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Khadija Jafari cries as she looks at the asylum-seeker’s home in Croatia where she, her sister and their three children have spent three nights since they were deported from Austria.

The two women arrived in Austria as asylum-seekers from Afghanistan in 2016. They did their best to integrate by learning German and enrolling the children in school, Jafari said.

“I cry every day, every night, and cannot sleep. My child says every day, ‘Why am I not going to kindergarten?’” she told The Associated Press in German during an interview in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb. “We cannot stay here.”

Austrian authorities argued the family should be sent to Croatia because of European Union regulations that require asylum-seekers to apply for protection in the first EU country they reached.

The European Court of Justice agreed in a landmark July ruling that puts the residency status of tens of thousands of other refugees in doubt.

After they fled Afghanistan, Jafari, her 4-year-old son, her sister and the sister’s two children traveled through Serbia to Croatia, an EU member country since July 2013. Croatian authorities arranged transportation to Slovenia, and the sisters and their children made their way to Austria.

Christoph Riedl, a policy adviser with humanitarian aid group Diakonie, said Austria has deported hundreds of asylum-seekers under the EU’s “Dublin” agreement. But lawyers argued the Jafari family had become so well-integrated that they and others like them should be allowed to remain.

Even with the European court ruling in the sisters’ appeal, Austria did not have to deport them, Riedl said. The court stressed that the Dublin agreement permitted countries to “unilaterally or bilaterally in a spirit of solidarity… examine applications for international protection lodged with them, even if they are not required to.”

“Austria should simply have shown some heart and solidarity as the European Court of Justice demanded in its ruling,” Riedl said.

It was Sunday when Austrian authorities came for the family of five.

“We were sleeping in our room and then the police came,” Jafari recalled, wiping tears from her face. “I fled to my neighbor, and the police came to me with a dog and found us, and then they sent us here.”
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The United States is demanding the world hold Syria’s government, Russia and Iran responsible for what a top official calls “some of the worst atrocities known to man.”

The statement, by U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster, came Thursday during an event at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington marking the seventh anniversary of the start of the Syrian conflict.

“The Assad regime has killed indiscriminately, tortured, starved, raped and used chemical weapons on its own people,” McMaster said, referring to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “It has attacked hospitals and schools, and countless Syrians have been arrested, abducted or simply disappeared.”

But McMaster, one of the most senior advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump, also accused Russia and Iran of enabling Assad, and said they, too, must be held accountable.

“All nations must respond more forcibly than simply issuing strong statements,” McMaster said. “Assad should not have impunity from his crimes and neither should his sponsors.”

Political, economic pressures

So far, McMaster and other U.S. officials have emphasized an approach using political and economic pressure, pointing to ramped-up sanctions against both Iran and Russia.

“The president and General McMaster are continuing to work together to put pressure on Russia to do the right thing,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters when asked about McMaster’s comments.

“Again, I think you can see what the administration’s viewpoint is simply by looking at the actions that we took today by placing new sanctions on Russia,” Sanders said.

But while the U.S. has repeatedly criticized Russia, Thursday’s sanctions were not aimed at its support for the Syrian regime.

Instead, the actions were aimed at five entities and 19 individuals accused of interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and for cyberattacks targeting U.S. infrastructure.

There are also questions about how far the Trump administration is willing to go to stop attacks on civilians in Syria, including in eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus that has been bombed repeatedly by Russia and Syria.

“The U.S. seeks to halt Assad’s atrocities and constrain and ultimately reduce the buildup of Iranian proxy forces and Iranian influence in Syria,” said Jennifer Cafarella, with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. “The means the U.S. is willing to use will not accomplish the stated goals.”

And there are few signs the U.S. is going to change course, at least for now.

“We urge Russia to compel the Assad regime to stop killing innocent Syrians and allow much-needed aid to reach the people of east Ghouta,” chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told reporters Thursday.

“We are going to be consistent in that message and we are going to continue to urge them to do that,” she added.

When pressed on whether the U.S. military would consider taking any action to help ensure the safety of civilians, White said that Syria’s Assad would be “ill-advised to use any gas [chemical weapons].”

U.S. action against Syria

The U.S. has taken action against Assad once before, launching a barrage of 59 cruise missiles at Shayrat airfield, in western Syria, in April 2017. Officials said it was in retaliation for a gruesome sarin gas attack by Assad’s forces that killed about 100 civilians.

But despite more recent reports alleging Assad’s use of chemical weapons and chlorine gas, the U.S. has not acted. Military officials say while they are looking into the reports, they have yet to find conclusive evidence that chemical weapons were used.

There are also no indications that Washington, which has said a political settlement is the only way forward, is willing to use air power or ground forces already in the region to stop the onslaught against civilians, including the most recent bombing campaign in eastern Ghouta, or to forcibly remove Assad from power.

