Bosnia’s migrant crisis reveals EU’s moral blind spot

A migrant sits near a wall bearing the EU flag at a refugee camp in northern Bosnia. According to the Bosnian security minister, more than 34,000 migrants from Asia and Africa have illegally entered the country since 2018. (AFP)
Updated 20 October 2019
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Bosnia’s migrant crisis reveals EU’s moral blind spot

  • Bosnia struggles with influx of refugees coming other Eastern European countries
  • Country emerging as a transit station for those trying to reach EU’s Schengen area

ABU DHABI: After months of official denials, Croatia’s leader finally admitted in an interview with Swiss television this year that her government had been pushing undocumented immigrants across the border into Bosnia.

President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said that a small amount of violence and a “little bit of force” was to be expected when police handle irregular migrants.

The truth is that the use of force by Croatian security officers has become routine since the 2016 border closures along the Western Balkan route, which left thousands of asylum-seekers stranded and looking for new routes to Western Europe.

The daunting problems migrants and refugees face on that route might make the issue of police violence along the Croatia-Bosnia border seem relatively minor. But such comparisons can obscure neither the grim reality of the situation nor the EU’s failure to match its moral rhetoric with action.

Bosnia is emerging as a new transit station for those trying to reach Croatia and continue the perilous journey to the EU’s Schengen area of free movement.

Croatia has a bilateral agreement with Bosnia that allows it to send back irregular migrants coming from across the border. Given that the agreement is not applicable to asylum-seekers, there are numerous accounts of the Croatian border police preventing people from applying for asylum, thus necessitating their illegal movement into Bosnia.

People who try to cut through Croatia to reach the Schengen zone are regarded by the country as “illegal migrants” and frequently subjected to collective expulsion, torture, violence and intimidation at the Croatia-Bosnia border.




Migrants near a border crossing between Bosnia and Croatia. Asylum-seekers using the route have been subjected to violent attacks and intimidation. (AFP)

Since July 2018, the European Border Agency, Frontex, has had a presence on the Croatia-Bosnia border through a Multipurpose Aerial Surveillance system, which includes daily aerial patrols.

Detecting human-rights violations and expulsion of migrants and asylum-seekers is one of the priorities of the Frontex operation. However, its mission along the Croatia-Bosnia border has proved ineffectual in putting an end to the violence directed against migrants and asylum-seekers, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

On the Bosnian side, the European Commission says that 2018 was marked by a sharp increase in migrants and asylum-seekers in the country, with the number approaching 6,000.

Officially, Bosnia has only one reception center for asylum-seekers with a capacity for 156 people. Many other ad hoc centers across northern Bosnia, managed by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the UN refugee agency, are in a state of dilapidation.

An estimated 5,500 women, men and children are stranded in two Bosnian towns near the Croatian border, Bihac and Velika Kladusa, living in defunct factories that lack even basic amenities.

The influx of migrants and refugees has proved problematic for Bosnia, a country which has yet to recover from the war that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Conditions in the camps are unhygienic at best.

“We don’t have enough food to feed the whole family, especially the children,” one Afghan mother told Amnesty International. “They are always hungry.”

INNUMBERS

2.4 MILLION - Immigrants who entered EU from non-EU countries in 2017.

2.5,000 - Migrants pushed by Croatia into Bosnia in 2018 without their cases being processed.

€9 MILLION - Earmarked by Europe for migrant crisis in Bosnia since 2018.

25,000 - Migrants and refugees registered by Bosnia on its soil in 2018.

3.5,000 - Migrants and refugees who stayed behind in Bosnia.

In the course of 2018, Bosnia witnessed a sharp increase in the number of migrants and refugees entering the country — from 237 recorded in January to 2,557 in May and 2,493 in July 2018.

According to the Bosnian border police, the country of origin of most migrants and refugees is generally self-declared since most lack identification documents. IOM data shows the main countries of origin to be Pakistan (31 percent), Syria (17 percent), Afghanistan (13 percent), Iran (12 percent) and Iraq (9 percent).

