#Turkish asylum seekers in Germany | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

newstfionline · 4 years ago

Text

Headlines: Saturday, September 26, 2020

Largest California wildfire threatens marijuana-growing area (AP) California’s largest wildfire is threatening a marijuana-growing enclave, and authorities said many of the locals have refused to evacuate and abandon their maturing crops even as weather forecasters predict more hot, dry and windy conditions that could fan flames. The wildfire called the August Complex is nearing the small communities of Post Mountain and Trinity Pines, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) northwest of Sacramento, the Los Angeles Times reported. Law enforcement officers went door to door warning of the encroaching fire danger but could not force residents to evacuate, Trinity County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Nate Trujillo said. “It’s mainly growers,” Trujillo said. “And a lot of them, they don’t want to leave because that is their livelihood.” The area is in the Emerald Triangle, a three-county corner of Northern California that by some estimates is the nation’s largest cannabis-producing region. People familiar with Trinity Pines said the community has up to 40 legal farms, with more than 10 times that number in hidden, illegal growing areas. Growers are wary of leaving the plants vulnerable to flames or thieves. Each farm has crops worth half a million dollars or more and many are within days or weeks of harvest.

Things to avoid during your Zoom session (Reuters) An Argentine lawmaker has resigned after being caught on a live camera caressing his wife before appearing to partially pull down her top and kiss her breast during a virtual session of the country’s lower house of Congress on Thursday. The lower house of deputies said in a statement on Twitter early on Friday that it had voted to accept the resignation of Juan Ameri, a representative from the northern province of Salta in the ruling coalition. Virtual meetings amid the coronavirus pandemic have tripped up lawmakers before. In June, Ireland’s Luke Ming Flanagan appeared to be wearing no trousers as he discussed policy matters with his European Parliament peers.

Queen Elizabeth II to trim costs as COVID-19 hits income (AP) Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and her family are facing a 35 million pound ($45 million) hit from the coronavirus pandemic, partly due to a shortage of tourists, the monarch’s money-manager said Friday. Releasing the royal household’s annual accounts, Keeper of the Privy Purse Michael Stevens said a lack of income from visitors to royal buildings was likely to bring a general funding shortfall of 15 million pounds ($19 million) over three years. He said the impact of the pandemic is also likely to cause a 20 million-pound ($25.4 million) shortfall in a 10-year, 369-million-pound program to replace antiquated heating, plumbing and wiring at Buckingham Palace, the queen’s London home. Stevens said the royal household would not ask for more government money but would “look to manage the impact through our own efforts and efficiencies.”

As Virus Cases Surge in Europe, Hospitalizations Lag. (NYT) In Munich, normally brimming with boisterous crowds for Oktoberfest this month, the authorities just banned gatherings of more than five people. In Marseille, France, all bars and restaurants will be closed next Monday. And in London, where the government spent weeks urging workers to return to the city’s empty skyscrapers, it is now asking them to work from home. Summer ended in Europe this week with a heavy thud amid ominous signs that a spike in coronavirus cases may send another wave of patients into hospitals. But just how imminent is the peril? As they weigh actions to curb a second wave of the virus, European leaders are dealing with a confusing, fast-changing situation, with conflicting evidence on how quickly new cases are translating into hospital admissions—and how severe those cases will end up being. In Spain, where new cases have surged to more than 10,000 a day, hospitals in Madrid are close to capacity and the government said it was preparing to reopen field hospitals in hotels and in the city’s largest exhibition center. Yet in France, which reported 66,000 new cases over the last seven days, hospital admissions and deaths, while also rising, are going up more slowly. There is a similar divergence between infection rates and hospitalizations in Germany and Austria. And in Britain, which reported 6,178 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday—the highest figure since May 1—just 134 patients were admitted to hospitals on Monday, barely a tenth of those admitted in early May.

Pope to UN: Use COVID crisis to come out better, not worse (Washington Post) Pope Francis urged world leaders Friday to use the coronavirus emergency as an opportunity to reform the injustices of the global economy and the “perverse logic” of the nuclear deterrence doctrine, warning that increased isolationist responses to problems “must not prevail.” Francis laid out his appeal for greater involvement and influence of the United Nations in protecting the poor, migrants and the environment in a videotaped speech Friday to the U.N. General Assembly, held mostly virtually this year because of the pandemic. Francis said the world has a choice to make as it emerges from the COVID-19 crisis and addresses the grave economic impact it has had on the planet’s most vulnerable: greater solidarity, dialogue and multilateralism, or self-retreat into greater nationalism, individualism and elitism. “The pandemic has shown us that we cannot live without one another, or worse still, pitted against one another,” he said. “This is why, at this critical juncture, it is our duty to rethink the future of our common home and our common project.”

Migrants accuse Greece of pushing them back out to sea (AP) Shortly after reaching the Greek island of Lesbos, a group of Afghan migrants say, their hopes for a new life in Europe were cut short when Greek authorities rounded them up, mistreated them, shoved them into life rafts and abandoned them at sea, where they were rescued by the Turkish coast guard. Turkey, which hosts about 4 million refugees, accuses Greece of large-scale pushbacks—summary deportations without access to asylum procedures, in violation of international law. Greece, which lies on the EU’s southeastern border and has borne the brunt of migration flows from Turkey, denies the allegations and in turn accuses Ankara of weaponizing migrants. In March, Turkey made good on threats to send migrants to Europe, declaring its borders with the EU open. In what appeared to be a government-organized campaign, thousands headed to the Greek border, leading to scenes of chaos and violence. Turkey’s border with EU member Bulgaria was largely unaffected. Greece shut its frontier and controversially suspended asylum applications for a month. Uneasy neighbors Greece and Turkey have been at loggerheads for decades over several territorial issues, and asylum-seekers have found themselves caught up in the geopolitical conflict.

Taliban entrepreneurs (Foreign Policy) For decades, Afghanistan’s untapped mineral wealth has been touted as the country’s trillion-dollar El Dorado. But while the Afghan government has never been able to monetize mountains of copper, iron ore, gold, and gemstones, the Taliban have—and are ramping up their mining operations as just-started peace talks aim to shape the future of a postwar Afghanistan. In recent years, the Taliban have deliberately moved to secure control over regions of Afghanistan rich in mineral deposits, from lapis lazuli mines in northern Badakhshan to gold, lead, and zinc in Helmand and vast talc and marble deposits in southern Nangarhar. The Taliban, who already control most of the country’s mineral wealth, are banking on further developing the sector to make it the bedrock of the country’s postwar economy—or theirs, at least.

The Indian navy and China (WSJ) India’s border conflict with China is pushing New Delhi to look for an asymmetric response: flexing its naval might as it deepens cooperation with other democracies that seek to counter Beijing’s global ambitions. India, which operates one of the world’s largest navies, sits astride shipping routes in the Indian Ocean that connect China to its main sources of oil and gas in the Middle East and to its key markets in Europe. Though growing fast, China’s navy still has only limited ability to operate in a region far from its home shores—and has to contend with the U.S. in its own backyard. “On the northern border, the best we can hope for is to achieve a stalemate. But at sea, we have an advantage over the Chinese,” said retired Adm. Arun Prakash, a former head of the Indian navy. “A show of force at sea can send a message to China that you are vulnerable, that we can interfere with your shipping and with Chinese energy supplies. Their economy would be shaken up.”

‘Tis the season for travel in China. But virus fears cast a shadow over festivities. (Washington Post) Zuo Weiwei has been stuck since February in her hometown Wuhan—yes, that Wuhan—and the problem now is that the city is overflowing with tourists. Wuhan’s government, like many across China, has been offering free tickets to tourist attractions to try to salvage economic growth. For better or worse, it appears to be working, as China approaches its first major holiday season since tamping down the coronavirus. The “Golden Week” holiday is one of the largest annual human migrations, with upward of 700 million people on the move. This year, it will be a crucial test of China’s efforts to regain normalcy and prevent new coronavirus waves. The holiday season begins with China’s National Day on Oct. 1, marking 71 years of Communist Party rule. The period also coincides with this year’s mid-autumn festival, a one-day holiday that falls on the night of the fullest autumn moon. With borders closed around the world, those in China itching to travel have had to look closer to home. Around 408 million highway trips are expected to be made this Golden Week, slightly up from last year, China’s Ministry of Transport said on Thursday. But the flood of travelers will make social distancing difficult and brings the risk of new virus outbreaks that could spread rapidly across the country.

Tunisian migrants (Washington Post) The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is propelling thousands of Tunisians to make the perilous Mediterranean journey in search of better living conditions, with the largest wave in nearly a decade reaching Italy’s shores. The strict lockdown Tunisia imposed in March was largely successful in containing the outbreak, but the measures devastated the country’s already ailing economy. During the first eight months of this year, nearly 8,000 Tunisians crossed the Mediterranean to Italy, six times as many as last year.

Palestinian elections (Foreign Policy) Fatah and Hamas, the two largest political factions in the occupied Palestinian territories, have agreed to hold elections for the first time in almost 15 years. The last elections, held in 2006, resulted in a landslide victory for Hamas, leading to bloody clashes between the two sides and a de facto split within Palestine, with Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) retaining control of the West Bank. Leaders said a vote will be held within six months. The move follows an unprecedented show of unity among Palestinians in opposition to recent moves by several Arab states to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel.

#headlines #news

1 note · View note

antoine-roquentin · 6 years ago

Link

When it comes to far-right extremism, German law enforcement has made little secret of its priorities. While a paltry number of police officers responded in Chemnitz and to similar incidents elsewhere, they were deployed en masse — and with state-of-the-art gear — for a protest days later in North Rhine-Westphalia, where German environmental activists continue to defend a primeval forest against a coal-mining project. During the visit last month by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to Germany, two police officers deployed to Berlin from Saxony were discovered to have used the code name “Uwe Böhnhardt,” the name of one of the members of the terror cell the National Socialist Underground, which in the 2000s murdered 10 Turkish-Germans and others, in the most striking known example of domestic right-wing terrorism since the end of the war.

Should the right-wing ties with the police really have come as a surprise? For decades, the German security services, and the B.F.V. in particular, have been accused of operating sympathetically — even symbiotically — with elements of the far right. But with the recent rise of Alternative for Germany, the far-right, anti-immigrant party that polls rank as the second-most popular party in the country, this symbiosis has taken on new urgency.

