Month: October 2018

Austria said Wednesday it will join the United States and Hungary in not signing a global agreement meant to minimize the factors that push migrants to leave their home country, while boosting safety, access to services and inclusion for those who are compelled to go.

Nations are due to gather in early December in Morocco to adopt the non-binding Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which was negotiated through a U.N.-led process during the past two years.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said his government fears the agreement would pose a threat to its national sovereignty and that it would blur the lines between legal and illegal migration.

Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said there is not and should not be a human right to migration.

Hungary also cited concerns about the agreement going against national interests when it announced in July it would not be part of the pact.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told reporters that contrary to his government’s policies, the agreement would promote migration as “good and inevitable,” and “it could inspire millions” of migrants.

The United States was the first to step away from the negotiations, deciding in December of last year that the proposed agreement was “inconsistent with U.S. immigration and refugee policies.”

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States supports international cooperation on migration issues, “but it is the primary responsibility of sovereign states to help ensure that migration is safe, orderly, and legal.”

The Global Compact features 23 objectives, including boosting access to basic services, strengthening anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking efforts, eliminating discrimination, safeguarding conditions that ensure decent work, and facilitating safe and dignified return for those who are sent back home.

The United Nations estimates there are about 258 million migrants in the world — or just over three percent of the world’s population. The world body considers a migrant to be anyone who changes their country, regardless of the reason. It expects the number of migrants to increase due to factors such as population growth, trade, rising inequality and climate change.
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The U.N.’s political chief cautioned Tuesday that planned local elections in two separatist areas of eastern Ukraine next month could contradict international agreements. 

“The U.N. urges all parties to avoid any unilateral steps that could deepen the divide or depart from the spirit and letter of the Minsk agreements,” Rosemary DiCarlo told a Security Council meeting on the issue. 

In 2015, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists signed the Minsk agreement in the Belarus capital. It seeks to halt the fighting through a cease-fire and the withdrawal of foreign troops and heavy weapons, and open the way to a permanent, legal and political solution to the conflict in Ukraine, which began in 2014. 

De facto authorities in the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have announced that they plan to hold elections on Nov. 11. 

“As we understand, two separate ballots in both Donetsk and Luhansk are reportedly being planned: one for the “head of Republic” and one for the “People’s Councils,” DiCarlo said. She said the posts will reportedly be for five-year terms. 

She noted that election-related matters are covered in the Minsk agreements. 

“I therefore caution that any such measures taken outside Ukraine’s constitutional and legal framework would be incompatible with the Minsk agreements,” she said. 

Western council members echoed her concerns and condemned the planned ballot.

“These sham elections staged by Russia run directly counter to efforts to implement the Minsk peace agreements,” said U.S. deputy U.N. Ambassador Jonathan Cohen. “The elections also obstruct and undermine efforts to end the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.”

“We do see these so-called elections as illegitimate,” said British Ambassador Karen Pierce. “They are the latest example in the Russian campaign to destabilize Ukraine. They are a clear breach of the Minsk agreements, and they are illegal under Ukrainian law.”

Even China, a close ally of Moscow, expressed concerns. 

“China respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, including Ukraine, and opposes the interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs by any external forces,” Beijing’s deputy envoy told the council. 

Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed the criticism. 

“Today, we are witnesses of the latest round of hypocrisy — the total and inexcusable sabotage by Kyiv of the Minsk agreements, over the long term, factually from Day One, has been completely ignored,” Nebenzia said. “Instead of recognizing this fact, in the discussion in the Security Council we are discussing the forthcoming elections in November, which are a necessary measure in conditions of sabotage by Kyiv of its political commitments.”

He said European and American sanctions imposed on Moscow because of the Ukrainian situation is an invitation to Kyiv to continue undermining its Minsk obligations because Russia will be the one to pay for it. 

Ukraine’s ambassador, Volodymyr Yelchenko, said holding these “so-called early elections’ would amount to putting armed gangs’ leaders in seats in illegitimate representative bodies.” He said the move is a “provocation” and a “further escalation” of the situation by Russia. 

While he acknowledged to reporters later that there is little Kyiv authorities can do to stop the voting from going forward, he said the results would be null and void and not be recognized by Ukraine or the international community. 