“Our mission in Syria is to defeat ISIS,” said the Pentagon’s White, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group. “It is not our intention to be part of a civil war. … We are pushing toward the Geneva process.”

On Wednesday, the commander of the U.S. military’s Central Command, General Joseph Votel, told lawmakers he would advise against the use of military force.

“I don’t recommend that at this particular point,” Votel said. “Certainly, if there are other things that are considered, you know, we will do what we are told.”

But when asked whether Assad, with the backing of Russia and Iran, had “won” the civil war in Syria, Votel suggested that was the case.

“I do not think that is too strong of a statement,” Votel said.

VOA’s Steve Herman contributed to this report from the White House.
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Turkish opposition parties are warning that the raft of electoral reforms parliament passed this week pose a threat to free and fair elections.

“They hid the package from the nation. Why? Because the law explains line by line how election fraud can be conducted,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition CHP party, said Tuesday after the measures were approved.

The reforms were so contentious that fistfights erupted in the parliamentary chamber among deputies as the articles were approved. The 26 changes include easing restrictions on the presence of security forces in ballot stations, allowing state governors to locate ballot boxes and authorizing security forces to remove ballot boxes.

One of the most contentious reforms is allowing the use of paper ballots that do not have official stamps. Until now, ballots had been issued to match the number of voters, which were then stamped by monitors drawn from all political parties.

Controversial 2017 referendum

The use of unstamped ballot papers has revived the controversial April 2017 referendum on extending President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s powers.

The extension was narrowly approved, but in the middle of vote counting, the electoral body controlling the election allowed unstamped ballots to be included. The decision to accept the votes as valid and the way in which it was implemented was criticized in a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Council of Europe referendum monitors.

“These decisions undermined an important safeguard against fraud,” the report noted.

The use of unstamped ballots in future elections has caused alarm among opposition parties.

“We can say there is very little hope there are going to be fair elections in Turkey, so the election themselves are under question,” warned Ertugral Kurkcu, parliamentary deputy and president of the pro-Kurdish HDP party. “Tayyip Erdogan put his hand inside the ballot box. Unless the situation is changed dramatically … every election is going to be tainted with fraud and the result won’t be legitimate.”

Voter fraud is of particular concern in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, the region at the center of a conflict between security forces and Kurdish insurgents.

During the 2016 presidential referendum, HDP party election monitors raised allegations of ballot-box stuffing. Several voting areas recorded 100 percent support for extending Erdogan’s powers, even though the area was a stronghold against the president.

Adding to such fears, Turkey remains under emergency rule, which was introduced after the failed 2016 coup.

“The next elections most probably take place under the state of emergency, and the government and the regime will do everything in its power to win all the elections. They will not allow any meaningful elections,” political scientist Cengiz Aktar warned.

Ruling party criticisms

Criticism over the latest electoral reforms and fears of fraud have been angrily dismissed by the ruling AK Party and its ally, the MHP party.

Mustafa Sentop, AK Party parliamentary deputy, described opposition party concerns as “ignorant.”

The ruling AK Party argued the reforms are aimed at ensuring fair elections and reducing the threat of voter intimidation.

The opposition CHP party, however, said monitoring elections and counting ballots are key elements of creating free and fair elections.

“For the security of the elections, we have already started working to ensure we will have 1 million volunteer observers, which will mean more than one overseer for each ballot box,” said Sezgin Tanrikulu, deputy head of the CHP party. “I am still hopeful for a just and honest election. At least we should make sure the results cannot be changed.”

The CHP has been frequently criticized by observers for failing to mobilize and marshal its members to properly scrutinize polls.

Already, government supporters have labeled monitoring efforts as subversive and a threat to fair elections.

“The two [opposition] parties’ aim is to create a perception among the public that elections are being manipulated by the ruling party, and the results are therefore illegitimate,” columnist Mehmet Acet wrote in the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper earlier this month. He said adding a perception of illegitimacy can instigate a “change in government by nonelectoral means.”

Pro-Kurdish HDP party president Kurkcu said, “So what’s ahead for Turkey’s elections is a very big disagreement on how the vote is carried out. There is going to be a very heated debate in the coming days.”

The success of monitoring, especially under emergency rule, in next year’s presidential, general and local elections will be key to whether all parties will accept the election’s results, experts said.
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Russians are expected to vote Sunday in a presidential election, but disqualified opposition candidate Alexei Navalny told VOA’s Russian service that he expected the entire process to be a sham, even down to the European election observers.

“All those so-called ‘European observers’ — they are as much observers as other candidates in these elections are ‘rivals’ to [President Vladimir] Putin,” Navalny said in a VOA interview Thursday. “Of course this is an absolute fake. It’s ridiculous and unpleasant to look at how Putin corrupted and turned into his puppets a significant part of the European establishment.”

