His worn trousers bagging over the top of borrowed rubber rain boots, Kueaa Darhok attempts to make his way through the sucking mud and deep-set puddles, on his way to the communal feeding kitchen at the center of the transit camp he now calls home.
There, under his calming gaze and soft-spoken reassurances, Sudanese refugees and returning South Sudanese wait as aid workers and local women ladle through steel pots filled with lentils and porridge.
In Sudan, Darhok, who is of South Sudanese origin, was the headmaster of an English language secondary school in the capital Khartoum, where he taught his students texts by legendary African authors like Chinua Achebe to instil in them, he says, a sense of cultural pride.
After fighting broke out over two months ago in Khartoum, he and his family made the terrifying journey back to South Sudan and he has become a community elder here at the camp.
Set up a week into the fighting in Sudan, when desperate families arrived seeking shelter, the Renk transit camp near the border of South Sudan and Sudan was not supposed to hold more than 3,000 people. It now houses more than double that. There are no sanitation facilities, not enough waterproof sheets and not enough food. Not enough of anything.
“I eat once a day, sometimes not even that,” Darhok says, keeping an eye on the meal distribution. “Most of the men here are the same, so that the most vulnerable – the women and children – can eat.”
Even then, Darhok says, not all those queuing up will get food, and they’ll return to expectant families empty-handed.
The UN estimates at least 860 people have been killed since fighting erupted on April 15 between Sudan’s Armed Forces and the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
With 6,000 people injured across Sudan as of June 3, half a million people have fled the country and more than 1.4 million are internally displaced.
Blighted by decades of fighting both before and after independence from the Republic of Sudan, South Sudan was already Africa’s largest refugee crisis, with 2.2 million people displaced outside the country’s borders and 2.3 million internally displaced. Now at least 800,000 South Sudanese have been driven back by the fighting in Sudan.
A spokesperson for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Renk, Charlotte Hallqvist told CNN that an average of 1,500 people have been arriving daily since the fighting began in Sudan, adding to the burden of a country where 75% of the population are in need of assistance.
Hallqvist says the UN’s emergency response was already critically underfunded, “and the new emergency is adding additional strain to already limited resources.”
To respond to the Sudan crisis, the UN needs $253 million, with the South Sudan response alone in need of $96 million.
According to UNHCR figures, two months into the crisis, international donors have so far only contributed 10% of the total figure, and 15% of the overall Sudan regional emergency response.
On June 19, the United Nations, the governments of the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the European Union will convene a High-level Pledging Event to support the humanitarian response in Sudan and the region in a bid to drive up donor contributions.
For many here in Renk, it’s too late; the international community’s delayed response has already cost lives.
Malnutrition and unsanitary conditions are triggering an epidemic of communicable diseases, and every day, Darhok tells us, a little boy or girl dies.
A CNN team visiting the camp witnessed the burial of one boy, not quite two-years-old, who had died in the early hours of that morning from measles.
His mother and grandmother sat in shocked silence as men shoveled earth onto his grave at the local cemetery, pausing to plant a spindly wooden cross before heading back to their own tents and their own vulnerable families, carrying with them the specter of a death that could have been prevented.
Authorities vowed the 10 suspected human traffickers they arrested would be ‘severely punished’.
Pakistan authorities have arrested 10 alleged human traffickers after it emerged that many of the dozens of migrants and refugees who drowned off the coast of Greece were from the South Asian nation currently in the midst of an unprecedented economic and political crisis, officials said on Sunday.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also ordered an immediate crackdown on agents engaged in people smuggling, saying they would be “severely punished”.
The federal investigation agency arrested the suspected human traffickers from different parts of the Islamabad-controlled part of Kashmir – also known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir – and another from Karachi airport, who was trying to flee abroad, local TV Geo News reported.
At least dozens of Pakistani nationals onboard
Every year, thousands of young Pakistanis embark on perilous journeys attempting to enter Europe without proper documents in search of a better life.
Reports indicate there were at least dozens of Pakistanis onboard the trawler that sank off Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula on Wednesday, killing at least 78 people with hundreds more missing.
Young men, primarily from eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, often use a route through Iran, Libya, Turkey, and Greece to enter Europe.
Local media published estimates that 298 Pakistanis might have died in the Greek boat disaster, 135 from the Pakistani side of Kashmir. Other reports suggested there were about 400 Pakistani nationals onboard. Al Jazeera could not independently verify these numbers.
Human trafficking seems to be going on with impunity in #Pakistan. Apparently nearly 400 people on board in boat carrying refugees to Greece were from Pakistan with more than 298 reported dead. The appalling conditions in which people were transported, resulting in the tragic… pic.twitter.com/2brFP4Inj4
On Saturday, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 12 nationals had survived, but they had no information on how many were onboard the boat.
An immigration official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the figure could surpass 200.
In a joint statement, the International Organization for Migration and UN Refugee Agency said between 400 to 750 people in total were believed to be aboard the ferry.
Adil Hussain from Pakistan shows a photo of his brother that he says was onboard the ship that sunk off the coast of Greece. June 16, 2023 [Louiza Vradi/Reuters]
DNA-matching needed to identify deceased
The 10 suspected human traffickers “are presently under investigation for their involvement in facilitating the entire process,” said Chaudhary Shaukat, a local official from Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
“The Prime Minister has given a firm directive to intensify efforts in combating individuals involved in the heinous crime of human trafficking,” his office said in a statement.
The foreign ministry spokesperson, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, said in a statement that Pakistan’s embassy in Greece remains in contact with the Greek authorities to identify the 78 recovered bodies.
“At this stage, we are unable to verify the number and identity of Pakistani nationals among the deceased,” she said, adding that the identification process will take place through DNA-matching.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Wars don’t run according to political timetables. And in the lead-up to Ukraine’s counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his top aides strove to explain this reality to both nervous allies, impatient for military progress, and their own people, eager for the big counterattack to kick off and hear good news from the front lines.
In the run-up to the long-awaited counteroffensive, which started to unfold last week — later than most anticipated — Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov was worried that expectations were “definitely overheated.” “Everyone wants another win,” he said, cautioning allies to temper their hopes, so as to avoid subsequent disappointment.
The worry here is that falling short of expectations might lead to a reduction in international military assistance and renewed, often oblique, pressure to engage with Moscow in negotiations. “They want the next victory. It’s normal, these are emotions,” Reznikov added.
But impatience for a decisive blow against Russia stems not just from emotion but from political calculations too.
A long war risks Western fatigue, the depletion of arsenals and an erosion of unity — especially with China, Brazil and South Africa touting dubious “peace” plans. And despite public promises to back Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” earlier this year Washington officials warned counterparts in Kyiv that they needed to make major battlefield gains soon, while weapons and aid from the U.S. and European allies are still surging.
With the U.S. heading into what’s likely to be an exceptionally torrid and combustible presidential election season — to say the very least — the high level of security and economic assistance from Congress might be hard to maintain, they warned. And according to Ukrainian lawmakers, in recent talks with U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials, queries regarding future commitments and asks were batted away, with the response often being, “let’s see how the counteroffensive goes.”
Former Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told POLITICO these talks left her feeling anxious about the “continuation of the same level of U.S. support to Ukraine after this financial year” — which, for the U.S. federal budget, is September.
Likewise, there are also signs of war-weariness and wariness in Europe, both among politicians and the public, with Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser in Zelenskyy’s office, complaining this week: “I understand that sitting thousands of kilometers away from Ukraine you can talk about ‘geopolitics,’ ‘settlement’ and the undesirability of escalation for months. And allow the rampage of the ‘Russian world.’”
Tellingly, even in Poland — one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies — the attitude toward Ukrainian war refugees is deteriorating. According to a survey by researchers from the University of Warsaw and the Academy of Economics and Humanities, in the past five months, the percentage of those who strongly support helping refugees dropped from 49 percent to 28 percent.
So, the political clock is ticking — and not necessarily matching the tempo of war.
Zelenskyy has had to pull off a difficult balancing act in recent weeks, holding out the prospect of delivering a decisive blow against Russia to shore up Western confidence and optimism and keep equipment and weapons flowing, while also underscoring that the counteroffensive most likely won’t be able to achieve the stunning quick success of last autumn’s push in Kharkiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
| Alexey Furman/Getty Images
Triggering a cascading collapse of Russia’s defenses and a pell-mell rout, the success in Kharkiv helped keep Western allies on side, but it also unhelpfully colored expectations, adding to the hype surrounding the current counteroffensive, which Kyiv has been keen to calm. However, Ukrainian officials are acutely aware of Western fears about a long-drawn out war of attrition.
