European Union

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The fingerprints and – according to Belga – DNA of Salah Abdeslam have been found in a flat raided by police in Brussels this week, the Belgian prosecutors confirmed on Friday.

Six Belgian and French Police Officers raided an apartment on Tuesday, March 15. The officers believed it would be vacant, as both water and electricity supply had been cut off. During the raid, they found three men: one was killed on site, two escaped.

Three officers were wounded on the spot. Throughout Tuesday afternoon a shootout continued in the Forest quarter and two suspects managed to escape. One more police officer was wounded during.

Belgian media speculate now that Frenchman Abdeslam, 26, was one of the two people who evaded arrest. The information has yet to be confirmed by the police.

Abseldslam is thought to be one of the leading figures of the November 13, 2015 attack in Paris that had a toll of 130 civilian casualties. His brother Brahim also participated as a suicide bomber.

If this information is verified, this would be the second time the police miss Abdelslam. Immediately after the attacks, Abdeslam was driven to Brussels by friends Mohammed Amri and Hamza Attou. They were stopped by the police, who let them go as the suspects had not been at the time identified.

The suspect killed in the Forest apartment during the raid on Tuesday was identified as the 35 year old Algerian illegal immigrant, Mohamed Belkaid. He was only known to the police for one case of robbery. Belkaid was killed by snipers.

(Belga, BBC, RTBF, France 24, The Telgraph)

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EU leaders arrived at a final deal among the 28 member countries on Friday afternoon, and are preparing now the signing ceremony with the Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Resistance has been high among some leaders. Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel had earlier said: “I hope we find an agreement, but not at any price. We must maintain our values.”

Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel made a similar statement. The main question, beyond Turkey’s approval, remains whether the EU plan violates international law.

There are legal, political and moral issues, but even Angela Merkel was forced to accept a deal, after having blocked Turkeys accession talks for more than a decade.

The EU wants now to be able to quickly start the expulsion towards Turkey of masses of refugees, in spite of the forced islamisation of the Turkish society and of Erdogan’s authoritarian drive, the reality is that there is no alternative to the agreement.

For the EU, the deal would bring some calm and solace months of bitter infighting over how to deal with the migrant crisis. It would essentially see Europe outsource its refugee emergency to Turkey.

“For Turkey, the refugee issue is not an issue of bargaining, but values,” Davutoglu told reporters earlier in the day, staking out the same moral ground that the EU has claimed throughout the crisis.

Davutoglu said he hoped that beyond helping the refugees, the deal would “deepen EU-Turkey relations” with the approval of unprecedented access to Europe for Turkish nationals and the speeding-up of bogged-down EU membership talks.

With more than one million migrants having arrived in Europe in a year, EU leaders were desperate to clinch a deal with Turkey and heal deep rifts within the 28-member bloc while relieving the pressure on Greece, which has borne the brunt of arrivals.

The deal would have clear commitments that the rights of legitimate refugees would be respected and treated according to international and EU law. Within a week, Turkish and EU officials would assess joints projects to help Syrian refugees in Turkey, after complaints that promised aid of 3 billion euros was too slow coming.

Turkey would also be guaranteed that EU accession talks on budgetary issues could start before the summer.

More than 46,000 people are trapped in Greece, after Austria and a series of Balkan countries stopped letting through refugees who reach Greece from Turkey and want to go to Europe’s prosperous heartland. Greece wants refugees to move from Idomeni to organized shelters.

The EU-Turkey plan would be operational despite concerns about Turkey’s subpar asylum system and human rights abuses. Under it, the EU would pay to send new migrants arriving in Greece who don’t qualify for asylum back to Turkey. For every Syrian returned, the EU would accept one Syrian refugee, for a target figure of 72,000 people to be distributed among European states.

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Hong Kong’s newest political party announced itself on social media on March 16. Calling for the secession from mainland China, the newly established Hong Kong National Party, which was formed by a group of university students, Tweeted that its manifesto had been published.

‘We have set up this party because we want to harness the strength and energy from all walks of life in Hong Kong in our fight for independence,” read the manifesto published in the latest issue of Undergrads from the University of Hong Kong.

“We believe in concrete action. We will not rule out any methods of action. We are not after any moral high ground.”