The influx has challenged the human and financial resources of the government agencies concerned, according to an early 2019 OSCE report on the situation in Bosnia.

Faced with a growing crisis in its northwestern region, Bosnian authorities have moved hundreds of migrants and asylum-seekers to an isolated forest camp despite the threat from land mines and fires, as well as other health risks.

The UN has refused to operate at the camp, citing concerns about its close proximity to minefields and describing its location on top of a former landfill site as “unsuitable for human habitation.”

The precarious situation of migrants in Bosnia adds to the troubles of those who have been forcibly and illegally returned by the Croatian police, further complicating the crisis.

“We don’t go into the city center because we’re scared that the police will catch us,” 23-year-old Sufyan Al-Sheikh Ahmad, from Syria, told the New Humanitarian, a news agency focused on human stories. “You should see how we were when we lived in Turkey — I looked nothing like this.

“The circumstances here are very hard. Last time, we walked for six days in Croatia and reached Slovenia, but the Slovenian police caught us after two days. They handed us over to Croatian police, who took our money and bag, and broke our telephones. They took us to the border and we had to walk about 30 km to Bihac. That was the fifth attempt.”




A migrant woman takes shelter from the rain at the entrance of Sarajevo’s railway station in June, 2018. (AFP)

After extensive on-the-ground research, HRW communicated its findings to the Croatian Interior Ministry in December 2018. The minister, however, denied all allegations of expulsion and violence. In a meeting this year with Terezija Gras, a top ministry official, HRW was told that no expulsions were taking place, that all returns to Bosnia were being conducted in accordance with Croatian and EU laws, and that the HRW evidence was based on fabricated stories.

In August 2018, the UN refugee agency reported violence, theft and multiple cases of forced return by Croatian police. Subsequently, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights called on the Croatian government to investigate all case of forced return, torture and violence.

“The European Commission needs to protect EU law and fundamental rights at external borders by opening infringement proceedings against Croatia and calling on authorities to investigate alleged abuse and provide fair and efficient access to asylum,” Lydia Gall, the HRW investigator for the Balkans and Eastern Europe, said.

Gall added: “While the EU has dedicated more than €9 million for humanitarian aid to migrants in Bosnia, such an action does not justify ignoring the violence being done to migrants on the Croatian/Bosnian border.”

Amnesty International in March 2019 echoed similar concerns, accusing European governments of being complicit in the “systematic, unlawful and frequently violent returns and collective expulsions” of thousands of asylum-seekers to squalid and unsafe refugee camps in Bosnia.

Yaran Y., a 19-year-old from Iraq, was carrying his disabled 14-year- old sister, Dilva, when they were detained along with at least five others at night in the forest.

The Iraqi said he told police officers that he wanted asylum for his sister, but they just laughed. “They told us to go to Brazil and ask for asylum there,” he told HRW.

An HRW report was blunt: “By prioritizing border control over compliance with international law, European governments are not just turning a blind eye to vicious assaults by the Croatian police, but also funding their activities.”

Back then, the forced return of migrants and asylum-seekers was contrary to the EU asylum law, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the 1951 Refugee Convention. Three years on, it still is, yet sadly the political will among European governments to remedy the situation is even more lacking.