After a brief calm over the summer months, the U.N. said during the past six weeks, cease-fire violations have spiked, and casualty levels have risen. It also reports increased tensions in the Sea of Azov, warning there is a “need to avoid any risk of escalation, provocation or miscalculation.” 

The Kyiv government has been clashing with Russian-backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine since 2014. The United Nations says more than 3,000 civilians have been killed, and up to 9,000 injured since the start of the conflict.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged on Tuesday a new development fund to tackle unemployment in Africa, a problem spurring the mass migration that has shaped her long premiership as it nears its end.

Merkel hosted a summit of African leaders a day after her announcement that she would retire from politics by 2021, which sent shockwaves across Europe and started a race to succeed her.

She needs the Compact with Africa summit to show that progress has been made in addressing the aftermath of one of the defining moments of her 13 years in power: her 2015 decision to open Germany’s doors to more than a million asylum seekers.

The Berlin summit, attended by 12 presidents and prime ministers including Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, is designed to showcase the continent as a stable destination for German investment.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde is also there, along with a host of international development officials.

The aim is to create good jobs for Africans, easing the poverty which, along with political instability and violence, has encouraged large numbers to head for Europe. But with Africa’s population growing at almost three percent a year, the task is enormous.

“We Europeans have a great interest in African states having a bright economic outlook,” Merkel said in her opening speech, announcing the fund to help small and medium-sized enterprises from both Europe and Africa to invest on the continent.

The 119,000 Africans who arrived in Europe in 2018, according to the International Organization for Migration, are the tip of the iceberg. International Labor Organization figures show that 16 million migrants were on the move within Africa in 2014.

While European Union countries invested $22 billion in Africa in 2017, breakneck economic growth will be needed to help bring down the migrant numbers.

Berlin hopes Germany’s manufacturing-based economy, which drove Eastern Europe’s rapid economic growth after the 1989 collapse of Communism, could turn things round.

Merkel needs results fast if she is to ensure the leadership of her Christian Democrats passes to a centrist ally, such as its general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

A marshall plan for Africa?

Other candidates for the party leadership, including Health Minister Jens Spahn or her old rival, the strongly pro-business Friedrich Merz, are well to her right politically and could be expected to want to challenge much of her legacy.

Merkel has said she will remain chancellor but that her current, fourth term up to 2021 will be her last. A whopping 71 percent of Germans welcomed Merkel’s decision, a poll released Tuesday by broadcasters RTL and n-tv showed.

Germany has introduced tax incentives for its companies to set up plants in Africa, reflecting her view that state aid must give way to private investment if jobs are to be created in their millions.

This would be part of a “Marshall Plan for Africa” – named after the U.S.-funded plan that helped to rebuild European states including Germany after World War II – that she sees as central to her legacy.

Merkel presented her decision to open Germany’s borders in 2015 as an unavoidable necessity driven by the vast scale of the human tide, that year mostly fleeing the civil war in Syria.

An agreement with Turkey sharply curtailed the arrival of refugees into the EU through Greece. But hundreds of thousands of mainly African migrants continued to travel across the Mediterranean, a flow that finally began to abate in the past year with improved efforts to halt smuggling from Libya.

The crisis has upturned European politics, bringing the far right to power in Italy and Austria, and in Germany revitalizing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose demand that the country shut its borders to migrants helped to fuel its surge into parliament in last year’s election.

A successful outcome to the summit may help to strengthen Merkel’s case for remaining chancellor even after stepping down from the party leadership, and could quieten her coalition partners in Bavaria’s conservative CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD).

All three parties have suffered punishing setbacks in regional elections this month, building internal party pressure for them to switch leaders or break up the coalition.
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The death toll from flooding and gale-force winds battering Italy rose to 11, authorities said Tuesday as storms raged across Europe.

Roads were reported blocked and thousands were left without power in southern and central Europe, where fierce winds and rain felled trees.

Venice flooded to a level seen few times before in the lagoon city’s history, with tourists and residents holding bags above their heads as water sloshed above their knees.

Debris from pulverized yachts filled the harbor of Rapallo near Genoa after a dam broke under the pressure of flood waters.

Heavy snow trapped many in their cars and hotels in the mountainous intersecting border regions of Italy, Switzerland, and France. 
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Recent allegations that an oligarch with close personal ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin is behind several attacks and at least one killing has compelled some journalists and free speech advocates to take a stand against intimidation tactics in Russia.

