Police said there had been 62 murders on Saturday, making it the most violent 24-hour period since the end of the civil war in 1992.

New laws restrict the right to gather, allow arrests without a warrant and the monitoring of communications.

Last year, the gang-plagued nation recorded 1,140 murders – a 30-year low.

However, that still equates to 18 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. In November, another spate of violence led to more than 40 people being killed within three days.

Hours before MPs voted on the new powers, which will remain in place for 30 days, police said four leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang had been arrested over the spate of killings.

President Nayib Bukele, elected in 2019 on promises to fight organized crime and improve security, said: “We have had a new spike in homicides, something that we had worked so hard to reduce.

“While we fight criminals in the streets, we must try to figure out what is happening and who is financing this.”

The country “must let the agents and soldiers do their job and must defend them from the accusations of those who protect the gang members”, he added, in the statement tweeted by Congress president Ernesto Castro.

However, Juan Pappier, from the international campaign group Human Rights Watch, tweeted the measures were “very worrying, especially in a country where there are no independent democratic institutions”.

Authorities say the MS-13 and Barrio-18 gangs, among others, number about 70,000 members and are responsible for homicides, extortion and drug-trafficking.

Police said the latest bloodshed had left 12 people dead in the central department of La Libertad, as well as nine each in the capital, San Salvador, and the western department of Ahuachapan, with the other killings spread around the country.

In April 2020, as coronavirus swept through the country, President Bukele imposed a 24/7 lockdown for imprisoned gang members after more than 50 people were killed in three days.

He argued that many of the murders were ordered from behind bars and said prisoners belonging to rival gangs would be made to share cells in a bid to break up lines of communication.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-60893048

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Two hours later, thanks to this surveillance footage, a Libyan Coast Guard cutter caught up with the migrants and ordered them to stop even though they were well outside of Libyan waters. The armed officers then took the migrants on board, beat them savagely, and carried them back to the one place they did not want to go: Libya’s gulag of detention centers.

Efficient and brutal, the at-sea capture and onland internment of these migrants is what European Union officials hail as part of a successful partnership with Libya in their “humanitarian rescue” efforts across the Mediterranean. For many, though, the true intent of this joint campaign, however, is less to save migrants from drowning than to stop them from reaching European shores.

Since the migrant crisis started in 2015 and hundreds of thousands of people began crossing the Mediterranean Sea, European officials have relied heavily on the Libyans to stem the flow. Not only did the EU equip and train the Libyan Coast Guard, it also lobbied the United Nations’ maritime organization to recognize an enlarged search-and-rescue zone so that the Libyans could have wider reach off their coast. The result of this collaboration has been a precipitous drop in the number of people reaching Europe via the Central Mediterranean route: Around 20,000 migrants arrived in the first six months of this year, down from 70,000 during the same period in 2016. Without the support of aerial reconnaissance from Frontex, the Libyan Coast Guard would in effect be searching with its eyes closed.

Frontex has long denied direct cooperation with Libya, a failed state largely run by militias. It has insisted its sole aim is to save lives, and it has said that it only directly alerts Libyan authorities of migrant boats in a true emergency.

A spokesperson for Frontex told me that the agency “International law obliges all vessels to provide assistance to any persons found in distress…[Frontex] has never engaged in any direct cooperation with Libyan authorities.”

But a mounting body of evidence shows otherwise.

Last year, for instance, Lighthouse Reports, a watchdog organization in Europe, documented 20 instances in which Frontex aircraft were in the vicinity of migrant boats later captured by the Libyan Coast Guard. In a dozen of those cases, Lighthouse determined, Frontex was the first to identify the boats, meaning that under international law, it was obliged to notify not just the Libyan Coast Guard, but the nearest vessel — government or commercial — so that a rescue might be promptly undertaken.

“There is a clear pattern discernible,” Lighthouse researchers asserted. “Boats in distress are spotted, communications take place between European actors and the Libyan Coast Guard. No notice is given to nearby commercial shipping or NGO vessels despite its proximity to urgent situations where boats are in distress on the open sea.” While the real numbers could be far higher, this representative sample showed that Frontex was present and watching while at least 91 people went missing and are presumed to have drowned.”