 


Canadian police charge 2 former UN employees with conspiracy to sell military equipment in Libya

A Toronto police vehicle is parked in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (REUTERS file photo)
Updated 24 April 2024
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Canadian police charge 2 former UN employees with conspiracy to sell military equipment in Libya

  • Poirier said Mhaouek, a Canadian citizen, was arrested Tuesday morning at his home in the Montreal suburb of Ste-Catherine, Que., and was scheduled to appear in a Montreal court later in the day

MONTREAL: Two former United Nations employees in Montreal have been charged with participating in a conspiracy to sell Chinese-made drones and other military equipment in Libya, Canadian police said Tuesday.
RCMP spokesman Sgt. Charles Poirier said the alleged offenses occurred between 2018 and 2021, when the two men were working at the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN agency headquartered in Montreal.
Police identified the two men as Fathi Ben Ahmed Mhaouek, 61, and Mahmud Mohamed Elsuwaye Sayeh, 37. Poirer said they violated UN sanctions related to the Libyan civil war. The sanctions have the force of law in Canada by way of federal regulation.
“What we found is that through some shell companies, they attempted to sell this Chinese military equipment to Libya, which is a direct violation of the regulation,” Poirier said, adding that the military equipment included large drones that can carry multiple missiles.
Poirier said the regulation prohibits anyone in Canada from supplying military equipment to any of the factions that were fighting in the Libyan civil war, or helping to finance those groups. The alleged conspiracy, he said, would have benefited one of the two main factions in the conflict, which ended in 2020.
“The second part of this scheme was to export Libyan oil to China,” Poirier said. “So at the time, the oil fields were under the control of Gen. Khalifa Haftar and the plan was to sell millions of drums of crude oil to China without anyone knowing about it.”
Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army fought against Libya’s UN-backed government and held much of the country’s east during the civil war; he continues to be a powerful figure in that region.
Poirier said Mhaouek, a Canadian citizen, was arrested Tuesday morning at his home in the Montreal suburb of Ste-Catherine, Que., and was scheduled to appear in a Montreal court later in the day.
Mhaouek’s alleged accomplice remains on the run. An Interpol red notice — an alert sent to police around the world — and a Canada-wide warrant have been issued for Sayeh’s arrest.
Poirier said investigators have no indication that military equipment or crude oil ever reached their alleged final destinations, but he said if they had, the two co-conspirators stood to gain several million dollars in commissions.
“The theory behind the motivation is primarily financial,” he said. However, it would have also benefited China by allowing it to covertly support Haftar’s faction and by giving the country prime access to Libyan oil.
Poirier said the investigation began in 2022 after the RCMP received what he described as “credible intelligence.”
Both men had diplomatic immunity due to their work with the UN Their immunity had to be waived by ICAO before the two men could be charged.
The UN organization, which sets international aviation standards, has been collaborating with the police investigation.
“There’s no indication that ICAO was aware of the conspiracy until they were approached by us,” Poirier said.
Police don’t know where Sayeh, a Libyan national, may be.
“He could be in Libya, but with the level of influence and the networking that these men had working at ICAO, he could be anywhere,” Poirier said.
The UN’s civil aviation agency said in an emailed statement that it is committed to upholding Canadian laws, UN standards and its own ethics code.
“ICAO is fully cooperating with the RCMP investigation of the individuals involved in the complaint, who left the organization a number of years ago,” the agency said. “ICAO strongly condemns any actions of individuals that are inconsistent with the organization’s values.”

 


Rights concerns, costs undermine Turkiye-EU migrant deal, say auditors

Updated 24 April 2024
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Rights concerns, costs undermine Turkiye-EU migrant deal, say auditors

  • EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has launched an inquiry into human rights guarantees under the bloc’s new migration deal with Tunisia