Navalny, for years an anti-corruption activist and outspoken opponent of the government, was disqualified from the race in December because of a conviction for embezzlement. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the conviction was politically motivated, but it was upheld in Russian courts. Navalny was given a suspended five-year sentence. 

Navalny said Sunday’s election would be marked by illegitimacy. He has called for a boycott.

Putin faces seven challengers, but is expected to take an overwhelming majority of the vote.

“Our task in this campaign is that as many people as possible understand that these are not elections” and refuse to take part in them, Navalny  said. “And we will fight for it.”

Putin has been in power as either president or prime minister since 1999. He has switched back and forth between the two roles to circumvent a Russian law banning him from serving more than two consecutive terms as president.

Yet, opinion polls show he has far more support than any of his rivals, who run the gamut from far-right populist to far-left communist. With another Putin win practically guaranteed, Navalny and other experts say Russian authorities will try to use inflated voter turnout numbers to prove the election was a success.

Navalny said the elections are staged to look free and fair, but that at best they are an insincere effort. “We are faced with a construct in which they, the authorities, look into the eyes of the public and say: ‘You know we will not allow you to choose your own people’s representatives. We offered you some people — you can vote for them,’ ” he said. 

But, he added, “it’s pointless to participate in the construct that, from the get-go, foresees Putin’s result is over 70 percent.”

Sunday’s vote will span 11 time zones, starting with the far east and ending with the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, and 108,968,869 people are registered to cast ballots. State-owned polling company VCIOM projects a turnout of 71 percent. 

Yet, the Russian nongovernmental research organization Levada Center conducted a survey in December that indicated 58 percent of voters planned to boycott the elections.

VOA’s Russian service contributed to this report.
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Slovenia Prime Minister Miro Cerar resigned late Wednesday over a Supreme Court decision nullifying a referendum in favor of a major railroad project.

“This was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Cerar said in his resignation note to parliament. “The second track project has been hit by another blow taken by those who want to stop Slovenia’s positive development. I don’t want to be part of such stories.”

He plans to submit his resignation to President Borut Pahor Thursday.

Voters in September approved the $1.2 billion project to extend a key rail line from an Adriatic port to the Italian border.

But the Slovenian Supreme Court ordered a new vote, saying the government unfairly influenced voters to approve the project.

Cerar said the rail line would be of “strategic importance for the development of Slovenia.”

Cerar says his center-left coalition is leaving the country in much better economic shape than it was when it took power in 2014.

Parliamentary elections are set for June, but Cerar’s resignation may move them up. 
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday thanked residents of Crimea for voting to annex the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, calling the move “real democracy” in a speech days ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.

“With your decision you restored historical justice,” he told the crowd of supporters in Sevastopol, home to the Black Sea Fleet’s base.

“With your decision, you showed the whole world what is real, rather than sham, democracy. You came to the referendum and made a decision. You voted for your future and future of your children,” Putin said.

In a rallying call, he said there were still things to improve in Crimea, but “we will definitely do everything, because when we are together, we are a huge force that can resolve the most difficult problems.”

Putin is running for a historic fourth term in a poll all but guaranteed to hand him another mandate.

His visit to Crimea also included a stop at the construction site of a massive bridge linking the peninsula to Russia and a look at a new airport terminal.

Police said about 40,000 people attended Putin’s short speech, having to wait first for several hours to listen to patriotic songs.

An AFP correspondent at the scene put the crowd at nearer 20,000.

Putin’s stop at Sevastopol’s main Nakhimov square was seen as his last campaign event before the country votes.

Foreign condemnation

The annexation of Crimea in March 2014 was slammed by the international community and led to sanctions against Moscow but is celebrated by most Russians and resulted in a major boost of Putin’s popularity at the time.

After Putin’s speech, the U.S. State Department reacted with a statement titled starkly: “Crimea is Ukraine.”

“In his campaign rally in Crimea today, President Putin reiterated Russia’s false claims to Ukrainian territory in another open admission that the Russian government disdains the international order and disrespects the territorial integrity of sovereign nations,” spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Russian authorities scheduled the election for March 18 to mark exactly four years since Putin signed a treaty with representatives from Crimea to make it a part of Russia.

Ahead of the vote, authorities are presenting the annexation as a major legacy of Putin’s current term, with Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warning recently that failing to endorse Putin on Sunday would amount to opposing the move.
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Physicist Stephen Hawking died March 14, 2018, at his home in Cambridge, England. He was one of the most respected and best-known scientists in modern history. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman says relations with the U.S. can’t get any worse so he’s hoping for improvement under a new secretary of state.

Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday that he’s not worried about relations getting worse after Rex Tillerson’s ouster, saying the relationship “can hardly go lower than the floor.”