As reported by The Asian Correspondent online, Hong Kong was granted a high degree of autonomy as special administrative region in China in 1997 based on the “one country, two systems” principle, but localism and varying living standards have created an anti-mainland sentiment among Hongkongers.

Last year, Hong Kong was the stage of the massive Umbrella Movement protest which had called for electoral reforms.

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“The European Council president Donald Tusk has presented to the 28 member states, a revised and compromised proposal,” an EU source told New Europe on the sidelines of the EU Summit.

“Tusk recommends that the member states adopt it without any changes”, pointed out the source after the third bilateral talk between Tusk and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Therefore, “Tusk appears to feel comfortable that this proposal will be accepted from Davutoğlu”, the source stressed right after the restart of talks between the 28 EU member states early on Friday afternoon. The source spoke to New Europe moments after Davutoğlu had departed from Justus Lipsius building of the European Council, in Brussels.

As the source stressed, there were 4 problematic issues on the table earlier today and have now been resolved.

Legality of the EU-Turkey agreement

On the first issue, the issue of legality, it was been made explicit that everything has to happen in full accordance with the EU and international law, including an additional explicit reference that there cannot be any collective expulsions.

Date of commencement

In the question of the cut-off date, the date of implementation of the forthcoming agreement of this summit, that will be the 20 March 2016. “All migrants who arrive to the Greek islands after that date, are then subject to be returned. Of course every migrant will have to be assessed individually”, added the source.

Financing of the agreement

The financial element was the main concern of the Turkish side, because the disbursement appears to be “slow” for Turkish standards. “Therefore, it has been agreed that already this week a list of complete projects will be identified, and [the definition of] a number of [geographical] areas [that this agreement concerns] has been specified”.

The Cyprus issue

“The fourth and most difficult issue was on Cyprus”, the source concluded. There the balance that satisfies both sides compromise was found. It was agreed that there will be a re-energizing of relations and of the EU accession talks of Turkey. On accession talks, it was agreed to accelerate the preparatory work of opening chapters in full accordance with the negotiating framework and it was also agreed that chapter 33 on financial and budgetary provisions will be opened during the Dutch Presidency.

72,000 is the limit

On the agreement, there is a new key element regarding the number of migrant returns. It is now agreed that “if the number of migrant returns comes close to, but does not exceed 72,000, the mechanism will have to be reviewed. If it exceeds 72,000, then the mechanism will be discontinued, as 72,000 is a ceiling”.

On who will be in charge to decide on these returns: “it is the Greek authorities that return people. It is the Greek authorities and can only be the Greek authorities that can take the decisions on whether a person that has the right to stay in Greece or can be returned to Turkey”. The source confirmed that this will take a lot of assistance from Europe, as it is a massive logistical undertaking. On the number of hotspots, more details will be available from the institution responsible on the details, the European Commission, in due course.

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Republican senators indicated on Thursday that they would be willing to support President Barack Obama’s nomination for the US Supreme Court, if the Republicans lost the Presidential elections in November.

Constitutional chess game

A political chess game unfolds over Supreme Court nominations in the US. Certain Republican senators on Thursday indicated they preferred a President Obama nomination for the Supreme Court than one made by his potential successor, Hillary Clinton, Reuters reports.

Among the Senators playing political chess with the Supreme Court nomination are Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Arizona’s Jeff Flake. Therefore, they indicated they would support Merrick Garland – Barack Obama’s nomination – before he leaves office in January, but only if Republicans lose the Presidential election on Nov. 8.

Context

The nomination by President Obama of Merrick Garland on Thursday for the Supreme Court was a bipartisan choice that placed Republicans in a difficult position. The former successful prosecutor of Unabomber Oklahoma City and the Atlanta Olympics bombing investigations is known for being a political centrist.

Senate Republican leaders had officially vowed to filibuster any Obama nomination for the Supreme Court. The filibuster is a tactic used in the U.S. Senate to block or delay action on a bill to obstruct or prevent action by taking an issue to death. Senators talk and talk, until there is not time for a vote. The longest it has ever taken the Senate to confirm a Supreme Court nominee is 125 days, that is, four-and-a-half months. Republicans this time would need to do at least twice as much filibustering. They say they would be willing to do so for “constitutional reasons,” claiming it is constitutionally inappropriate for a President to make such an appointment in an elections.

