#eu border force

[bluastro-yellow]

unfortunately the EU keeps making cool regulations like holy shit they're forcing big messaging apps like whatsapp to send and recieve messages from other services. someone's doing that, fucking finally

[ironmanrecords]

Tour Management: Crossing the UK/EU Border - Transporting musical instruments or equipment

No more ATA Carnets for small artists carrying their own musical instruments and equipment. MU member and founder of ukeartswork, Ian Smith says: “This in very real terms is great news…..It’s a game changer for smaller bands and musicians who do not have the budget to pay for a carnet, when in fact they’re only taking over an instrument or two and an amp/mike.” Please note: This information and…

[niveditaabaidya]

Russia Claims 70 Attackers Killed In Cross Border Belgorod Raid. #ukrain...

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Reverse engineers bust sleazy gig work platform

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/23/hack-the-class-war/#robo-boss

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Supposedly, these lines were included in a 1979 internal presentation at IBM; screenshots of them routinely go viral:

https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1385565737167724545?lang=en

The reason for their newfound popularity is obvious: the rise and rise of algorithmic management tools, in which your boss is an app. That IBM slide is right: turning an app into your boss allows your actual boss to create an "accountability sink" in which there is no obvious way to blame a human or even a company for your maltreatment:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

App-based management-by-bossware treats the bug identified by the unknown author of that IBM slide into a feature. When an app is your boss, it can force you to scab:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

Or it can steal your wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But tech giveth and tech taketh away. Digital technology is infinitely flexible: the program that spies on you can be defeated by another program that defeats spying. Every time your algorithmic boss hacks you, you can hack your boss back:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/02/not-what-it-does/#who-it-does-it-to

Technologists and labor organizers need one another. Even the most precarious and abused workers can team up with hackers to disenshittify their robo-bosses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#gojek

For every abuse technology brings to the workplace, there is a liberating use of technology that workers unleash by seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

One tech-savvy group on the cutting edge of dismantling the Torment Nexus is Algorithms Exposed, a tiny, scrappy group of EU hacker/academics who recruit volunteers to reverse engineer and modify the algorithms that rule our lives as workers and as customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Algorithms Exposed have an admirable supply of seemingly boundless energy. Every time I check in with them, I learn that they've spun out yet another special-purpose subgroup. Today, I learned about Reversing Works, a hacking team that reverse engineers gig work apps, revealing corporate wrongdoing that leads to multimillion euro fines for especially sleazy companies.

One such company is Foodinho, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish food delivery company Glovo. Foodinho/Glovo has been in the crosshairs of Italian labor enforcers since before the pandemic, racking up millions in fines – first for failing to file the proper privacy paperwork disclosing the nature of the data processing in the app that Foodinho riders use to book jobs. Then, after the Italian data commission investigated Foodinho, the company attracted new, much larger fines for its out-of-control surveillance conduct.

As all of this was underway, Reversing Works was conducting its own research into Glovo/Foodinho's app, running it on a simulated Android handset inside a PC so they could peer into app's data collection and processing. They discovered a nightmarish world of pervasive, illegal worker surveillance, and published their findings a year ago in November, 2023:

https://www.etui.org/sites/default/files/2023-10/Exercising%20workers%20rights%20in%20algorithmic%20management%20systems_Lessons%20learned%20from%20the%20Glovo-Foodinho%20digital%20labour%20platform%20case_2023.pdf

That report reveals all kinds of extremely illegal behavior. Glovo/Foodinho makes its riders' data accessible across national borders, so Glovo managers outside of Italy can access fine-grained surveillance information and sensitive personal information – a major data protection no-no.

Worse, Glovo's app embeds trackers from a huge number of other tech platforms (for chat, analytics, and more), making it impossible for the company to account for all the ways that its riders' data is collected – again, a requirement under Italian and EU data protection law.

All this data collection continues even when riders have clocked out for the day – its as though your boss followed you home after quitting time and spied on you.

The research also revealed evidence of a secretive worker scoring system that ranked workers based on undisclosed criteria and reserved the best jobs for workers with high scores. This kind of thing is pervasive in algorithmic management, from gig work to Youtube and Tiktok, where performers' videos are routinely suppressed because they crossed some undisclosed line. When an app is your boss, your every paycheck is docked because you violated a policy you're not allowed to know about, because if you knew why your boss was giving you shitty jobs, or refusing to show the video you spent thousands of dollars making to the subscribers who asked to see it, then maybe you could figure out how to keep your boss from detecting your rulebreaking next time.