But Ukraine also doesn’t want to be pushed into any hasty moves that could result in serious and costly mishaps, which might then undermine military morale or knock Western hopes and have major geopolitical repercussions, a senior Ukrainian military official told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “This is not like Kharkiv,” he said. “We must be cautious. The Russians have been learning and preparing, and their defensive lines are formidable — we don’t have men to waste, nor equipment. Progress will have to be incremental.”
And incrementalism is the new watchword.
In his nightly address, Zelenskyy noted on Monday that “the battles are fierce, but we are moving forward, and this is very important. The enemy’s losses are exactly what we need.”
Similarly, according to Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. army in Europe, this “offensive is incredibly important for Ukraine’s future.” “Kyiv’s top military leadership has, to date, followed the conservative strategy of eroding Russian formations over time, gaining ground incrementally, avoiding major risks and limiting Ukrainian casualties as much as possible,” he wrote for the Center for European Policy Analysis.
“The offensive has clearly started, but not I think the main attack. When we see large, armored formations join the assault, then I think we’ll know the main attack has really begun,” he added.
Even though the main action is still to come, however, as Zelenskyy highlighted, the going is clearly tough.
And his Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar made this even clearer, saying on Telegram: “The enemy is doing everything to keep the positions captured by him. Actively uses assault and army aviation, conducts intense artillery fire. During the offensive, our troops encounter continuous minefields, which are combined with anti-tank ditches. All this is combined with constant counterattacks by enemy units on armored vehicles and the massive use of anti-tank guided missile and kamikaze drones.”
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Ukrainians believe they can, and will, deliver a powerful blow with the brigades trained by NATO militaries and supplied by Western allies. And officials in Kyiv believe they can do better than the “moderate territorial gains” forecast by the Pentagon, according to leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents.
Anger is growing over the handling of a migrant boat disaster off Greece last week that has become one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean in years. The calamity is dominating the country’s political agenda a week ahead of snap elections.
The Hellenic Coast Guard is facing increasing questions over its response to the fishing boat that sank off Greece’s southern peninsula on Wednesday, leading to the death of possibly hundreds of migrants. Nearly 80 people are known to have perished in the wreck and hundreds are still missing, according to the U.N.’s migration and refugee agencies.
Critics say that the Greek authorities should have acted faster to keep the vessel from capsizing. There are testimonies from survivors that the Coast Guard tied up to the vessel and attempted to pull it, causing the boat to sway, which the Greek authorities strongly deny.
The boat may have been carrying as many as 750 passengers, including women and children, according to reports. Many of them were trapped underneath the deck in the sinking, according to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. “The ship was heavily overcrowded,” Frontex said.
About 100 people are known to have survived the sinking. Authorities continued to search for victims and survivors over the weekend.
The disaster may be “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said on Friday. She said there has been a massive increase in the number of migrant boats heading from Libya to Europe since the start of the year.
Frontex said in a statement on Friday that no agency plane or boat was present at the time of the capsizing on Wednesday. The agency said it alerted the Greek and Italian authorities about the vessel after a Frontex plane spotted it, but the Greek officials waved off an offer of additional help.
Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa traveled thousands of miles across the Continent hoping to claim asylum.
Migration and border security have been key issues in the Greek political debate. Following Wednesday’s wreck, they have jumped to the top of the agenda, a week before national elections on June 25.
Greece is currently led by a caretaker government. Under the conservative New Democracy administration, in power until last month, the country adopted a tough migration policy. In late May, the EU urged Greece to launch a probe into alleged illegal deportations.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is expected to return to the prime minister’s office after the vote next Sunday, blasted criticism of the Greek authorities, saying it should instead be directed to the human traffickers, who he called “human scums.”
“It is very unfair for some so-called ‘people in solidarity’ [with refugees and migrants] to insinuate that the [Coast Guard] did not do its job. … These people are out there … battling the waves to rescue human lives and protect our borders,” Mitsotakis, who maintains a significant lead in the polls, said during a campaign event in Sparta on Saturday.
The Greek authorities claimed the people on board, some thought to be the smugglers who had arranged the boat from Libya, refused assistance and insisted on reaching Italy. So the Greek Coast Guard did not intervene, though it monitored the vessel for more than 15 hours before it eventually capsized.
“What orders did the authorities have, and they didn’t intervene because one of these ‘scums’ didn’t give them permission?” the left-wing Syriza party said in a statement. “Why was no order given to the lifeboat … to immediately assist in a rescue operation? … Why were life jackets not distributed … and why Frontex assistance was not requested?”
Alarm Phone, a network of activists that helps migrants in danger, said the Greek authorities had been alerted repeatedly many hours before the boat capsized and that there was insufficient rescue capacity.
According to a report by WDR citing migrants’ testimonies, attempts were made to tow the endangered vessel, but in the process the boat began to sway and sank. Similar testimonies by survivors appeared in Greek media.
A report on Greek website news247.gr said the vessel remained in the same spot off the town of Pylos for at least 11 hours before sinking. According to the report, the location on the chart suggests the vessel was not on a “steady course and speed” toward Italy, as the Greek Coast Guard said.
After initially saying that there was no effort to tow the boat, the Hellenic Coast Guard said on Friday that a patrol vessel approached and used a “small buoy” to engage the vessel in a procedure that lasted a few minutes and then was untied by the migrants themselves.
Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou defended the agency. “You cannot carry out a violent diversion on such a vessel with so many people on board, without them wanting to, without any sort of cooperation,” he said.
Alexiou said there is no video of the operation available.
Nine people, most of them from Egypt, were arrested over the capsizing, charged with forming a criminal organization with the purpose of illegal migrant trafficking, causing a shipwreck and endangering life. They will appear before a magistrate on Monday, according to Greek judicial authorities.
“Unfortunately, we have seen this coming because since the start of the year, there was a new modus operandi with these fishing boats leaving from the eastern part of Libya,” the EU’s Johansson told a press conference on Friday. “And we’ve seen an increase of 600 percent of these departures this year,” she added.
Greek Supreme Court Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos has urged absolute secrecy in the investigations being conducted in relation to the shipwreck.
Thousands of people took to the streets in different cities in Greece last week to protest the handling of the incident and the migration policies of Greece and the EU. More protests were planned for Sunday.
Myanmar’s military junta is holding up humanitarian access to some cyclone-hit communities in western Rakhine state after Cyclone Mocha devastated the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in the poorest parts of the country.
United Nations agencies said Thursday they were still negotiating access to parts of the state four days after Mocha slammed into Myanmar’s coast on Sunday as one of the strongest storms ever to hit the country.
Hundreds of people are feared to have died and thousands more are in urgent need of shelter, clean water, food and health care as a clearer picture of the devastation is beginning to emerge.
While rescue groups have warned of “a large scale loss of life,” the exact number of casualties is hard to know due to flooding, blocked roads, and downed communications.
Widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure has been reported throughout Rakhine, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Storm damage has hampered efforts to access rural and hard-to-reach areas while pre-existing travel restrictions imposed by the junta have delayed the delivery of vital aid to communities in urgent need.
“Humanitarian actors have made clear that the need to secure travel authorization is impeding their response to the cyclone,” said Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar.
“It seems that many agencies haven’t even been able to conduct needs assessments, let alone deliver aid, because SAC (junta) officials have not granted travel authorization. This is extremely worrying.”
The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) said it was still waiting for access to be granted by the junta to reach communities in Rakhine state in order to “start coordinated field missions to gauge the full scope of the humanitarian situation.”
“The bureaucratic access constraints are affecting all partners, including the UN and NGOs,” said Pierre Peron, UN OCHA’s regional public information officer. “To deliver, we will need access to affected people, relaxation of travel authorization requirements and expedited customs clearances for commodities.”
About 5.4 million people in Rakhine and the northeast are estimated to have been in the path of the cyclone, which crashed into the state as an equivalent category 5 hurricane, with winds of over 200 kilometers per hour (195 mph). Of those, more than 3 million people are most vulnerable, according to UN OCHA in its latest update.
The priority is to assess the damage in Kyauktaw, Maungdaw, Pauktaw, Ponnagyun, Rathedaung and Sittwe townships, it said.
“The road between Yangon and Sittwe has now reopened, potentially providing a transport route for much-needed supplies, if approved. It is also hoped the Sittwe airport will reopen on Thursday,” UN OCHA said.
Another roadblock to relief efforts is a severe lack of funding, with a $764 million humanitarian response plan less than 10% funded.
“Colleagues simply will not be able to respond to these additional needs from the cyclone and continue our existing response across the country without more financial support from donors,” said UN OCHA’s Peron.
Medecins Sans Frontieres told CNN it had a number of travel authorizations already in place for staff for the month of May, “which has allowed us to be fully operational so far and focus on life-saving activities in areas most affected.”