The B.F.V.’s precursor was founded after World War II by the American occupiers. It then became a magnet for ex-Nazis and Gestapo members looking for a second act. Its designated purpose was to spy on and root out the West German Communist Party. (The party was finally banned in 1956, based on materials turned up by the B.F.V.) In the 1960s, Hubert Schrübbers, the head of the agency, employed former S.S. colleagues. By the 1970s, employees of the B.F.V. who were Social Democrats or lacked right-wing credentials fell under suspicion. It was hardly surprisingly that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s attempt to ban the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany in the early 2000s failed when a court ruled against the ban because much of the party’s right-wing orientation had been shaped by the state itself through paid informants.

Mr. Maassen himself has hardly diminished the organization’s right-wing reputation. This year, a defector from Alternative for Germany accused him of having advised the party’s former co-leader on how to avoid surveillance. Mr. Maassen was never charged, but even the hint of such a link is detrimental to the state’s legitimacy. A constellation of forces is now relearning to cooperate: right-wing street movements, right-wing news outlets, a fully fledged political party and a murky portion of the state bureaucracy.

So in a sense, Horst Seehofer, Germany’s interior minister and Mr. Maassen’s sympathetic boss, is not wrong when he calls Mr. Maassen a “classic civil servant.”

Mr. Seehofer has proved Mr. Maassen’s most important ally, raising questions about the interior minister’s own pandering or fealty to the far right. For Mr. Maassen’s professional breach, Ms. Merkel’s fragile coalition agreed to remove him from his post as head of German intelligence. Yet instead of demoting him — or outright firing him — the coalition effectively promoted him. His new job as state secretary came with a salary increase. In reaction to the public outcry, he was shuffled once again, this time to become “special adviser” to Mr. Seehofer.

Mr. Seehofer is the fiercest critic of Ms. Merkel within her governing coalition. “Migration is the mother of all problems,” he recently declared. But Ms. Merkel needs his party, the Christian Social Union, to form the right flank of her government. He, in turn, believes he needs to appeal to the far more right-wing elements in his own party, which faces a challenge in this month’s regional Bavarian election from the Greens and, crucially, Alternative for Germany. Evidently, Mr. Seehofer considers the disgraced Mr. Maassen a valuable electoral asset for keeping his conservative bona fides intact.

The entire affair is only one in a series of events that have marked a change in the public perception of the far right in Germany. Only two years ago, many right-wing politicians were still reluctant to officially endorse nationalist, anti-immigrant street movements such as Pegida. Now it is normal for not only Alternative for Germany politicians to back them officially, but even members of the putative political center to make shows of sympathy. Wolfgang Kubicki, vice chairman of the liberal Free Democratic Party, was quick to attribute “the roots of the riots” in Chemnitz to Ms. Merkel’s policy of admitting refugees and asylum seekers in 2015.

For decades, the right-wing elements in the German state never had the opportunity to cooperate with a major party that shares its views. Now they do.

For hundreds of civil servants, the rise of Alternative for Germany has presented an opportunity to engage in more right-wing political activities than would have been possible only a few years ago. A senior public prosecutor in Berlin, a judge in Dresden, as well as police officers and teachers across the country: For all of them, supporting the party serves as the bridge between the functioning state apparatus and the far right.

Very often, the party’s members draw connections between their profession and what they take to be the necessity of right-wing activism. They spread rumors of the government’s secret commands to prioritize anti-right policies over the solving of crimes committed by refugees or the “left-green indoctrination of students” in public schools. Their conspiracy theories have not diminished with their proximity to power. The future is a dark one when a right-wing party surges and finds sectors of the state full of “classic civil servants.”

113 notes · View notes

xtruss · 3 years ago

Text

Yanis Varoufakis on Angela Merkel’s Legacy, European Politics & the “Sordid Arms Race” on the Seas

— September 29, 2021 | Democracy Now

— GUESTS: Yanis Varoufakis, Member of the Greek Parliament and Former Finance Minister of Greece.

The center-left Social Democratic Party in Germany has narrowly claimed victory in an election that marks an end to the 16-year era of Angela Merkel’s conservative chancellorship. We look at what this means for Europe and the world with Yanis Varoufakis, a member of the Greek Parliament and the former finance minister of Greece. The SDP’s narrow victory should be viewed critically, says Varoufakis, noting that the party “ruthlessly” practiced austerity in 2008 and 2009. “Not much has changed,” Varoufakis says. “It’s not as if an opposition party won.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn now to Germany, where the center-left Social Democratic Party narrowly claimed victory Sunday in an election that puts an end to the 16-year era of Angela Merkel’s conservative leadership. Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, won the second most votes, with the Green Party coming in third. Social Democrats will now have to form a ruling coalition, which could take weeks or possibly months. The SDP’s candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who positioned himself as a leader in the vein of Merkel during his campaign, vowed to tackle the climate crisis and modernize industry, he says.

Well, for more on what this means for Europe and the world, we’re joined in Greece by Yanis Varoufakis. He’s a member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece who negotiated with Chancellor Merkel and international creditors in 2015, when they demanded harsh new austerity measures for a European bailout of Greece, largely at Merkel’s behest, although at some points Varoufakis was excluded from the negotiations. His latest piece for Jacobin is headlined “Angela Merkel Was Bad for Europe and the World.” His new book is called Another Now.

We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Yanis. If you can first talk about what’s happened in Germany, what it means for Greece and for the world?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Well, it’s good to be back, Amy. Thank you.

Look, not much has changed. Let’s not hyperventilate about the great changes. Point number one: Angela Merkel was not defeated. She’s the first German chancellor in the postwar era that has not been defeated. She resigned. So, she is going home because she’s had enough. Point number one.

Point number two: The previous administrations, at least the last two, were administrations — the so-called grand coalitions between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, who now narrowly beat the Christian Democrats. So, it’s not as if [inaudible] Democrats are coming into government. They went into government. Olaf Scholz, who is going to be chancellor, if this coalition that he’s now concocting comes to fruition, he was finance minister until yesterday. So, let’s, you know, take down a few notches all the hype about the great changes that we’re going to see in Germany.

The other point, which is very important — two points, if I may, Amy, quickly, brief ones. Firstly, the austerity that hit our country here in Greece in 2010 was first practiced in 2009 — not to such an extent, but it was first practiced, put into place in Germany in 2009 — 2008, 2009, by the Social Democrats themselves. So it’s not as if the Social Democrats are an anti-austerity party. They were the inventors of austerity, and they practiced it ruthlessly in Germany.

And finally, the point I need to make is that whoever is in this government and whoever leads this government, this government is going to contain, for the first time since ages, the so-called Free Democratic — the Free Democrats of Germany, the FDP, which is a very strong, austerian, right-wing — libertarian even — party. And they are going to exact a pound of flesh from the Social Democrats or the Christian Democrats or the Greens, whoever joins them up. Their price for joining the government will be business as usual.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well ,Yanis Varoufakis, you have argued, in articles you published in the New Statesman and Jacobin, that Merkel’s austerity policies condemned Europe and Germany to decline. Could you expand on that?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Happily. Remember the Lehman Brothers and the great financial meltdown of 2008? Very soon after that, Angela Merkel found out, to her, you know, disbelief, that the German banks were also kaput, bankrupt. And so were the French banks. So were all the banks in the European Union, including the British ones. And they had to actually salvage them, like President Obama did in the United States, except that, unlike President Obama, the Europeans had given up on having a central bank, a national central bank. So they effected a cynical transfer of — instead of printing money, instead of having the Central Bank of Europe, the ECB, print the money, which is what Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and Barack Obama did in the United States — instead of doing that, they transferred their losses onto the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers, who were Greeks, you know, working-class Germans and so on. So you had socialism for the very few, for the bankers, and harsh austerity for everyone else — not just the Greeks, but the German workers, the French workers, the Slovak workers, the Portuguese workers, the Spanish workers.

Now, what happens when you do that? You know, the bankers have been refloated. They are constantly being given money that the Central Bank brings, eventually. And the masses are suffering and laboring under the yoke of austerity. Now, big business looks at the “little people” out there and says, “Oh, well, they will not be able to afford the equivalent of a German Tesla,” let’s say, so they don’t build one. They won’t invest. So investment is very low. Good quality jobs disappear. They are replaced by mini jobs, delivery jobs, you know, the gig economy. So you have discontent across Europe. You have low levels of investment in the places that are the richest, like Germany. And, of course, you have nonexistent investment in places like Greece.

This is what I said when I tried to make the point in the articles that you kindly mentioned, that Angela Merkel leaves the chancellery, the office of prime minister of Germany, much stronger than she inherited it, because of the crisis. She leaves Germany complete and replete and full of economic surpluses, of, you know, surplus money. But she also leaves it with low levels of investment and, effectively, condemned to be falling behind China and the United States when it comes to the things humanity and Europeans will be needing in the next few years, which is green energy, artificial intelligence, high-tech companies that can combine the green transition with some degree of shared prosperity.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about another issue that marks, I guess, Merkel’s legacy, is the issue of immigration. I mean, we’re seeing new images again, not just in the United States of Haitians and Central Americans at the border, but, once again, in Southern Europe, of 600 asylum seekers yesterday in one boat in Italy, a huge increase in those escaping from Africa and the Middle East, coming to Europe. Greece, obviously, has been dealing with this. But Merkel was distinguished among the leaders by initially welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants into Germany, when other countries were trying to close their borders. Your sense of her legacy in terms of migration policy and how migration is affecting Europe, given the fact that these imperial powers keep waging wars, disrupting these countries, creating chaos, and then insisting that migrants cannot come into Europe?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Yes, you are so right. I mean, it was such a show of hypocrisy recently, when the Taliban moved into Kabul, and the liberal press in the United States, and then, of course, in the European Union, they were horrified by the sight of the Taliban taking over, and all these concerns about the liberal, progressive Afghans, especially women, and then, at the very same time, you know, our great and good leaders, the same ones who were lamenting the success of the Taliban, they started talking about raising the height of the fences that they’re building to turn Europe into fortress Europe — not one mention of letting the Afghan women that are being persecuted by the Taliban come in.

But going back to your question about Merkel’s legacy when it comes to immigration, look, there was a key word in your question. That was “initially.” Her initial response, in 2015, the summer of 2015, when the Syrian refugees came storming in, running away from the civil war in Syria — her initial response was great. I mean, I even tweeted that — and, you know, I’m not a political ally of Angela Merkel. I said in my tweet that I am proud to be European because of Angela Merkel, because she said, “Let them in.” My goodness! And she let 1 million people in. But then, immediately, her pragmatism kicks in. She is the leader of a conservative party that would — was about to eat her up alive, to put it blunt — not too bluntly, I hope. And within two weeks, she reversed course. So, that initial response shows that the woman is probably a very decent person. And, you know, all kudos to her. But within two weeks, she spoke to the Turkish president, Mr. Erdoğan, and together they concocted a travesty of a policy.