All this data-collection and processing is bad enough, but what makes it all a thousand times worse is Glovo's data retention policy – they're storing this data on their workers for four years after the worker leaves their employ. That means that mountains of sensitive, potentially ruinous data on gig workers is just lying around, waiting to be stolen by the next hacker that breaks into the company's servers.

Reversing Works's report made quite a splash. A year after its publication, the Italian data protection agency fined Glovo another 5 million euros and ordered them to cut this shit out:

https://reversing.works/posts/2024/11/press-release-reversing.works-investigation-exposes-glovos-data-privacy-violations-marking-a-milestone-for-worker-rights-and-technology-accountability/

As the report points out, Italy is extremely well set up to defend workers' rights from this kind of bossware abuse. Not only do Italian enforcers have all the privacy tools created by the GDPR, the EU's flagship privacy regulation – they also have the benefit of Italy's 1970 Workers' Statute. The Workers Statute is a visionary piece of legislation that protects workers from automated management practices. Combined with later privacy regulation, it gave Italy's data regulators sweeping powers to defend Italian workers, like Glovo's riders.

Italy is also a leader in recognizing gig workers as de facto employees, despite the tissue-thin pretense that adding an app to your employment means that you aren't entitled to any labor protections. In the case of Glovo, the fine-grained surveillance and reputation scoring were deemed proof that Glovo was employer to its riders.

Reversing Works' report is a fascinating read, especially the sections detailing how the researchers recruited a Glovo rider who allowed them to log in to Glovo's platform on their account.

As Reversing Works points out, this bottom-up approach – where apps are subjected to technical analysis – has real potential for labor organizations seeking to protect workers. Their report established multiple grounds on which a union could seek to hold an abusive employer to account.

But this bottom-up approach also holds out the potential for developing direct-action tools that let workers flex their power, by modifying apps, or coordinating their actions to wring concessions out of their bosses.

After all, the whole reason for the gig economy is to slash wage-bills, by transforming workers into contractors, and by eliminating managers in favor of algorithms. This leaves companies extremely vulnerable, because when workers come together to exercise power, their employer can't rely on middle managers to pressure workers, deal with irate customers, or step in to fill the gap themselves:

https://projects.itforchange.net/state-of-big-tech/changing-dynamics-of-labor-and-capital/

Only by seizing the means of computation, workers and organized labor can turn the tables on bossware – both by directly altering the conditions of their employment, and by producing the evidence and tools that regulators can use to force employers to make those alterations permanent.

Image: EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/issues/eu-flag-11_1.png

CC BY 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[mesetacadre]

Something I'd consider to be a big step in any communist's theoretical and practical development is the true adoption of class politics, as the main vehicle of your discourse. There is no shame in not having done this, and I'd wager almost any communist had a period of time between consciously adopting marxist politics and this "true adoption" I'm referring to. Some never take this step as well.

Especially if you were already into politics, rejecting the political discourse of bourgeois democracy and substituting it for class politics is something that takes conscious effort. Take immigration as an example, this is a relevant subject of debate in the EU. The two main positions in normal (read: bourgeois) debate is to either make legal immigration harder and murder more migrants, or to relax controls and allow easier legal integration into whichever country they're in. Your intuition as a newer communist is probably to side with the second position, and that's understandable. But a consistently class conscious position is to first understand that those two broad sets of policies (hardening or relaxing the borders) both serve different factions of the same capitalist class at the same time:

Immigration, particularly from global south countries sacked by Europe, serves to increase the reserve army of labor that exerts a downwards pressure on wages, especially from these immigrants whose precarious situations force them to take the harshest jobs for miserable pay. So these two alternating policies of opening or closing up the border (but never closing it) serve to control the size of this reserve army when it's convenient, and once they're in Europe, to utilize this mass of low-wage workers. This is what is at the crux of the bourgeois debate over immigration in Europe, it's just coated in different paints, one nationalistic and one more "humanitarian". And this is what informs the actually marxist position in this particular debate; the rejection of any and all instrumentilzation of our fellow workers for the benefit of the capitalist class. There is no immigration policy within a capitalist framework that does not utilize the cheap labor brought by immigration.

