Month: September 2018

The U.N. refugee agency says people smugglers are taking greater risks to ferry their human cargo toward Europe as Libya’s coast guard intercepts more and more boats carrying migrants, increasing the likelihood that those on board may die during the Mediterranean journeys.

That’s one of the key findings from the latest UNHCR report about efforts to reach Europe. The report, released early Monday and titled “Desperate Journeys,” says that even though the number of crossings and deaths has plunged compared to recent years, the voyage is more deadly in percentage terms for those who venture across.

The report says 2,276 people died last year while trying to cross, or one death for every 42 arrivals.

This year, it’s 1,095 deaths, or one out of every 18 arrivals. In June alone, the proportion hit one death for every seven arrivals.

On the Central Mediterranean route so far this year, there have been 10 separate incidents in which 50 or more people died — most after departing from Libya. Seven of those incidents have been since June alone, UNHCR said.

“The reason the traffic has become more deadly is that the traffickers are taking more risk, because there is more surveillance exercised by the Libyan coast guards,” said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s special envoy for the central Mediterranean. “They are trying to cut the costs: It costs them more to keep those people here longer in their warehouses, under captivity.”

Libyan authorities intercepted or rescued 18,400 people between August last year and July this year — a 38-percent increase from the same period of 2016 and 2017. Arrivals by sea from Libya to Europe plummeted 82 percent in those comparable periods, to 30,800 in the more recent one.

UNHCR says a growing worry these days is deaths on land by people trying to get to Libya in the first place, or getting stuck in squalid, overcrowded detention centers: Many get returned there after failing to cross by sea to Europe.

“The problems after disembarkation (is that) those people are sent back to detention centers, and many disappear,” Cochetel said. “Many are sold to militias, and to traffickers, and people employing them without paying them.”

He said the drop in departures means that traffickers attempt to “monetize their investment, which means they have to exploit more people. That results in more cases of slavery, forced labor, prostitution of those people — because they (smugglers) want to make money on those people.”

Would-be workers and migrants are still pouring into Libya: Some are fleeing injustice, abuse or autocrats in their home countries further south in Africa. Others are looking for work in the oil industry or agriculture.

“I think you have more deaths on land,” Cochetel said, referring to treks across the desert in Sudan, Algeria, Chad and Niger. “Many people in Libya are reporting having seeing people dead in the desert on the way to Libya.”

In Libya, instability continues even seven years after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi. French medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said Friday that fighting between rival militias in Tripoli, the capital, has endangered the lives of people trapped there and worsened humanitarian needs — especially at migrant detention centers.

Cochetel said Europe — where some countries have shown “appalling” squabbles about who would take in rescue ships carrying migrants — should look at the root causes of such journeys. European populations need to shun anti-migrant rhetoric and realize that figures are down sharply, and migrant flows are clearly manageable at current levels, he said.

“Europe has to show the lead, has to be exemplary in its response, but it’s quite clear that it’s already too late when the people are in Libya,” he said. “We need to work downstream in country of first asylum, in country of origin, and that takes time.”

 
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Human Rights Watch is calling for an immediate end to all arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the bombing of a schoolbus last month that killed 51 people, including 40 children.

In a report released Sunday, the HRW called the attack an “apparent war crime,” saying it only added to the Saudi-led coalition’s “already gruesome track record of killing civilians at weddings, funerals, hospitals and schools in Yemen.”

The coalition, which has the support of the United States, has been fighting the Houthi rebels since March 2015. The coalition backs Yemen’s internationally recognized government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and aims to restore it to power.

The HRW report comes just a day after the coalition said it has accepted the conclusions of its investigative body that there were “mistakes” made in the attack, including failing to take measures to minimize collateral damage.

The coalition vowed to “take all the legal measures to hold accountable those who were proven to have committed mistakes” once it officially receives the findings. It also pledged to coordinate with Yemen’s government to compensate civilians.

The U.S. State Department on Sunday welcomed the coalition’s statement as “an important first step toward full transparency and accountability.”

But, Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher for HRW, urged the U.S. and other countries to “immediately stop weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and support strengthening the independent U.N. inquiry into violations in Yemen, or risk being complicit in future atrocities.”
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The archbishop of Philadelphia has asked Pope Francis to cancel a bishops’ conference focusing on youth in the wake of the child sex abuse crisis roiling the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for the archdiocese confirmed Saturday that Archbishop Charles Chaput made the request by letter, but he declined further comment, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The Youth Synod, which would include bishops from the around the world, has been planned for two years and its website says it is to be focused on “young people, the faith and vocational discernment.” An international panel of young people is expected to join the council of bishops for the event.

