News

European Union Provides Response to Illegal Immigration Emergency in Wake of Fatal Shipwreck

By Ben Kopp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BRUSSELS, European Union – European Union officials responded to emergency calls for review of illegal immigration. At the same time, EU critics claim that countries cannot afford providing full benefits to migrants.

Immigrants continued to find routes into Europe from Libya, Syria, and similar countries. (Photo courtesy of CNN International)

An early October 2013 shipwreck caught worldwide attention as over 300 African migrants died off the coast of Italian island, Lampedusa. Nevertheless, migrants have continued to begin journeys from northern Africa in hope of crossing the Mediterranean to hit Europe. As a result, EU leaders began a review of the bloc’s immigration policies.

European Union border agency Frontex estimates that a minimum of 72,000 people illegally migrate to the EU via land and sea, and expects that the actual figure is much higher. Of all illegal residents, Frontex believed that most arrived with plane tickets and valid travel visas only to remain beyond the visa’s expiration date.

EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom issued a statement giving Frontex sufficient resources to operate a wide “search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to Spain.”

The EU plans to establish a new border surveillance system and task force; however, observers believe boats will continue their regular flow.

Recently, Frontex released its “Annual Risk Analysis 2013” report, which states that immigrants taking illegal routes often travel through Greece and continue by land or ferry to Italy and the western Balkans. An increasing number has attempted central Mediterranean journeys. In many cases, the migrants have fled violence and poverty in regions like Syria and Libya.

The EU also said it is setting up a new border surveillance system and Mediterranean task force to bolster its efforts and will review its asylum immigration policies next summer.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, current holder of the EU presidency, said, “Today, Europe is not ready to accept as many refugees as probably can flow in.” Also, Grybauskaite denied that immigration policies would be business as usual.

National governments within the EU pledged assistance to several “gateway” countries, such as Italy, Malta, and Greece.

Although human rights groups criticize Greece often for its lack of an asylum service, the country has created such.

Not all parts of the bloc are ready to support immigration. For instance, anti-EU commentators in Britain have been pointing to statistics that suggest the UK cannot afford to allow EU migrants access to full benefits.

While immigration has created concerns in nearly every nation throughout history, now, every nation must remember what immigration most often means for the world: progress.

For further information, please see:

BBC News – Greece Immigration: Look inside New Asylum Service – October 31, 2013

CNN International – How Do Illegal Immigrants Get into the European Union? – October 30, 2013

Wall Street Journal – EU: Mulling Security, Defense Operation to Stem Illegal Migration – October 30, 2013

Telegraph – True Scale of European Immigration – October 12, 2013

Saudi Writer Arrested for Supporting Women Drivers

By Thomas Murphy
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – On October 27, Saudi police arrested Tariq al-Mubarak, a columnist who criticized the country’s ban on women drivers.  The arrest followed an October 26 protest of the driving ban, during which at around sixty women got behind the wheel.

A Saudi Arabian woman starts her car and prepares drive despite the country’s outdated ban on female driving. (Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

On October 6, Tariq al-Mubarak wrote an opinion article that is titled “It’s Time to Change Women’s Place in the Arab World.”  The article, available here, supported women’s rights generally, but education, freedom to travel, and marriage were specifically mentioned as areas for reform.  Al-Mubarak, a young schoolteacher, is also a member of a core group that has supported the right of women to drive.

He was called to the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigation Department on Sunday on the pretext that a car was stolen.  However, when he arrived he was interrogated about his involvement in the “Women2Drive” campaign, the activist group behind the driving protest.  Human Rights Watch and local activists report that al-Mubarak remains in custody and does not have access to a lawyer or family.

The police have also fined and harassed some of the women that participated in the protest by driving.  Fines were typically around 300 Saudi riyals ($80 USD) and many of the women and their male guardians were forced to sign a pledge stating they would respect the laws in the future.  Days after the protest, police cars remained outside of the homes of some participants.

The activists responsible for the “Women2Drive” campaign have reportedly been followed over the last few days and are preparing for the possibility of arrest.  They have put contingency plans in place and have provided phone numbers to journalists and human rights organizations in the event they are arrested.

The activists called for women specifically with international driver’s licenses to take part in the October 26 protest.  The campaign began in 2011 and was started by Saudi women with goal having the ban on women drivers repealed.

Human Rights Watch has called for an end to the mistreatment of the activists associated with “Women2Drive” and announced their support of the group’s mission.

“Saudi authorities are retaliating against people who want a very basic right for women, the right to get behind the wheel and drive themselves where they want to go,” said Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch Deputy Middle East director. “The authorities should end the driving ban and stop harassing people for supporting women’s rights.”