That same year, the Guardian, in collaboration with Lighthouse, published the actual recorded exchanges between a European surveillance plane and the Libyan Coast Guard as the Libyans sought to intercept two migrant boats. “OK sir, my radar is not good, is not good, if you stay [over the boat] I will follow you,” a Libyan Coast Guard captain radioed the plane. “We have approximately five minutes left on station,” said the plane’s pilot, as he tried to guide the Coast Guard to the migrant vessels. “We will go overhead the vessel, the rubber boat, and we will light our landing lights.”

Hussein Baoumi, Amnesty International’s Libya researcher, said he was not surprised by Frontex’s continuing denial of a formal relationship with the Libyan Coast Guard. “They want to separate themselves from the dirtiest aspects of migrant containment,” Baoumi said. “It doesn’t matter. They are cooperating. They are directly complicit.”

The E.U. has also denied directly funding the gulag of migrant prisons in Libya, and has consistently both conceded their barbarity and called for improvements. But it has resisted calls to date to end its work with Libya and take steps to rescue those caught up in the country’s migrant jails.

But if the E.U. does not pay to build the detention centers or staff their guards, European money does pay for virtually everything else in the inhumane system where migrants are routinely tortured, raped, unlawfully held and sometimes murdered. Through Frontex drones and planes, the E.U. is first responsible for spotting the rafts and, via Italian and Maltese authorities, handing this intelligence over to Libya. Then E.U.-purchased boats operated by the Libyan Coast Guard capture the migrants and bring them back to shore.

An investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit news organization in Washington DC, found that funds from the EU and member states, sometimes routed through aid organizations, pays for most of what happens next. These monies bought the shipping containers that double as port offices for the Libyan Coast Guard staff, and the touch-screen tablets used by aid workers who count the migrants as they disembark in Tripoli. This money pays for many of the buses used to transport the migrants from port to the detention centers, and the blankets, winter clothes, and slippers they often receive upon arrival. The bathrooms at some of the detention centers as well as the showers, toilets, soap, hygiene kits, toilet paper were bought with E.U. money. The same goes for the mattresses where the detained migrants sleep. E.U. money paid for the SUVs used by Libyan migration authorities to look for migrants if they escape detention or as they enter Libya in the south through the Saharan desert. When migrants in detention get sick, often the ambulances that take them to the hospital have been purchased by the E.U. And when migrants die — washing ashore or in detention — EU money often pays for the body bags and to train Libyan personnel how to handle the corpses in a religiously respectful fashion.

Much of this funding is well-intentioned, even life-saving. But it is beyond denial that the E.U. and its member states financially sustain the system in Libya by which thousands of migrants are being captured and held in ghastly conditions.

And since Frontex is the tip of the spear, more attention is being paid to the role it plays and the legality of its involvement.

A recent investigation carried out by the European Parliament produced a litany of allegations against the agency — that it turned a blind eye to human rights violations committed by coast guard personnel from both European countries and partner countries in Africa; that its own internal system for receiving and acting on complaints of misconduct was itself a failure; and that the agency’s head, Fabrice Leggeri, had failed to act on four years of warnings made by his agency’s own top human rights official.

In an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project in late October, a senior Frontex official said Leggeri had engaged in a calculated and disingenuous game for years — insisting “evidence” of misconduct by E.U. border agencies were produced before he would act, all while failing to ensure that complaints of such potential abuse were aggressively investigated.

The senior official said they were no longer confident Frontex was meeting its most essential obligation: making sure the rights of some of the world’s most vulnerable people were respected. The official said the angry and volatile emotions in Europe concerning the question of migration enforcement had eroded Frontex’s complete independence.

“The influence of politics is a problem when you are handling the question of fundamental human rights,” the official said. Even if its participation in returning migrants to Libya is indirect, Frontex may be violating E.U. law.”

“No interest,” the official said of Leggeri and his other most senior aides. “It didn’t matter what you told them. They didn’t want to understand.” Leggeri denied repeated requests for an interview.

This year, two landmark cases are being brought by migrants against Frontex before the Court of Justice of the European Union, the E.U.’s chief judicial authority. The first case, filed in May, claims that Frontex has long been operating in violation of its obligations to report and halt criminal abuse of migrants seeking asylum in Europe. The case alleges that two migrants – a 17-year-old Congolese boy named Jeancy Kimbenga and a woman from Burundi who asked to remain anonymous – were part of a group of 13 that was rounded up by Greek authorities after arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos. They say they were forcibly transferred to a Coast Guard vessel, and brought back out to sea before being abandoned on a lifeboat, eventually ending up back in Turkey.