“Travel within Rakhine state is restricted with the exception of Sittwe, the state capital. Permission is always necessary. All aid agencies are required to apply for travel authorizations to implement activities one month prior to travel,” said Paul Brockmann, MSF’s operations manager for Myanmar.
Brockmann said the scale of the medical humanitarian needs created by the cyclone are “enormous” and fast approvals of import permits and travel authorizations is “of life-saving importance, considering that 17 townships have been declared disaster zones by the authorities.”
“The needs are widespread and beyond the capacity of any one organization to respond to,” he said.
Concerns are high because Rakhine is a largely impoverished and isolated state, which in recent years has been the site of widespread political violence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the state due to the protracted conflict, many of them members of the stateless Rohingya minority group, long persecuted in Myanmar.
Rohingya in Rakhine are mostly confined to camps akin to open air prisons, where authorities place strict controls on their movement, as well as access to schooling and health care.
Aung Saw Hein, a resident of a displacement camp in the Rakhine capital Sittwe, told CNN the storm has “made us refugees again.”
“We have been refugees for almost 11 years now… We are not able to access health care, not able to take a rest… we are not able to support our family members with basic needs like food,” he said. “And now this storm completely destroyed our life and brought us on the road again.”
Myanmar authorities have a long history of impeding access to aid for vulnerable communities.
In the wake of a brutal and bloody military campaign that forced 740,000 people to flee to neighboring Bangladesh from 2017, aid activities in the north of the state were suspended and authorities denied humanitarian actors access to communities in need, mostly the Rohingya population, according to aid groups.
Following the 2021 military coup, the junta and its security forces imposed new travel restrictions on humanitarian workers, blocked access roads and aid convoys, and destroyed non-military supplies, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.
Rohingya adviser to Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government Aung Kyaw Moe tweeted the junta is “blocking aid agencies in Rakhine” and “must not play the same game” as a previous junta administration did in 2008, when after Cyclone Nargis it prevented international disaster relief teams and supplies from reaching those in need. An estimated 140,000 people died.
“This is their basic MO,” said UN Special Rapporteur Andrews.
“In Rakhine state, in addition to access challenges, the restrictions on freedom of movement imposed on the Rohingya have further impaired their ability to access aid and services, including medical treatment.”
In a statement, the IFRC said “access in Rakhine and the northwest remains heavily restricted” but the Myanmar Red Cross has a “presence in every affected township through its branches and volunteers.”
A spokesperson for Partners Relief & Development, which has been working in the camps since the initial violence in mid 2012, said they have had few restrictions on their activity during that time and have a “strong local network carrying out our relief efforts.”
However, “access has been much more difficult in the past three years and the current government restrictions are now making it more complicated to reach the affected areas,” the spokesperson said.
“Our hope is that unimpeded access is provided and that the local authorities will not only facilitate access for aid but also contribute assistance and treat the Rohingya with care and dignity.”
CNN has reached out to Myanmar’s military junta for comment on the restrictions to access and aid in Rakhine following the cyclone.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing has been quoted by state media Global New Light of Myanmar as saying “relief teams must be sent to the storm-affected areas to carry out rescue and relief tasks as well as rehabilitation.”
State media showed Min Aung Hlaing visiting cyclone-affected areas in Bagan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site famed for its ancient temples. It also carried reports of the junta’s deputy prime minister Adm. Tin Aung San visiting towns and villages around Sittwe to oversee the delivery of water tanks, food supplies, and cash assistance.
ATHENS — The biggest crime in Greece? The state of the police force.
That’s according to opposition politicians, who are putting security and law enforcement center-stage ahead of this month’s national election.
Syriza, the leftist main opposition party, accuses the conservative New Democracy, which is hoping for another term in office after the May 21 vote, of allowing the police to become run by organized crime gangs. The conservative government maintains a lead in the polls, although a second round will likely be needed and is penciled in for July 2.
“The Greek police are collaborating with the crime instead of fighting crime,” Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras said, adding that the “Greek mafia is in the police.”
For sure, Greek police have been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons of late, thanks to the alleged involvement of police officials in mafia gangs profiting from illegal brothels and casinos; the murder of a 16-year-old Roma boy during a police chase; an alleged rape in a central Athens police department; and complaints of police brutality.
The Greek police force has a long history of corruption and excessive use of force but since New Democracy was elected in 2019 — at least in part on a law-and-order platform — complaints have soared.
In recent protests following a deadly train crash, police were accused of using unjustified violence during peaceful rallies, with several videos exposing the brutality. In one case, police officers sped toward a group of peaceful protestors on motorcycles and threw firecrackers at their feet. Prosecutors have ordered an investigation after a police tow truck drove at high speed into dumpsters being wheeled into the middle of a street by protesters.
The chief of police, Konstantinos Skoumas, was replaced in March. In an open letter, Skoumas defended his record and blamed politicians for forcing him out, saying he wouldn’t be “anyone’s scapegoat,” and arguing that his actions “caused strong resentment in certain centers of power, which, as a result, led to the violent termination of my term of office.”
The opposition blames both the police and the interior ministry that oversees it. “Impunity, the cultivation of an omertà mentality, the lack of accountability, are unfortunately characteristic of the way the Greek police operates, with the tolerance, if not the complicity, of the ministry,” said Giorgos Kaminis of the socialist Pasok party.
Minister of Civil Protection Takis Theodorikakos hit back, calling Syriza’s accusations “slanderous” and “nationally damaging,” as they could potentially scare away tourists.
“Our daily concern in practice is the safety of citizens, which is why we put an end to the lawlessness and delinquency,” he said on a recent visit to a police station. “This is why in 2022 the Greek police arrested 7,000 illegal migrants in the Attica [region that includes Athens], and now we are placing 600 new special guards at the Attica police stations,” Theodorikakos said, adding that Greece is a safe country.
Government spokesman Akis Skertsos said on Monday that there has been a reduction in all medium and low crime rates during the government’s term. Comparing January to August of 2019 to the same period in 2022 there has been a 15 percent reduction in thefts and 35 percent reduction in robberies.
Complaints on the rise
In 2022, preliminary data from the Greek Ombudsman showed a 50 percent rise in citizens’ complaints against the police compared to 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, and a 14 percent rise in incidents of racially motivated police actions.
“The tone set by the political as well as the natural, operational leadership of the security forces undoubtedly plays a vital role” in these increases, Greek Ombudsman Andreas Pottakis told POLITICO. Pottakis said the government’s attitude toward the police was “overly supportive” and could “be misinterpreted” by officers, making them think they have “carte blanche” to do whatever they want.
One of the government’s first tasks after taking office four years ago was to revive a police motorcycle unit that had been disbanded under the previous Syriza government over human rights violations. Many of the 1,500 recruits were drafted from the ranks of military special forces, bypassing the police academy.
New Democracy’s efforts to establish the first university police force in Europe also failed. Α special unit with 1,000 officers was set up in September but still hasn’t set foot on campuses. The idea is so unpopular that on the rare occasions officers from the unit have ventured near universities, they have been accompanied by riot police. Some 600 officers meant for the uni police have already been transferred to other departments, the police confirmed.
Last month, an officer fired his gun into the air outside Athens University of Economics and Business in the center of the capital during clashes with hooded, masked youths.
Theodorikakos, the interior minister, said such incidents happened because, in the pre-election period, some people want to “blow up the political climate.” He added that some people “even want him dead,” a comment that was heavily criticized by the opposition.
“Let’s stop playing games at the expense of the seriousness of the issues, as [Prime Minister Kyriakos] Mitsotakis did with the university police,” said Pasok leader Nikos Androulakis. “He made a body which was paid for by the Greek taxpayers, did nothing of substance, and instead of apologizing he continues doing the same.”
Abuses of power
Police have also been accused of resorting to violence and intimidation to hamper journalists covering demonstrations and the refugee crisis on the country’s islands.
“We have cases of police officers arresting and even stripping lawyers and journalists off their clothes or humiliating them even though their professional identity is made known,” Pottakis, the ombudsman, said. “Young people are mainly targeted. The age element seems to act as an encouragement.”
Last December a 16-year-old Roma boy died after being shot in the head by police chasing him after he fled a petrol station allegedly without paying for €20 of fuel.
A 19-year-old girl reported she had been raped in a station by two policemen who filmed their actions in the main central police department last year. The officers involved said the sex was consensual. They have been suspended pending an investigation.
“We are heading from one fiasco to another,” said Syriza MP Christos Spirtzis. “Where are the internal investigations that have been conducted? There is no information, no one has been punished.”
Such investigations have, however, been launched. In January, Supreme Court prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos and Interior Minister Theodorikakos ordered an investigation into the relationship between senior police officials and members of the mafia, after leaked conversations showed gang leaders negotiating with officers about continuing their activities undisturbed.