“I have written the Holy Father and called on him to cancel the forthcoming synod on young people,” Chaput said at a conference Thursday at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, according to LifeSite News, a conservative Catholic website. “Right now, the bishops would have absolutely no credibility in addressing this topic.”

Instead, Chaput asked that the synod be refocused on the life of bishops.

A nearly 900-page grand jury report released last month said more than 300 Catholic priests abused at least a thousand children over the past seven decades in six Pennsylvania dioceses, and senior figures in the church hierarchy systematically covered up complaints.

A description of the purpose of the Oct. 3-28 synod at the Vatican begins “Taking care of young people is not an optional task for the Church, but an integral part of her vocation and mission in history.”
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A new U.S. study finds that when temperatures around the world start creeping up, insects that eat crops will not only become hungrier, their numbers will grow. Scientists say this will mean more insect damage to wheat, corn and rice crops, and therefore less food on the dinner table. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Russia is not giving up on efforts to destabilize Afghanistan and drive divisions between the United States and its coalition partners, according to the outgoing commander of U.S. forces in the country.

The commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan and of Operation Resolute Support, General John Nicholson, is scheduled to step down Sunday after serving in the position for more than two years.

But before relinquishing command, he took time to cast doubts on Russia’s intentions in the region, despite recent overtures from Moscow to help the Taliban reconcile with the Afghan government.

“We know that Russia is attempting to undercut our military gains and years of military progress in Afghanistan, and make partners question Afghanistan’s stability,” Nicholson said in an email to Voice of America, following on questions from his August 22 briefing with Pentagon reporters.

“It is no secret that Russia seeks any opportunity it can find to drive a wedge between the United States and our Central Asian partners, including Afghanistan,” Nicholson added.

Aid to Taliban

U.S. and Afghan officials have previously accused Russia of meddling in Afghanistan by providing Taliban insurgents with both weapons and training.

Moscow has rejected the allegations, saying it has only political ties with the Taliban. Still, Russia has faced growing suspicion from the U.S. and its allies, who say the Kremlin has been increasingly working to expand its influence in Afghanistan and beyond.

Most recently, the U.S. and Russia have been competing over efforts to kick-start peace negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Russia was set to host both parties, along with the U.S. and other countries, for talks starting September 4, but was forced to postpone after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani declined the invitation.

The U.S. also has been hoping for talks between the government and the Taliban.

“We talk about an Afghan-led, Afghan-owned reconciliation process,” U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said during a briefing with reporters this past week. “We believe that the best way to get there is to ensure Taliban recognizes they can’t win on the battlefield, they must negotiate.”

But while U.S. officials have touted what they see are signs of progress, including increased support for a peace process from various sectors of the Afghan population, the government’s recent cease-fire offer to the Taliban appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have been angered by what they see as Russian efforts to derail peace and stabilization efforts with disinformation campaigns.

​Charges repeated

Just over a week ago, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised concerns about “unidentified” helicopters flying missions in support of fighters for the Islamic State terror group, also known as IS-Khorasan or IS-K, in the northern Sar-e-Pul province, suggesting the U.S. and NATO might be responsible.

“Who is arming the terrorists and secretly creating their bases?” she asked. “Why is this happening if NATO command is effectively in control of Afghanistan’s airspace?”

Pentagon officials rejected the suggestion of U.S. or NATO involvement as “completely untrue,” noting it was not the first time Moscow had levied such charges.

“As they [Russia] perpetuate false narratives about ISIS-K, the United States and the Afghan Special Security Forces eliminated the Jowzjan ISIS-K enclave and are killing ISIS-K leaders and fighters in Nangarhar,” Nicholson said in his statement to VOA.

Still, the outgoing commander said he held out hope Russia could play a constructive role. 

“We have shared interests with Russia in Afghanistan — peace, counterterrorism and counternarcotics,” Nicholson said. “We hope to see Russia support Afghanistan and the NATO-led coalition in these areas going forward.”

VOA’s Ayaz Gul contributed to this report.
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No one knows what will happen in the next 48 hours in Chemnitz, the Saxon town which this week saw the worst rioting in Germany in three decades, with mobs of far-right supporters and soccer hooligans overwhelming local police and beating anyone in the streets who appeared to be a foreigner while flashing illegal Nazi salutes.