The allegations in the second case, filed in October, are arguably even more damning for Frontex. The case alleges that a Syrian family, with four young children between the ages of 1 and 7, were deported from Greece in 2016 without being given access to an asylum procedure, and were returned to Turkey on a flight arranged by Frontex, with the four young children separated from their parents while Frontex staff looked on. The family was detained on landing in Turkey, and now lives in northern Iraq.

The cases mark the first time Frontex has been brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Human Rights Watch in a report published last summer issued a sweeping indictment of Frontex’s performance, its organizational culture and its leadership. “Frontex has repeatedly failed to take effective action when allegations of human rights violations are brought to its attention,” said Eva Cossé, Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Its rapid growth into an executive agency of the EU, with increased powers, funding, and legal responsibilities makes it all the more urgent for Frontex to put in place effective tools to safeguard fundamental rights.”

Created in 2004, Frontex now has a budget of more than half a billion Euros and it employs more than 1,400 staff members, including a uniformed force of roughly 600 officers. The agency is governed by a management board consisting of representatives of the 25 E.U. member States and two members of the European Commission. In theory, there are a range of mechanisms by which Frontex could be held accountable, but it has rarely, if ever faced any genuine sanction. Obtaining basic information from the agency, even for a member of the European Parliament, is difficult. “We really have problems with the lack of transparency,” said Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament.

In an analysis of the history of Frontex’s work, Human Rights Watch noted that under its own bylaws, the agency has a duty to suspend or end its operations in countries found to have committed serious abuses. In its entire history, Human Rights Watch said, the agency has only done so once, in Hungary, after a European court ruling.

Leggeri, Frontex’s executive director, has faced calls for his resignation repeatedly in recent months. Protesters gathered outside Frontex’s offices in Brussels recently calling for the abolishment of the agency altogether. In a letter to his staff, Leggeri, who worked on migration enforcement as a member of the French interior ministry, called the protests a “hate campaign,” and vowed legal action.

In June, Human Rights Watch sent the agency’s top officials what it said was evidence of serious misconduct either committed or overlooked by Frontex in three European countries. It has yet to get a response. The organization accused Frontex of a cynical semantic game in avoiding responsibility for abuses taking place in both the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

“Over the years, Frontex has relied on its coordinating role and lack of executive authority to evade human rights responsibility,” Human Rights Watch wrote. “In December 2020 Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri told the European Parliament there was no evidence of Frontex’s involvement in abuses in the Aegean and that only member states had the authority to make operational decisions, implying that Frontex could not be held responsible.”

Frontex, under pressure, ordered an internal review of its operations. Its own investigators offered a withering critique of the agency’s systems for reporting problems in its ranks. The investigators said the agency needed to acknowledge its failures, and recommended what amounted to an overhaul of the agency’s culture concerning its responsibilities for identifying and acting on concerns about human rights violations. It suggested that Frontex take care to video record the enforcement work being done by E.U. member states and preserve them for investigation.

In June, a migrants rights organization that had for years been part of an independent board of advisers to Frontex, withdrew from the group. Saying it felt ignored and marginalized, the organization, the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, said it had grown uncertain of Frontex’s role in “a civil society.”

On yet another front, in January, the European Anti-Fraud Office opened an investigation into Frontex, with media reports claiming it was looking at allegations of fraud, cases of illegal treatment of migrants pushbacks, and issues of workplace harassment, but the specific allegations have not been made public. Both Frontex and the European Anti-Fraud Office confirmed an investigation was taking place, but did not offer further details. “[They] are operating very carefully,” said Strik. “But I spoke to them in August and they hope to finish within a few months.”

Frontex’s work with Libya, of course, is part of a much larger and more expensive European push to outsource immigrations enforcement to third-party countries. The E.U. has sent billions to countries such as Libya, Niger, Tunisia and others, ostensibly to help them improve conditions in their countries and thus limit the need for people to flee. But tens of millions of those dollars have gone to toughen immigration legislation and empower enforcement agencies in those countries.