He said he hopes for a “constructive and sober approach in joint relations” under Tillerson’s nominated replacement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo. “This hope will always remain.”

Relations between the U.S. and Russia have worsened in recent years over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Trump unexpectedly fired Tillerson on Tuesday.  Pompeo faces Senate confirmation hearings where he is expected to be asked about his approach toward Russia.

 
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Britain says it will expel 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow shrugged off demands to explain how a deadly Soviet-era nerve agent came to be used in the English town of Salisbury to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

The retaliation  announced Wednesday by Prime Minister Theresa May to the House of Commons amounts to the unleashing of an economic war against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his coterie of Kremlin officials and oligarchs, with asset freezes and seizures of property they own in London alongside visa bans against named Russian individuals.

The prime minister is pressing international allies to follow Britain’s example and turn the spotlight on the billions of dollars of Kremlin-tied assets around the world.

But officials say even British actions alone will cause some pain to Russians linked to the Kremlin, who, under the plans being drawn up, will have property and assets seized, if they cannot show their holdings come from ‘legitimate’ sources. British officials have powers under criminal finance legislation to start moving on Russian assets.

“The overall impact of what we are planning to do will have serious repercussions for Russia,” a senior British official told VOA.

Kremlin denies involvement

Kremlin officials deny Russia had anything to do with the poisoning of the Skripals, accusing the British of fanning the flames of Russophobia. May had given an ultimatum to the Kremlin to explain the poisoning; but, the deadline passed on Tuesday night with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying there would be no official response until Britain had provided a sample of the toxin and pursued the investigation through the “proper channels” of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Russia and Britain are signatories to the organization.

In increasingly barbed and menacing exchanges between the British and Russians, reminiscent of the height of the Cold War, Kremlin officials have warned it is dangerous to threaten nuclear-armed Russia.

In the escalating confrontation, the Kremlin Wednesday warned that reprisals would be met with a firm Russian response.

“Moscow does not accept the groundless accusations or the language of ultimatums,” said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman. He added, “We hope that common sense prevails and that countries will think twice whether there is any evidence or not and how justified any accusations against Russia are …Any unlawful British actions,” he adds “will result in a Russian response.”

Pressure to act

Political and public pressure on Theresa May to retaliate for the March 4 poisoning of Skripal, a former Russian military officer who was recruited by MI6 and exchanged in a spy swap in 2010, and his 33-year-old daughter, hasn’t let up. If anything, it has grown in intensity.

Further impetus for reprisals came Tuesday when British police said they had opened an investigation into the “unexplained” death on Monday of Putin critic Nikolai Glushkov, a former adviser to Boris Berezovsky, the deceased Russian oligarch and fierce Putin rival.  Glushkov, who the Kremlin had demanded be extradited to Moscow, was found dead at his London home just eight days after the poisoning of the Skripals.

Media reports in London suggest he may have been strangled.

Public anger toward Russia has also increased amid warnings that hundreds of people in the town of Salisbury are in danger from the nerve agent, Novichok, that was used to poison the Skripals. A former Russian scientist who helped develop the nerve agent in Soviet-era chemical warfare laboratories says people who may have been exposed to even small amounts of the military-grade toxin will face health risks for the rest of their lives.

Describing Novichok as “very nasty stuff,” scientist Vil Mirzayanov, a chemist who ran the technical counter-intelligence department in Russia’s chemical weapons institute, told Britain’s Sky News it was developed as a “weapon of mass murder.”

Speaking from his home in Princeton, New Jersey, Mirzayanov said, ”It’s the same as nerve gas but 10 times, at least 10 times, more powerful.” He said the agent was designed to wreck the human body and do “irreparable” damage, saying the Skripals would be left as “invalids.”

Mirzayanov also said serious long-term health risks remain for hundreds of Salisbury residents who may have been exposed to trace contamination because of their proximity as the attack unfolded, or who brushed past the Skripals in a pub and a restaurant they visited.  Asked about the advice given by British public health officials, including washing clothes and wiping down possessions, he said, “Sure, it’s useful, but not enough, absolutely not.”

Low public risk

British health officials say “the risk to the general public is low.” But their comments aren’t reassuring, say locals, who are seeing increasing numbers of police and army specialists clothed in protective suits deployed in the town of 40,000. Locals complain that the government hasn’t been quick enough to understand the wider dangers.

The Skripals remain hospitalized in critical condition. Meanwhile, a police officer is out of immediate danger and talking, but colleagues say he remains highly anxious. A fourth person has been treated as an outpatient in recent days.

 
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As its name implies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has its roots in Europe and North America. But as the alliance faces new global threats, it has begun to broaden its horizons. VOA’s Jela de Franceschi takes a closer look at how North Korea’s missile and nuclear build-up has led NATO to boost its engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.
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