If our goal as communists is to guide the working class to power, then we should be consequent in this and not lose ourselves in debates about which policy the managers of capitalism should adopt, it's to educate workers in our actual positions and utilize these debates as a jumping off point. This is what differentiates communists and opportunists who use workerist rethoric

[crimethinc]

As Egypt builds a five-meter-high concrete wall to seal off a five-square-kilometer area along the border with Gaza, we cannot help but think of the "no-go zone" on the border between Poland and Belarus, in which thousands of refugees have been enclosed over a period of years, trapped between countries and left to die.

https://crimethinc.com/NoBordersTeam

Since 2021, the government of Belarus has cynically used thousands of refugees displaced by wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ethiopia, and elsewhere as a weapon with which to exert pressure on the European Union. EU governments have callously left these refugees in limbo between two militarized borders, establishing a restricted zone so that observers cannot see them die.

The majority of the inhabitants of Gaza were already refugees from other parts of Palestine. The world has already turned a blind eye while the Israeli government has set about ethnic cleansing in Gaza. If we permit them to complete that process by forcing the survivors into a containment zone across the Egyptian border, it will set a gruesome precedent that will be repeated elsewhere around the world.

[stackslip]

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) announced today that it has ceased operations of its rescue vessel, Geo Barents, which had been operational since June 2021. MSF is suspending all search and rescue efforts until further notice, with the intention of restarting again next year with a new ship. Italian laws and policies have made it impossible to continue with the current operational model. MSF will begin the process of evaluating different operational models to respond to the needs of migrants in this challenging environment. MSF reaffirms its solid commitment to people on the move, especially those taking the dangerous journey across the Central Mediterranean Sea, a route where over 31,000 people have died or gone missing since 2014. “MSF will be back as soon as possible to conduct search and rescue operations on one of the deadliest migration routes in the world,” said Juan Matias Gil, MSF search and rescue representative. “We will come back to bear witness and speak out against the violations committed against people on the move by EU members states, particularly by Italy, and the other actors in the area.”  (...) In the past two years, Geo Barents faced four sanctions by the Italian authorities, imposing a total of 160 days of detention in port. These punitive measures came under the Piantedosi Decree, a law that was introduced by the Italian government in the beginning of 2023 that limits the operations of non-governmental (NGO) rescue ships in the Mediterranean Sea and undermines the maritime historical humanitarian and legal duty to save lives at sea. This month, Italy further intensified the sanctions by making it easier and faster to confiscate humanitarian search and rescue vessels.

[txttletale]

Hi! Do you think you could link me to some resources about the problems/ evils of the EU? Would love to find some but it's hard to know what's reliable when I have no base knowledge in this area + you seem very well informed :)

sure. let's start with what the EU does to its own member states--in 2009, the EU bailed the greek government out of severe debt on the condition that they establish brutal austerity measures, cutting public spending and welfare. these measures served to immiserate and destroy the lives of thousands of greek people:

Greek mortality has worsened significantly since the beginning of the century. In 2000, the death rate per 100,000 people was 944.5. By 2016, it had risen to 1174.9, with most of the increase taking place from 2010 onwards.

[forbes]

Since the implementation of the austerity programme, Greece has reduced its ratio of health-care expenditure to GDP to one of the lowest within the EU, with 50% less public hospital funding in 2015 than in 2009. This reduction has left hospitals with a deficit in basic supplies, while consumers are challenged by transient drug shortages.

[the lancet]

The homeless population is thought to have grown by 25 per cent since 2009, now numbering 20,000 people.

[oxfam]

the most brutal treatment, however, the EU of course reserves for migrants from the global south. the EU sets strict migration quotas and uses its member states as weapons against desperate people fleeing across the mediterranean. boats are prevented from landing, migrants that do make it to land are repelled with brutal violence, and refugees are deported back to countries where their lives are in lethal danger. these policies have led to many, many deaths--and the refugees and migrants who do survive are treating fucking inhumanely.

After a perilous journey across the desert, Abdulaziz was locked up in Triq al-Sikka, a grim prison in Tripoli, Libya. Why? Because the EU pays Libyan militias millions of euros to detain anyone deemed a possible migrant to Europe [...] A leaked EU internal memorandum in 2020 acknowledged that capturing migrants was now “a profitable business model” [...] in Triq al-Sikka and other detention centres, “acts of murder, enslavement, torture, rape and other inhumane acts are committed against migrants”, observed a damning UN report.

[the guardian]

Volunteers have logged more than 27,000 deaths by drowning since 1993, often hundreds at a time when large ships capsize. These account for nearly 80% of all the entries.

[the guardian]

Refugees and asylum seekers were punched, slapped, beaten with truncheons, weapons, sticks or branches, by police or border guards who often removed their ID tags or badges, the committee said in its annual report. People on the move were subject to pushbacks, expulsion from European states, either by land or sea, without having asylum claims heard. Victims were also subject to “inhuman and degrading treatment”, such as having bullets fired close to their bodies while they lay on the ground, being pushed into rivers, sometimes with hands tied, or being forced to walk barefoot or even naked across a border.