BRUSSELS: Turkiye’s poor human rights record and economic factors are undermining the effectiveness of the European Union’s migration deal with Ankara, EU auditors said on Wednesday.
Under the 2016 deal, Ankara agreed to take back migrants who had crossed from its territory to Europe in return for EU aid to help fund more than four million refugees on Turkish soil.
The EU, which faces elections in June for the European Parliament in which illegal migration promises to be a big issue, has sealed agreements similar to the Turkiye scheme with Tunisia, Egypt, Mauritania and others.
In their report, the EU auditors raised concerns about the ability of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to operate projects, as envisaged under the 6 billion euro ($6.4 billion) deal, given Turkiye’s authoritarian turn since a failed coup in 2016 and its crackdown on dissent.
“The operating situation of NGOs has continuously deteriorated since 2015 and has been exacerbated in the context of the unsuccessful... coup in Turkiye, where NGOs subsequently were targeted through various legislation,” it said.
The European Court of Auditors (ECA) report also cited the difficulty of managing the EU aid in the context of Turkiye’s economic downturn and Ankara’s “backsliding on the rule of law and fundamental rights.”
The report said the European Commission, the EU’s executive, had failed to provide an adequate analysis of costs and that it was unclear what would happen once the aid ended.
“The facility is beneficial for refugees and host communities but we would still like to see improvements in terms of demonstrating impact, ensuring sustainability, and value for money,” said Bettina Jakobsen, who led the ECA report.
Rights groups and some politicians have long accused the EU of neglecting human rights in its drive to curb illegal migration.
“This leads to the EU focusing less on issues that should be of relevance such as the neglect of human rights,” said Florian Trauner, a professor at the Brussels School of Governance.
EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has launched an inquiry into human rights guarantees under the bloc’s new migration deal with Tunisia.


US, Russia set for a showdown at UN over nuclear weapons in space

Updated 24 April 2024
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US, Russia set for a showdown at UN over nuclear weapons in space

  • The White House says Russia has not yet deployed such a weapon.

UNITED NATIONS/WASHINGTON: The United States and Russia are set to face off over nuclear weapons in space on Wednesday at the United Nations Security Council, which is due to vote on a US-drafted resolution calling on countries to prevent an arms race in outer space.
Russia is expected to block the draft resolution, said some diplomats. The US move comes after it accused Moscow of developing an anti-satellite nuclear weapon to put in space, an allegation that Russia’s defense minister has flatly denied.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Japan’s UN Ambassador Yamazaki Kazuyuki said in a joint statement on Friday that they have been negotiating with Security Council members on the draft text for six weeks.
The text affirms the obligation of states to comply with the Outer Space Treaty and calls on countries “to contribute actively to the objective of the peaceful use of outer space and of the prevention of an arms race in outer space.”
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars signatories – including Russia and the United States – from placing “in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”
Russia and China are planning to first put an amendment to a vote in the council. The amendment echoes a 2008 proposal by the pair for a treaty banning “any weapons in outer space” and threats “or use of force against outer space objects.”
The amendment is not expected to be adopted, said diplomats. The amendment and the draft resolution each require at least nine votes in favor and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, Britain or France to be adopted.
“Without our amendment, based on the General Assembly resolution adopted in December 2023, the text tabled by the US will be unbalanced, harmful and politicized,” deputy Russian UN Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told Reuters, adding that it would also undermine the Outer Space Treaty legal regime.
Polyanskiy said “all questions relating to this sphere should be considered by the full membership of States Parties to this Treaty and not by the UN Security Council members only.”
US intelligence officials, according to three people familiar with their findings, believe the Russian capability to be a space-based nuclear bomb whose electromagnetic radiation if detonated would disable vast networks of satellites.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has said Russia has not yet deployed such a weapon.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February that Russia was against the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.
Governments have increasingly viewed satellites in Earth’s orbit as crucial assets that enable an array of military capabilities on Earth, with space-based communications and satellite-connected drones in the war in Ukraine serving as recent examples of the outsized role of space in modern warfare.
Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.


Google fires at least 20 more workers who protested its $1.2bn contract with Israel

Updated 23 April 2024
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Google fires at least 20 more workers who protested its $1.2bn contract with Israel

NEW YORK: Google fired at least 20 more workers in the aftermath of protests over technology the company is supplying the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, bringing the total number of terminated staff to more than 50, a group representing the workers said.

It’s the latest sign of internal turmoil at the tech giant centered on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 for Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

Workers held sit-in protests last week at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California. The company responded by calling the police, who made arrests.