Effectively, the European Union, under Merkel’s guidance, bribed, with a few billion euros, the president of Turkey, the Turkish government, to allow the European Union to violate international law, not to allow refugees. You know, refugees, on these ramshackle boats that end up on Lesbos, the Greek islands — right? — here, they really don’t have the right to seek asylum, because Merkel and Erdoğan agreed, years ago, with the approval of my former comrades in this government, after I resigned, the French, the Italians and so on — they agreed that Turkey is a safe country, and therefore, no refugees from Syria, from Afghanistan, from wherever, has the right, the automatic right, to file an application for a refugee status, even if they’ve been tortured. You know, this is absolutely preposterous. So, you have the initial reaction, which was good, and then you have what has been happening over the last few years.

Let me give you some — a piece of information which I think is significant. Last week, two weeks ago, a concentration camp, a prison camp, was built with European Union money, as part of the Merkel legacy, on the island of Samos. Now, on the one hand, you have those who are waxing lyrical about it, because those refugees that used to live in tents, and they would — you know, tents that would be washed away whenever there was a wintery storm or rain, heavy rain falling — you know, suddenly, they had decent dwellings. They even had a restaurant, and they had Wi-Fi. But what they forget to mention is that there is also barbed wire surrounding them. So these people can stay in there for years for having committed the crime of coming to Europe to seek refugee status.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, Yanis Varoufakis, you’re speaking to us from a Greek island, and so we’re having a little trouble with the Skype. But thank you all for bearing with us. You tweeted on Tuesday, “At a time when the US& France are competing on which of the two will undermine Peace in the Pacific more effectively, the Greek PM is pushing Greece further into debt bondage by purchasing French frigates–with a nod from Biden so as to placate Macron. Greece deserves better!” And, of course, talking about AUKUS, this new military alliance to marginalize China, many are asking if it’s Biden who is really creating a new cold war with China. He makes a deal with the U.K. and Australia for — it was a deal, $65 billion, nuclear-powered subs. And this cut France out. They felt stabbed in the back. So now France is making a deal with Greece, further militarizing the world. Your thoughts?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: I am ever so depressed by this. You know, we are not learning any lessons from the past. You put it quite rightly. There is a sordid arms race, arms deal race, happening in the Pacific. So, you know, the French want to make some money out of the Australians by selling them submarines. The Americans come in, and they cut the French out of the deal. The French get seriously peeved. All this is happening, supposedly, in order to increase security in the Pacific. It is doing exactly the opposite, because the Chinese are simply going to respond to this arms race by just upping the ante, building more of their own nuclear subs.

The nuclear subs are a waste in any case. Now, you know, we live in a technological world where we have transparent oceans. These old-fashioned nuclear submarines are neither here nor there. They are not increasing security. If they increase anything, it is insecurity.

But there’s a lot of money to be made, by the French, who want to sell them, by the American government, who wants to make sure that their mates that are producing these nuclear subs get the deals from Australia. And Macron is stabbed. And then, sadly, President Biden decides to throw him a few morsels of bread in order to pacify him. And that is to give the green light to the Greek prime minister to buy three or four frigates from the French government, which — exactly what are they going to contribute to our security? Yes, we do have a problem with Turkey. We have a recalcitrant Turkey. We have a Turkish regime that traditionally proves imperialist or acts imperialistically when it wants to solidify its own foundering base within Turkey, because it is a dictatorship, and our Turkish comrades, Turkish democratic comrades, are suffering under it. So, whenever the Turkish government feels unsafe, it creates tensions in the Aegean. But how exactly is this going to help? By “this,” I mean a few more high-tech frigates that Greece is going to buy from France — using what? More debt.

You mentioned that, you know, I was a finance minister at the height of the Greek debt crisis. Well, let me restate it for the record, that, back then, when every newspaper in the world, including in the United States, was covered with articles about the Greek crisis, our debt-to-GDP ratio was something like 170%, 150%, 170%. Right? One-and-a-half times our national income. Today it’s more than twice. It’s 210%, 212%. And still they are borrowing more money from the Europeans to buy European frigates to pacify Macron in terms of what he lost in the Pacific, while both the Pacific and the Aegean oceans and seas are becoming less secure and more prone to conflicts that will only have victims amongst the working classes of China, of Australia, of the United States, of Greece, of Turkey, of France and Germany.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Yanis, if you can say why you called your new book Another Now?

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: Because I’m a leftist. And we leftists have a problem, Amy, especially those of us who declare to be critical of capitalism or against capitalism, because the obvious question that then comes or is thrown at us is — and it’s a fair question — “Mate, if you don’t like capitalism, what’s the alternative? How could we have organized society — the economy, polity, the whole thing — differently without capitalism?” So I decided to write a novel, a science fiction novel, a political science fiction novel, in which I imagine that the 2008 great financial collapse led to not just Occupy Wall Street, but to a global movement that, with some degree of realism, built another now.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to ask you to stay so we can have a further conversation about Another Now and post it at democracynow.org. Yanis Varoufakis, member of the Greek Parliament, former finance minister of Greece. His latest piece for Jacobin, we’ll link to, “Angela Merkel Was Bad for Europe and the World.” His new book is titled Another Now.

And that does it for our show. Happy Birthday to Paul Powell!

0 notes

algeroth · 6 years ago

Link

A telling milestone on Kurz’s path to this moment occurred around three years ago, when the now-chancellor was still in his 20s. In September 2015, Vienna was an emotional place. It was shortly after the image of drowned Syrian three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach was shown all over the world; after a truck with 71 suffocated refugees was found on an Austrian highway; after Germany declared that Syrian refugees wouldn’t be sent back to the EU country they first entered and chancellor Angela Merkel announced “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it”). Thousands of refugees and migrants were arriving at Vienna’s Westbahnhof train station every day, most continuing their journeys to neighboring Germany. In Vienna, they were greeted by volunteers. High-ranking politicians, including the president and the interior minister, came as well. But Sebastian Kurz wasn’t among them. Given that he was then the minister for Europe, Integration, and Foreign Affairs, this seemed curious to some.

Virtually his whole national political career to that point—all four years of it—had been spent dealing with migration issues. He had first served as the Interior Ministry’s permanent secretary for integration—that is, the process of facilitating immigrants’ full participation in society. In that job, the then 24-year-old Kurz had received praise from liberal commentators for making the migration debate more “matter-of-fact,” demanding “integration through achievement,” and appointing “ambassadors of integration”—prominent Austrians who were immigrants or had immigrant parents. “Kurz knows that a heterogenous society functions when people come close to each other. In his discourse, foreigners are finally no longer just victims or perpetrators, but self-confident actors who decide their own fate,” Florian Klenk, the editor-in-chief of the liberal weekly newspaper Falter (for which I am a frequent contributor) wrote in October 2012. This was shortly after Kurz suggested a reform of the citizenship law that made it possible for people with “excellent integration” (like good German skills and contributing to society, for example through volunteer work) to receive citizenship faster. Back then, Kurz was in line with the pro-European stance of his party: When the far-right Freedom Party demanded that citizens from other EU countries should receive limited access to welfare, Kurz spoke out against it.

Yet he wouldn’t have become chancellor so fast if it hadn’t been for what happened in 2015. From the very beginning, with the first wave of refugees, before the public mood in Europe shifted after the Paris attacks in November and the New Year’s sexual attacks in Cologne, Kurz stood firmly against his coalition partner, Austria’s then-chancellor Werner Faymann, and his German colleague Angela Merkel. Asked why he never went to greet refugees at the train station, he responded: “It’s the wrong signal to criminal smugglers that people who gave them that much money and made it across the Mediterranean are greeted with smiles” from European politicians, according to his recently published authorized biography by the German journalist Paul Ronzheimer. Then in 2016, at a conference in Vienna, the West Balkan countries decided to close their borders. Germany was not invited.

Kurz’s coalition government has been in power for half a year now, and it has been consistent in following an anti-immigrant course: It has cut back state-funded German classes for asylum-seekers and is pushing through a law that will cut family benefits for EU citizens with children in lower-income EU countries. “He was never interested in integration politics,” argues Muna Duzdar, a member of parliament for the opposition Social Democratic Party and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. “It was just a tool to gain power. And he succeeded.”

#politics #sebastian kurz #austria #europe #migrant crisis #far right

1 note · View note

deniscollins · 6 years ago

Text

Swedish Student Blocks Afghan’s Deportation by Refusing to Sit Down on Flight

An airplane cannot take off if a passenger is standing up. Swedish human rights activists are protesting the deportation of Afghans who have been denied asylum and residency in Sweden. What would you do if a woman human rights protester refuses to sit down for 2 hours and counting unless a man being deported to Afghanistan by Swedish government authorities is allowed to get off the plane: (1) forcefully remove her from the plane, (2) do as she requests and have the man being deported leave the plane and she will then leave after him? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision? Would you sue the woman for the costs associated with the 2-3 hour delay? Why?

A Swedish student activist stopped the deportation of an Afghan man this week by refusing to take her seat on a packed Turkish Airlines flight, and her dramatic video of the tense standoff has gone viral.

The student, Elin Ersson, initially bought a ticket because she believed that a 26-year-old man from Afghanistan was being deported to Kabul from Landvetter Airport in Gothenburg via Istanbul. When she got on the plane, the 26-year-old was not there, but an Afghan deportee in his 50s was with the Swedish authorities.

Ms. Ersson, 21, live-streamed the standoff on the flight late Monday on Facebook, and footage of the 14-minute video shows her in tears, at times being confronted by crew members and angry passengers. But she also garnered some support.

“I’m not going to sit down until this person is off the plane,” she says in the video, “because he is most likely to get killed if he is on this plane when it goes up.”

As Ms. Ersson narrates the video — which had 2.7 million views as of Wednesday afternoon — a male voice with an English accent can be heard calling her “frightening” and telling her to think of the children on the flight.

“I am doing what I can to save a person’s life,” she responds. “As long as a person is standing up, the pilot cannot take off. All I want to do is stop the deportation, and then I will comply with the rules here. This is all perfectly legal, and I have not committed a crime.”

She says that the long-running war in Afghanistan has made the security situation there not safe to send anyone back. The identity of the man in his 50s was not immediately released, nor were further details about his background or his deportation.

Swedavia, the company that runs Sweden’s main airports, said the flight had been delayed for about two hours. A representative for Turkish Airlines said that no one was immediately available for comment on Wednesday.

In the end, both the Afghan man and Ms. Ersson left the plane. It’s likely that the man’s deportation will be carried out later.