[the guardian]

In September, Greece opened a refugee camp on the island of Samos that has been described as prison-like. The €38m (£32m) facility for 3,000 asylum seekers has military-grade fencing and CCTV to track people’s movements. Access is controlled by fingerprint, turnstiles and X-rays. A private security company and 50 uniformed officers monitor the camp. It is the first of five that Greece has planned; two more opened in November.

[the guardian]

i could go on. i could cite dozens more similarly brutal news stories about horrific mistreatment, or any of the dozens of people who have killed themselves in the custody of border police under horrific conditions. the EU is a murderous institution that does not care about the lives of refugees and migrants or about the lives of the citizens of any member state that is not pursuing a vicious enough neoliberal political program

[iamthetruenhaz]

Russia's prep work

I originally wrote this as a reply to a reddit comment about the prep work Putin's Russia has done to reconquer Eastern Europe (and Central Asia) and soften up the West in order to "reclaim" the "lost" global power status the USSR had.

Putin* has been prepping his "reconquering" of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since he stepped into office. He took on an openly anti-western course since the Munich speech in 2007. He probably saw American global dominance weakening following Afghanistan and Iraq and because Russia had stabilised after the 90s, he thought it was time to act.

First he paved the way with the Chechen war where he "won" and got to jump on the War on terror bandwagon and use Islamic terrorism as a boogeyman for his own imperialistic purpose to rile up Russians against external threats.

Then he invaded Georgia to probe the soil and see how the west would react. They mostly ignored him so he went on to meddle in Eastern European politics, coerce Ukraine for gas and fund right-wing parties all across Europe (at the time mostly to drive a wedge between Eastern and Western Europe and suck EE countries back into Russian orbit) while pumping anti-western sentiment and Soviet nostalgia at home.

He saw that the west was disunited because of the US-UK-EU split following the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. He capitalized on that in several ways using both the wars and the refugee crisis that followed. One, to increase racist and nationalist propaganda and stir up hatred against "the liberal gay western cabal" and the resulting Euroscepticism. Two, to prop up the "proper" traditionalist Russia as an alternative. Three, to paint Eastern European countries as a puppet of the US liberals who were "ackschually" nazis in disguise, which was easy when the West was divided between trying to coax them into the EU and leaving them as a buffer-zone backwater. The brightest example of the latter was in late 2021 when Lukashenko started dumping Middle Eastern migrants on the Polish border so the Poles could be painted as a racist, white supremacist state. Unlike, you know, Belarus (really Russia) which weaponized the migrants.

Then he failed in Ukraine when his puppet's sharp turn away from a planned EU accession path caused the Euromaidan revolts. Pro-Russian protesters soon spawned, staging provications (my own country had a wave of protests and pro-russian counter-protests back then and I remember neonazis and other paid protesters being at the forefronts). Russian media started hurling accusations of nazism against pro-western protesters.

All of a sudden, it's like a switch was flipped in Russian society. Decommunization was out the window. In 2015, Stalin was chosen as the most influential figure in *world* history by Russians. All the anti-Western, Russian irredentist, traditionalist, racist and homophobic sentiments coalesced into one, directed against the "evil nazi gay jewish West". Putin started openly provoking the West with displays of military force, close flybys in territorial waters, playing Cuban missile crisis in Kaliningrad. All to rack up the atmosphere of an imminent Cold War II and maybe even WWIII where a "wronged", "humiliated" Russia would finally make the West pay. The WWII victory celebrations also took on the appearance of a war cult, with jingoistic slogans like "we can do it again", "to Berlin" and "we're coming for the German women" displayed on every 9th May parade. Eastern European countries, especially the Baltics and Poland, noticed and tried to raise alarm, but were mostly told to keep their paranoia down and ignored.

In the last decade, he used his military and propaganda machine (what we call "hybrid warfare") to create the impression of the following: (1) The West is imperialist (and is being hypocritical about it), waging pointless bloody wars in the Middle East; (2) The West is weak in those wars, causing Russia to step in like in Syria and deal with the issue "properly"; (3) Western democracies are weak in dealing with "barbaric" refugees because they're too greedy not to let them in but too soft to throw the bad apples out (this was used to boost nationalism and Euroscepticism).