The chess game

In fewer words, majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky reiterated the Republican position on Thursday that no one should be nominated in an election year. McConnel will not see Garland, who is customarily consulting Senators prior to the debate of his nomination.

However, the discussion does not seem to have much to do with constitutional ethics.

Garland is to replace Supreme Court Judge Scalia, that is, a Reagan-nominated extremely conservative judge who died in February, who could be relied upon to fight gay rights, abortion choice, and defend gun ownership. Moreover, his appointment comes at a critical juncture for the Supreme Court that after Scalia’s death is equally divided between liberals and conservatives. Garland would balance without tilting the power scale, but in an arena they Republicans had dominated for quite some time.

On the one hand, Republican Senators asked President Obama to defer the nomination to the next President, hoping he would be a Republican; on the other, some would like now to keep their options open, just in case Hillary Clinton wins and nominates a more outspoken liberal. If Donald Trump wins, an ultra-conservative nomination comparable to Scalia can be depended upon.

The Republican Paradox

Meanwhile, these Republican Senators find that voting for a Supreme Court judge during a Presidential transition period is more ethical than voting during an election year. Of course, it is also hoped that if Hillary Clinton were to win the Presidential elections in November, Democrats would stick to President Obama’s nominee rather than making a more partisan choice.

The post The Republican chess game with the Supreme Court appeared first on New Europe.

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After pressure by US Congress and human rights organizations, the US government formally acknowledged that the Islamic State group is committing genocide against Yazidis and other minorities in Iraq and Syria.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that he speaks in front of the journalists to assert that in his judgement the terrorist group is responsible for committing genocides against Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims in all the areas that has under control.

Using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group, Kerry said, “Daesh is genocidal by self-proclamation, by ideology, and by actions — in what it says, what it believes and what it does.” However, he added that he was “neither judge nor prosecutor nor jury with respect to the allegations” and said any potential criminal charges must result from an independent international investigation.

According to AP, while his determination does not carry such legal weight, Kerry said he hoped that groups he cited as being victimized would take some comfort in the fact that the “the United States recognizes and confirms the despicable nature of the crimes committed against them.”

Los Angeles Daily News reported that local Armenians and Assyrians living in the US welcomed Kerry’s announcement. According to the LA based website, many were expecting from the State Department to announce that genocide only applies for the Yazidi minority, a Kurdish speaking minority living in Northern Iraq and practices a monotheistic religion.

However, many US humanitarian groups such as the Knights of Columbus, the Armenian National Committee of America and nearly 30 other organizations sent a letter to Kerry in 2015, saying that besides the Yazidis genocide the US government must also consider the war crimes committed by the IS against the ancient Christian people of Iraq and Syria as genocide too.

According to Nora Hovsepian, chairwoman of the Glendale-based Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region, Kerry’s announcement may also encourage passage of another resolution that calls on US President Barack Obama to encourage Turkey’s acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide which took place beginning in 1915 and resulting in nearly 1.5 million deaths among them alone.

 

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Latvia’s Antisemitism is a ghost that makes European headlines every March. This week, a Latvian MP of the ruling coalition bloc, Kārlis Seržants, was on the record on Tuesday, March 15, making profoundly anti-Semitic comments.

In an interview with the Russian language public radio LR4, he said that “clever Jews” were responsible for some of the nation’s main problems. Clever Jews who operate “on the edge of the law,” referring to prominent Russian minority activists who, he believes, are Jewish. “I am not a chauvinist, absolutely not,” he specified “and “that is exactly why I am telling that being of Jewish ethnicity means being very smart.” While Russians might also be smart, he specified that Jews are “especially smart.”

The President of the European Jewish Congress, Dr. Moshe Kantor, expressed his profound shock at the remarks of the Latvian MP: “Such racist remarks singling out individual communities in Latvia have no place in democratic discourse within the European Union.”

The former journalist and member of the Saeima (Latvian Parliament) makes part of the Greens and Farmers Union (ZZS), that is, the third largest party but one that emerged at the helm of the current ruling coalition since February 2016. ZZS is the party of the current Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis.

But, perhaps, the heightened attention to this antisemitic stereotyping, that is not unique to Latvia, points towards a greater issue. Anti-Semitic rhetoric, implicit or explicit, is a controversial issue in Latvia, especially in the days leading to March 16. March 16, 1941 is the date of a decisive battle in Russia’s Opochka region, in which Nazi Germany failed to repel the advance of the Red Army. That was a battle in which Baltic volunteers were engaged, including the Latvian Legion, a locally drafted force of Waffen SS.