Posters of the communist party in Thessaloniki | Sakis Mitrolodis/AFP via Getty Images
This was not the first report linking the police with organized crime.
Active and retired police officers stand accused, together with mafia members, of widespread corruption, with the criminal organization alleged to be running a protection racket involving 900 businesses — from clubs to brothels and casinos — with a turnover of at least €1 million per month.
Investigative website Reporters United revealed that one official implicated in the racket was promoted to director of the Attica Security Department, one of the most important positions in the fight against organized crime. Police later said they weren’t aware of the allegations against the officer.
“Citizens’ trust relationship with the police is broken when those who break their oath are not punished,” the ombudsman said.
Aid agencies in Bangladesh and Myanmar say they are bracing for disaster and have launched a massive emergency plan as a powerful cyclone barrels toward millions of vulnerable people.
Since forming in the Bay of Bengal early Thursday, tropical Cyclone Mocha has intensified to a the equivalent of a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane, with sustained winds of 259 kilometers per hour (161 mph) and gusts of up to 315 kph (195 mph).
The storm is moving north at 20 kph (12 mph), according to the latest update from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center on Sunday.
Mocha is expected to make landfall Sunday afternoon local time (early Sunday morning ET), likely across Rakhine State in Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, host to the world’s largest refugee camp.
Outer bands are already impacting Myanmar and Bangladesh bringing rain and strong winds to the region. Conditions are expected to deteriorate further leading up to landfall, which brings the threats of flooding and landslides.
Disaster response teams and more than 3,000 local volunteers who have been trained in disaster preparedness and first aid have been put on standby in the camps, and a national cyclone early warning system is in place, according to Sanjeev Kafley, Head of Delegation of the IFRC Bangladesh Delegation.
Kafley said there are 7,500 emergency shelter kits, 4,000 hygiene kits and 2,000 water containers ready to be distributed.
In addition, mobile health teams and dozens of ambulances are ready to respond to refugees and Bangladeshis in need, with specially trained teams on stand by to help the elderly, children and the disabled, Arjun Jain, UN Principal Coordinator for the Rohingya Refugee Response in Bangladesh, told CNN.
“We expect this cyclone to have a more severe impact than any other natural disaster they have faced in the past five years,” said Jain. “At this stage, we just don’t know where the cyclone will make landfall and with what intensity. So we are hoping for the best but are preparing for the worst.”
Evacuations of people in low-lying areas or those with serious medical conditions had begun, he said.
In Myanmar, residents in coastal areas of Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region have started to evacuate and seek shelter at schools and monasteries.
Hundreds of Red Cross volunteers are on standby and the agency is relocating vulnerable people and raising awareness of the storm in villages and townships, the IFRC’s Kafley said.
The last storm to make landfall with a similar strength was Tropical Cyclone Giri back in October 2010. It made landfall as a high-end Category 4 equivalent storm with maximum winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
Giri caused over 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu was destroyed. According to the United Nations, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in Rakhine state during the storm.
About 1 million members of the stateless Rohingya community, who fled persecution in nearby Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017, are living in the sprawling and overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar.
Most live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.
Jain said the shelters can only withstand wind speeds of 40 kph (24 mph) and he expects winds from Cyclone Mocha to exceed that.
“Low lying areas of the camps are likely to flood rapidly, destroying shelters, facilities such as learning centers, as well as infrastructure such as bridges that have been constructed with bamboo,” he said.
The cyclone adds to an already disastrous year for the Rohingya, and without more funds from the international community, Jain said they won’t have enough to rebuild.
“They faced a 17% cut in their food rations earlier this year due to funding cuts and we expect a further cut in their rations in the coming months. 16,000 refugees lost their home in a devastating fire in March. And now they must deal with the cyclone. Unfortunately, we don’t even have the funds to help refugees rebuild their homes and facilities if the devastation is severe,” he said.
There are also concerns for 30,000 Rohingya refugees housed on an isolated and flood-prone island facility in the Bay of Bengal, called Bhasan Char. The UN refugee agency said volunteers and medical teams are on standby and cyclone shelters and food provisions are available for those living on the island.
In Myanmar, about 6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Rakhine state and across the northwest, with 1.2 million displaced, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
While scientists are still trying to understand ways climate change is affecting cyclones, a slew of research has linked human-caused global warming to more potent and destructive cyclones.
Tropical cyclones (also known as hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms depending on ocean basin and intensity), feed off ocean heat. They need temperatures of at least around 27 degrees Celsius (80 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit) to form, and the warmer the ocean, the more moisture they can take up.
The waters in the Bay of Bengal are currently around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit Fahrenheit), about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than average for May.
As the climate crisis pushes up the temperatures of oceans – which absorb around 90% of the world’s excess heat – it provides ideal conditions for cyclones to gain strength.
Warmer oceans also increase the chances of cyclones rapidly intensifying, according to recent research.
Climate-change fueled sea-level rise adds to the risks, worsening storm surges from tropical cyclones and allowing them to travel further inland.
Bangladesh and Myanmar are particularly threatened because they are low-lying, as well as being home to some of the world’s poorest people.
A tropical cyclone is strengthening in the Bay of Bengal and is on course to hit western Myanmar and Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar, where around 1 million people live in flimsy shelters in what many consider to be the world’s largest refugee camp.
Cyclone Mocha is the first to form in the Bay this year and is expected to strengthen further before making landfall on Sunday, likely in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, near the border with Bangladesh.
According to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Mocha strengthened Friday into the equivalent of a category 1 Atlantic hurricane and is moving north at 11 kilometers per hour (7 miles per hour).
The storm’s winds could peak at 220 kph (137 mph) – equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane – just before making landfall on Sunday morning, the agency said.
India’s Meteorological Department said Friday Mocha had intensified into a very severe cyclonic storm and warned fishermen and trawlers against sailing far into the Bay over the coming days.
The agency forecast a storm surge of up to 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) was likely to inundate low-lying coastal areas in the path of the cyclone at the time of landfall.
In Bangladesh, that includes Cox’s Bazar, home to members of the stateless Rohingya community who fled persecution in nearby Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017. Many live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.
There are also concerns for hundreds of Rohingya refugees housed on an isolated and flood-prone island facility in the Bay of Bengal, called Bhasan Char.
Ahead of Mocha’s expected landfall, aid agencies are ramping up their emergency preparedness and response with local and refugee communities.
The UN refugee agency in Bangladesh said in a tweet that “emergency preparations in the camps and on Bhasan Char are underway” in coordination with the government and local aid agencies.
“In preparation of cyclones, hundreds of Rohingya refugee volunteers have been trained on identifying risks, informing their communities, evacuating people when needed and responding after disaster strikes,” the UNHCR said in a tweet.
In neighboring Myanmar, residents in coastal areas of Rakhine state and Ayeyarwady region have started to evacuate their homes and seek shelter ahead of the cyclone’s expected landfall, according to local independent media Myanmar Now.
The ruling Myanmar junta has issued cyclone warnings and claimed to be taking precautionary measures such as readying disaster management committees to respond to a potential disaster, according to state media Global New Light of Myanmar.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said widespread flooding, landslides and high wind gusts are expected around the area of landfall and across Myanmar’s interior.
The last named tropical cyclone to make landfall in Myanmar was Maarutha in April, 2017. Though Maarutha was the equivalent of a tropical storm at landfall, with maximum winds of 92 kph (58 mph), it brought heavy rains and damaged nearly 100 homes.
In October 2010, Tropical Cyclone Giri was the last storm to make landfall with hurricane-force winds. It made landfall as a high-end Category 4 equivalent storm with maximum winds of 250 kph (155 mph).
Giri caused over 150 fatalities and roughly 70% of the city of Kyaukphyu, in Rakhine state, was destroyed. According to the United Nations, roughly 15,000 homes were destroyed in the state during the storm.
The worst natural disaster to hit Myanmar was Cyclone Nargis in May 2008, killing 140,000 people, severely affecting 2.4 million and leaving 800,000 displaced, aid agencies said.
BRUSSELS — China and other powerful countries need to step up to help steer the world away from a potentially “catastrophic” hunger crisis this year, the new head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.
Cindy McCain, an American diplomat and the widow of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, also told POLITICO that the EU and U.S. should see world hunger as a national security issue due to its impact on migration. She furthermore accused Russia of using hunger as a “weapon of war” by hindering exports of Ukrainian grain.
McCain, formerly the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, took the helm of the WFP on April 5 and begins her five-year term at a time of increasing world hunger. The number of people facing food insecurity around the world rose to a record 345 million at the end of last year, up from 282 million in 2021, according to the WFP’s figures, as Russia’s war in Ukraine deepened a food crisis driven by climate change, COVID-19 and other conflicts.