By those means, Russian propaganda managed to manipulate both anti-imperialist and nationalist groups within the West as well as in Russia and Eastern Europe and pave the way for its "just war" of "reconquering" Eastern Europe. In the West, the image of Eastern Europe was molded as either "poor backwards savages we're better off without" (for nationalists), "paranoid silly yokels crying wolf about Russia who is now playing nice" (for moderates), "ingrates not worth defending so we'll pull out" (for Trump-like US conservatives) or "backwards homophobic barbarians we don't want here because they'll ruin our utopia" (for progressivists). In Russia, they were portrayed as "lost property", accused them of being "taken over by nazis" anytime they tried to acknowledge any of the repressions suffered from USSR, and "unconscious puppets of the West" and routinely threatened with "annexation in 3 days" whenever they "misbehaved" by taking a stance against Russia's politics, whether past or current. Finally, in Eastern European countries themselves, Russia tried to ruin the image of the liberal West by portraying them as "the real fascists", "liberalism gone so far it circled back to fascism" and to prop up its own image as the "savior from debauchery upholding the good ols ways".

Also worth noting that Putin was all too eager to intervene in any country that tried to reject Russian dominance or even its own pro-Russian dictatorship. He was ready to support Belarus in 2020 and intervened in Kazakhstan in 2022 just a month before the invasion of Ukraine.

So yeah, it was quite the prep work. All to ensure that when he went on his imperialistic crusade in EE, people at home and in the West and even in Eastern Europe itself would applaud him, failing that be indifferent, failing THAT remain unheard.

* by "Putin" I don't necessarily mean just him, but the lobby behind him as well.

[metamatar]

With a budget nearing $1 billion, Frontex is the EU’s best-funded government agency. [...] including by helping Libya’s EU-funded coast guard send hundreds of thousands of migrants back to be detained in Libya under conditions that amounted to torture and sexual slavery. In 2022, the agency’s director, Fabrice Leggeri, was forced out over a mountain of scandals, including covering up similar ​“pushback” deportations, which force migrants back across the border before they can apply for asylum.

[...] EU hopes to extend Frontex’s reach far beyond its territory, into sovereign African nations Europe once colonized, with no oversight mechanisms to safeguard against abuse. Initially, the EU even proposed granting immunity from prosecution to Frontex staff in West Africa. [...] 26 African countries have received taxpayer euros aimed at curbing migration through more than 400 discrete projects. Between 2015 and 2021, the EU invested $5.5 billion in such projects, with more than 80% of the funds coming from developmental and humanitarian aid coffers.

[...] Besides the surveillance tech the DNLT branches receive, migration data analysis systems have also been installed at each post, along with biometric fingerprinting and facial recognition systems. The stated aim is to create what eurocrats call an African IBM system: Integrated Border Management. [...] no European countries maintain databases with this level of biometric information.

[...] In Niger, for instance, the EU helped draft a law that criminalized virtually all movement in the north of the country, effectively making regional mobility illegal.

[the-cimmerians]

Imane Khelif, you may remember, is an Algerian boxer, one of two to be attacked during the Olympics as cheaters, as transsexual women, as men, and even as violent criminals — all of which was completely false. The two of them, the other being Lin Yu-Ting of Taiwan, were relentlessly demeaned, mocked, and threatened, based only on how each woman had been — retroactively — excluded from an international competition last year by the International Boxing Association. Famous anti-trans politicians and personalities piled on, with Donald Trump, JD Vance, Megyn Kelly, and JK Rowling being among the most recognizable. Possibly because Rowling singled out Khelif and not Lin, the harassment of Khelif was even worse than Lin faced, and many have been wondering when karma might finally land the author in court.

The answer is … not exactly soon, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. While in the process of winning gold under unprecedented pressure (as Lin did also), Khelif worked with a famous and well-regarded Paris lawyer, Nabil Boudi, to prepare a complaint about the harassment. It was filed on Friday, August 9, actually before the gold medal bout. Although many people in the English speaking world have misinterpreted this as a defamation lawsuit (Variety seems to have corrected the body of its article, but not its headline), in fact it’s a criminal complaint alleging “moral harassment,” and per Le Monde was filed with “the Paris correctional court's National Centre for Combating Online Hate.”

So what is ‘moral harassment’ and what’s next?

Moral harassment is a criminal charge that is typically of lesser severity, on a relative par with stalking laws in the United States. As with stalking, there are more and less serious versions and the penalties can vary, but the most serious can be penalized by up to three years in jail and a fine of up to 45,000 Euros. Most violations carry lesser penalties. It is generally defined as repeated acts that have the object or effect of injuring the rights or dignity of a person, harming their health, or impairing certain other specific activities (like the ability to perform one's job).