In July, Amnesty International issued its latest dire report on the state of migrants in Libya. It noted that the Libyan Coast Guard, often alerted by Frontex to migrants trying to make it to Europe, then race to intercept the migrant boats and capture those aboard, sometimes firing guns at the rafts or dinghies, occasionally capsizing them. In February, for example, the Coast Guard fired on a raft, puncturing it and causing it to sink. Five people drowned as members of the Coast Guard filmed with their cell phones, the report said.

Frontex is surely aware of longstanding concerns about the Libyan Coast Guard it has found itself regularly assisting. The Coast Guard, really a hodgepodge of local port authorities, has for years been understood to be working in concert with the country’s militias, many of whom are involved in human trafficking. Indeed, the head of the Libyan government agency overseeing the crackdown on migrants has openly admitted in a series of recent interviews that corruption exists within the ranks of the Coast Guard.

The senior Frontex official who talked to The Outlaw Ocean Project said they had made clear doing any sort of business with the Libyan Coast Guard was unthinkable, in part because Europe “didn’t have a clue” as to the integrity of those purporting to belong to the Coast Guard. Things were simply too broken and opaque in Libya, a divided and violent country still struggling to emerge from years of civil war.

“It’s impossible,” the official said, “to have any vetting of who is who.”

Ian Urbina is the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington DC that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.

This article is based on a recent report produced by The Outlaw Ocean Project, “The Secretive Libyan Prisons That Keep Migrants Out of Europe.” The full piece may be found in The New Yorker and on The Outlaw Ocean Project’s Substack page.

The opinions expressed herein are the author’s and not necessarily those of The Maritime Executive.

Source: https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/how-europe-s-border-agency-works-with-libya-to-turn-back-migrants

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When Greece’s notorious Moria migrant camp burned to the ground in September, its thousands of desperate residents were rehoused in another site hastily erected on military-owned land nearby.

But while their new home offered an escape from the endemic violence and overcrowding of Moria, it has confronted asylum seekers with an entirely new hazard: potential lead poisoning.

Human Rights Watch warned Tuesday that the Mavrovouni migrants camp, erected on land including a former military firing range on the Greek island of Lesvos, could pose a serious risk of lead poisoning to its 7,500 residents.

“It’s very likely there is lead in the soil,” Eva Cossé, a Human Rights Watch researcher, told VICE World News.

Her group has been unable to conduct its own testing for lead contamination at the site. But it says that it is concerned due to the known risk of lead poisoning at former firing ranges, where highly toxic lead dust from bullets, shot and casings contaminate soil, and becomes airborne in dry, windy conditions.

“It’s well known across the globe that shooting ranges are contaminated with lead,” she said. “We say the government should have done testing before it put people there.”

The new camp was established on military land that includes a former firing range, where generations of Greek soldiers have carried out shooting drills since it was first opened in 1926. In the aftermath of the devastating fire at Moria camp, which made thousands of desperate asylum seekers homeless, the residents were rehoused there without any testing for lead contamination of the site having been carried out.

Lead poisoning can cause irreversible impairment of neurological, biological, and cognitive functions. Young children, who absorb four to five times as much lead as adults, and pregnant women are especially vulnerable. According to official data, one-third of the camp’s inhabitants are children — about 1,000 of them aged under 5 — and more than 1,600 are women, 118 of whom are pregnant.

Alastair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology at the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health, and Therapeutics told VICE World News that the concerns raised by Human Rights Watch were warranted, due to the site’s use as a firing range.

“Children are the most vulnerable to lead due to their developing nervous systems,” he said.

“Most people get exposed to lead through ingestion, and young kids eat a certain amount of soil every day just because they’re putting their hands in their mouths.”

Human Rights Watch is concerned that construction work being carried out to make improvements at the camp could be worsening the risk of lead poisoning, by disturbing lead deposits buried in the soil. It’s also concerned about unexploded mortars and bullets that have been found throughout the site by residents, including children, despite assurances from the government that it had been cleared of danger.

The Greek government did not respond to requests for comment but has denied there is any risk at the site.

In a letter to Human Rights Watch last month, Migration and Asylum Minister Notis Mitarachi wrote that his ministry had been “assured that there is no lead contamination,” as only lead-free ammunition had been used on the firing range. Furthermore, the site had been covered in a layer of clay, which emitted low levels of dust, prior to being turned into a migrant camp.

But he acknowledged that lead testing had not been carried out on the site. Due to the concerns, he said he has arranged for soil testing to be carried out, although the results are not known.