This year could be worse still, McCain warned, with the Horn of Africa experiencing its worst drought in 40 years and Haiti facing a sharp rise in food insecurity, among other factors. “2023 is going to be catastrophic if we don’t get to work and raise the money that we need,” she said. “We need a hell of a lot more than we used to.”
Non-Western countries, which have traditionally contributed much less to the WFP, need to step up to meet the shortfall, McCain said, pointing specifically to China and oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. China contributed just $11 million to WFP funds last year, compared to $7.2 billion donated by the U.S.
“There are some countries that have just basically not participated or participated in a very low fashion. I’d like to encourage our Middle Eastern friends to step up to the plate a little more; I’d like to encourage China to step up to the plate a little more,” said McCain. “Every region, every country needs to step up funding.”
Her entreaty may fall on deaf ears, however, given rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. The WFP’s last six executive directors have been American, dating back to 1992, and Beijing may prefer to distribute aid through its own channels. Last summer, for example, China shipped food aid directly to the Horn of Africa following a drought there.
National security
Countries hesitant to throw more money into food aid should think about the alternative, McCain said, particularly those in Europe that are likely to bear the brunt of any new wave of migration from Africa and the Middle East.
“Food security is a national security issue,” she said. “No refugee wants to leave their home country, but they’re forced to because they don’t have enough food, and they can’t feed their families. So it comes down to if you want a stable world, food is a major player in this.”
The WFP is already having to make brutal decisions despite raking in a record $14.2 billion last year — more than double what it raised in 2017. In February, for instance, it said a funding shortfall was forcing it to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.
The problem is compounded by surging costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which sent already-high food prices soaring further, as grain and oilseed exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports plunged from more than 5 million metric tons a month to zero.
A U.N.-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian grain exports to pass through Russia’s blockades in the Black Sea has brought some reprieve, but Moscow’s repeated threats to withdraw from the agreement have kept prices volatile.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
The deal, initially brokered in July last year, was extended for 120 days last month; Russia, however, agreed to extend its side of the Black Sea grain initiative only for 60 days. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov threatened, once again, to halt Moscow’s participation in the initiative unless obstacles to its own fertilizer and food exports are addressed.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions — those targeting Russia’s fertilizer oligarchs and its main agricultural bank, as well as others excluding Russian banks from the international SWIFT payments system — are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South.
Ukraine and its Western allies have countered that Russia is deliberately holding up inspections for ships heading to and from its Black Sea ports, creating a backlog of Ukraine-bound vessels off the Turkish coast and inflating prices.
These delayed food cargoes are hindering the WFP’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises, said McCain, who did not hold back on the issue.
“Let’s be very clear, there are no sanctions on [Russian] fertilizer,” she said. “It is not sanctioned and never has been sanctioned.”
Russia is “using hunger as a weapon of war,” said McCain. “it’s unconscionable that a country would do that — any country, not just Russia.”
Ukraine’s farmers played an iconic role in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, towing away abandoned enemy tanks with their tractors.
Now, though, their prodigious grain output is causing some of Ukraine’s staunchest allies to waver, as disrupted shipments are redirected onto neighboring markets.
The most striking is Poland, which has played a leading role so far in supporting Ukraine, acting as the main transit hub for Western weaponry and sending plenty of its own. But grain shipments in the other direction have irked Polish farmers who are being undercut — just months before a national election where the rural vote will be crucial.
Diplomats are floundering. After a planned Friday meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian agriculture ministers was postponed, the Polish government on Saturday announced a ban on imports of farm products from Ukraine. Hungary late Saturday said it would do the same.
Ukraine is among the world’s top exporters of wheat and other grains, which are ordinarily shipped to markets as distant as Egypt and Pakistan. Russia’s invasion last year disrupted the main Black Sea export route, and a United Nations-brokered deal to lift the blockade has been only partially effective. In consequence, Ukrainian produce has been diverted to bordering EU countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
At first, those governments supported EU plans to shift the surplus grain. But instead of transiting seamlessly onto global markets, the supply glut has depressed prices in Europe. Farmers have risen up in protest, and Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk was forced out earlier this month.
Now, governments’ focus has shifted to restricting Ukrainian imports to protect their own markets. After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw in early April, Polish President Andrzej Duda said resolving the import glut was “a matter of introducing additional restrictions.”
The following day, Poland suspended imports of Ukrainian grain, saying the idea had come from Kyiv. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after an emergency cabinet meeting, said the import ban would cover grain and certain other farm products and would include products intended for other countries. A few hours later, the Hungarian government announced similar measures. Both countries said the bans would last until the end of June.
The European Commission is seeking further information on the import restrictions from Warsaw and Budapest “to be able to assess the measures,” according to a statement on Sunday. “Trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable,” it said.
While the EU’s free-trade agreement with Ukraine prevents governments from introducing tariffs, they still have plenty of tools available to disrupt shipments.
Neighboring countries and nearby Bulgaria have stepped up sanitary checks on Ukrainian grain, arguing they are doing so to protect the health of their own citizens. They have also requested financial support from Brussels and have already received more than €50 million from the EU’s agricultural crisis reserve, with more money on the way.
Restrictions could do further harm to Ukraine’s battered economy, and by extension its war effort. The economy has shrunk by 29.1 percent since the invasion, according to statistics released this month, and agricultural exports are an important source of revenue.
Cracks in the alliance
The trade tensions sit at odds with these countries’ political position on Ukraine, which — with the exception of Hungary — has been strongly supportive. Poland has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, while weapons and ammunition flow in the opposite direction; Romania has helped transport millions of tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki | Omar Marques/Getty Images
Some Western European governments, which had to be goaded by Poland and others into sending heavy weaponry to Kyiv, are quick to point out the change in direction.
“Curious to see that some of these countries are [always] asking for more on sanctions, more on ammunition, etc. But when it affects them, they turn to Brussels begging for financial support,” said one diplomat from a Western country, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Some EU countries also oppose the import restrictions for economic reasons. For instance, Spain and the Netherlands are some of the biggest recipients of Ukrainian grain, which they use to supply their livestock industries.
Politically, though, the Central and Eastern European governments have limited room for maneuver. Poland and Slovakia are both heading into general elections later this year. Bulgaria has had a caretaker government since last year. Romania’s agriculture minister has faced calls to resign, including from a compatriot former EU agriculture commissioner.
And farmers are a strong constituency. Poland’s right-wing Law & Justice (PiS) party won the last general election in 2019 thanks in large part to rural voters. The Ukrainian grain issue has already cost a Polish agriculture minister his job; the government as a whole will have to tread carefully to avoid the same fate.
Since 2015, when deepening crises across Asia and Africa coupled with the war in Syria resulted in a significant increase in the number of people seeking asylum in Europe, stopping so-called “irregular migration” has been a priority for the European Union.
As more and more people fleeing bloody conflicts, totalitarian regimes, climate change-related catastrophes and extreme poverty started showing up at Europe’s gates, EU member states began to fortify their borders. Electric fences, watchtowers, dog patrol units, helicopters and surveillance drones mushroomed across European frontiers, and the budget of the EU border agency, Frontex, ballooned to more than $800m (754 million euros), making it the best-funded among all EU agencies.
The EU also moved to export its border control strategies and technologies to countries in its neighbourhood, from the western Balkans and Turkey to North Africa and the Sahel. The resulting regional border architecture, designed specifically to keep refugees out of the EU, left almost no safe and legal paths to asylum in member countries, compelling many to embark on dangerous journeys to try and enter Europe without authorisation in the hopes of applying for asylum once they reach their desired final destination.
As a researcher and activist, I spent years tracing refugee journeys and documenting the treatment of asylum seekers at the hands of European border security officials. The worst incidents I documented took place in the borders between Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Many who tried to migrate through these states told me that they have been abused by border security officers and showed me marks of torture, ranging from electric burns to still-bleeding cuts and bruises, on their bodies.
“When the Croatian police caught us as we were trying to enter the country from Bosnia-Herzegovina, they put us all into a very dirty van,” Mazin*, a young journalist from Pakistan, told me. “It was hot and there was not enough oxygen, so many people were vomiting.”
He recounted how the police officers beat him and other asylum seekers before illegally pushing them back into Bosnia without processing them. “They drove us to the Bosnian border, made a line in front of the van, and told us to get out one by one,” Mazin said. “As we passed through, police officers in the line all beat us hard with their batons.”
Many other asylum seekers told me that their experiences with security personnel at those borders had been similar to that of Mazin – experiences marked by cruelty, sexual violence and torture. Thousands of similar testimonies have also been recorded and published by rights groups and international organisations.