The Centre for Combating Online Hate is a subunit of the Central Office for Combating Crimes against Humanity and Hate Crimes (OCLCH) and a recent creation. It is empowered to investigate all acts of moral harassment (amongst other hate crimes and crimes against dignity) against persons within France’s borders, even visitors like Khelif and even when the online perpetrators are unknown or outside of France’s jurisdiction.

A number of prominent people within France participated in the harassment of Khelif, including Eric Zemmour, a far-right racist politician who most recently ran for the Parliament of the European Union with the “far-right Reconquête! party.” Yes, that “Reconquête!” means just what you think it does. Members of Rassemblement National also racked up millions of views for their sexist and cissexist tweets targeting Khelif. All of these figures, and more, could face a civil fine plus forced restitution (which would not prevent Khelif from also suing for defamation) or criminal penalties if prosecuted and convicted.

The scope of the investigation, however, is certain to include the tweets of Rowling and others outside France who participated in what the complaint labeled a campaign of harassment both “massive” and “coordinated.” Speaking to Le Monde, Boudi said,

“The investigation will have to determine who was behind this misogynistic, racist, and sexist campaign, as well as those who fueled this digital lynching.”

French prosecutors have authority to request documents and other evidence from foreign governments, but outside the EU they have no ability to require cooperation, only to request it. (Inside the EU their ability to require cooperation is limited, but not non-existent.) While other European countries often have hate speech and harassment laws that overlap with those of France, speech protections are stronger in the UK than in mainland Europe and even stronger in the US. Criminal prosecution of — just as an example — JK Rowling would be possible but more difficult than a French prosecution of Zemmour and his co-harassers. In the USA, prosecution is right out.

So why bother pursuing evidence against Rowling, Musk, Trump, and Vance?

OCLCH, the office under which the online centre is organized, has as part of its mission the support of victims in their attempt to access justice. As a result of this mandate combined with the scope of France’s law against moral harassment, the prosecution investigative service is empowered to gather evidence relating to the treatment of persons within its borders even when charges can’t be filed. The benefit here is that evidence collected by the government at the government’s expense can then be used by private parties in defamation lawsuits, allowing victims to collect monetary judgements even when the prosecutors choose not to indict or a person using the internet to harass someone in France is beyond the reach of French law.

Boudi, with a background in both criminal and human rights laws, undoubtedly knows this and how to exploit it. While his client has achieved fame in winning a gold medal, it’s unlikely she has the money to pursue defamation claims around the world (and against the world’s richest respondents). While many people in the US may find it shocking that sending a tweet can be made a criminal offense in Europe, the tools that this allows the French government to use to provide equal access to justice for rich and poor will likely be crucial in the certainly forthcoming Khelif lawsuits against Rowling and her ilk in the English speaking world.

Don’t expect that defamation lawsuit too soon, however. Boudi will undoubtedly be working closely with prosecutors to keep on top of all the evidence that they gather and will want to give them time to work before bringing the civil law to bear.

[soon-palestine]

The report, “Handcuffed like dangerous criminals”: Arbitrary detention and forced returns of Sudanese refugees in Egypt, reveals how Sudanese refugees are rounded up and unlawfully deported to Sudan – an active conflict zone – without due process or opportunity to claim asylum in flagrant violation of international law. Evidence indicates that thousands of Sudanese refugees have been arbitrarily arrested and subsequently collectively expelled with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimating that 3,000 people were deported to Sudan from Egypt in September 2023 alone.

“It is unfathomable that Sudanese women, men and children fleeing the armed conflict in their country and seeking safety across the border into Egypt, are being rounded up en masse and arbitrarily detained in deplorable and inhumane conditions before being unlawfully deported,” said Sara Hashash, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

“Egyptian authorities must immediately end this virulent campaign of mass arrests and collective expulsions. They must abide by their obligations under international human rights and refugee law to provide those fleeing the conflict in Sudan with safe and dignified passage to Egypt and unrestricted access to asylum procedures.”

For decades, Egypt was home to millions of Sudanese people studying, working, investing or receiving healthcare in the country, with Sudanese women and girls, as well as boys under 16, and men over 49 exempt from entry requirements. Around 500,000 Sudanese refugees are estimated to have fled to Egypt after the armed conflict erupted in Sudan in April 2023. However, in the following month, the Egyptian government introduced a visa entry requirement for all Sudanese nationals, leaving those fleeing with little choice but to escape through irregular border crossings.