However, Cossé said that an analysis of photographs of ammunition found by camp residents — which showed varieties that contained lead — cast doubts on the government’s assessment of the risks, and its assurances that the site had been cleared of bullets.

“This contradicts what the government said about the army only using lead-free bullets in the firing range,” she said.

Thousands of asylum seekers from countries like Afghanistan and Syria are stranded on Lesvos, sometimes also referred to as Lesbos, an island in the Aegean just a few miles from the Turkish coast. The island was once only a brief stopover for asylum seekers arriving by smuggler boats from Turkey before they made their way to the Greek mainland and onwards into Europe.

READ: Asylum seekers describe gang-style violence in Europe’s biggest migrant camp

But a March 2016 migration deal struck between the European Union and Turkey turned the Greek islands into de facto holding pens for migration into Europe, requiring migrants to remain there until their asylum applications could be processed.

The Greek government has faced criticism for the squalid conditions in the island camps, with regular calls for asylum seekers to be relocated into better-equipped accommodation on the Greek mainland. In response, it says it carries an unfair share of the burden of dealing with irregular migrants into Europe, who hope to travel onwards to wealthier northern European countries.

READ: Violence is exploding in Europe’s most notorious migrant camp

Human Rights Watch has called on the Greek government to carry out thorough testing of the levels of lead in the soil and dust at the camp and to publish the results. If lead is found, it says, residents should be tested, offered treatment, and relocated to a safe location.

“The Greek government could be putting at-risk families with young children, aid workers, and its own employees because it’s determined to hold asylum seekers on the island,” said Belkis Wille, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at the organization.

“If this is where the government is trying to force asylum seekers to live on Lesbos, then all the more reason to transfer people to the mainland.”

Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8y9x/migrant-camp-built-on-army-firing-range-could-be-giving-asylum-seekers-lead-poisoning

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again used the millions of refugees hosted in the country as a bargaining chip against the European Union.

Speaking alongside Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban on Thursday (7 November), he told reporters the refugees will be allowed into Europe unless the EU provides more support.

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A Russian law has taken effect that, in theory, would allow the Russian government to cut off the country’s Internet from the rest of the world.

The “sovereign Internet law,” as the government calls it, greatly enhances the Kremlin’s control over the Web. It was passed earlier this year and allows Russia’s government to cut off the Internet completely or from traffic outside Russia “in an emergency,” as the BBC reported. But some of the applications could be more subtle, like the ability to block a single post.

It requires Internet service providers to install software that can “track, filter, and reroute internet traffic,” as Human Rights Watch stated. Such technology allows the state telecommunications watchdog “to independently and extrajudicially block access to content that the government deems a threat.”

The equipment would conduct what’s known as “deep packet inspection,” an advanced way to filter network traffic.

Such widespread control is alarming to human rights groups, which fear it could be used to silence dissent.

“Now the government can directly censor content or even turn Russia’s Internet into a closed system without telling the public what they are doing or why,” Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Europe and Central Asia director, said in a statement. “This jeopardizes the right of people in Russia to free speech and freedom of information online.”

The Russian government has justified the law by saying it is needed to prevent U.S. cyberattacks. And, as the BBC reported, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected the idea the law could be used to cut off Russia from the rest of the world: “No-one is suggesting cutting the Internet.”

Regardless of what the government intends, some experts think it would be technically difficult for Russia to actually close its network if it wanted to, because of the sheer number of its international connections.

“What I found was that there were dozens of existing Internet exchange points in Russia, some of which have hundreds of participants — so hundreds of networks coming together there to exchange traffic,” says David Belson, senior director of Internet Research & Analysis at Internet Society. Many of them are international network providers, he says, so “basically it’s challenging — if not impossible, I think — to completely isolate the Russian Internet.”

Belson says that the requirement for Internet service providers to install tracking software will very likely also be challenging in practice. He adds that it will be difficult to get hundreds of providers to deploy it and hard to coordinate that they’re all filtering the same content. And blocking certain content could have “collateral damage” — effects that the government hasn’t foreseen.

And how will this law ultimately change how Russians use the Internet? “It’s not clear,” Belson says. “There could be no change.” Or, Russians may begin having difficulty accessing certain sites or be redirected to other sites when they request ones that are blocked.