But while documenting the violence directed at people migrating across European borders, I also encountered rare stories of humanity and kindness: stories about individual border officers refusing to be violent and resisting illegal “pushbacks”; stories about officers defying their supervisors’ commands in order to help asylum seekers; stories about officers taking personal risks to blow the whistle on their organisation’s illegal practices.
Empathy, kindness and adherence to international law, which means respecting the human rights of all those attempting to cross borders, should be standard in all border security work anywhere in the world. But in the current climate, where migration is being perceived as a threat by many, acting against international refugee law and inflicting violence on those classed as “irregular migrants” became part of the job description for most European border officers. And thus, even the simplest acts of kindness, empathy and humanity towards asylum seekers are rare, and require much courage on the part of officers at Europe’s borders.
“When we were spotted by border officers in Macedonia,” Mustafa from Afghanistan recounted, “one of them saw the conditions we were in, saw how our shoes were broken from weeks of walking, and said to me ‘I will pretend that I did not see you. Walk this direction for five kilometres, and there, you can pass the border without anyone seeing you’.” Mustafa told me this unnamed officer’s kindness helped him complete his long and dangerous migration journey. “This person did not return us like the others. Thanks to him, we managed to cross to Serbia and moved closer to our destination.”
While the officer who helped Mustafa did so simply by looking the other way, others who wanted to support refugees and end illegal border protection practices followed different paths of resistance. For example, in 2019, a police officer in Croatia anonymously reported his border unit to the county’s ombudswoman for abusing refugees. In his complaint, he said that out of fear of losing his job, he personally participated in more than 1,000 illegal pushbacks. He said the pushbacks he participated in were often very violent, and involved beatings and theft. He asked the ombudswoman to take action to stop these illegal practices.
Some refugees talked about individual officers who stopped their colleagues from beating detainees or stealing their money. Others spoke fondly of officers who, even when they were not able to offer any practical help, acknowledged their humanity and showed empathy. Members of one Afghan family, for example, remembered a Croatian officer who cried with them as he led them back towards the Bosnian border. They recalled the officer saying “Please, don’t cry. Sorry. I don’t want to do this, but I must follow the orders.”
Similarly, Hamid from Algeria said a group of officers who spotted him near the Italian border in Croatia showed him kindness and even encouraged him to continue with his efforts to find a haven in Europe. “I was very scared that they were going to beat us as others do,” he told me. “But they took us to a restaurant and bought us warm food. One of them said: ‘Sorry, we cannot let you go because we have orders to return you [to the country you entered Croatia from]. But please, come back and try again.’”
These few uplifting stories of solidarity are important and should be shared – not to humanise the European border regime that is underpinned by extreme brutality, but to show that small acts of compassion, kindness and resistance from inside of the border units are possible and must be encouraged. Individual border officers can make a difference.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The Bangladeshi prime minister on claims of repression of political opponents and the continuing Rohingya refugee crisis.
Bangladesh is governed by none other than its founding father’s daughter, Sheikh Hasina, who has been in office for more than 14 years.
After a large fire burned through the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar on March 5, we ask how she is facing the challenges that have been brought on by the refugee crisis since 2017.
And as Bangladesh prepares for a general election later this year, we ask Hasina about allegations of persecution of opposition members.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina talks to Al Jazeera.
The United Kingdom government has set out details of a new law barring the entry of asylum seekers arriving by unauthorised means, such as in small boats across the English Channel.
Home secretary Suella Braverman admitted on Tuesday that the government had “pushed the boundaries of international law” with a bill dubbed the “Illegal Migration Bill” that will bar asylum claims by anyone who reaches the UK by irregular means, and allow the authorities to deport them “to their home country or a safe third country”.
But the proposed legislation has been lambasted by critics as unworkable and inhumane.
Why is the UK introducing this law?
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made stopping boat arrivals one of his five key priorities after the number of refugees and migrants arriving on the south coast of England soared to more than 45,000 last year, up 500 percent in the last two years, and almost 3,000 have arrived so far this year.
Sunak said the new legislation meant the government will “take back control of our borders, once and for all”, a reference to a slogan of the pro-Brexit campaign that successfully took the UK out of the European Union in 2016.
While the number of applications for asylum in the UK hit a 20-year high of nearly 75,000 in 2022, it is still below the EU average. Germany received more than 240,000 asylum applications last year.
How will the law work?
The legislation will enable the detention of unauthorised arrivals without bail, or judicial review for the first 28 days after arrival.
The legislation will disqualify refugees and migrants from using modern slavery laws to challenge government decisions to remove them in the courts.
Once deported, they will be banned for life from entering the UK, claiming asylum or seeking British citizenship.
Only children, people who are considered too ill to fly, or those at a “real risk of serious and irreversible harm” will be allowed to claim asylum in the UK.
Tens of thousands of people could be held in detention facilities until they are removed to another country.
The UK recently signed a deal with Rwanda to receive some of these people who are deported. But that policy is being challenged in the courts, and so far, no refugee has been flown to the East African country.
How have critics reacted to the proposed law?
The main opposition Labour Party has dismissed the law as “political posturing”, while other critics have underlined several practical and legal challenges to implementing the new law.
The government has said it plans to house people in disused military bases and vacation parks. But there are questions about whether the government has the capacity to keep people detained in these centres.
There are logistical questions about how the UK would be able to remove tens of thousands of people from the country each year, and where they would go.
Rwanda only had one hostel, with a capacity for 100 people, to accept UK arrivals last year, a fraction of those who have arrived in the UK on small boats, and the government has not signed any similar deals with other countries yet.
Turning sick people away from receiving healthcare is not a ‘plan’.
Forcing people into destitution is not a ‘plan’.
Deporting people to a country 4000 miles away is not a ‘plan’.
Refugee groups have said that most of the Channel arrivals are fleeing conflict, persecution or famine in countries such as Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Analysts using Home Office data in 2021 showed a majority of applications for asylum made by people who arrived by boats were granted in the UK.
The Refugee Council charity said the new plans are “unworkable, costly and won’t stop the boats”.
4 false statements from @SuellaBraverman 1) Refugees dont have to claim asylum in the 1st so-called safe country 2) Being an “adult male” does not mean you can’t be a refugee 3) The UK’s asylum laws aren’t “generous” 4) Seeking asylum is not a crime. #saferoutes don’t exist
— Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex & London (@RAMFELCharity) March 7, 2023
The charity said the law would leave refugees “locked up in a state of misery” and compared the government’s approach to “authoritarian nations”, such as Russia, which have walked away from international human rights treaties.
🧵 The Government’s new asylum bill ignores the fundamental point that most of the people in small boats are men, women and children escaping terror and bloodshed from countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. (1/4)
Some lawyers have said barring unauthorised people arriving in the UK from claiming asylum would be incompatible with the United Nations Refugee Convention, of which the country is a signatory. This is likely to lead to legal challenges, which could delay removals.
A massive fire has ripped through a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh’s southern district of Cox’s Bazar on Sunday, leaving around 12,000 people homeless, local Superintendent of Police Mohammad Mahfuzul Islam told CNN.
Sweeping through the Kutupalong refugee camp in the afternoon, the blaze gutted around 2,000 huts before it was brought under control, Islam said.
No casualties have been reported so far, he said, adding that the cause of the fire is not yet determined but an investigation is under way.
Authorities are working with international and local humanitarian organizations to provide food and temporary shelters to those who have lost homes, he added.
“We will ensure no one sleeps under the open sky. Everyone will get a temporary shelter,” Islam said, with community centers and mosques providing housing to those affected by the fire.
Ninety facilities including hospitals and learning centers were burnt down, the Bangladesh branch of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR tweeted on Sunday.
“Rohingya refugee volunteers trained on firefighting & local fire services have controlled the fire,” it added in another tweet.
The UN’s International Organization of Migration (IOM) in Bangladesh said on social media that “they are assessing the needs of people to provide support.”
Sunday’s fire marks one of the largest of several fires that have plagued the camp in recent years.
An estimated 1 million members of the stateless Muslim minority Rohingya live in what many consider to be among the world’s largest refugee camps after fleeing a brutal campaign of killing and arson by the Myanmar military.
Federal agency investigates people smugglers after two recent incidents of Pakistanis drowning on their way to Europe.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistani authorities have launched an investigation to find alleged traffickers after a boat carrying nearly 200 people – 20 of them Pakistanis – drowned near the southern Italian coast, killing at least 63.
Sixteen Pakistanis survived the shipwreck, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif tweeted on Monday, while four others are still missing. A search operation is continuing.
On Tuesday, an official of Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) told Al Jazeera there had been two incidents of Pakistani refugees drowning in recent weeks, the other being off Libya’s coast nearly a week ago.
The FIA official, on condition of anonymity, said the agency had formed several teams of investigators following the incidents and expected to arrest some suspected traffickers.