Hans Lippens, a spokesman for the Swedish Police in Gothenburg, said Ms. Ersson’s refusal to sit down constituted a civil infraction but not a crime.

“It is up to Turkish Airlines to sue the woman for the two- to three-hour delay,” he said. “There can be costs associated with delays. She has not done anything punishable from a police perspective.”

The video begins with Ms. Ersson, who is studying to become a social worker and is part of a broad network of people demonstrating against the deportation of Afghans denied asylum and residency in Sweden, walking up the aisle and explaining to perplexed passengers why she would not sit down.

At times, a stern flight attendant can be heard asking her to turn off her phone and leave the plane. Someone in the background can be heard yelling at her to sit down. She explains that the man to be deported was sitting at the back of the plane, escorted by the Swedish authorities.

“The people who have been trying to deport the old man actually pushed me and tried to forcibly move me,” Ms. Ersson says. “The pilot has the right to say that he is not allowed to be on the plane,” she adds, “and as long as he is not on the plane, then I will comply. I’m waiting for the pilot’s decision.”

The man with the English accent stands up, takes her phone and tells her to stop. A flight attendant returned it, Ms. Ersson said.

“I’m trying to change my country’s rules,” she tells a seated passenger. “He is going to die — because it’s Afghanistan.”

About six and a half minutes into the video, people start clapping in an apparent show of support. Then Ms. Ersson starts to cry.

“There’s a Turkish guy helping me out, telling me what I am doing is right,” she says, flushed. “Some people are really applauding all this what I am doing. There is a football team standing at the back. As long as they are standing, this plane is not allowed to go.”

A flight attendant says that according to the pilot, the plane was going to Istanbul, not Kabul, and that a decision would be made there. Ms. Ersson didn’t budge.

A few minutes later, a flight attendant says that the man will be removed from the plane. A child can be heard crying in the background.

“They are taking his bags out,” Ms. Ersson says, smiling. People can be heard clapping. “When he’s actually out, I will go out of the plane and comply with the rules,” she says.

She is met at the door by airport security, at which point she stops filming.

The activists are protesting the deportation of Afghans who have been denied asylum and residency in Sweden. Advocates say there are many reasons the deportation of the migrants is problematic, not the least of which is that many of them came to Sweden via Iran and no longer had homes or families to go back to.

Almost 42,000 people from Afghanistan applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015, according to the Swedish Migration Agency, plus another 4,700 over the next two years.

A spokeswoman for the organization leading Ms. Ersson’s intervention gave details by phone on Wednesday about the campaign.

A similar protest took place this month at Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen, where Mohammad Simone, a 19-year-old Afghan man, was scheduled to be deported.

Eva Marta Granqvist, 55, an artist from southern Sweden who said she and others were fighting “arbitrary” deportation decisions by the Swedish Migration Agency, recalled that they had received information that a deportation of a young gay man who had converted to Christianity was to occur earlier this month from Sweden via Denmark. Within a day, they had raised nearly $1,500 for two tickets to Kabul.

Ms. Granqvist and another woman boarded the plane.

“We ignored the instructions to sit down in our seats,” she said. “When we went farther back in the plane, we could hear how he was crying loudly and pleading to the other passengers for his life.”

“I asked people in the plane to stand up,” Ms. Granqvist said. “I explained that this was about a human life and that we together could save a human life. Many stood up.”

“Then the captain made the immediate decision not to fly and to take off the boy,” she added.

Mr. Simone is being held in a deportation center in Astorp, in southern Sweden, she said.

There have been other protests in Europe and the United States. Some pilots in Germany have refused to fly rejected asylum seekers out of the country. Virgin Atlantic has said it would no longer assist the British authorities in flying undocumented immigrants.

And United Airlines and American Airlines asked the Trump administration not to use their planes to fly migrant children separated from their parents at the border.

#Airlines

1 note · View note

ancientidea34 · 4 years ago

Text

Germany's ZDF releases video of migrant pushback by Frontex, Greece

Germany’s ZDF releases video of migrant pushback by Frontex, Greece

Video shows distressed migrant boat in Greek waters being pushed back by EU’s border agency and Greek coast guard, followed by Turkish rescue of asylum seekers. trtworld A German TV news team has witnessed a migrant pushback in the Aegean sea by EU’s border agency and the Greek coast guard, during a patrol of the Turkish coast guard. Germany’s ZDF releases video of migrant pushback by Frontex,…

View On WordPress

#A German TV #Frontex #Greece #Greek waters #Turkish rescue o

0 notes

biomedgrid · 4 years ago

Text

Biomed Grid | Refugees and Asylum Seekers-A Somewhat Challenging Australian Experience

Introduction

This article is written by a social scientist, a sociologist, who is concerned about Australia’s current treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. The previously welcoming attitude of politicians, policy makers and people has changed considerably and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Services ‘keep Australia safe’: no maritime arrivals will be processed in Australia nor will they ever can settle in Australia. Asylum seekers arriving by boat at Australia’s shores have been transferred to Manus Island or Nauru. These so called ‘processing centres’ are closed, however, during a recent Australian Senate Estimates Committee hearing, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Home Affairs, Mandy Newton, provided figures for asylum seekers on Nauru: there were 652 asylum seekers on the island as of October 22. Of those, 541 (or 83%) have been granted refugee status; 88 people (13%) were still subject to the ‘refugee status determination’ process; and 23 were considered ‘failed asylum seekers’ [1]. This is a challenging issue because these people, young men, have been there for more between five and seven years. Although the detention centers are now officially closed and the ‘detainees’ have open access to the outside, these young men are in a state of fear and uncertainty and their health, especially mental health, is of concern.

In the following, information is provided about Australia’s changing policies and attitudes in relation to asylum seekers and refugees who arrive ‘unauthorized’ and ‘by boat’. Australia has declared itself a multicultural society in 1972. The 2016 Census data reveals that of 24,641,662 people almost 25% of the population is born in another country. Looking at the 2016 Census [2], two thirds (67%) of the Australian population are born in Australia. Further data of the ABS [2] demonstrates that almost half (49%) of Australians has either been born overseas (are first generation Australians) or have one or both parents born overseas (representing the second generation of Australians). Of the 6,163,667 people born overseas, nearly one in five (18%) have arrived since the start of 2012. The 2016 Australian Census [2] also points out that while England and New Zealand are the next most common countries of birth after Australia, the proportion of people born in China and India has increased since 2011 (from 6.0% to 8.3%, and from 5.6% to 7.4%, respectively). The same Census shows that there are more than 300 separately identified languages spoken in Australian homes. More than one-fifth (21%) of Australians speak a language other than English at home. After English, the next most common languages spoken at home are Mandarin, Arabic, Cantonese, and Vietnamese.

Australia has welcomed people from more than 180 countries since its European settlement in 1788, and as an immigration country can present itself as a relatively harmonious society. Australia’s immigration policies have changed during the last 65 years from focussing on attracting migrants for the purpose of increasing Australia’s population to a focus on attracting workers and temporary (skilled) migrants in order to meet the skilled labour needs of the economy [3]. With changes in policies and its Border Protection Bill in 2001, it has become harder to enter Australia without a visa and to become a citizen. Australian citizenship is a person’s status in relation to Australia and carries with its certain responsibilities and privileges. The Australian Citizenship Act 1948 determines who holds Australian citizenship. A person may acquire Australian citizenship by birth, adoption, descent, resumption or grant of Australian citizenship (naturalization) [3].

As a signatory of the Refugee Convention Australia has a responsibility of protecting asylum seekers and refugees, but there are signs that its previous welcoming attitude towards people in need of protection has become more cautious during the last 30 or so years. This will be briefly discussed. The change in attitude towards people in need can partly be related to a change in labor market requirements (manual labor has been shifted to developing countries, the car industry is declining) but also to a fear of terrorism since 9/11. This article looks at Australia’s past and present immigration policies, at the development of settlement programs, different streams of immigration and at different types of visas and the protection and entitlements embedded in these visas. A challenging aspect of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers (Tampa affair and Pacific Solution) will be discussed briefly. Overall it is concluded that Australia as a multicultural society has so far functioned well, that life is relatively peaceful, but that Australian politicians need a different approach to settle asylum seekers and refugees.

The objective of this article is to determine policies regarding refugees and strategies for settlement of humanitarian entrants. This study should be a benchmark to compare the settlement of refugees and humanitarian entrants in other countries.

The methodology is a literature review, using official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Census data, publications of the Refugee Council of Australia (RCoA), of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Service (RAILS), and of other suitable literature.

Defining would be Settlers in the Australian Content

Migrants: The ABS [3] defines migrants as people who are born overseas but whose usual residence is Australia; for instance, if people have been (or are expected to be) residing in Australia for a period of 12 months or more.

Refugees: A refugee is a person who was subject to persecution in their home country and who is in need of resettlement [3]. Most applicants who are considered under this category are identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and referred by the UNHCR to Australia [3].

Asylum seekers: People who have sought protection as a refugee, but whose claim for refugee status has not yet been assessed [4,5]. Under international law, a person is a ‘refugee’ as soon as s/he meets the definition of refugee, whether their claim has been assessed or not.

Humanitarian entrants: As far as could be determined, refugees, asylum seekers, and people belonging to the group of refugee family reunion are being categorized as humanitarian entrants. They are holders of a qualifying humanitarian visa, such as that of refugee (subclass 200), In-country special humanitarian (subclass 201), Global humanitarian (special humanitarian program) (subclass 202), Emergency rescue (subclass 203), and Woman at risk (subclass 204) [6-8]. For further discussion, please see below.

Background of Australia’s settlement of refugees and asylum seekers

Looking at the European history of Australia, it has granted assisted passages to people who wanted to reside in this country since 1831 [9]. Assisted passages stopped officially in 1980. Australia has supported approximately 750,000 refugees since Federation in 1901 [10]. In 1952 Australia became one of the 145 countries to sign the Refugee Convention [11], which defined the term ‘refugee’ and outlined their rights. The UNHCR (n.d.) defines refugees as “people who have fled war, violence, conflict or persecution and have crossed an international border to find safety in another country”.

The RCoA [4,5] provides a more specific definition, namely that “a refugee is any person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country”. An interesting point here is that Australia’s program to settle German refugees’ dates to 1839: Lutherans, trying to escape worship restrictions in Prussia, settled in Hahndorf and Klemzig, South Australia. But according to RCoA [10], there were people from several other European countries who left because of religious and political persecution to find refuge in Australia.