Internet freedom has been on the decline in Russia for at least six years, according to Freedom House. Last year the government tried to block the messaging app Telegram and cracked down on virtual private networks, which encrypt Internet traffic.

Correction
In a previous version of this story, we misquoted David Belson of the Internet Society as saying that he found hundreds of Internet exchange points in Russia. Belson actually said he has found dozens of exchange points.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775366588/russian-law-takes-effect-that-gives-government-sweeping-power-over-internet

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The European Union must continue protecting Syrian refugees within Turkey, but should also take further responsibility and resettle more of them, Human Rights Watch associate director Gerry Simpson wrote in an op-ed published by the EU Observer on Wednesday.

More effort from the EU to safeguard the refugees is essential now because they face the danger of forced deportation from Turkey, Simpson said.

Turkey hosts more than 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees, but public discontent with the number of Syrians in the country has risen as Turkey’s economy has stuttered in recent years, and the government has responded by cracking down on undocumented migrants.

Reports by media outlets and NGOs have said Syrians are in danger of arbitrary arrest under the crackdown and that some have been forced to sign voluntary return papers before being bused back to Syria.

Eighteen Syrians told Simpson and his colleague during interviews that this had happened to them in immigration removal centres in Istanbul and the southern Turkish city of Antakya.

“I was deported with about 35 Syrians on a large bus. They handcuffed us and … they beat some of the men on the bus with truncheons when they asked to go to the toilet or for water. We all spoke with each other [and] no one wanted to go back to Syria,” Simpson quoted one of the men as saying.

The return of Syrians to the opposition-controlled Idlib province puts their lives in danger due to ongoing Syrian government attacks, backed by Russian.

Turkey should end the forced deportations and other abuses against Syrians, “but the EU also needs to reverse course on its own problematic policies toward Syrian refugees,” Simpson said.

The EU has paid Turkey more than 6 billion euros so far to fund refugee-related projects but demanded a halt to the flow of migration from Turkey in exchange.

“Yet Turkey has never met the EU’s safe third country criteria, which require effective protection and access to jobs and services,” Simpson said.

Ankara’s plans to resettle millions of Syrians in areas of northern Syria captured in a recent military operation could put the refugees at further risk, he said.

“The European Union should continue to support the registration and protection of Syrian refugees in Turkey, but it should also resettle more Syrian refugees from Turkey,” said Simpson.

“The European Commission should urgently publicly acknowledge that Turkey is committing grave abuses against Syrians, press Turkey to end them, and press the UN refugee agency to monitor whether Syrians detained in immigration removal centres or other facilities actually wish to remain in Turkey.”

Source: https://ahvalnews.com/syrian-refugees/eu-must-take-responsibility-syrian-refugees-turkey-ngo-director#

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WASHINGTON — The United States withdrew on Tuesday from the world’s most important human rights body in protest of its frequent criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. It was the latest effort by the Trump administration to pull away from international organizations and agreements that it finds objectionable.

It was the first time a member has voluntarily left the United Nations Human Rights Council. The United States now joins Iran, North Korea and Eritrea as the only countries that refuse to participate in the council’s meetings and deliberations.

“Earlier this year, as it has in previous years, the Human Rights Council passed five resolutions against Israel — more than the number passed against North Korea, Iran and Syria combined,” Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said in a speech on Tuesday. “This disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights.”

“If the Human Rights Council is going to attack countries that uphold human rights and shield countries that abuse human rights, then America should not provide it with any credibility,” Ms. Haley said.

Human rights advocates denounced the decision.

“All this administration seems to care about when it comes to the council is defending Israel,” said John Sifton, an advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit organization. “If the Trump administration’s complaint is that the council is biased and flawed, they’ve just made it more so.”

In a series of posts on Twitter, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel welcomed the decision. “The U.S. decision to leave this prejudiced body is an unequivocal statement that enough is enough,” he wrote on Tuesday.

But Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said through a spokeswoman that he would have preferred that the United States remained in the council. He noted that the United Nations’ human rights “architecture” plays an important role in the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide.

Conservatives have been complaining about the council since its inception in 2006, and the administration of President George W. Bush refused to join the body, citing concerns of bias. Ms. Haley has been a fierce critic of the council since joining the Trump administration and is known to have pushed for a withdrawal.

Elliott Abrams, a former Republican diplomat and now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the Human Rights Council’s bias against Israel was too much to ignore.