“We have met some families and conducted our own investigation into criminal elements involved in trafficking, and will hopefully make some arrests soon,” he said.
The reports of the drowning of over two dozen Pakistanis in a boat tragedy in Italy are deeply concerning & worrisome. I have directed Foreign Office to ascertain facts as early as possible & take the nation into confidence.
At least 63 people, including 12 children, died after the wooden boat that left Turkey last week crashed early on Sunday against rocks near Steccato di Cutro, a resort on the eastern coast of Italy’s Calabria region.
In a tweet on Monday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said their embassy official in Italy met the 16 Pakistanis rescued from the capsized vessel.
“They seemed [to be] in good physical condition. According to them, there were 20 Pakistanis on the ship. Embassy is in close contact with Italian authorities to verify status of the four missing Pakistanis,” said the tweet.
Muhammed Waseem, a resident of Gujar Khan, a small city nearly 60km (37 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, told Al Jazeera his nephew Asad Naeem was among the Pakistanis who drowned in the Libya incident.
“We submitted an application to the foreign office on Monday but so far have not heard back anything from the officials,” he said.
Waseem said the family last heard from his nephew on February 22 when he boarded a ship in Libya bound for Italy.
“He called us and said he has boarded a big ship and there is nothing to worry about. But two days later, we got a call from a number in Libya, informing us of his death,” he said.
“We are looking for some help from the authorities to bring his body back to Pakistan,” he added.
Shamima Begum, who left the United Kingdom to join ISIS at the age of 15, has lost her appeal against the decision to revoke her British citizenship.
Judge Robert Jay gave the decision on Wednesday following a five-day hearing in November, during which her lawyers argued the UK Home Office had a duty to investigate whether she was a victim of trafficking before removing her citizenship.
The ruling does not determine if Begum can return to Britain, but whether the removal of her citizenship was lawful.
Begum, now 23 and living in a camp in northern Syria, flew to the country in 2015 with two school friends to join the ISIS terror group. In February 2019, she re-emerged and made international headlines as an “ISIS bride” after pleading with the UK government to be allowed to return to her home country for the birth of her son.
Family of ISIS victim says YouTube algorithm is liable. What will the Supreme Court say?
02:30
– Source:
CNN Business
Then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid removed her British citizenship on February 19, 2019, and Begum’s newborn son died in a Syrian refugee camp the following month. She told UK media she had two other children prior to that baby, who also died in Syria during infancy.
Begum’s lawyers criticized Wednesday’s ruling as a “lost opportunity to put into reverse a profound mistake and a continuing injustice.”
“The outcome is that there is now no protection for a British child trafficked out of the UK if the home secretary invokes national security,” Gareth Pierce and Daniel Furner, of Birnberg Pierce Solicitors, said in a statement seen by UK news agency PA Media.
“Begum remains in unlawful, arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in a Syrian camp. Every possible avenue to challenge this decision will be urgently pursued,” it continued.
Rights group Amnesty International described the ruling as a “very disappointing decision.”
“The power to banish a citizen like this simply shouldn’t exist in the modern world, not least when we’re talking about a person who was seriously exploited as a child,” Steve Valdez-Symonds, the group’s UK refugee and migrant rights director, said in a statement.
“Along with thousands of others, including large numbers of women and children, this young British woman is now trapped in a dangerous refugee camp in a war-torn country and left largely at the mercy of gangs and armed groups.”
“The home secretary shouldn’t be in the business of exiling British citizens by stripping them of their citizenship,” Valdez-Symonds said.
Javid, the home secretary who removed Begum’s British citizenship, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling, tweeted that it “upheld my decision to remove an individual’s citizenship on national security grounds.”
“This is a complex case but home secretaries should have the power to prevent anyone entering our country who is assessed to pose a threat to it.” Javid added.
Begum has made several public appeals as she fought against the government’s decision, most recently appearing in BBC documentary The Shamima Begum Story and a 10-part BBC podcast series.
In the podcast series she insisted that she is “not a bad person.” While accepting that the British public viewed her as a “danger” and a “risk,” Begum blamed this on her media portrayal.
She challenged the UK government’s decision to revoke her citizenship but, in June 2019, the government refused her application to be allowed to enter the country to pursue her appeal.
In 2020, the UK Court of Appeal ruled Begum should be granted leave to enter the country because otherwise, it would not be “a fair and effective hearing.”
The following year, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, arguing that the Court of Appeal made four errors when it ruled that Begum should be allowed to return to the UK to carry out her appeal.
Shamima Begum loses legal bid to return home to appeal citizenship revocation (February 2021)
Begum was 15 when she flew out of Gatwick Airport with two classmates and traveled to Syria.
The teenagers, all from the Bethnal Green Academy in east London, were to join another classmate who had made the same journey months earlier.
While in Syria, Begum married an ISIS fighter and spent several years living in Raqqa. Begum then reappeared in al-Hawl, a Syrian refugee camp of 39,000 people, in 2019.
With ISIS fall, Europe faces returnees dilemma (February 2019)
Speaking from the camp before giving birth, Begum told UK newspaper The Times that she wanted to come home to have her child. She said she had already had two other children who died in infancy from malnutrition and illness.
She gave birth to her son, Jarrah, in al-Hawl in February of that year. The baby’s health quickly deteriorated, and he passed away after being transferred from the camp to the main hospital in al-Hasakah City.
In response to that news, a British government spokesperson told CNN at the time that “the death of any child is tragic and deeply distressing for the family.”
But the spokesperson added the UK Foreign Office “has consistently advised against travel to Syria” since 2011.
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls rolled in, as Russian tanks barrelled into Ukraine and missiles pierced the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled overhead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
Clea Caulcutt and Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
Mohammed Abu al-Hayja was sleeping alongside his wife and two young daughters last month when loud gunfire woke them up. Minutes later, Israeli soldiers rammed down his door and burst through his apartment.
“They spread through the house in seconds,” 29-year-old al-Hayja told CNN. “Two soldiers came up to me, told me to get up, one told me, ‘Leave your daughter with her mother,’ and then he took me and cuffed my hands behind my back.”
“The security forces operated to apprehend a terror squad belonging to the Islamic Jihad terror organization,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), the Israeli Security Agency and the Israel Border Police said in a joint statement, hours after the raid.
Ten Palestinians were killed in Jenin, including an elderly woman, according to Palestinian officials. Another Palestinian was killed in what Israel Police called a “violent disturbance” near Jerusalem hours later, making it the deadliest day for Palestinians in the West Bank in over a year, according to CNN records. As violence spiraled in the region, at least seven people were killed and three injured in a shooting near a synagogue in Jerusalem a day later according to Israeli police.
In Jenin, Al-Hayja recalls the events of January 26 clearly, explaining that after being handcuffed an Israeli soldier took him to the bathroom and made him kneel down, before wrapping a towel around his head.
Restrained, blindfolded and stuck in his bathroom, al-Hayja then started hearing gunfire from inside his apartment. “I could hear it, and if I concentrated I could hear one of the soldiers talking to my wife,” he says.
Al-Hayja says he was able to convince the soldiers to let him go to his wife. Still blindfolded, he crawled to his living room, as bullets flew above him.
Israeli soldiers had removed one of his couches and set up a firing position by the window to provide cover for their units engaging Palestinian gunmen nearby. Using apartments like al-Hayja’s to provide cover fire is “standard operating procedure,” a spokesman for the Israeli military told CNN.
Representatives of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) visited Jenin in the days after the incident and spoke to al-Hayja and his family. “Their children were noticeably traumatized,” Adam Bouloukos, director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank told CNN. “This kind of invasion violates not only international law but common decency.”
As Israeli soldiers fired, the Palestinian gunmen fired back, holes from their bullets dotting the family home’s doors and walls. Al-Hayja showed CNN a bag of spent bullet casings he says the Israeli soldiers left behind. “They fired a crazy number of bullets,” he added.
While they did, al-Hayja and his wife lay on the floor clutching their young daughters for more than three hours. Their oldest daughter is 2-and-a-half, the youngest 18-months-old. “Honestly, I thought I had maybe 1% chance of making it out alive,” he said.
Moments later an explosion rocked the apartment. He later found out that Israeli soldiers had mounted a second firing position in his bedroom.
They sawed off the window bars and fired a rocket at the building the gunmen were in, with scorch marks smudging al-Hayja’s ceiling.
“I said to myself, we are going to die,” he said.
From atop al-Hayja’s building, the sprawling Jenin refugee camp spreads toward the horizon and up the hills. What were once temporary tents, is now a more permanent-looking slum of sandstone houses, cobbled on top of each other.
Down below, lies the building targeted by Israeli soldiers. The structure was so damaged after the raid that local officials decided it was safer to bulldoze it down. On the rubble, people have placed banners with the faces of some of those killed – “martyrs,” they read – and a lone Palestinian flag.
