ are becoming more and more right-wing and fascistic, making hostile immigration policies, or attempting to criminalise those who dare to help our fellow human beings. Instead of spending money on saving refugees, the EU continues to strengthen fortress Europe, paying agencies like Frontex to prevent people from arriving, essentially leaving them to drown.

    Sea Watch, which actively rescues people from sea, argues that:

    By 2027, the EU is letting Frontex’s work cost 5.6 billion euros without spending a single euro on saving human lives.

    It continues:

    The EU actively prevents legal and safe entry routes by strengthening the border police and outsourcing further border controls through cooperation with third countries. It thus de facto not only abolishes the fundamental right to asylum but bears direct responsibility for thousands of deaths at its borders.

    At the same time, some European countries refuse to face the fact that the refugee crisis is largely due to their policies, as they have actively participated in invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, provided weapons to destroy lives in Syria, and meddled in politics around the world.

    Featured image via Georgios Giannopoulos / Wikimedia Commons

    By Eliza Egret

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Event: 11/10 Webinar: Refugees and Asylum in USA: Review of Domestic Interpretations are at Odds with International Guidance

    Wednesday November 10, 2021, at 12noon ET, the American Bar Association will host a webinar entitled Refugees and Asylum in the U.S. & Review of Domestic Interpretations at Odds with International Guidance. This webinar will review the differences between the…

    This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.

  • Syrian journalist Majed Shamaa facing deportation from Turkey over satirical video

    New York, November 4, 2021 — Turkish authorities should immediately release Syrian journalist Majed Shamaa, end deportation proceedings against him, and allow him to do his job freely and safely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

    At 1:30 a.m. on October 30, police arrested Shamaa, a reporter for the Dubai-based broadcaster Orient TV, at his home in downtown Istanbul, according to news reports, a statement by his lawyer, Muhammad Ali Artvi, and a statement by the Syrian Media Council, a coalition of Syrian press freedom organizations and journalists’ unions.

    The journalist is facing deportation to Syria for allegedly inciting hatred and insulting the Turkish people in a satirical video he produced as part of a news program, according to those sources.

    Today, Orient TV and the Turkish free speech group Susma Platformu reported that the journalist had been transferred to a deportation center in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep.

    “By arresting journalist Majed Shamaa and threatening him with deportation, Turkish authorities are not only showing a lack of sense of humor, but also an utter disregard for press freedom and human rights,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Representative Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “Turkish authorities must immediately release Shamaa, stop his deportation, and allow Syrian journalists in Turkey to do their jobs freely and without fear of reprisal.”

    Shamaa reports for Orient TV on issues affecting Syrian refugees in Turkey, and has recently covered topics including difficulties refugees encounter in renting homes and accessing hospitals, as well as other and human interest stories about refugees.

    In late October, he produced an episode of the program Street Poll in which he interviewed Syrians in Istanbul’s Fatih district about the so-called banana wars, a dispute over standards of living in the city sparked by a viral video of a Turkish man claiming that he could not afford bananas but saw Syrians buying many of them, according to news reports.

    Since that clip went viral, Syrians living in Turkey have shared videos and pictures on social media of themselves eating bananas, prompting Turkish authorities to arrest several Syrians for alleged provocation and incitement to hatred, according to news reports, which said that those arrested could face deportation.

    In his Street Poll episode, in addition to interviewing locals, Shamaa also aired a satirical sketch of himself buying bananas in a shop, hiding them under his shirt, and eating them in secret. The video has since been removed from YouTube.

    In his November 3 statement, Shamaa’s lawyer said that the Public Prosecution Office had interrogated Shamaa twice concerning allegations of incitement to hatred and insulting the Turkish people based on that video.

    When the journalist and his lawyer “explained to the public prosecutor that Shamaa is a journalist and deportation would endanger his life,” the prosecutor ordered him to be released, Artvi wrote.

    But by that time, the Immigration Department already initiated deportation proceedings against Shamaa, and ordered him to remain in detention while that decision is pending, according to his lawyer’s statement.

    The statement noted that Shamaa had been “highly critical of the [Syrian President Bashar] Al-Asad regime, would receive a sentence no less than a death penalty” if sent back to Syria.

    Artvi wrote that Shamaa had not intended to incite hatred or insult the Turkish people, and that the video was done in accordance with his work as a journalist. The statement said that Shamaa had filed an appeal against potential deportation.

    In a letter Shamaa wrote to Orient TV, published today, the journalist said the staff at the Gaziantep deportation center had forced him to sign and fingerprint deportation papers, even though they knew that he did not want to be deported. He wrote that his criticism of the Syrian government and armed factions, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, would put him in danger if he returned to Syria.

    CPJ emailed and sent requests for comment via messaging app to the Istanbul Immigration Department and Omer Tanriverdi, head of public diplomacy at the Turkish presidency’s Directorate of Communications, but did not receive any replies.