An October 22 Novaya Gazeta article by reporter Denis Korotkov, who just days prior to publication received a funeral wreath bearing an anonymous threat at his private residence and a severed goat’s head in a basket outside his newsroom, says billionaire businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin has directed clandestine hits on multiple continents.

Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s Chef” for catering presidential events and sometimes personally waiting on important guests, has been indicted by American investigators for allegedly trying to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.

In the investigative report about Prigozhin, headlined “The Chef Likes It Spicy,” Valery Alemchenko, a former convict who worked for Prigozhin, details physical attacks on Prigozhin’s opponents, as well as the killing of an opposition blogger in northwest Russia, all at the mogul’s behest.

Alemchenko also says several Prigozhin employees traveled to Syria last year to test an unknown poison on Syrians who refused to fight for President Bashar al-Assad’s government, an allegation Novaya Gazeta corroborated with two other sources.

Alemchenko disappeared shortly after meeting with the reporter and is now on a Russian police list of missing persons.

Danger of inaction

For Novaya Gazeta contributor Boris Vishnevsky, the latest threats and disappearances have taught him one thing: the greatest threat to his own colleagues and sources is their own inaction.

“I believe that the information published by Novaya Gazeta cannot remain only within the circle of its readers,” Vishnevsky told VOA’s Russian Service, explaining why he has called upon Russia’s prosecutor general and federal legislators to conduct an investigation of the latest allegations surrounding Prigozhin, and the threats against those who reported them.

“These are very serious suspicions of involvement in crimes, including the murders of people who, to put it mildly, are connected to Mr. Prigozhin and his structures,” said Vishnevsky, who is also a deputy in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. “This evidence should be checked, and I think there is enough – names are named, quotes are quoted. And to leave it unheeded seems to me quite impossible.”

Vishnevsky’s appeal coincided with a statement by the Union of Journalists of the St. Petersburg and Leningrad region, who expressed concerns about the threats directed at Korotkov.

Asked whether Russian investigators would actively probe any of Putin’s closest associates, Vishnevsky said that’s beside the point.

“I’m not inclined to have big illusions about its results, especially about the conclusions that will be made,” he said. “Nevertheless, I want to see official explanations from the prosecutor general’s office and the investigative committee on the reports of crimes contained in Denis Korotkov’s article.

“I understand that everything will be done to, in simple terms, cover up for Mr. Prigozhin,” he added. “But if a verification is not demanded, then you cannot expect anything at all.”

Because Article 144 of the Russian Criminal Code says crimes reported in the media require the consideration of federal prosecutors and investigators, Vishnevsky said he expects that some sort of investigation will be carried out.

‘Second wave’ of investigative reporting

Roman Zakharov of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, a non-governmental organization that advocates press freedom, said the threats against Korotkov are extremely serious, and that they come amid a “second wave” of hard-hitting investigative journalism occurring in Russia.

“The first surge of this genre was during the years of democratic development of Russia, but then it seemed to us to be something taken for granted,” Zakharov told VOA. “And now there is a second wave of investigations, and they are being conducted by many young journalists who write about economic crimes, about corruption, about the Mafia’s links with politicians.”

With a surge in investigative reporting, he said, comes a surge in threats to reporters and editors behind the stories.

“Of course editors try to protect [their reporters], but, as we see from practice, the powers of the editors themselves are limited,” he said, referring to the assassinations of Russian reporters stretching over decades. “But all joking aside, it’s impossible to oppose the Mafia, much less the state steamroller.”

As widely reported in Western media, some of Prigozhin’s privately owned enterprises, such as the Concord catering company, were used to bankroll disinformation campaigns designed to interfere with U.S. elections. Earlier this month, U.S. officials brought charges against Prigozhin employee Elena Khusyaynova for helping oversee the finances of the St. Petersburg-based “Internet Research Agency,” the so-called troll farm that aimed to influence American voters through social media postings.

Activities of Prigozhin’s private security-contracting firm, Wagner – a mercenary outfit that has conducted operations in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic and Sudan – are well documented.

‘Don’t touch journalists’

Another member of Prigozhin’s security detail, Oleg Simonov, who is suspected of attacking the husband of an opposition activist and injecting him with poison, died last year under murky circumstances.