“There is always an argument for staying, which is that the United States will be in a better position to help defend Israel,” Mr. Abrams said. “But this council is hopelessly compromised, so leaving is the right choice.”

The withdrawal comes as the Trump administration faces condemnation by rights groups and governments worldwide for its decision to separate children from their families at the border. On Monday, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for human rights, called for an immediate end to the practice, describing such a tactic as inflicting “abuse on children” and “unconscionable.”

Mr. Trump has turned decades of American foreign policy on its head by attacking or undermining much of the rules-based order that the United States established after World War II. Previous administrations viewed the interlocking network of alliances, trade rules and international organizations as beneficial to the United States.

But Mr. Trump has ripped up the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal — both of which were negotiated under the strong influence of world powers. He has also imposed tariffs on the United States’ closest allies and left the Group of 7 summit meeting this month in chaos and recriminations after he denounced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada as “very dishonest & weak.”

The Trump administration has made clear that it will not countenance the level of criticism and what it describes as slanted resolutions by the Human Rights Council that have historically been directed at the United States and Israel. On her first day as ambassador, Ms. Haley warned that “for those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names.”

Rob Berschinski, a senior vice president at Human Rights First, another nonprofit organization, conceded that no one believed the human rights council was perfect. But, he said, leaving it is a mistake.

“Countries like China, Russia and Venezuela will applaud this decision because we are freely giving up leverage over them that we previously had,” Mr. Berschinski said.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/us/politics/trump-israel-palestinians-human-rights.html

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But it doesn’t show any signs of stopping.

Since 2015, Europe has scrambled to cope with the arrival of around 1.5 million people by sea.

In an effort to stem this flow, many European countries have tightened their policies and borders. In 2016, the European Union forged a controversial “one in, one out” deal with Turkey to stop the tide of migrants and refugees fleeing to the continent from the Middle East. And, this year, Italy has adopted an aggressive approach to halting migration across the Mediterranean from North Africa, backing the Libyan coast guard’s rescue efforts and cracking down on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating off the country’s coast.

With each new twist and turn, the number of arrivals has dropped. But new migrant routes keep cropping up. People seeking alternative passages have moved westward — seen in the recent spike in migrants arriving in Spain from northern Morocco — while others are turning in desperation to new destinations such as Yemen.

Footage that surfaced on social media in early August showed stunned sunbathers watching as a dinghy packed with dozens of African migrants landed on a Spanish beach — the latest sign of an evolving crisis.

Here’s what has been happening in the Mediterranean:

Why are NGOs suspending migrant search-and-rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean?

Three aid groups operating in the Mediterranean — Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Save the Children and Sea Eye — suspended their rescue operations in August, citing security concerns after Libya blocked foreign vessels from a stretch of sea off its coast. The MSF said an increasingly “hostile environment” had made their efforts untenable, while Sea Eye alleged that the Libyan government had issued an “explicit threat” against NGOs.

What is the Libyan coast guard doing?
Libya has extended its SAR zone into international waters, restricting access to humanitarian vessels. The Libyan navy, emboldened by its agreement with Italy, has recently fired warning shots at humanitarian aid vessels patrolling in this area. Libyan Navy spokesman Brigadier Ayoub Qassem told CNN: “We are fed up with these organizations. They increased the number of immigrants and empowered smugglers.

Meanwhile, they criticize us for not respecting human rights.”

Libya has asserted its right to operate beyond the territorial limit of 12 nautical miles from the coast. According to Save the Children, Libya has extended its SAR zone to 70 nautical miles from its shoreline. The move has led to clashes with NGO vessels at the edge of Libyan waters.

What assistance is Italy providing to the Libyan coast guard and why?

In August, Italy announced it would deploy two naval ships to Libya — a patrol vessel and a technical and logistical support unit — in an effort to deter illegal migration and human smuggling into Europe. The move came after Libya’s UN-recognized government of national accord requested help. The initiative has been widely panned by NGOs, which have warned that the move will expose migrants to far more danger and abuse.

What restrictions has Italy imposed on NGOs?

