ATHENS: Greek authorities on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos say they are drawing up a criminal case, including on charges of espionage, against 10 people, all foreign nationals, for allegedly helping migrants enter the country illegally.
Police in Lesbos said on Monday the investigation had been ongoing for several months and was being carried out in cooperation with Greece’s intelligence service and anti-terrorism task force. No charges have been brought and no suspects have been publicly identified.
Greece has been repeatedly accused by rights groups and migrants of carrying out summary deportations of newly arrived migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum — an illegal practice known as pushbacks. The government strenuously denies the accusations, labeling them as “fake news,” but has stressed it is robustly patrolling its land and sea borders with Turkey, which are also the external borders of the European Union.
The country has been one of the preferred entry points into the EU of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia for years. Its frequently tense relations with neighboring Turkey have led to what Athens has said is the weaponization of migrants by Ankara, which it accuses of encouraging people to cross into Greece as a means of pressuring both Greece and the EU.
There has been mounting evidence suggesting Greek authorities do carry out pushbacks, including photos of migrants picked up by the Turkish coast guard after the same people had appeared in photos shared with rights groups showing them with identifiable landmarks on Greek islands.
Police said the case involves four members of undisclosed non-governmental organizations and another six people. All are under investigation for espionage, assisting the illegal entry of foreign nationals, impeding Greek authorities’ investigations and violating migration laws.
The police described the activities as “organized” and said they date to early June 2020, “in the form of providing essential assistance to organized networks of illegal smuggling of migrants” under the guise of performing humanitarian work. The case involves migrant arrivals on the islands of Chios, Lesbos and Samos.
As evidence of suspicious activity, police listed communication through mobile messaging applications with migrants leaving the Turkish shores.
According to the police announcement, those under investigation would advise recent arrivals to head either to areas of difficult terrain to hide, or to health care facilities, thereby “systematically complicating the work of the responsible Greek authorities.”
It said the investigation so far indicated the people under investigation had assisted in “the illegal entry of a significant number of third country nationals” to Greek islands. Authorities are continuing the investigation into potential further contacts and activities, police said.
Greek police prepare criminal case on migrant smuggling
https://arab.news/49fej
Greek police prepare criminal case on migrant smuggling
- Police said investigation had been ongoing for months in cooperation with intelligence service and anti-terrorism task force
- Greece has been repeatedly accused of carrying out summary deportations of migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum
Only 4% women on ballot as Bangladesh prepares for post-Hasina vote
- Women PMs have ruled Bangladesh for over half of its independent history
- For 2026 vote, only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates
DHAKA: As Bangladesh prepares for the first election since the ouster of its long-serving ex-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, only 4 percent of the registered candidates are women, as more than half of the political parties did not field female candidates.
The vote on Feb. 12 will bring in new leadership after an 18-month rule of the caretaker administration that took control following the student-led uprising that ended 15 years in power of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Nearly 128 million Bangladeshis will head to the polls, but while more than 62 million of them are women, the percentage of female candidates in the race is incomparably lower, despite last year’s consensus reached by political parties to have at least 5 percent women on their lists.
According to the Election Commission, among 1,981 candidates only 81 are women, in a country that in its 54 years of independence had for 32 years been led by women prime ministers — Hasina and her late rival Khaleda Zia.
According to Dr. Rasheda Rawnak Khan from the Department of Anthropology at Dhaka University, women’s political participation was neither reflected by the rule of Hasina nor Zia.
“Bangladesh has had women rulers, not women’s rule,” Khan told Arab News. “The structure of party politics in Bangladesh is deeply patriarchal.”
Only 20 out of 51 political parties nominated female candidates for the 2026 vote. Percentage-wise, the Bangladesh Socialist Party was leading with nine women, or 34 percent of its candidates.
The election’s main contender, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose former leader Zia in 1991 became the second woman prime minister of a predominantly Muslim nation — after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto — was the party that last year put forward the 5 percent quota for women.
For the upcoming vote, however, it ended up nominating only 10 women, or 3.5 percent of its 288 candidates.
The second-largest party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has not nominated a single woman.
The 4 percent participation is lower than in the previous election in 2024, when it was slightly above 5 percent, but there was no decreasing trend. In 2019, the rate was 5.9 percent, and 4 percent in 2014.
“We have not seen any independent women’s political movement or institutional activities earlier, from where women could now participate in the election independently,” Khan said.
“Real political participation is different and difficult as well in this patriarchal society, where we need to establish internal party democracy, protection from political violence, ensure direct election, and cultural shifts around female leadership.”
While the 2024 student-led uprising featured a prominent presence of women activists, Election Commission data shows that this has not translated into their political participation, with very few women contesting the upcoming polls.
“In the student movement, women were recruited because they were useful, presentable for rallies and protests both on campus and in the field of political legitimacy. Women were kept at the forefront for exhibiting some sort of ‘inclusive’ images to the media and the people,” Khan said.
“To become a candidate in the general election, one needs to have a powerful mentor, money, muscle power, control over party people, activists, and locals. Within the male-dominated networks, it’s very difficult for women to get all these things.”