    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

  • Charlotte Bellis on Afghanistan: ‘It’s just life and death on so many levels’

    RNZ News

    In just a few weeks the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply as millions cope without desperately needed international aid, New Zealand journalist Charlotte Bellis says.

    Bellis is Al Jazeera’s senior producer in Afghanistan and reported on the turmoil in August as the Taliban took over the government and thousands of people tried to flee.

    She has dealt with Taliban leaders for a long time, and has sensed a change in their attitudes since they first ruled the country before being toppled 20 years ago.

    She had to leave the country in mid-September because the network feared for her safety and Bellis noted on Twitter that the Taliban were detaining and beating journalists trying to cover protests.

    Now she has returned and told RNZ Sunday Morning that she was not worried about her safety.

    “The situation here is pretty dire and there are a lot of stories still to be told and I feel invested in what’s happening here and I also just love the country. It’s a beautiful place to be with amazing people and I genuinely like being here.”

    However, the country is facing an uncertain future with its population suffering more than ever now that international aid has been cut off.

    UN warns of humanitarian crisis
    This week the United Nations warned that Afghanistan is becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and Bellis agrees.

    “The Taliban took over about two months ago and I just can’t believe how quickly everything has deteriorated.

    “People cannot find food, there’s no money, they can’t pay for things, employers can’t pay their workers because there’s no cash, they can’t get money out even from the ATMs.”

    Millions of jobs have disappeared, half of the population does not know where their next meal is coming from and already children are dying from malnutrition, Bellis said.

    All the aid agencies are appealing to the world to listen.

    23 million need urgent help
    She is about to go out with the UN Refugee Agency whose teams are organising some aid distribution as the temperatures drop to 2 degC overnight as winter approaches. They are handing out blankets, food and some cash to thousands of the needy in camps in Kabul.

    “But it’s such a Band-Aid. There is no way they can reach the number of people they need to reach — it’s  like 23 million people who need that kind of assistance,” she said.

    Neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran were very concerned, in part because they fear a huge influx of refugees. They have closed the borders to try and keep them away.

    The process of getting money and food into people’s hands had broken down, she said, with a lot of it due to United States sanctions.

    Three quarters of the country ran on foreign donations before the Taliban took over and that has dried up because no countries are recognising the Taliban’s legitimacy to govern.

    Bellis has spoken to one senior Taliban official who said that at recent meetings between the Taliban and the US in Doha the Americans would not tell the Taliban what policies they needed to enact to unfreeze billions of dollars in funding.

    “They [the Americans] are playing with millions of people’s lives.”

    School problem for girls
    She believes some Taliban leaders are pragmatic and would be willing to agree to high school girls being educated but are worried they will alienate their conservative base.

    In the main, primary school age girls are able to attend their lessons but the problem is at secondary school level.

    “If you’re a high school girl in Kabul it’s awful – sitting around thinking how did this happen. It’s really frustrating and really frustrating for everyone to watch and say this doesn’t make sense.”

    Taliban Badri 313 fighter
    An elite Taliban Badri 313 fighter guarding Kabul airport … facing threats from ISIS-K. Image: Al Jazeera screenshot APR

    Bellis said while she feels safe at the moment, the main problem is the terrorist group, ISIS-K, who have made threats against the hotel where she is staying.

    The Taliban have said they will protect guests and have placed dozens of extra guards outside.

    ISIS-K is believed to only number between 1200 and 1500 yet they are a potent force with their random attacks, such as beheading members of the Taliban, whom they hate.

    She believes the Taliban’s biggest worry is that ISIS will appeal to its most fundamentalist members.

    ISIS attracting recruits
    ISIS is also believed to be trying to attract recruits who would be trained as fighters and be paid $400 a month which is a substantial amount of money in Afghanistan.

    Bellis said she feels guilty staying at a hotel with the scale of poverty and deprivation she is witnessing.

    “Right outside the door people are desperate,” she said.

    She visited a major maternity hospital in Kabul yesterday and the only medication available for women giving birth was paracetamol.

    “Imagine going into labour and thinking, OK if anything goes wrong I’ve got paracetamol. It’s just life and death on so many levels.”

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Haitian Guerline Jozef wins Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights award 2021

    When Guerline Jozef, co-founder and executive director of the San Diego-based Haitian Bridge Alliance, learned that she had won this year’s RFK award, she wanted to celebrate in another way. She brought the ceremony to the border and led a group, including Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights staff and musician Wyclef Jean, to the Tijuana Immigration Shelter and then to the Otaimesa Detention Center, which houses detainees at the Immigration and Customs Department.

    “We wanted to bring this award to people on both sides of the border and let them know that it was for them,” Joseph said. “We hear them. We see them. We keep fighting for them.”

    “We went to the border because we heard there were Haitians,” she said in a speech outside the detention center, recalling the early days of her organization’s activities in Tijuana. “We went for the Haitians, but we stayed for everyone, and we continue to fight for everyone.

    Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, has known Ms Joseph for three years since working together to help Haiti and Cameroon immigrants in Tijuana.