In late July, Italy’s Parliament passed a controversial “code of conduct” for NGOs operating search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean. Among the measures are:

• Ban on entering Libyan waters except in situations of grave or imminent danger
• Ban on phone calls to help migrant departures
• Ban on transferring rescued migrants to other vessels
• Commitment to allow armed police onto vessels to monitor activities

Three of the eight humanitarian groups operating in the Mediterranean agreed to the terms, while Doctors Without Borders refused to sign, saying it could increase deaths at sea. The mayor of Catania, Italy, told CNN that he believes the code of conduct is behind the recent drop in migrant arrivals there; critics say it is too early to tell.

What is happening to migrant arrivals in Italy?
Migrant arrivals to Italy dropped in July — cut in half from the same month last year — figures from Italy’s interior ministry showed. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 94,802 migrants have reached Italian shores so far this year — 85% of all arrivals in Europe.

How is that affecting migrant arrivals elsewhere?
The UN says over 9,000 migrants have arrived in Spain so far this year, most of those in the past two months. It’s the most the country has seen since the start of the crisis. And it’s flared in August — with a staggering 604 migrants rescued in just 24 hours. Increasingly, African migrants are seeking a cheaper and easier path to Europe, setting sail for Spain from Morocco in toy dinghies and on jet skis. The average price to cross from the Moroccan coast to Spain is around 500 euros (about $590), according to Frontex.

Why has the Italian government shifted its strategy on refugees?
Italy’s beefed-up approach to tackling the flow of migrants into the country followed local elections in June, which saw a wave of anti-immigrant mayors and local councilors ushered into office. Critics say the result has left the governing center-left party reeling, forcing Italian leaders to seek short-term solutions at the cost of migrants’ lives.

“Our goal is to govern the migration flows,” the Italian interior minister, Marco Minniti, said in an August news conference. “A big democracy, a big country, doesn’t endure migration’s flow, but tries to govern them.”

What is happening to migrants intercepted by the Libyan coast guard?
Migrants intercepted by the Libyan coast guard are being returned to the north African country. Human Rights Watch, and other humanitarian organizations, have warned against returning migrants to Libya, a war-torn country where migrants are exposed to torture, slavery and detention, they say.

A report published in June by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya contained serious allegations that factions of the coast guard were colluding with smugglers, and abusing migrants they intercepted. The same report detailed inhumane conditions in multiple migrant detention centers. It echoed another report by the UN support mission in Libya and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, published in December last year, which included similar claims.

What is the EU’s strategy to address the refugee crisis, and how has it changed?
Since the height of the crisis in 2015, governments across Europe have sought to fortify their countries’ borders. In February 2017, EU leaders outlined plans to stem the flow of migrants traveling across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy, and boost the ability of the EU to send people back.

“The key priority is reducing the flow without any consideration for the causes of migration,” Nando Sigona, an expert in migration at Birmingham University’s School of Social Policy, told CNN.

What about the anti-immigrant patrols in the Mediterranean?
An anti-immigrant vessel has underlined just how fraught the debate on refugees has become in Europe. The Defend Europe group deployed its C-Star vessel to the Mediterranean this summer, vowing to stop the “invasion” of refugees attempting to sail to Europe.

“It’s created pressure, pressure for the NGOs as we were here, always watching them, documenting them and basically paralyzing them. We’ve seen it, I think during our operation time, the whole thing has turned against the NGOs. They’ve lost most public support; many have given up,” Martin Sellner, one of the group’s leaders told CNN. “We came and they went so definitely a success.”Though the C-Star has been allowed to continue operating in Libya’s SAR zone, the Libyan Navy’s Qassem told CNN that the coast guard would not work them directly.

“They combat immigration through a spiteful, racist standpoint,” Qassem said. “We don’t work with racism.”

What is happening to the charities that are continuing their missions?
The Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms is among several NGOs that have continued to conduct rescue operations in the Mediterranean despite restrictions. Its crew recently reported that the Libyan coast guard fired warning shots while the vessel was in international waters.

“They were warned and told that they could be detained. We gave them a chance to leave and they did,” Libyan navy spokesman Qassem told CNN. “They have to respect our sovereignty. They consider themselves above the law and Libyan sovereignty.”

According to Italian coast guard figures, nongovernmental groups were responsible for rescuing a quarter of all those saved in 2016, and a third of those pulled from the Mediterranean in the first three months of 2017.

CNN’s Lorenzo D’Agostino, Sarah El Sirgany, and Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this report. Graphics by CNN’s Henrik Pettersson.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/europe/mediterranean-migrant-crisis-2017/index.html

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