While this operation was one of the deadliest in years, for residents here, such Israeli incursions occur all too often. Posters remembering other people killed in confrontations with Israeli security forces over the years line walls across the neighborhood.
The IDF says these raids are targeted, aimed at terrorists, and that they open fire when those they are searching for fire at them.
But people in Jenin see it differently. “The Israelis raid the camp and they fire at anything that moves,” paramedic Abdel-Rahman Macharqa told CNN.
The 31-year-old has seen multiple gun battles in Jenin and says the situation is becoming increasingly riskier, even for those who save lives, like him.
“They [Israeli soldiers] have fired at me five times,” Macharqa said. “We don’t feel safe, even in uniform.”
“When we say goodbye to our wives and children to come to work, we know we could become martyrs,” he added.
Macharqa witnessed part of the raid in Jenin as it unfolded on January 26. The paramedic tried to help one of the three civilians whom Israeli officials say were killed there, along with seven gunmen.
“They opened fired on him and he was hit three times,” he recalled. Macharqa said he pulled the man away and attempted to resuscitate him, but he died.
“We deserve to live,” Macharqa said. He feels frustrated, not just by Israeli actions, but also what he sees as the passive attitude and double standards of the international community.
“Israelis claim he is a terrorist, but Ukrainians, when they defend themselves from the Russian invasion is that terrorism?,” he asked.
On the day of the raid, Ziad Miri’ee peaked out of his door after he heard gunfire. He saw an Israeli soldier firing through his car to hit a young man from his neighborhood.
“Our neighbors over there tried to pull him out (of the street),” he said. “The kid died.”
Miri’ee, 63, says he was one of the Jenin camp’s oldest residents, but he also believes the situation has been getting worse.
“In 2002, when they raided the camp and bulldozed the houses it was much easier than the three-and-a-half hours of last week’s raid,” he said. At the time, during the second intifada, Israeli forces occupied the camp, destroying around 400 homes.
“2002 was a child play compared to the incident here last week. We couldn’t step a meter outside the house because the bullets were coming in,” he said.
Miri’ee believes the situation is bound to get even worse, as frustration with the occupation grows, the lack of future on the horizon is driving more and more young people to join the ranks of militant organizations such as the Islamic Jihad.
“Yes, there’s more [fighters] from this generation,” he says. “This generation was born into the war.”
Upstairs from Miri’ee, al-Hayja is still shaken by the traumatic experience. Inside his home there’s no room for bravado, just concern over the safety of his daughters.
“I don’t interfere or get involved in these things, I just go from my work to my house and it all landed on my head,” he said. “You are in your city and you are not safe, you are in your house and you are not safe.”
“You are not safe from this occupier who occupies your land” he added. “You are not safe at all.”
Pope Francis starts a trip on Tuesday to two fragile African nations often forgotten by the world, where protracted conflicts have left millions of refugees and displaced people grappling with hunger.
The Jan. 31-Feb 5 visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan, takes the 86-year-old pope to places where Catholics make up about half of the populations and where the Church is a key player in health and education systems as well as in democracy-building efforts.
The trip was scheduled to take place last July but was postponed because Francis was suffering a flare-up of a chronic knee ailment. He still uses a wheelchair and cane, but his knee has improved significantly.
Both countries are rich in natural resources – DRC in minerals and South Sudan in oil – but beset with poverty and strife.
DRC, which is the second-largest country in Africa and has a population of about 90 million, is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985 when it was known as Zaire.
Francis had planned to visit the eastern city of Goma but that stop was scrapped following the resurgence of fighting between the army and the M23 rebel group in the area where Italy’s ambassador, his bodyguard and driver were killed in an ambush in 2021.
Francis will stay in the capital, Kinshasa, but will meet there with victims of violence from the east.
“Congo is a moral emergency that cannot be ignored,” the Vatican’s ambassador to DRC, Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, told Reuters.
According to the U.N. World Food Programme, 26 million people in the DRC face severe hunger.
The country’s 45 million-strong Catholic Church has a long history of promoting democracy and, as the pope arrives, it is gearing up to monitor elections scheduled for December.
“Our hope for the Congo is that this visit will reinforce the Church’s engagement in support of the electoral process,” said Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican, Christ Trott, who spent many years as a diplomat in Africa.
DRC is getting its first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985 when it still was known as Zaire.
The trip takes on an unprecedented nature on Friday when the pope leaves Kinshasa for South Sudan’s capital, Juba.
That leg is being made with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields.
“Together, as brothers, we will live an ecumenical journey of peace,” Francis told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday address.
The three Churches represent the Christian makeup of the world’s youngest country, which gained independence in 2011 from predominantly Muslim Sudan after decades of conflict and has a population of around 11 million.
“This will be a historic visit,” Welby said. “After centuries of division, leaders of three different parts of (Christianity) are coming together in an unprecedented way.”
Two years after independence, conflict erupted when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir clashed with those loyal to Vice President Riek Machar, who is from a different ethnic group. The bloodshed spiralled into a civil war that killed 400,000 people.
A 2018 deal stopped the worst of the fighting, but parts of the agreement – including the deployment of a re-unified national army – have not yet been implemented.
There are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan and another 2.3 million have fled the country as refugees, according to the United Nations, which has praised the Catholic Church as a “powerful and active force in building peace and reconciliation in conflict-torn regions”.
In one of the most remarkable gestures since his papacy began in 2013, Francis knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan’s previously warring leaders during a retreat at the Vatican in April 2019, urging them not to return to civil war.
Trott, a former ambassador in South Sudan, said he hoped the three Churchmen can convince political leaders to “fulfil the promise of the independence movement”.
The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a new program to allow groups of private citizens to sponsor refugees from around the world to live in the United States.
The program, called the Welcome Corps, was billed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as “the boldest innovation in refugee resettlement in four decades.”
Under the program, groups of at least five individuals can apply to sponsor refugees and help them acclimate to life in the US, with the help of a consortium of non-profit resettlement organizations.
The sponsor groups must raise a minimum of $2,275 per refugee, but they will not be required to provide ongoing financial support to the refugees they sponsor.
That initial amount goes to “provide the initial support for the refugees during their first three months in the country,” a senior State Department official said Thursday, noting that money goes toward things like apartment security deposits, clothing and furniture.
“The goal is for the refugees to become self-reliant as quickly as possible,” the official said.
Julieta Valls Noyes, the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said that the program requires groups of at least five people, rather than one person who might be able to raise the minimum amount, because the work to help the sponsored refugees is “a lot more than what the average American can do” alone.
“It’s not about money. It’s about commitment. It’s about the community. It’s about bringing people together and forming a group so that the refugees have more than one person that they can refer to and can work with,” she said at a State Department briefing Thursday.
“It’s a lot of work involved in sponsoring a refugee – finding schools, helping them find affordable housing, getting their kids signed up for school, helping them find jobs, showing them where the pharmacy is, what bus to take. It’s a lot more than what the average American can do. And so we think that providing a group of five or more Americans is more likely to be successful,” Valls Noyes said.
She said the groups could be “from all walks of life, including community volunteers, faith and civic groups, veterans, diaspora communities, businesses, colleges, universities.”
The senior State Department official noted that “all refugees being supported by private sponsors will be cleared through the same extensive security vetting required for all refugees admitted to the United States.”
The sponsors will be screened, vetted and approved through the consortium of non-profits, which is receiving funding from the State Department. The sponsors will have to provide a detailed “welcome plan” laying out how they plan to receive the refugees and connect them to housing, jobs and schools.
“The consortium will also provide training to the sponsors before they begin their sponsorship,” and will “check in regularly” with the sponsors and refugees, the official said.
“There are many, many checkpoints, many, many fail-safes, vetting, all that is part of this program to prevent any abuses. That said I think we’re really excited about the program; we think it’s going to be really successful,” they said.
Refugee admissions to the US have plummeted in recent years after former President Donald Trump slashed the refugee cap to historic lows. Although the Biden administration has raised the cap to 125,000 for the past two fiscal years, the admissions last year and thus far this year have fallen far short of that.
“In the program’s first year, our goal is to mobilize at least 10,000 Americans to step forward as private sponsors and offer a welcoming hand to at least 5,000 refugees from around the world,” Blinken said in a statement Thursday.
The Welcome Corps program is distinct from other programs unveiled by the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security to allow individuals to sponsor refugees from Ukraine and Venezuela.
“In those programs, sponsors need to show that they can support the parolees financially during a two year parole period. The Welcome Corps, on the other hand, will enable private sponsors to support refugees from all nationalities who are being permanently resettled in the United States … and who ultimately may, and in many cases I am confident, will become US citizens,” the senior State Department official said.