    For more on this award and its laureates, see: https://thedigestapp.trueheroesfilms.org/awards/69FD28C0-FE07-4D28-A5E2-2C8077584068/edit

    “The great thing about Guerline is that she’s tackling a big problem. She works in a crucible of poverty, race and immigrants,” Kennedy said. “

    According to Joseph, her parents gave up a comfortable life in Haiti to move to the United States after the coup. Back in Haiti, they had a big house and her father was the mayor. In the United States, the father became a taxi driver and the mother became a housekeeper. Both worked long hours to take care of their families.

    https://californianewstimes.com/haitian-activist-wins-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-award-brings-celebration-to-the-border/573950/

    https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/story/2021-10-28/haitian-activist-kennedy-human-rights

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Asylum seekers in UK housed in converted hostel with prison cells

    Experts say Home Office risks traumatising refugees by housing them in courthouse turned into hostel

    Asylum seekers are being housed by the Home Office in a former courthouse turned hostel which promised nights in “an authentic prison cell” to backpackers.

    Hundreds of people are understood to be in the facility – which appears to have been a form of court and prison cell “theme park” accommodation – including some who were imprisoned in the past in their home countries, including Libya.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Taliban ‘forcibly evicting’ Hazaras and opponents in Afghanistan

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • If All Refugees Lived in One Place, It Would Be the 17th Most Populous Country in the World

    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 Report accumulated 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.

    The post If All Refugees Lived in One Place, It Would Be the 17th Most Populous Country in the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Refugee: ‘Serco is playing with our lives’ in the Park Hotel

    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.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Outrage as Australia walks away from PNG refugee responsibilities

    RNZ Pacific

    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.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UK ‘colluding in torture’ by leaving women and children in Syria camps

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Heroes or Parasites: Europe’s Self-serving Politics on Refugees

    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.

    The post Heroes or Parasites: Europe’s Self-serving Politics on Refugees first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The pattern is clear: Australia’s next election will be a competition on cruelty | Behrouz Boochani

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • ‘Authoritarian-style’ law would allow Australia to use secret evidence to deport migrants

    Proposed legislation would install a ‘regime of alarming secrecy’, legal organisations and rights groups have told parliament

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • ‘Send us home,’ beg Afghan refugees stuck in UK hotels

    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”.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Online rally: Don’t deport refugees to danger

    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.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Australia to end offshore processing in Papua New Guinea

    Refugees and asylum seekers offered path to permanent migration in PNG – or transfer to Nauru

    Australia will end offshore processing on Papua New Guinea by the end of the year, leaving Nauru as its sole regional processing centre.

    PNG has been seeking to end its involvement in offshore processing for years. The Australian-run detention centre on PNG’s Manus Island was found to be illegal and ordered shut by the PNG supreme court in 2016 and Australia forced to pay $70m in compensation to those unlawfully detained.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Biden’s Expulsion of Haitian Migrants Is Racist, Illegal — and Trumpian

    Protesters denounce the expulsion of Haitian refugees from Del Rio, Texas, on September 22, 2021, in Miami, Florida.

    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.

    The plaintiffs asserted that the Biden administration’s use of Title 42 to deport migrants violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Public Health Services Act.

    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, told CBS 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.

    As UNHCR has noted, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the U.S. has ratified) enshrines

    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.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Britannia Turns Back The Boats

    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 post Britannia Turns Back The Boats first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jeel Albena Association in Yemen wins 2021 Nansen Award

    Ameen Hussain Jubran, head and founder of the Yemeni non-governmental organization Jeel Albena.

    © UNHCR/Ahmed HaleemAmeen Hussain Jubran, head and founder of the Yemeni non-governmental organization Jeel Albena. 29 September 2021

    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.

    For last year, see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/10/02/nansen-refugee-award-2020-to-maye-vergara-perez-of-colombia/

    https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/09/1101582

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Rohingya human rights leader Mohibullah murdered in Bangladesh refugee camp

    Illustration: Fortify Rights

    Illustration: Fortify Rights

    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.

    https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/fortify-rights-calls-swift-probe-rohingya-leader-mohibullah-murder-309355

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/29/rohingya-leader-shot-dead-in-bangladesh-refugee-camp

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • The climate crisis is destroying the human rights of those least responsible for it | Patrick Verkooijen and AK Abdul Momen

    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.

    Continue reading…

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

  • CPJ calls on EU states to prioritize safe passage for fleeing Afghan journalists

    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.”

    Since August, CPJ has covered the worsening situation in Afghanistan for media workers as Taliban fighters attack and detain journalists, force female reporters off the air, and imperil the country’s independent press. CPJ has been working to support fleeing Afghan journalists in need of emergency assistance and evacuation.

    In recent conclusions published by the Council of the European Union, member states did not voice clear commitments to aid in the resettling of high-risk Afghans in their own countries.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Child refugees were ‘dumped’ in unsafe hotel, claims Brighton council

    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”.

    Continue reading…

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