The group organizing the protests, No Tech For Apartheid, said the company fired 30 workers last week — higher than the initial 28 they had announced.

Then, on Tuesday night, Google fired “over 20” more staffers, “including non-participating bystanders during last week’s protests,” said Jane Chung, a spokeswoman for No Tech For Apartheid, without providing a more specific number.

“Google’s aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” Chung said in a press release. “In its attempts to do so, Google has decided to unceremoniously, and without due process, upend the livelihoods of over 50 of its own workers.”

Google said it fired the additional workers after its investigation gathered details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and it identified employees who used masks and didn’t carry their staff badges to hide their identities. It didn’t specify how many were fired.

The company disputed the group’s claims, saying that it carefully confirmed that “every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings.”

The Mountain View, California, company had previously signaled that more people could be fired, with CEO Sundar Pichai indicati ng in a blog post that employees would be on a short leash as the company intensifies its efforts to improve its AI technology.


Britain’s home secretary touts UK-Rwanda migrant deportation deal during visit to Italy

Updated 23 April 2024
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Britain’s home secretary touts UK-Rwanda migrant deportation deal during visit to Italy

  • Deal, in which Britain will pay Rwanda to process the migrants, is aimed at deterring people from crossing the English Channel from France
  • It is similar in some basic aspects to Italy’s controversial pact to outsource the processing of asylum-seekers to Italian-run centers in Albania

ROME: Britain’s home secretary on Tuesday touted Britain’s migrant deportation deal with Rwanda as a “new and creative” deterrent to an old and growing problem. But he said he took seriously criticism by the UN refugee agency that it violates international law.
Home Secretary James Cleverly visited Italy, ground zero in Europe’s migration debate, hours after the UK Parliament approved legislation to enable the government to deport some people to Rwanda who enter Britain illegally.
The deal, in which Britain will pay Rwanda to process the migrants, is aimed at deterring people from crossing the English Channel from France. It is similar in some basic aspects to Italy’s controversial pact to outsource the processing of asylum-seekers to Italian-run centers in Albania.
Human rights groups have said both deals, forged by conservative governments amid anti-migrant sentiment among voters, violate the rights of migrants that are enshrined in international refugee conventions.
On Tuesday, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said the UK-Rwanda deal is “not compatible with international refugee law” because it uses an asylum model “that undermines global solidarity and the established international refugee protection system.”
Cleverly defended the deal as a necessary response to a problem that has outgrown the international institutional way of processing migrants. He said Britain will not tolerate people smugglers determining who arrives on British soil.
“People-smuggling mass migration has changed (and) I think demands us to be constantly innovating,” he told a gathering at the Institute of International Affairs, a Rome-based think tank.
He said he took seriously the UNCHR criticism and said Britain was a law-abiding country.
“Of course we will respect the UN enormously,” he said when asked about the UNHCR criticism. “We take it very, very seriously. Doesn’t mean to say we always agree with their assessment. But we will, of course, look at that.”
Cleverly visited the Italian coast guard headquarters on Tuesday and on Wednesday is to visit the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where tens of thousands of migrants have arrived after crossing the Mediterranean Sea on boats setting off from northern Africa.
Lampedusa is closer to Africa than the Italian mainland and is often the destination of choice for migrants, whose numbers reached 157,652 new arrivals in Italy last year.
The numbers arriving in Italy so far this year are actually way down, presumably thanks to Italy’s European Union-endorsed agreement with Tunisia to stem departures. As of Tuesday, 16,090 migrants had arrived by sea in Italy so far this year, compared to 36,324 in this period last year.
Spain has actually outpaced Italy so far this year in terms of migrant sea arrivals, with 16,621 arriving this year as of April 15, the last available date.
In Britain, the numbers pale in comparison to the southern Mediterranean, even during peak periods: In 2022, the number of people arriving in Britain from across the Channel reached 45,774, though last year the number dropped to 29,437.