The Latvian national narrative is that the 140,000 members of the Latvian SS were not really Nazis, but patriots who fought against the Soviet occupier. They were fighting against an army that had occupied Latvia in 1939 – following an agreement with Nazi Germany – deporting thousands of Latvians to Siberia.

Jewish groups and the Russian minority in Latvia are less convinced. Commenting on the event, Efraim Zuroff, of Jerusalem’s Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center told AFP that “anyone who fought for the victory of the Third Reich shouldn’t be a hero.” The Latvian patriotic narrative often omits that about 70,000 Jews were exterminated in Latvia, largely with local collaboration, while the Nazi were hailed as liberators, AFP reports.

On Wednesday, as every year, more than a 1,000 people commemorated the patriotic contribution of the 140,000 Latvian Legionnaires.  The Minister of Culture Dace Melbarde had announced he would join the event, as did a number of Members of the Saeime. Other ministers would not attend, others that they would be “absent,” without making clear whether they would be willing to attend had they been in Riga.

Officially, the administration of Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis does not regard March 16 an official commemoration day for Latvian soldiers. But, for all governments, this is a symbolically loaded issue. In 2014, a Minister of the national conservative alliance resigned, after participating in the event in Riga.

Each year, the event stains the image of Latvia and heightens attention to anti-Semitic attitudes. Unfailingly, it is also an event that Russia uses to discredit the Latvian government.

(AFP, The Baltic Times LR4, LSM.lv, BNS, Jerusalem Post)

 

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The Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen are responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as all other forces put together, United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said today.

The announcement didn’t come as a surprise as it has been reported repeatedly that the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia, had targeted many times populated territories in Yemen during its campaign against the Yemeni rebels, known as the Houthis.

The coalition supports the exiled Yemeni government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and tries to bring it back in power after being forced to withdraw from Yemen because of military actions performed by the Houthis and military forces loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Since the start of the airstrike campaign in March 2015, the citizens of the poorest state in the Middle East are witnessing a humanitarian destruction. At least 7.6 million people are now seriously “food insecure” in Yemen. Moreover, on 5 January, the UN reported that civilian casualties in Yemen topped 8,100, with nearly 2,800 of them killed, amid Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, shelling by Houthi groups and other clashes.

On 4 March, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, also told journalists in Geneva, Switzerland that civilian casualties continued to mount in Yemen, during February. Last month, a total of at least 168 civilians were killed and 193 injured and around two-thirds of them were hit by the Arab-coalition airstrikes. In the country as a whole, 117 civilians were killed and another 129 wounded as a result of airstrikes in February, with the largest number of casualties (99) attributed to airstrikes hitting the capital, Sana’a.

Today, it was reported that another airstrike on 16 March, on a market in northern Yemen’s rebel-held Hajja province, caused the death of 119 people, including 22 children. According to reports, after the carnage caused by the airstrike, a panel of UN experts has said the coalition has carried out 119 sorties and called for the urgent need for establishing an international probe for war crimes in Yemen.

After the market massacre, the Arab-coalition spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP in an exclusive interview that the coalition is “in the end of the major combat phase,” in Yemen. His statement was welcomed by the White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

However, a similar announcement was made in April 2015. Then, al-Asiri, had said that the objectives of the campaign have been met and the Shia rebels, are no longer a danger.

Two days ago, the Dutch MPs asked from the national govenmrent to enforce an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia, to pressure the oil-rich country to shop shelling in Yemen. A similar call was made by the MEPs to the EU main policy-makers.

This is not the first time The Netherlands are trying to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. In 2015,  Dutch diplomats in the UN, asked for an independent war crimes inquiry in Yemen. However, the inquiry was blocked by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries such as Bahrain and Qatar which claimed that a war crimes investigation must be launched by the Yemeni government.

 

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A declaration to tackle global wildlife trafficking routes has been signed by the Sustainable Shipping Initiative (SSI) – a coalition of companies from across the global shipping industry.

As reported by Hellenic Shipping News online, the declaration was unveiled by The Duke of Cambridge, President of United for Wildlife, and is the culmination of 12 months of work to develop a plan, led by the transport sector, to crack down on illegal wildlife trafficking routes.