After Federation in 1901, “refugees were allowed to settle as unassisted migrants, as long as they met the restrictions imposed by the Immigration (Restriction) Act, the basis for the White Australia Policy” [10]. Between 1933 and 1939, 7,000 Jewish people, fleeing Nazi Germany, also found refuge in Australia. During World War II, settlement programs were suspended, but in 1947, Australia arranged with the newly formed International Refugee Organization to settle displaced persons from camps in Europe: 170,000 people from Poland, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia and Hungary entered Australia over the next seven years. The Australian arrangements with the International Refugee Organization and with European countries to admit refugees and later on to embark on large immigrant intakes had two main reasons: Australia’s population in 1945 was 7,430,197 and there was a need to improve the capacity to defend itself [12], ‘populate or perish’ was the catch cry. At that point in time, the ‘yellow peril’ was greatly feared. But Australia also wanted to move from primary to secondary industry, for which it needed more people and a wider knowledge base.

The following is an overview of Australia’s contribution to absorb people from countries in crises after 1955: [10]. These people were admitted and provided with the opportunity to settle apart from those in refugee camps in Europe:

In 1956 The Hungarian Revolution;

In 1968 Warshaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia;

In 1972 Uganda’s President Idi Amin expelled Asian settlers;

In 1973 Military coups deposed the Allende Government in Chile;

In 1974 Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus;

In 1975 War in East Timor, evacuees were brought to Darwin;

1975 Fall of the South Vietnamese Government in Saigon. Vietnamese refugees fled into nearby countries, triggering international interference. Australia pledged to help and between 1975 and 1995, has resettled more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees from different Asian countries. In 1975 there were also 2,000 Vietnamese people who arrived by boat illegally and without being invited. They are the so called ‘boat people’.

Development of settlement institutions and programs

Up until the 1970s, there were no specific strategies in place to help refugees or migrants settle and to acculturate in Australia. At migrant receiving camps people would be accommodated, provided with necessities to live and, most importantly, provided with advice regarding employment. The political and economic circumstances of that time need to be remembered: Europe was in turmoil with millions of people being displaced and Australia having a shortage of workers. That many new settlers were only able to speak very basic English or did not know the language at all, was not important, as manual Laboure’s, which Australia needed to move from primary to secondary industry, they were able to survive and to contribute to Australian society in a positive way. But the world-wide refugee crisis increased and forced Australia to be pragmatic. In 1977 Michael Mackellar, the then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, developed a national refugee policy, entitled the Galbally Report [10]. This report looked at ways of helping newcomers to settle in Australia, of maintaining their cultures, and of ensuring they had the same rights and access to services as other Australians [13]. Overall there was a strong emphasis on increased involvement of voluntary agencies.

The following is a summary of agencies of strategies that were created by the Australian government:

According to the [10], in 1977, Migrant Resource Centers were established in capital cities; in 1979 a loan scheme was created to help refugees to buy their own home; 1979 also saw the further development of Adult Migrant and Settlement Education Programs, and, most importantly, a Community Refugee Settlement Scheme was established in 1981, which involved community groups to provide “newly-arrived refugees with on-arrival accommodation, social support and assistance of finding employment”. In 1981, a Special Humanitarian Program was also created to provide settlement options to people who had suffered serious discrimination or human rights abuses, had fled their home country and had close ties with Australia. Because of growing awareness of the psychological impact of persecution, in 1988, the first torture and trauma services were established. In 1989, a special visa category within the refugee program was developed to make possible priority settlement for refugee women at risk and their children. In 1991, a Special Assistance Category visa was created because of catastrophes countries, allowing people in vulnerable circumstances and with connections to Australia, to resettle. This program was phased out in 1997 because it had become a family reunion program (which is a special category within the Australian refugee settlement scheme).

The most important change to the settlement services involved settling people in rural and regional areas, matching them with people of the same ethnic background. According to the [10], changes of the regional distribution of refugees and of service provisions were necessary because the cohort of refugees has changed considerably: while people of mainly European decent had made up the majority of refugees in the past, from the 1990s on, people from Africa and the Middle East make up the vast majority [14,10]. Hugo argues that these people, despite being costly to settle, make a valuable contribution to Australian society, to the three ‘Ps’, population, participation and production: these refugees “are meeting some important and significant labor shortages in Australia’s regional areas”, despite “the difficulties that have been experienced by humanitarian settlers in these locations” [14]. Here is a summary of refugees and humanitarian arrivals, cited in the [10] (Table 1).

Table 1: Shows different regional resettlement locations and different migrant groups.

According to the best estimates available, 2009-10 was the year in which Australia, since becoming an independent nation, passed the 750,000 mark in its intake of refugees and humanitarian entrants. From Federation in 1901 until 1948, no official statistics were kept of refugee settlement. However, research published by the Australian Parliamentary Library estimated that Australia received 20,000 refugees in this period. From July 1948 to June 1977, Australia received 269,266 assisted humanitarian arrivals, as well as another 33,000 unassisted humanitarian arrivals, according to DIAC estimates. Since the modern Refugee and Humanitarian Program began in 1977, Australia has received 392,538 offshore refugee and humanitarian entrants and has issued 42,714 onshore protection visas.

Who fits the bill? Australia’s streams of migrants and different visa categories.

Australia’s migration programs have three different streams, business, skilled and family migration [14,15,4,5]. There is also a special eligibility migration stream. Looking at the different visa categories (see below), one can see how very complex the system is. First, it needs to be mentioned that all visa applicants need to undergo health checks and fulfil certain character requirements; applicants for all permanent visas are required to sign an Australian Values Statement [15].

Business migration: Of importance is that Australia is very keen to attract business migrants, i.e. businesspeople investing substantial amounts of money can obtain a business skills visa if they have established skills and a genuine commitment to owning and managing a business in Australia [16].

Skilled migration: Individuals are being assessed according to a skilled migrant category, a point system based on age, work experience, qualifications, and knowledge of the English language [13].

Family migration: This stream aims to reunite immediate and extended family members with their eligible Australian relatives. Applicants wishing to migrate under this scheme must be sponsored by a close family relative who is an Australian [13].

Special eligibility migrants: Former citizens wanting to return to Australia must fulfil health and character requirements (required for all visas) [13].

No specific ‘refugee stream’ could be identified, however, the latest figures according to Phillips [12] demonstrate Australia’s intake of migrants: During 2015-2016, Australia accepted 57,400 people under the family reunion scheme, 128,550 people under the skilled migration program (including business migrants),under the special eligibility scheme, 308 people were admitted, and 3,512 children were resettled in Australia. The figure of people who were processed under the humanitarian program was 17,555.

Any person residing in a foreign country needs a visa; this determines their status in relation to their ability to reside in that country. In general, there are permanent and temporary visas and it is usually easier for a migrant than for a refugee to obtain a permanent visa or permanent residence status. A permanent resident is legally defined as a person who was born overseas and has obtained permanent Australian resident status prior to or after arrival [16]. According to the RCoA [4,5], the difference between migrants and refugees is based on, and clarified by, international law, with different treaties and bodies being responsible for migrants and for refugees. The distinction is reflected in Australia’s policies, which include both a Migration Program and a Refugee and Humanitarian Program. The RCoA [4,5] raises the interesting point that labelling refugees as being ‘migrants’, ignores the protection they need.

Humanitarian programs have been developed for refugees and other people with specific humanitarian needs. This program has two functions: the offshore assessment and resettlement component, and the onshore protection / asylum component [17]. This program is of major interest; it determines different kinds of visas. It is important to mention that after arrival in Australia, all temporary visa holders are entitled to Australia’s Status Resolution Support Services. This service provides support to people who are living in the community on temporary visas, or who are in community detention while their application for refugee status is assessed. It constitutes a regular payment to help with basic living costs [18].

Here is a brief overview of different visas and their basic entitlements. We are starting with onshore assessments and protection:

• Permanent Protection Visas (subclass 866): are visas granted to persons who enter Australia unlawfully, but are then found to be refugees based on the guidelines of the United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol of the Status of Refugees, or to be at real risk of suffering significant harm in their home country [19]. These people are usually confined to and assessed in various Australian detention centers.

Bridging Visa (BVA) (subclass 010): According to the Australian Government [17], this temporary visa allows applicants to stay in Australia after their current visa ceases and while their substantive visa application is being processed.

Offshore Refugee and Humanitarian Visas (subclasses 200- 219) are visas granted to persons outside Australia who are subject to persecution or substantial discrimination in their home country. The most important visas for offshore refugees are the following categories:

• Refugee (visa subclass 200) (Visa Help Australia, n.d.): This is a permanent residence visa. It allows people to stay in Australia indefinitely, work and study, access Medicare (Australia’s public health care system), and social security payments, attend English classes, apply for Australian citizenship after four years in Australia, and propose family members for permanent residence.

• In‐Country Special Humanitarian (visa subclass 201): This visa is for individuals who are living in their home country and are subject to persecution in their home country, face immediate threats to their lives or to their personal security, but have not been able to leave that country to seek refuge elsewhere [6,7]. This visa provides individuals with the right to live, work and study in Australia indefinitely, access Medicare, access social security benefits, attend English language classes, apply for citizenship, and propose family members for permanent residence.

• Emergency Rescue (visa subclass 203): This visa gives priority processing for people who are in immediate danger [6,7]. This is a permanent residence visa. It allows individuals to stay, work and study in Australia indefinitely, access Medicare, access certain social security payments, attend English language classes, apply for Australian citizenship after four years of living in Australia, and propose family members for permanent residence.

• Women at Risk (visa subclass 204): This visa provides women who do not have the protection of a partner or a relative and are in danger of victimization [6,7,19]. According to ISA Migration [20], this visa is applicable for females who want to live, study and work in Australia. It is a permanent visa. Applicants must have a recommendation by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees to the Australian Government. This recommendation makes their application considered for relocation to Australia. These individuals can access Medicare and social security benefits, can attend English language classes, can apply for citizenship after four years in Australia, and can sponsor family members for permanent residence.

• Global Special Humanitarian Visa (subclass 202): According to Visa Help Australia [11], applicants must live outside Australia when applying for the visa. They must also be outside Australia when a visa is granted. Their application must be proposed by a person or organization in Australia. The individuals must experience substantial discrimination which amounts to a gross violation of human rights in their home country. Holders are entitled to stay, work and study indefinitely in Australia, access Medicare, access certain social security payments, attend English language classes, apply for Australian citizenship after four years, and can propose family members for permanent residence. If they want to travel outside Australia, they need to get a travel document. After five years, they will need a Resident Return Visa to re-enter Australia.

Demonstrating the even greater complexity of visa applications are the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV) and the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV).

• Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV) (Subclass 790): According to the Australian Government [21], this visa is for people who arrive in Australia illegally and apply for protection. A SHEV allows people to stay in Australia work and / or study, access Medicare, receive some social security payments, and access English language classes. According to the RCoA [4,5], a SHEV is current for five years and the holder can apply for a permanent migration visa after that time (but not a permanent protection visa). Of advantage is when SHEV holders during their stay in Australia are financially self-sufficient and / or work or study in a regional area. When applying for permanent residence, these people must also meet the criteria of other permanent visas (for instance, as the husband or wife of an Australian citizen). This visa does not allow the holder to travel to the country from which s/he has been granted protection. It does also not allow the holder to sponsor family members for a visa.

• Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) (subclass 785): According to the Australian Government [22], this visa is for individuals who arrive in Australia without a valid visa and apply for protection on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion and/or membership of a particular social group. Immigration Australia [14] points out that applicants must show cause that because of leaving their home country they would face arbitrary deprivation of life, the death penalty, torture, or cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment. The TPV allows individuals to stay and work in Australia for three years, access Medicare, and receive some social security payments. According to the RCoA [4,5], TPV holder cannot apply for permanent residency, however, prior to the expiry of that visa, another TPV or SHEV can be lodged. The claim for protection will be re-assessed.

As can be seen, different visas are available for different circumstances; none of the categories includes asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru. The difficulty is to be accepted under Australian law and on Australian soil as being someone in need of protection. It is also important that claims for protection are (in theory) assessed as quickly as possible in order to avoid stressful situations, especially when held in custody in detention centers in Australia or offshore. Business and skilled migrants are preferred; Australian policies also look favorably at refugees and humanitarian entrants who have worked and studied in regional areas.

Social Services Benefits (Centrelink) of Visa Holders

Various entitlements of holders of different visas have been outlined above. Here is a summary of benefits or services that can be accessed once a visa has been granted. The Asylum Seeker Status Resolution Support Services will stop, and Centrelink Special Benefits can be claimed if readily available funds are less than $5000. Bank statements must be provided to Centrelink who will assess the situation every 13 weeks. Visa holders can work but must inform Centrelink about their income. They are entitled to Medicare, job seeker assistance and, depending on the type of visa, individuals can access short-term counselling for torture and trauma. According to RAILS [9,23], visa holders are also entitled to family tax benefit, single income family supplement, double orphan pension, parental leave pay, dad and partner pay, child care benefit, school kids bonus, child dental benefit, care fee assistance, stillborn baby payment and to the low income health care card. As mentioned before, an advantage in relation to claim permanent residence, i.e. a permanent migration visa, is when a refugee or humanitarian entrant is/was financially independent (does not/ did not rely on social security benefits) and has worked or studied in a regional area.

Changing Australian Policies and A Shameful Aspect of it

Australia has experienced three waves of asylum seekers who arrived by boat. Unfortunately, negative public opinions, prompted by the creation of fear by far-right politicians and the supporting press, provoked Australia’s politicians to introduce mandatory detention and the Pacific Solution [24] for people arriving ‘unauthorized’ (without a visa), being called ‘illegal immigrants’, and are labelled ‘queue jumpers’, ‘unlawful non-citizens’, and ‘illegal maritime arrivals’ [25]. Between 1976 and 1981, 2059 Vietnamese boat people arrived. These people were welcomed. The arrival of 27 Indochinese asylum seekers in November 1989 started the second wave. During the following nine years, boats arrived at the rate of about 300 people per annum – mostly from Cambodia, Vietnam and southern China. In 1999, the third wave of asylum seekers, predominantly from the Middle East, began to arrive; often in larger numbers than previously and usually with the assistance of ‘people smugglers’ [24].

Apart from ‘illegal immigrants’, who officially will never be able to settle in Australia, the country accepts a fluctuating number of refugees and humanitarian entrants. RCoA [26-29] reports an increase from 13,750 to 20,000 in 2012-13, then back to 13,750, followed by an increase to 16,250 in 2017-18, to be further increased to 18,750 in 2018-19. 2015 saw a one-off intake of 12,000 people to be resettled in Australia because of the crises in Syria and Iraq. As these figures imply, immigration is a hotly discussed topic in parliament; the whole issue is highly politicized. According to RCoA [26-29], between 2012 and 2017, 51,637 people arrived by boat seeking asylum and at least 862 deaths have occurred at sea. Both, the Coalition (Liberal Party and National Party) and the Labor Party use the fact that many people drowned as reason for not accepting and assessing unauthorized arrivals by sea.

The Pacific Solution was legalized in 2001 and is discussed by the RCoA [2-4] in the following. It has been the most controversial policy in relation to the handling of asylum seekers ever since. Based on the Pacific Solution asylum seekers arriving by boat were being transported to and detained in Nauru and on Manus Island. These Australian offshore detention centres (politicians call them offshore immigration processing centres) were created in 2001, suspended in 2008, but reopened in 2012 because of large numbers of so-called ‘maritime arrivals of asylum seekers. The Manus Regional Processing Centre closed officially in October 2017; people were transferred to different facilities on Manus. The Nauru Regional Processing Centre closed officially in March 2019 but, as the Australian Senate Inquiry established, 652 asylum seekers are still on the island with no hope to be resettled in Australia but are also unable to return to their home countries. They have been on the island between five and seven years and there is a general understanding that their health, especially mental health, is deteriorating.

Let us dig a little deeper into the history of the Pacific Solution. Since the second wave (1989) of boat arrivals entered Australian shores, the Australian public has been concerned. Prior to 1992 so called unauthorized boat arrivals (asylum seekers) were held in detention under the Migration Act 1958 on a discretionary basis. This changed in 1992. The Labor Government legislated the Migration Amendment Act, starting mandatory detention of all citizens who do not hold a valid visa. A further change occurred in 2001 when the Liberal Government introduced legislative changes allowing some of Australia’s territory to be excised from the migration zone in order to discourage non-citizens from arriving unlawfully in Australia by boat. As discussed by Phillips and Spinks [24], under the Pacific Solution so called unauthorized arrivals at excised places were transferred to offshore processing centers in Nauru and on Manus Island. They are detained while their asylum claims are being processed. These claims are not processed under Australian law and the claimants have no access to legal assistance or judicial review.

Very important here is the statement by Janet Phillips, who finds that Asylum seekers who arrive by boat are subject to the same assessment criteria as all other asylum applicants. Past figures show that between 70 and 100 per cent of asylum seekers arriving by boat at different times have been found to be refugees and granted protection either in Australia or in another country [25]. Despite these people being genuine refugees, it seems that only a few have been resettled, mainly in countries other than Australia. Some resettlements may have taken place in Australia, however, the process is not transparent, media access to the offshore processing centers is denied, medical and other staff who work at the centers are not permitted to talk about their experiences, and members of the Coalition and of the Labor Party emphasize continuously that people detained in Nauru and on Manus Island will not be settled in Australia.

A large part of the Australian population has been appalled by these measures [30-33] and the pressure on politicians is mounting to resettle these people as soon as possible. “The Pacific Solution was widely criticized by refugee advocacy and human rights groups as being contrary to international refugee law, unjustifiably expensive to implement, and psychologically damaging for detainees” [24]. In February 2019, the Refugee Medical Evacuation Bill was passed by the Australian Parliament after very intense negotiations. This does mean “innocent people languishing on Manus Island and Nauru are able to access the healthcare they need, when they need it” [15]. Up until now, not a medical professional but an administrator decided whether a detainee needed medical attention. Twelve deaths have occurred in the detention centers, some could have been avoided had the refugees received adequate medical care. Now treatment will take place in Australia on Christmas Island, but the asylum seekers will have to return to Nauru or Manus Island.

A trigger of the Pacific Solution was the so-called Tampa affair, an incidence which many Australians find challenging to accept and shameful. In August 2001 the Coalition government under the leadership of Prime Minister John Howard refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa to enter Australian waters. MV Tampa had rescued 433 asylum seekers and five crew members from a fishing vessel in distress [34]. When the captain of the Tampa refused to turn around and did enter Australian waters, the Prime Minister ordered the ship be boarded by Australian Special Forces (SASR) to prevent it from closer approaching Christmas Island. In doing this, he confirmed Australian sovereignty and determined who will enter and reside in Australia.

The Norwegian government condemned the Australian government; it had failed to meet its obligations to distressed mariners under international law and complained to the United Nations. According to International law, survivors of a shipwreck are to be taken to the closest suitable port for medical treatment. The closest suitable port was 12 hours to Merak, Indonesia. Christmas Island, Australia, was six or seven hours closer [35], however, according to Shaltbolt (cited in Wikipedia) it did not have the ability to receive large shopping freighters. The Australian troops instructed the captain of the Tampa to move the ship back into international waters, he refused, claiming that ship was unsafe to sail until the asylum seekers had been offloaded. Norway refused to admit the asylum seekers, so did Indonesia; in the end, the asylum seekers were loaded onto a Royal Australian Navy vessel and transported to Nauru.

The inhumane situation becomes clear when looking at the assessment of the captain of the Tampa: I have seen most of what there is to see in this profession, but what I experienced on this trip is the worst. When we asked for food and medicine for the refugees, the Australians sent commando troops on board. This created a very high tension among the refugees. After an hour of checking the refugees, the troops agreed to give medical assistance to some of them… The soldiers obviously didn’t like their mission [10].

The Social and Economic Contributions of Humanitarian Entrants to Australian Society

Apart from moral issues which the detention of people in Nauru and Manus Island raise, some thought is provided here in relation to the overall contribution of asylum seekers and refugees. Graeme Hugo looks critically at different nationality groups of humanitarian entrants and their contributions to Australia society. He asserts that “the marked increase in capacity over time of humanitarian entrants and their subsequent generations … is very significant”; he particularly mentions the “resourcefulness, hard work and determination to improve their lives and the life of their children” [17]. Interestingly, comparing different migrant visa categories, Hugo [17] finds that an important aspect of humanitarian entrants is that they, compared to other migrant groups, tend to spend their entire lives and raise their children in Australia. But he does acknowledge that there are barriers confronting this group when entering the workforce; the knowledge of English is of great importance and not speaking the language does present difficulties.

Unemployment rates are higher and workforce participation rates are lower. However, this changes for the second generation: “at least half of the nationality groups have a higher level of participation [in the workforce] than those born in Australia, with ten of the nationality groups having lower level of unemployment rates than the Australia-born” [17]. This author also finds that humanitarian arrivals value the education of their children: a higher proportion (of those aged 15-24) attend educational institutions than other migrant categories and the Australia-born population. [17] concludes that the difficulties experienced by the first generation dissipate for the second generation. Does this demonstrate acculturation of Australian culture, convergence towards Australian values or is it something else? How can the success of second-generation migrants be understood? Muenstermann (1997) talked about this issue.