“Behind it all – written messages, funeral wreaths and a severed sheep’s head – as we know from past investigations, these are people who will stop at nothing and shrink from nothing,” Zakharov said, emphasizing that they “aren’t even averse to murdering their own associates.”

“There is the need to gather the entire journalistic community and citizens and say ‘No, Mr. Prigozhin! Don’t touch journalists, don’t threaten them,'” Zakharov said. “If you do not agree with the publications, sue them in court. Act by legal means, even if the Kremlin and the authorities are on your side.

“We hope that due to these public disclosures, there will be none of the excesses that have occurred with some other journalists,” Zakharov added, referring to “assault and battery … and also murders.”

Russia is currently ranked 148 out of 180 countries profiled in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index by international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service. Some information for this report was provided by AP.

 
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Russia’s only aircraft carrier was damaged while undergoing repairs in the north of the country after the floating dock holding it sank in the early hours of Tuesday and a crane crashed onto its deck, tearing a gash up to 5 meters wide.

The Admiral Kuznetsov has seen action in Russia’s military campaign in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad with its planes carrying out airstrikes against rebel forces.

It was being overhauled on one of the world’s biggest floating docks in the icy waters of the Kola Bay near Murmansk close to where Russia’s Northern Fleet is based and was due to go back into service in 2021.

Maria Kovtun, Murmansk’s governor, said in a statement that a rescue operation had been launched and 71 people evacuated after the floating dock holding the ship had begun to sink.

The warship had been successfully extracted from the dock before it completely sank, she said.

Investigators, who said they had opened a criminal investigation into the incident that would look at whether safety rules had been violated, said one person was missing and four others were being treated for hypothermia after being plucked out of the water.

Alexei Rakhmanov, head of Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation, told the TASS news agency that the ship’s hull and deck had been damaged, although what he called the vessel’s vitally important parts had not been harmed.

“There is a jagged hole 4-5 meters wide,” Rakhmanov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

“It’s obvious that when a 70-ton crane falls onto the deck, it’s possible that there could be such damage. We consider the damage to be insignificant.”

Yevgeny Gladyshev, a spokesman for the shipbuilding factory which operated the floating dock, told the RIA news agency that unspecified equipment had been damaged but that much of the deck had been spared because it had been removed during the refit.

The floating dock had been hit by a power outage which had caused its ballast tanks to fill up rapidly, prompting it to sink, the factory said.

The Admiral Kuznetsov gained notoriety in Britain when then Secretary of Defense Michael Fallon dubbed it the “ship of shame” in 2017 when it passed through waters close to the English coast on its way back from the Mediterranean belching black smoke.

 
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The leader of Sweden’s Social Democrats, Stefan Lofven, on Monday abandoned efforts to form a government, extending a political deadlock that has gripped the country since an inconclusive national election seven weeks ago.

The failed attempt brought the prospect of a snap election closer, though the speaker of parliament said he would try to avoid that at all costs.

The Sept. 9 vote gave the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats hold the balance of power, but neither Lofven’s center-left bloc nor the center-right group of parties has been willing to give them a say in policy due to their white supremacist roots.

“In light of the responses I have had so far … the possibility does not exist for me to build a government that can be accepted by parliament,” Lofven told reporters.

The center-right Alliance bloc’s leader, Ulf Kristersson, has already tried and failed to form a government.

Speaker Andreas Norlen, who on Monday held talks with all the party leaders, said he would not, at least for now, ask anyone else to try to form a government.

Instead, he would on Tuesday take on a more active role in trying to mediate a way to forming a viable coalition. He would propose a prime minister to parliament at least once during the autumn, in order if possible to avoid another election.

“A snap election would be a big defeat for the Swedish political system,” he told reporters.

A caretaker administration under Lofven has run Sweden since last month’s ballot.

The delay in forming a permanent government could further undermine faith in mainstream parties. Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said a new vote could boost support for his party.

Both Lofven and Kristersson said they still hope to be prime minister, but neither offered a way to end the stalemate.

“I do not see any indication that anyone has changed their minds about anything at all,” Kristersson told reporters after meeting speaker Norlen.
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Belarusians gathered in Minsk on Monday to commemorate more than 100 people, including 22 writers and poets, who were executed by the NKVD secret service on Oct. 29, 1937, during Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge.