The report documents in detail the ordeals of 27 Sudanese refugees who were arbitrarily arrested with about 260 others between October 2023 and March 2024 by Egypt’s Border Guard Forces operating under the Ministry of Defence, as well as police operating under the Ministry of Interior. It further documents how the authorities forcibly returned an estimated 800 Sudanese detainees between January and March 2024 who were all denied the possibility to claim asylum, including by accessing UNHCR, or to challenge deportation decisions.

The report is based on interviews with detained refugees, their relatives, community leaders, lawyers and a medical professional; as well as a review of official statements and documents and audiovisual evidence. The Egyptian ministries of defence and interior did not respond to Amnesty International’s letters sharing its documentation and recommendations, while the Egyptian National Council of Human Rights, the national human rights institution, rejected the findings claiming that authorities comply by their international obligations.

The spike in mass arrests and expulsions came after a prime ministerial decree issued in August 2023 requiring foreign nationals in Egypt to regularize their status. This was accompanied by a rise in xenophobic and racist sentiments both online and in the media as well as statements by government officials criticizing the economic “burden” of hosting “millions” of refugees.

It has also taken place against the backdrop of increased EU cooperation with Egypt on migration and border control, despite the country’s grim human rights record and well-documented abuses against migrants and refugees.

In October 2022, the EU and Egypt signed an €80 million cooperation agreement, which included building up the capacity of Egyptian Border Guard Forces to curb irregular migration and human trafficking across Egypt’s border. The agreement purports to apply “rights-based, protection oriented and gender sensitive approaches”. Yet, Amnesty International’s new report documents the involvement of the Border Guard Forces in violations against Sudanese refugees.

A further aid and investment package, under which migration is a key pillar, was agreed in March 2024 as part of the newly announced strategic and comprehensive partnership between the EU and Egypt.

“By cooperating with Egypt in the migration field without rigorous human rights safeguards, the EU risks complicity in Egypt’s human rights violations. The EU must press Egyptian authorities to adopt concrete measures to protect refugees and migrants,” said Sara Hashash.

“The EU must also carry out rigorous human rights risk assessments before implementing any migration cooperation and put in place independent monitoring mechanisms with clear human rights benchmarks. Cooperation must be halted or suspended immediately if there are risks or reports of abuses.” Arbitrary arrests from streets and hospitals

The mass arrests have mostly taken place in Greater Cairo (encompassing Cairo and Giza) and in the border areas in the governorate of Aswan or inside Aswan city. In Cairo and Giza, police have conducted mass stops and identity checks targeting Black individuals, spreading fear within the refugee community leaving many afraid to leave their homes.

Following arrest by police in Aswan, Sudanese refugees are transferred to police stations or the Central Security Forces camp, an unofficial detention place, in Shallal region. Those arrested by Border Guard Forces in Aswan governorate are detained in makeshift detention facilities including warehouses inside a military site in Abu Simbel and a horse stable inside another military site near Nagaa Al Karur before being forced into buses and vans and driven to the Sudanese border.

Conditions in these detention facilities are cruel and inhumane, with overcrowding, lack of access to toilets and sanitation facilities, substandard and insufficient food, and denial of adequate healthcare.

Amnesty International also documented the arrest of at least 14 refugees from public hospitals in Aswan, where they were receiving treatment for serious injuries sustained during road accidents on their journeys from Sudan to Egypt. Authorities transferred them – against medical advice and before they had fully recovered – to detention, where they were forced to sleep on the ground after surgery.

Amira, a 32-year-old Sudanese woman who fled Khartoum with her mother was receiving treatment at an Aswan hospital following a car crash on 29 October 2023 that left her with fractures to the neck and the back. Nora, a relative of Amira, told the organization that the doctors told her she would need three months of medical care, but after just 18 days police transferred her to a police station in Aswan where she was forced to sleep on the ground for around 10 days. Cold and rat-infested detention facilities before collective expulsions

Amnesty International’s Evidence Lab reviewed photos and verified videos from January 2024 of women and children sitting on dirty floors amidst rubbish in a warehouse controlled by Egyptian border guards. The former detainees said the warehouses were infested by rats and pigeon nests and those detained endured cold nights with no appropriate clothing or blankets. Men’s warehouse conditions were overcrowded, with over a hundred men crammed together and limited access to overflowing toilets, forcing them to urinate in plastic bottles at night.

At least 11 children, some under the age of four, were detained with their mothers at these sites.