The declaration states that shipping must earn a reputation for being a trusted and responsible partner in the communities that it touches around the world.

The United for Wildlife Transport Taskforce Buckingham Palace Declaration is a landmark agreement, outlining 11 commitments aiming to help support the private sector in fighting the illegal wildlife trade. These include: increasing passenger, customer, client, and staff awareness about the nature, scale, and consequences of illegal wildlife trade, promoting the declaration’s commitments across the entire transport sector , improving the training of staff within the transport sector to enable them to detect, identify and report suspected illegal wildlife trade, and acknowledge staff who champion this cause, and notifying relevant law enforcement authorities of cargoes suspected of containing illegal wildlife.

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Russian authorities have imposed a climate of fear in Crimea, according to a today’s report by the Human Rights Watch.

“Crimea’s isolation has made it very difficult to conduct comprehensive human rights monitoring there,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “But serious human rights abuses in Crimea should not slip to the bottom of the international agenda.”

Since Russian forces began occupying Crimea in early 2014, the space for free speech, freedom of association, and media in Crimea has shrunk dramatically, the humanitarian organization said. HRW accused the authorities of not conducting investigations into actions of armed paramilitary groups, implicated in torture, extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, attacks and beatings of Crimean Tatar and pro-Ukraine activists and journalists.

According to NGO, under the pretext of combating extremism or terrorism, the authorities have harassed, intimidated, and taken arbitrary legal action against Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority who openly opposed Russia’s occupation.

“For the last two years, many Crimean Tatars have consistently, openly, and peacefully opposed Russian actions in Crimea,” Williamson said. “Russia has been making Crimean Tatars pay a high price for nothing more than their principled stance.”

Local authorities declared two Crimean Tatar leaders personae non gratae and prohibited them from entering Crimea. Moreover, the authorities also harassed and intimidated Crimean Tatar activists and conducted intrusive and sometimes unwarranted searches at mosques and Islamic schools.

HRW reported that under international law, the Russian Federation is an occupying power in Crimea as it exercises effective control in Crimea without the consent of the government of Ukraine, and there has been no legally recognized transfer of sovereignty to Russia.

“Russia bears direct responsibility for the surge in rights abuses in Crimea,” Williamson said. “Russia’s international partners should sustain constant pressure on Russia to stop human rights abuses on the peninsula.”

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France launched a new prison program aiming to combat fundamentalism among prison inmates. The plan was initially unveiled in February 2015.

France established designated wards in French prisons for detainees, who adopted the jihadism ideology. The specialized units accommodate all but the more radicalized inmates. The detainees in the anti-jihadist units are supervised by more guards and receive a special treatment which focuses more on mental health and education. Psychologists are meeting with the prisoners who they are also encouraged to engage in political discussions, attend theatre workshops and discuss with experts about the jihadist ideology. Inmates who refuse to participate in the de-radicalization process are expelled from the program.

In 2015, Newsweek reported that even though Muslims make up less than 10 percent of France’s 66 million population, half of the prison population in the country are Muslim. After the fatal Paris attacks and the fact that most of the attackers were French nationals, many criticized the authorities because it provided many Jewish and Christian preachers for the prisoners in need but very few Muslim preachers.

Last month the French newspaper Le Fiagro reported France’s Interior Ministry had identified 8,250 “radicalized” French people.

In the meantime, the French government is also trying to establish the first de-radicalization center aiming at freeing those who have been convinced by the ideology of extremist Islam. The center is expected to open in the summer, but its location remains unknown.

According to the Local France, the center will be a kind of boarding school for radicalized French youths aged 18 to 30, who may have tried and failed to travel to the Middle East. It will officially be called a centre for “reintegration and citizenship”.

 

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The 28 EU states have agreed on a joint refugee plan which they are ready to present to Turkey for negotiation. Many commentators still oppose the planned deal with Turkey on the grounds that it is immoral. Others see it as the only way to stop the people smugglers and create legal escape routes for refugees.

In his capacity as governor of the Banská Bystrica Region Marián Kotleba, the leader of the neo-Nazi LS-Naše Slovensko party which has just gained seats in the Slovakian parliament, had a theatre production stopped in the city of Brezno simply because he didn't like it. Is Slovakia facing the prospect of Nazi-style enforced cultural conformity?