Federal authorities and neighboring German states have sent police reinforcements to Saxony to confront any repeat of the violence seen on Monday, when more than 6,000 anti-migrant protesters rallied to vent their fury at the stabbing of a 35-year-old German man, Daniel Hillig, during a brawl with a pair of asylum-seekers from Syria and Iraq.

The stabbing came at the end of a street festival celebrating the 875th anniversary of Chemnitz, a declining industrial town of drab Communist-era apartment blocks with a population of 250,000.

With four anti-migrant rallies scheduled for Saturday alone — one organized by Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-right party that last year became the largest opposition faction in the German parliament, the Bundestag, as well as counterprotests planned by left wing groups — police are preparing for the worst.

So, too, are many store owners and the 20,000 migrants who live in Chemnitz, nestled in the foothills of the Ore Mountains, which during the Communist era was known as Karl Marx Stadt. Migrants contacted on social media say they fear for the worst.

“I won’t be going outside today [Saturday],” said Farid, a 46-year-old Moroccan who asked that his full name not be published. “And neither will my wife nor daughters,” he said.

“Will we ever be safe again?” he asked. Like many other migrants, what shocked him the most was spotting neighbors among the rioters screaming for foreigners to go home. “I wasn’t born here but my two daughters were — this is their home,” he added. He says the rioting this week, the pitched street battles between overwhelmed local police and the protesters and the hunting down of foreigners for beatings, have convinced him that a tipping point may have been reached in Chemnitz and Saxony — and “possibly in Germany as well.”

Simmering tensions

He’s not alone in harboring such a fear.

Alara, a 36-year-old Turkish woman, says she, too, has been shocked by the participation in the violent anti-migrant protests of middle-class German “neighbors and co-workers.” “I thought they were my friends,” she laments.

In the middle of the week, a shocked German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her fear that far right rioting, along with Hitler salutes that are banned in the country, and the confidence protesters demonstrated in flaunting their affection for a dark German past, represented a threat to the very underpinnings of the post-Second World War state.

“There is video footage of chases, rioting and hatred on the street. And that has nothing to do with our constitutional state,” she said. Tensions over migrants have roiled German politics since 2015, when Merkel announced an open-door policy for war refugees from the Middle East that saw more than 1.2 million admitted.  

Merkel’s controversial immigration policy fueled the rise of the AfD. The group’s electoral performance in last year’s elections, in which it seized nearly 100 seats in the Bundestag, marked a startling new phase in the party’s progress from the fringe of German politics closer to the center of power in Berlin. For far right opponents, the AfD’s election success, built on menacing social media propaganda playing on fears of Islam and Muslim criminality and on foreigners in general, represented a door opening on a German past they thought long buried.

The anti-migrant violence this week in Chemnitz — and the threat of more to come — is prompting questions about whether that door is opening even wider in Germany.

Well organized

Aside from the participation of “ordinary” locals, officials acknowledge they also were taken aback by the speed with which the anti-migrant protesters were reinforced, as well as the level of organization and coordination displayed by a variety of far right groups, including AfD, Pegida and the National Democratic Party. These groups glorify the Third Reich and have averted efforts by the government to ban it.

Saxony’s interior minister, Roland Woller, told media this week that known soccer hooligan groups with strong ties to the far right — and some with solidarity links to Russian fan-clubs and martial arts groups —  helped to mobilize people from across Germany and transport them to join the street battle.

German officials blame orchestrated “fake news” peddled by far right groups on social media sites for helping to stoke the rioting that broke out Monday. “We have to acknowledge that mobilization on the internet was stronger than in the past,” said Michael Kretschmer, the state prime minister of Saxony. The trouble was fueled partially by false claims that the stabbed man had intervened to protect a woman from being raped by asylum-seekers.

The showdown in Chemnitz could continue well into next week. A concert is planned for Monday by a left-wing band. But it is the planned Saturday night marches that now have the focus. In a statement announcing its march, the AfD called Daniel Hillig “the next, avoidable victim of an irresponsible government policy that accepts the multiple deaths of natives with icy coldness.”

“The cartel media have tried to make Chemnitz, the city of the victims, into a city of the perpetrators,” the AfD statement said.

AfD senses a huge opportunity in Chemnitz, say analysts, and is determined to stoke Germany’s political divisions over migration and national identity, hoping the agitation will translate into greater electoral gains in the future.  

 
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