Israa, who has asthma, told Amnesty International that guards at the overcrowded horse stable near Nagaa Al Karur village ignored her request for an inhaler, even when she asked to buy one at her own expense.

After periods of detention ranging from a few days six weeks, police and Border Guard Forces handcuffed males and drove all detainees to the Qustul-Ashkeet border crossing and handed them to Sudanese authorities, without individualised assessment of risk of serious human rights violations if returned. None was given the opportunity to claim asylum even when they had registration appointments with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), asked to speak to UNHCR or pleaded not to be sent back. Such forced returns violate Egypt’s international obligations under human rights and refugee law, including the principle of non-refoulement.

Border Guard Forces expelled Ahmed, his wife and two-year-old child together with a group of roughly 200 detainees, on 26 February 2024, after detaining them for six days in Abu Simbel military site.

Since the conflict in Sudan began, Egyptian authorities have failed to provide statistics or acknowledge their policy of deportations.

[niveditaabaidya]

Russian Forces Hit Toretsk. #ukraine #donetsk #russia #belgorad #border ...

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🟦 CEASEFIRE DREAMS, IRANIAN LIES - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

( VIDEO - IDF targeted airstrike in Beirut this morning. )

✡️Erev Shabbat - Parshat (Torah portion) Vayeira - Genesis 18:1 - G‑d reveals Himself to Abraham three days after the first Jew’s circumcision at age ninety-nine; but Abraham rushes off to prepare a meal for three guests who appear in the desert heat. One of the three—who are angels disguised as men—announces that, in exactly one year, the barren Sarah will give birth to a son. Sarah laughs.

▪️SPORTS AND JEW HUNTING.. in football / soccer, the Israeli national team held France to a 0:0 game.  In the stands battles from Arabs who attacked Israeli supporters, who came prepared to defend themselves.

🔸CEASEFIRE DREAMS.. Draft agreement: the US and France will arm the Lebanese army, which will destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure south of the Litani river and prevent attacks on Israel, with direct American intervention in monitoring the Hezbollah organization so that they do not rearm, France and Great Britain have agreed to participate in maintaining the ceasefire.  The IDF will withdraw after 60 days.  

.. Ynet says minister Dermer met with Trump, who ‘hopes the deal will be closed before he takes office’. 

.. Commentary: The possibility of the Lebanese army restraining Hezbollah while Iran is army and backing them is a pipe dream, one that will only end up with another war.

.. Note: So far Hezbollah has not even been involved in the negotiations.  Making this ‘the appearance of negotiations’.

.. A senior member of Hezbollah, "The Israeli condition that will allow the occupier to operate militarily inside Lebanon is unacceptable.”

.. Lebanese Al Akhbar news: The American outline for the ceasefire agreement is an attempt at blackmail - either Lebanon will accept it or the war will escalate.  They also report that Israel is demanding international guarantees for the dismantling of all of Hezbollah's military infrastructure above and below the ground, as well as the deployment of the Lebanese army, "reinforced" with UNIFIL forces at all border crossings and airports and the sea.

🔹SYRIA - Eastern Syria: yesterday morning, 3 more trucks crossed from Iraq to Syria accompanied by the forces of the Iraqi Al Hashd Al Sha'abi (Shia militia) organization.

💩IRANIAN PRESIDENT’S LIE OF THE DAY - "We have never sought to possess nuclear weapons, and we will not do so based on the Iranian leader's fatwa on this matter."  (( Said with a straight face while enriching a TON of uranium to weapons grade. ))

💩TURKISH DEF. MIN SAYS - "We do not rule out the outbreak of a third world war and we are making the necessary preparations."

♦️LEBANON - day by day IDF ground forces are working through and combing the areas, capturing war equipment, destroying underground bases and caches, capturing and destroying rocket launchers. Heavy airstrikes on Nabatea, Hezbollah buildings.  The Air Force attacked more than 120 terrorist targets throughout Lebanon.

.. “But why are there still so many rocket launches?”  Because Hezbollah, with Iran funding and support, has been receiving and burying launchers for 20 years.  There is a LOT to work through.

⭕Hezbollah summarizes the previous day with 32 terror launches  against Israel, 20 of them against civilian towns and cities.  (( How many US, French, EU or UN statements have you heard against those 20 launches at civilian towns that Hezbollah clearly states they did (war crime)?  How many evac notices (zero)?  As Israeli children are directly targeted, how many human rights organizations, women’s and children’s organizations, have you heard speak out about targeting Jewish children?  …Exactly. ))