The success of the second generation is based on sacrifices of the first generation, on their efforts to push their children to achieve high levels of education. This, of course, reduces the barriers over time. The more specific economic contribution of humanitarian entrants is related to their sense of becoming independent, of establishing their own businesses (more so than other migrant groups), to engage disproportionally in the workforce in regional areas, and to initiate trade between their home countries and Australia [17]. Assessing the social capital of humanitarian arrivals [17], community contributions, close networking within their own ethnic groups and volunteering could be established.

New refugee communities have a strong connection to their immediate communities and promote these. But there is also engagement with the broader community, they volunteer at official organizations, which is a means of gaining confidence, learning about new communities, and of feeling empowered. Different groups take different length of time to engage with the broader community; it is affected by cultural norms, time spent in refugee camps, and the availability of leadership within the community. The overall finding of Hugo [17] is that the economic and social contributions of humanitarian entrants are substantial even though they experience greater difficulty in adjusting to life in Australia than other migrant groups.

Conclusion

This literature review has looked at Australian refugee and asylum seeker policies and demonstrated that Australia, despite being a signatory to the United Nations 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol on Refugees, is not always acting humanely when it comes to assist people in need of protection. One only needs to look at the labelling of asylum seekers or refugees, such as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘illegal maritime arrivals’, ‘queue jumpers’, ‘unlawful non-citizens’ to realize that people are victimized and humiliated. During the last 30 years Australia has applied increasingly stricter laws (enforced by Border Protection and border patrols), one of them being that no asylum seeker arriving by boat will be settled in Australia. Since 2001, boats, if discovered by border patrols, have be turned back (to Indonesia) or if a vessel should make it to Australian shores, people have been detained in offshore detention centers in Nauru or on Manus Island.

These centers have officially been closed, but there are still more than 600 people (young men) awaiting resettlement. In February 2019 (13.02.2019) the Australian parliament talked about people who have been in these detention centers for about 5 to 7 years. Medical care (up until 13.02.2019) was determined necessary or not necessary by administrators and not by medical professionals, the media had/has no access to the centers, and employees were / are not allowed to talk about their experiences. Overall transparency is lacking, and human rights violations have occurred. Looking at Australia’s different visa categories and the entitlement of the holders, there can be no doubt that on paper human rights have been addressed in relation to privileges and responsibilities of refugees and humanitarian entrants. The difficulty is to understand Australia’s treatment of, and policies in relation to, asylum seekers who arrive by boat. As Phillips [25] points out, 70% to 100% of ‘illegal maritime arrivals’ have been assessed as being genuine refugees.

Therefore, it can be argued that they will face deprivation of life, the death penalty, torture, or cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment if they return to their home countries. Reports of investigative journalism [8,36-39] find that the treatment in the offshore detention centers is unquestionably inhumane; many individuals have developed physical and mental illnesses, children as young as 12 self-harmed; and twelve deaths have occurred. In order to prevent further tragedy, it is time that people in the offshore detention centers to be resettled. There must be a better solution to protect Australian borders!

While this article cannot comment on the contribution’s asylum seekers/refugees in Australian offshore detention centers, mention is made here of Behrouz Boochani, a young Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and filmmaker, ‘writing from Manus Prison’ [40-17].

His book No Friend but the Mountains won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2019. It captures the enormous courage, resilience and hope of detainees on Manus Island; but it also implies the degrading, dehumanizing treatment of asylum seekers by those in the corridors of Australian power. The unprejudiced study by Hugo [17] is of some consolation; the author argues that humanitarian entrants contributed significantly to Australian society, that they influenced the three ‘Ps’, population, participation and production. There can be no doubt that people detained right now on Manus Island and in Nauru would make a positive contribution to Australian society [45-50].

Read More About this Article: https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume4/refugees-and-asylum-seekers-a-somewhat-challenging-australian-experience.000844.php

For more about: Journals on Biomedical Science :Biomed Grid | Current Issue

#biomedgrid #American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research #Health science Journal of Open access #Journals on Biomedical Intervention

0 notes

anarchistnewsdaily · 7 years ago

Text

News Highlights: February 19 2018 - February 25 2018

In case you didn’t see, hear, or do it yourself these are some events that took place or were reported during the last week.

Smashy

Montreal, Quebec: The war on the rich outside their home |

“A luxury car goes up in smoke in the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grâce district. The fire broke out around 1:30 am in the passenger compartment of a parked Porsche on Girouard Avenue, near Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Avenue. Arriving on the scene, the police noticed that the front window on the passenger side had been shattered and the fire was raging inside. Despite the intervention of firefighters, the fire completely destroyed the racing car. The Criminal Fire Section of the Ontario Police Service City of Montreal is in charge of the investigation. It is not uncommon in Montreal that the rich pay the price for hatred they sow, sometimes even just outside their house.”

Bremen, Germany: Arson Attack Against Military Contractor OHB in Solidarity with Afrin

“We carried out an arson attack against OHB’s headquarters in Bremen. OHB is one of the leading companies in space technology. The main business of OHB is military research and production. One of their current major contract orders comes from the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). OHB is currently building a spy satellite for them.”

Basel, Switzerland: Sabotage against some profiteers of the prison system |

“In recent weeks we have been puncturing the vehicle tyres of the following companies: Two IMPLENIA vehicles, Two ISS vehicles, An ALPIQ vehicle. IMPLENIA and ALPIQ are companies that are not afraid to make money by extending Bässlergut so are prepared to inflict suffering on vast numbers of people. In these times of war and exploitation that are pushing thousands of people on to the roads of exile, the above-mentioned companies are deliberately closing their eyes to the fact that misery prevails everywhere and that their “building contract” will directly affect those suffering it. It is not a swimming pool that is being built there. A prison is a place for locking up and punishing people. A place of violence.”

Greece: ‘Only the Ideas We Actually Live Are of Any Value’ – About the Hunger Strike of Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou

“There have been a few attacks here in Greece in solidarity with the comrade during the past few months of his incarceration:

A group called “Cracks in normality” heavily vandalized two SYRIZA local offices (largest party of the government coalition) and a post office in Athens, on 26/01/2018

A FAI cell called “FAI-IRF Cell” planted an incendiary device at a post office in Patras (western part of Greece), on 06/01/2018

A group called “Destroyers of social peace” heavily vandalied a post office and a local branch of Piraeus bank in Athens, on 18/01/2018

A FAI cell called “Revolutionary Cells of Action” planted an incendiary device at a local branch of Piraeus bank in Athens, on 26/01/2018

A group called “Anarchist Cell – Destruction of the existent” torched a local electricity station that belonged to the National Company of Telecommunications (OTE) in Thessaloniki, on 14/12/217

There have also been a few small solidarity gatherings and some banners were hanged around the city of Athens along with posters etc.”

Berlin, Germany: Arson Attack Against a DITIB Transporter by Revenge Commando Kendal Breizh in Solidarity with Afrin

“With this statement we, the Revenge Commando Kendal Breizh* claim responsibility for the arson attack against a vehicle belonging to the DITIB (Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs) in Schöneberg, Berlin on the night of Friday the 19th of February, 2018. The DITIB is not just a simple mosque organization. The DITIB acts openly as the mouthpiece for the fascist AKP regime in Germany. Organizationally, the union is tied to the Turkish religous authority Diyanet from whom it receives all orders and instructions. The contents of their sermons are written in Ankara and their preachers are all trained in Turkey.”

Athens, Greece: Coordinated Molotov Attacks Against Riot Police in Exarcheia in Solidarity with Konstantinos Giagtzoglou

“Over the last two nights (Friday and Saturday) we carried out coordinated attacks with Molotov cocktails against the MAT (Riot Police) forces guarding Exarcheia. These attacks were a sign of our full solidarity with anarchist Dinos Giagtzoglou who is on a hunger and thirst strike demanding to be transferred to Korydallos Prison. We will return tomorrow night.”

Banner Drop

Candler, NC: Banner Drop in Traditionally KKK Territory - It's Going Down

“Southeastern anti-fascists collaborated in a banner drop in long-held KKK territory, sending a clear message that we know where they are, we are watching, and we will confront any and all white supremacist organizing in our communities.”

Bern, Switzerland: Solidarity for Imprisoned Anarchist Comrades in Russia

“Solidarity for imprisoned anarchist comrades in Russia from Bern/Switzerland.

Brazil : Banner in solidarity with anarchists persecuted by “Op. Érebo” |

“We hang a banner in solidarity with the persecuted anarchists in Porto Alegre. For all those who are fighting against the storms of loneliness and the inclemency of uncertainty. For all those whose life was /is being disturbed by this repressive wave and that have not lowered neither arms nor head! For all those who face the difficulties waking up each morning with the conviction of having crossed the point of no return. The powerful can never stop us!”

Animal Liberation

Animals are Using Colorado's Wildlife Crossings, Reducing Collisions | Earth First! Newswire

“Statistics obtained by CDOT show that from 2006 to 2016 on U.S. 160, in the area between Durango and Bayfield, there were 472 car-animal collisions, a large number of them involving mule deer.”

Indigenous Resistance

Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Condemns the Rochford Mining in Black Hills: Committing to Additional Action

“The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe passed two (2) resolutions on 8 February 2018 opposing gold mining operations in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Mineral Mountain, LLC is a Canadian-based mineral extraction company preparing to drill hundreds of holes in the Black Hills in the search of gold.”

Borders

Melbourne, Australia: Community Blockades MITA Detention Centre in Desperate Bid to Stop Deportation to Danger of Tamil Asylum Seeker

“Community members have blockaded the gates of MITA detention centre in Broadmeadows this morning in a desperate bid to stop the deportation of Tamil asylum seeker, ‘Santharuban’. Grave fears are held for him should he be returned to Sri Lanka. As a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers), he faces plausible threat to his safety on return. Former Tiger members and returned Tamil refugees are routinely harassed, interrogated and some are subjected to torture by Sri Lankan security forces.”

Icebreaker Pt 2 - Confidential Homeland Security Asset Forfeiture and Search and Seizure Handbooks - UNICORN RIOT

“Unicorn Riot obtained confidential Department of Homeland Security manuals showing how DHS’s largest investigative arm, Homeland Security Investigations, advised its agents to conduct their operations. Part 2 of the Icebreaker series covers the HSI “Search and Seizure” and “Asset Forfeiture” handbooks.”