The 100 victims, many of them from the Belarusian intelligentsia, were among between 600,000 and 1.5 million people in then-Soviet Belarus who were swept up in Stalin’s mass repression of dissent that came to a head in 1937.

At one memorial event Monday, about 20 people lit candles next to the Minsk headquarters of the KGB security service, the present-day successor to the NKVD.

In a separate memorial event, several dozen gathered at an execution site used by the NKVD in a wooded area on the Belrusian capital’s outskirts that is now marked by dozens of wooden crosses.

Belarusians read poems as they stood near the crosses decorated with burning candles.

Similar memorial events were being held in other parts of the former Soviet Union to mark an unofficial day of remembrance for victims of Stalinist repression.
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Russia has sent a high-level official delegation to Venezuela, including a deputy finance minister, to help advise the cash-strapped country on economic reform at a time of crisis, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Finance said Monday.

Almost 2 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2015, driven out by food and medicine shortages and violent crime with inflation running at 200,000 percent and the OPEC nation’s oil production hitting a 28-year low in 2017.

Russian oil major Rosneft said in August Venezuela owed it $3.6 billion, while Moscow and Caracas last year signed a debt restructuring deal that allowed Venezuela to pay Russia back a total of $3.15 billion over a decade.

Andrei Lavrov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Finance, said Monday that Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak was due to take part in a meeting with Venezuelan government officials in Caracas on Tuesday.

Russian officials from the central bank and the Ministry of Economy would also attend, he said, saying Venezuela had invited the Russian experts to take part in a meeting tasked with drafting economic reform measures at a time of crisis.

“Venezuela’s government asked [Russia] to send relevant employees from Russian government ministries to share their experience of economic reform,” Lavrov said.
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Pope Francis has strongly condemned the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh after celebrating the closing mass of the Synod of Bishops on Youth in Saint Peter’s Basilica.

After reciting the Angelus prayer in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday, Pope Francis led prayers for Pittsburgh, the day after what he describedas the “terrible” massacre inside a synagogue during Sabbath services in which 11 people were killed and six others injured. 

The pope expressed what he called his closeness to the city of Pittsburgh, and in particular to the Jewish community stricken yesterday by a terrible attack on the synagogue.  

He said everyone is in reality wounded by this inhumane act of violence and asked God to help put out the hotbeds of hate that flare up in society and to help strengthen a sense of humanity, respect for life, moral and civil values.”

Earlier, several thousand people, including hundreds of priests, nuns, and young people took part in the final ceremony of a month-long synod titled “Young People, Faith and Discernment of Vocation”.

In his homily, Pope Francis asked young people to forgive adults if they have not listened to youth or opened their hearts.

The pope also said young people could not wash their hands of the problems of their neighbors, but should “dirty” them if they really want to imitate Jesus.

Pope Francis attended every session of the synod, which were held on a daily basis during October.

A 60-page final document was issued at the end of the synod late Saturday and will be used by Pope Francis in writing his Apostolic Exhortation.  

Women played an active role in this synod and although they did not vote the final text called on women to have greater recognition and say in the Church’s decision-making processes.  But the document stopped short of making a common apology for decades of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups.   

 
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The owner of the Leicester City soccer club of Britain’s Premier League was among five people who died after his helicopter crashed and burst into flames outside a stadium moments after taking off Saturday. 

Along with Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, a 60-year-old billionaire entrepreneur, two members of Vichai’s staff, Nursara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare, and pilot Eric Swaffer and passenger Izabela Roza Lechowicz, also died when the aircraft went down in the parking lot near King Power Stadium after a night soccer match.

“The world has lost a great man,” Leicester said in a statement. “A man of kindness, of generosity and a man whose life was defined by the love he devoted to his family and those he so successfully led.” 

Vichai who owns Thai duty-free retail giant King Power, bankrolled Leicester’s improbable league title triumph in 2016. 

He bought Leicester for $50 million in 2010 when it was in the second-tier Championship and led it to its revival that peaked with the title win.

Vichai handsomely rewarded Leicester’s players for winning the Premier League with new bumper contracts. In addition he bought each player a BMW i8 worth around $135,000, including for goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel.

Vichai, who started his business career with one shop and grew Thailand’s massive King Power duty-free chain, was known for arriving and leaving the stadium in his helicopter.

Located in central England, Leicester is about 143 kilometers north of London.
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