For further information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Saudi writer held for backing women drivers – 30 October 2013

Human Rights Watch – Saudi Arabia: Free Journalist who Supported Women Driving – 30 October 2013

Reuters – Saudi women say they will keep pushing for right to drive – 28 October 2013

Guardian – Saudi Arabia’s women hold day of action to change driving laws – 25 October 2013

Latest Reports Indicate the U.S. Operated 80 “Listening Posts” Worldwide and Tapped Merkel’s Phone Starting in 2002

by Tony Iozzo
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WASHINGTON, D.C. – More details have developed after the German magazine Spiegel reported last week that the U.S. National Security Agency had tapped into phone conversations on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a meeting of European Heads of State last week. (Photo courtesy of Kyiv Post)

Reports have indicated that the United States has been operating a global network of 80 “eavesdropping centers”, including 19 European listening posts in cities including Paris, Berlin, Rome and Madrid, according to the German magazine.

Spiegel said that the new details were based on American intelligence documents, leaked as a part of the Edward Snowden controversy. The magazine also reported that Angela Merkel has allegedly been listened to by the NSA since 2002, while she was a leader of the opposition party. She was allegedly under surveillance all the way up until U.S. President Barack Obama visited Berlin in June. Obama assured Merkel that her phone is not being and will not be listened to in the future, but U.S. officials have consistently declined to address reports of past surveillance.

Germany had already stated it would send a delegation to Washington D.C. to seek details of its own from the White House, even before the latest reports surfaced.

Spiegel has broken a series of stories about U.S. surveillance of its allies and neighbors from documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor.

In the latest reports, Spiegel stated that the NSA and Central Intelligence Agency established the 80 worldwide listening posts under a joint unit established in the 1970’s. Several were based in the capitals of European allies, apparently operating out of U.S. embassies.

The report states that the United States ran two posts in Germany, one in the U.S. embassy in the Germany’s capital, Berlin, and another in Frankfurt. German counter-intelligence officials told the magazine that they would increase their monitoring of the U.S. embassy as a result.

According to an additional leaked U.S. memo last week, the U.S. sought to monitor the telephone numbers of 35 world leaders. Last week, the U.S. ambassadors in Paris and Berlin were both summoned for explanations and clarification regarding these reports by their host countries.

Reportedly the U.S. does not operate similar surveillance operations in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand under intelligence-sharing agreements with those countries. The spying row prompted leaders meeting at a European Council summit to demand a new deal with Washington on intelligence gathering.

For more information, please see: 

Fox News – Report Claims US Had Merkel’s Phone Monitored Since 2002 – 27 October 2013

Kyiv Post – US Bugged Merkel’s Phone From 2002 Until 2013, Report Claims – 27 October 2013

BBC News – US Bugged Merkel’s Phone From 2002 Until 2013, Report Claims – 26 October 2013

The Telegraph – US Operates 80 Listening Posts Worldwide, 19 in Europe, and Snooped on Merkel Mobile 2002-2013 – 26 October 2013

 

 

A Video Satire of Women’s Driving Restrictions in Saudi Arabia Goes Viral

Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi women campaigning for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia have received support from a group of Saudi comedians whose satirical view of the ban forbidding women in Saudi Arabia from getting behind the wheel of a car continues to draw international attention to the campaign for women’s rights.

“No Women, No Drive” has received more than 6 million views since it was posted to YouTube over the weekend (Photo courtesy of the New York Times)

Their video, No Woman, No Drive, is a satirical play on the Bob Marley classic song “No Woman, No Cry,” has gone viral YouTube, receiving more than 6.5 million views since it was posted on Saturday.

One of the video’s creators, Saudi Arabian performer Hisham Fageeh, is well known in the Arab-speaking world for his comic videos on YouTube, which often contain a social commentary.

The tune mocks the country’s ultraconservative restrictions that ban women from operating vehicle and require them to be in the company of a male guardian for several activities. The video also mocked the claim by one Saudi cleric that if women were allowed to operate a vehicle it could damage their ovaries and affect reproduction. Sheikh Saleh Al-Loheidan’s, a leading figure in Saudi Arabia, argued that “if a woman drives a car, it could have a negative physiological impact … Medical studies show that it would automatically affect a woman’s ovaries and that it pushes the pelvis upward.” He argued that the ban prevents reproductive problems.  Al-Loheidan said, “We find that for women who continuously drive cars, their children are born with varying degrees of clinical problems.”

Well known on the Arabic-speaking web for his funny YouTube videos, which often contain a degree of social commentary, Hisam Fageeh has posted a new video spoofing his country’s practice of forbidding women from attaining driver’s licenses. Fageeh parodies the Bob Marley song “No woman, no cry” with lyrics lampooning Saudi Arabia’s car-related gender restrictions, which Saudi women are challenging this week with a mass protest drive.