Workplace Organizing

Seattle Solidarity Network Beats Thieving Temp Agency Who Calls In Army of Cops - It's Going Down

“We marched straight into their 6th-floor office and successfully delivered the demand to a manager in the middle of a worker orientation class. After delivering the demand the group left the office and moved to exit the building but were met in the lobby by no less than 8 Renton Police Department officers. The police officers immediately asked for Karim by name so SeaSol formed a protective barrier around him as our designated police liaison tried to communicate that our action was over and we were in the process of vacating the premises. Unfortunately, Renton PD chose to begin throwing people out of the way and aggressively grabbed for Karim yelling “we don’t have a warrant for his arrest yet” as they pulled him out of the group and led him outside. Members of SeaSol continued to peacefully place themselves in between Karim and the police so as to prevent them from totally isolating him. People filmed from just a few feet away as the police performed a search of Karim, the only black man at the action, to help ensure the police did not engage in any illegal repression. Once their search of him was complete, they began attempting to drive a wedge between SeaSol and Karim by acting as a mouth piece for LGC Hospitality by imploring us to stop and let them tell us LGC’s made-up story about Karim threatening to “shoot up the place.” Needless to say the minute he was released by the police officer, the group ignored the police, reconvened and immediately left the premises to disperse as they had originally been trying to do. Less than 24 hrs after this demand delivery, LGC Hospitality got in touch with Karim and offered to pay him around $1,600 to settle the dispute.”

Shelter

Toronto: Residents on Rent Strike Flyer Neighborhoods of Landlords - It's Going Down

“Over the long weekend flyers were delivered to Michael and Marsha Lax’s neighbours in their Bathurst and Sheppard-area neighborhood. More flyers appeared in the area of Bnei Akiva schools where Michael Lax sits on the Board of Directors.”

Wheeling, WV: Rally Against Homeless Raids Reclaims Stolen Items From City - It's Going Down

“We decided we had had enough raising awareness for the time being. Now was the time for direct action. We drove right up to pile and loaded up the bags into several vehicles. After dropping them off, we got word a second pile was discovered. We snatched them up as well. In total, we liberated about 20 bags from the city.”

Antifa

Report Back from Confronting the TWP at the University of Knoxville - It's Going Down

“The Holler Network welcomed us back for the second time in less than a month to join them and drive TWP back out by any means necessary. The TWP can’t and wont beat us with force. They win through laws, politics, and hiding behind cops. It has become abundantly clear that law enforcement will not only fulfill their legal obligations to protect Nazis and fascists, but they will do so willingly and joyfully.”

Additional Actions

Athens, Greece: Solidarity Action for Anarchist Prisoner of War Konstantinos ‘Dinos’ Yiagtzoglou

“There was an open-mic event in solidarity with the anarchist comrade K. Yiagtzoglou at the Propylaea. Banners were hung, texts were distributed and leaflets were thrown. This was a minimal sign of solidarity with our comrade who has been imprisoned by the hands of the State since 28.10.2017, accused of membership of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire and of the parcel bombs destined for European officials that were intercepted at the Hellenic Postal Service office in Kryoneri, as well as the parcel bomb that exploded in the hands of former Prime Minister L. Papademos.”

Repression

Catalonia: 6 Activists Face Up to 7 Years in Prison for Tower 66 Anti-MAT Resistance | Earth First! Newswire

”Activists just got 1 year suspended and 544 euros fine each for the 5 month tree occupation in mid winter 2013/14. 544 euros of fine for the 7 anti-MAT activists who were arrested at the eviction of the forest occupations in Sant Hilari Sacalm. The sentence condemns them for ”coercion and serious disobedience to the authority”, but fortunately exempts them from indemnifying Red Eléctrica with 41,000 euros! The Criminal Court Number 5 of Girona imposed the fines on each of the seven anti-MAT activists who spent a frigid winter in the trees to avoid the construction of the Very High Tension line. In addition, the ruling also emphasized that the police had to avoid traps (such as ditches dug out of the ground) and climb the trees to clear out the activists.”

Medical Horrors at FCI Florence - It's Going Down

“There amount of horrors that she is accountable for is staggering and hard to put into paragraph form. Inmates with long histories of seizures have regularly had their dosages reduced by her-without doctors permission or knowledge – leading to ugly, violent seizures. If you make the mistake of having a seizure on the 2nd tier, you can expect to be carried down the steps not on a gurney, but by 4 members of staff, dragging you like a sack of potatoes. Inmates with cancer have REGULARLY been denied doctor follow ups (despite the doctors request), denied medicine prescribed by the doctor, and had information continually withheld by R.N. Hendricks. There are countless grievances against her for ignoring actual doctors’ orders, losing medical inhalers, misplacing medicine, and changing dosages. I know this because I help type many of these grievances, and every time my heart aches for my comrades who have to go through this.”

Paris, France: Trial of the struggle against the expulsion machinery |

“At the hearing on January 31, 2018 at the 16th chamber of the court of Paris, the 7 comrades sent to trial for “Damage against Air France, the SNCF and Bouygues” and refusal to give DNA samples and identification, obtained an adjournment of the trial.

Bloc Party: Repression and Political Prisoner Updates - It's Going Down

“While there’s been a lot going on around the bloc, we wanted to get out these very important political prisoner and repression updates as fast as possible.“

Jury Finds Minneapolis Cop Not Guilty in Shooting at Car With Six Youth - UNICORN RIOT

“A Hennepin County jury found Minneapolis Police Officer Efrem Hamilton not guilty on multiple felony charges for shooting at a car occupied by six young adults.”

France: First Press Release from a Few Owls about the Bure Eviction

“The eviction of the Lejuc wood (Bois Lejuc) started with 500 riot cops, reinforced/orchestrated by a communication campaign from the home secretary (ministre de l’interieur), the news channels diffusing shock images of military vehicles gathered next to the Lejuc wood, cabins being invaded, cops in balaclavas armed with chainsaws and cameras.”

Germany: Anarchist Comrade Lisa Transferred to New Prison

“Our comrade was transferred to another prison in Germany, JVA Willich II, about 60km from Cologne, where she was previously. We do not know yet how long she will be there, but we will still leave her new address so that she can continue to receive letters and solidarity photos.”

Greece: Anarchist Prisoner of War Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou Begins Hunger Strike

“Anarchist prisoner Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou commenced a hunger strike to demand his transfer from the prisons of Larissa to the prisons of Korydallos following the rejection of his request by the Central Committee for Transfers.”

Greece: Anarchist Prisoner Konstantinos Yiatzoglou Kidnapped from Korydallos Prison by EKAM (Special Anti-Terrorist Unit)

“UPDATE 1 – Today at 06:45AM EKAM (Special Anti-Terrorist Unit) invaded Korydallos Prison and violently kidnapped the hunger striker Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou. Konstantinos resisted as best as he could as the masked and uniformed EKAM entered his cell and assaulted him. They then put him in handcuffs and violently dragged him out of his cell while he was in a dazed state from the assault. The wing of the prison was put on lockdown but the prisoners banged on the doors and cursed the cops. So far the wing is still on lockdown.

UPDATE 2 – As soon as the hunger striker Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou was removed from his cell a special transport team took him accompanied by heavily armed members of EKAM. The hunger striker was kidnapped without even letting him bring his clothes, personal belongings or even his medication. A-wing is still on lockdown as the prison authorities are frightened about the reactions of the prisoners. This is the second time in a month that EKAM have kidnapped prisoners from A-Wing. And all this occurring under the so-called left-wing Syriza government of ‘rights’.”

Greece: Korydallos Prisoners Take Keys & Radio from Guards as Rebellion Begins Following the Kidnapping of Anarchist Hunger Striker Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou

“UPDATE 1: This is a time of insurrection by Korydallos prisoners after the abduction K. Yiagtzoglou by the cops a while ago. So far A, D and possibly C wings are involved in a dynamic action in response to the kidnapping of anarchist hunger striker K. Yiagtzoglou.

UPDATE 2: The prisoners have taken keys and a radio from the guards. What is happening now is in the context of a mobilization by prisoners demanding the return of anarchist comrade Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou to Korydallos Prison. They demand that government representatives come to the prison.

UPDATE 3: The Prisoner Solidarity Network in Greece have announced via their Twitter account that the prisoners now control the majority of Korydallos Prison.”

Australia: Former Tamil Tiger Deported to Sri Lanka

“The Tamil Refugee Council condemns the Australian government for deporting to Sri Lanka a former member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers). Santharuban, who fled the country in 2012, last night was taken into custody for questioning in Colombo, the capital, on arrival just after 10pm local time. He had been handcuffed and removed from the Broadmeadows detention centre (Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation) on Tuesday evening and was driven to Sydney – escorted by four guards, one Border Force agent and one doctor – where he was detained.”

Greece: Ministry of Justice Pledge to Return Anarchist Comrade Konstantinos Yiagtzoglou to Korydallos & Promise No Reprisals Against Protesting Prisoners

“The Ministry of Justice has pledged to return anarchist prisoner Konstantinos Yiatzoglou to Korydallos, and has agreed to the terms that no prisoners will be disciplined.“

Greece: ‘No Trust in the Ministry’ -Anarchist Prisoner Konstantinos Yiatzoglou Will Continue Hunger Strike

“There is no confidence in the ministry officials. So Dinos will continue his hunger strike and from tomorrow morning will also begin a thirst strike with only one demand – his direct transfer back to Korydallos. There will be more detailed information in the next few hours.”

Rest in Power

William (Bill) Koehnline (1949-2017) Anarchist, Militant, Friend | anarchistnews.org

“William (Bill) W. Koehnlein, life-long militant, organizer and educator, died in Manhattan on November 19, 2017, after a long, courageous struggle with colon cancer. A native New Yorker, Bill was born May 10, 1949, and spent the first six years of his life in the Payson Avenue section of Manhattan (1949-51) and in Elmhurst, Queens (1951-55), where he attended kindergarten at P.S. 89. For the next twelve years, he lived in Huntington Station, Long Island, subsequently moving to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his main residence until his death.”

For further news check out: Anarchist News Daily

For anarchist podcasts, lectures, and audiobooks check out: F Yeah Anarchist Audio

For anarchist videos check out: F Yeah Anarchist Video

Current news sites include: itsgoingdown.org insurrectionnewsworldwide.com earthfirstjournal.org unicornriot.ninja anarchistnews.org contrainfo.espiv.net actforfree.nostate.net libcom.org

#anarchism #news #february 2018 #h #highlights #round up

5 notes · View notes