MEXICO CITY: Mexican officials have sped up the transfer of thousands of migrants from southern Mexico to other regions as northern border states prepare to receive asylum seekers sent back to Mexico from the United States.
Dozens of buses full of migrants, mostly from Central America as well as some from Cuba and Venezuela, have the city of Tapachula in Chiapas state in recent days to head to other states, a Reuters witness and an activist said on Monday.
Many of the migrants had waited months in Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, to try to regularize their migration status. Many have left violent and impoverished home countries hoping to eventually seek asylum in the United States.
US President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday said it would re-instate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a contentious Trump-era policy that requires asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico, a decision that shelters along the northern border have said could overwhelm their capacity.
The first group of migrants under the revamped program are expected to be returned to Mexico this week.
In Tapachula, 45 buses took migrants out of the city on Saturday, said a government source who requested anonymity.
Migrant rights activist Luis Garcia Villagran said migration officers took 32 full buses of migrants out of the city on Sunday, and another 70 on Monday.
“They are trying to not saturate the northern border now that MPP is starting,” he said. “That’s why they are moving them more quickly, controlling where the migrants are going.”
Mexico’s national migration institute did not respond to a request for comment.
A Nicaraguan migrant who declined to be identified said he was relived to get on a bus to the city of San Miguel de Allende in the central state of Guanajuato.
“I was here for a few months but thank God we are going,” he said.
Large numbers of migrants, especially from Haiti, remained clustered in Tapachula waiting for buses, with some sleeping in a camp outside a stadium that migration officers have used as a processing center.
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Mexico moves migrants from southern state; asylum seekers awaited at US border
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Mexico moves migrants from southern state; asylum seekers awaited at US border
- Many of the migrants had waited months in Tapachula, near the Guatemala border, to try to regularize their migration status
- US President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday said it would re-instate the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a contentious Trump-era policy that requires asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico
ICJ hears gruesome violence against Rohingya in Myanmar genocide case
THE HAGUE: Myanmar soldiers rampaged door-to-door, systematically killing, raping, and burning Rohingya men, women and children, the International Court of Justice heard on Tuesday, on day two of a genocide hearing.
ICJ judges are hearing three weeks of testimony as they weigh accusations by The Gambia that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya in a 2017 crackdown.
Tafadzwa Pasipanodya, a lawyer for The Gambia, laid out harrowing evidence of an alleged attack on a village in northern Rakhine State in Myanmar.
Soldiers decapitated old men, gang raped women and girls, threw infants into rivers.
After killing everyone in the villages, they “systematically” burned the buildings following the so-called “clearance operations,” alleged Pasipanodya.
“The totality of this evidence... convincingly show that Myanmar, through its state organs, acted with the intent to destroy the Rohingya,” said Pasipanodya.
Myanmar has always maintained the crackdown by its armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents after a series of attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.
The violence forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
Today, 1.17 million Rohingya live crammed into dilapidated camps spread over 8,000 acres in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
Lawyers for Myanmar will begin their response on Friday.
A final decision could take months or even years, and while the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions, a ruling in favor of The Gambia would heap more political pressure on Myanmar.
The Gambia is taking Myanmar to the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states, alleging breaches of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention,under which any state can haul another before the ICJ if it believes genocide is being committed.
Legal experts are watching this case as it could give clues for how the ICJ will handle similar accusations against Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, in a case brought by South Africa.
ICJ judges are hearing three weeks of testimony as they weigh accusations by The Gambia that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya in a 2017 crackdown.
Tafadzwa Pasipanodya, a lawyer for The Gambia, laid out harrowing evidence of an alleged attack on a village in northern Rakhine State in Myanmar.
Soldiers decapitated old men, gang raped women and girls, threw infants into rivers.
After killing everyone in the villages, they “systematically” burned the buildings following the so-called “clearance operations,” alleged Pasipanodya.
“The totality of this evidence... convincingly show that Myanmar, through its state organs, acted with the intent to destroy the Rohingya,” said Pasipanodya.
Myanmar has always maintained the crackdown by its armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, was justified to root out Rohingya insurgents after a series of attacks left a dozen security personnel dead.
The violence forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.
Today, 1.17 million Rohingya live crammed into dilapidated camps spread over 8,000 acres in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
Lawyers for Myanmar will begin their response on Friday.
A final decision could take months or even years, and while the ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions, a ruling in favor of The Gambia would heap more political pressure on Myanmar.
The Gambia is taking Myanmar to the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states, alleging breaches of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention,under which any state can haul another before the ICJ if it believes genocide is being committed.
Legal experts are watching this case as it could give clues for how the ICJ will handle similar accusations against Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, in a case brought by South Africa.
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