Fageeh continued to mock the country’s ban on Monday after at least 60 women took to the road in protest of the ban on over the weekend. In a post on Twitter, he jokingly suggested that young, unpredictable, teenage male drivers are more of a danger to the public than adult women drivers. He tweeted “Just got hit by another car driven by a teenage male while doing a phone interview about #NoWomanNoDrive” with the hashtags #NoTeenagerNoDrive, #Saudi and #Irony.

Tamador Alyami, an activist and blogger in the city of Jeddah, who drove last week, said she appreciated the video and appreciated the satirical comedy at this stressful time for the women’s rights movement. She said, “It cracked me up. I laughed, and I shared it with everybody. I wanted it to have the same effect on them because it eased up a lot of the tension I was feeling.”

For further information, please see:

CNN International – Saudi Cleric Warns Driving Could Damage Women’s Ovaries – 30 October 2013

Huffington Post UK – Saudi Comic’s ‘No Woman, No Drive’ Video Goes Viral – 30 October 2013

The New York Times – Saudi Men Sing ‘No Woman, No Drive’ In Mock Homage To Ban On Female Drivers – 30 October 2013

The Daily Beast – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Behind the Viral Video – 28 October 2013

The Washington Post – ‘No Woman, No Drive’: Saudi Arabian music video spoofs ban on female drivers – 27 October 2013

 

 

 

Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief in Senegal

By: Danielle L. Gwozdz
Impunity Watch News Reporter, Africa

DAKAR, Senegal – Human Rights Watch has released a report stating that thousands of patients in Senegal suffer from excruciating pain every year without any type of relief.  The reason is due to unnecessarily restrictive government regulations and poor training for healthcare workers, which impede their effective medical treatment.

Patient in Senegal suffering without any pain relief (photo courtesy of Angela Chung, HRW).

Patients are in need of pain relief to reduce suffering from prolonged illnesses, like cancer, but only a few hundred have access to medications, such as morphine.

Human Rights Watch says each year 70,000 people need this pain relief and that Senegal needs to integrate palliative care measures into its regular health care system.

This came from HRW’s 85-page report titled, “Abandoned in Agony: Cancer and the Struggle for Pain Treatment in Senegal.”

Morphine is an essential and inexpensive medication for treatment of severe pain, but Senegal only imports about one kilogram of morphine each year – enough to treat only 200 cancer patients. HRW also found that morphine is unavailable outside of Dakar, Senegal’s capital.

Frequent shortages limit access to the medication in the capital as well.

The reports also explain that an estimated 80 percent of patients with advanced HIV suffer from moderate to severe pain throughout the course of their illness.

Worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) claims that approximately 80 percent of people have no or insufficient access to treatment for such pain.

“Many thousands of cancer patients and other Senegalese suffer unnecessary agony because they can’t get morphine to treat their pain,” said Angela Chung, health and human rights fellow at Human Rights Watch.

“Senegalese officials should ask themselves whether they would want their own parents or children – or themselves – to suffer such pain when there is a cheap and effective way to relieve it.”

The Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance says the situation is particularly bad in sub-Saharan Arica, where only six countries – South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Swaziland – have made palliative care programs part of their national health plans.

“Palliative care in Senegal, and a lot of sub-Saharan countries in general, is very poorly developed because it’s not seen as a priority,” Chung said. “I think people might erroneously assume that cancer is something you get in a developed country, but it’s actually a huge problem in Africa and it’s increasing every year.”

People suffering from disease must often travel as much as 10 to 15 hours just for some pain relief.

HRW interviewed more than 170 patients, family members, medical personnel, and officials about the problem. Many patients, however, said they were in too much pain even to be interviewed.

“I am in pain 24 hours a day,” said a 47-year-old man in Dakar who has prostate cancer and suffers during morphine shortages.

“You cannot believe the pain I have all over my body. It is in my bones. I cannot have a real life without my medication. I try to bear the pain for 2 or 3 days, and when I cannot handle it I will take one pill . . . I went to all the pharmacies and they do not sell it.”

For more information, please visit: 

Human Rights Watch – Senegal: Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief – 24 October 2013
Tolerance – Senegal: Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief – 24 October 2013
Leuk Senegal – Senegal: Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief – 70,000 a Year Suffer Torment for Lack of Treatment – 25 October 2013
RSS Pump News – Senegal – Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief – 70000 a Year Suffer Torment – 24 October 2013
My Legal Right – Senegal: Thousands Urgently Need Pain Relief – 24 October 2013
allAfrica – Senegal: Rights Group Presses for Chronic Pain Care in Senegal – 25 October 2013