Italian government suggests shutting borders to prevent migrant entry

By: Sara Adams
Impunity Watch News Reporter, Europe 

Migrants travel through a Northern Italian city. Image courtesy of AP.

ROME, Italy – The Italian government has threatened to close its ports to prevent an influx of migrants from entering the country.

The suggestion to close ports was suggested by Italy’s EU ambassador, Maurizio Massari, to EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos during a meeting.

About 73,000 migrants have entered Italy this year. The migrants are mostly from North African countries.

For those who are not aided by a nonprofit group, the route is treacherous. Smugglers from Libya stow away migrants on small fishing boats. Nonprofit aid groups like Doctors Without Borders, as well as the EU’s official rescue operation Frontex, rescue stranded migrants, dropping them off on Italy’s shores.

The Italian Coast Guard also joins in rescue efforts.

Nearly 2,000 have died on the journey or gone missing. In one instance, Italian authorities arrested a man for allegedly torturing migrants in Libya as they waited for passage on a smuggler’s boat.

The consideration of closing ports comes after the arrival on Italian shores of 11,000 migrants over the course of five days.

The government has suggested refusing docking privileges to boats that are not carrying Italy’s flag.

Other countries have closed their borders to migrants to prevent them from moving north, out of Italy. Poland and Hungary have avoided taking on refugees to lessen Italy’s burden. And on June 26, police at the French-Italy border sprayed tear gas at the 400 migrants attempting to travel north.

Critics have described this threat as a “panic measure.” Mattia Toaldo, a Libya expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that he would be “surprised if [this move] is legal.”

EU leaders agree that Italy and Greece need to receive more aid in managing incoming refugees and migrants.

The move to close ports would not impact the European Union’s Frontex program. The program is governed by international law and cannot be altered. The commissioner’s office will be in charge of leading discussions for the policy change. These discussions will likely include the nongovernmental humanitarian aid groups.

For more information, please see:

Associated Press – Italy Threatens to Close Ports to NGO Migrant Rescue Ships – 28 June 2017

The Washington Post – World Digest: June 28, 2017 – 28 June 2017

BBC News – Migrant crisis: Italy threatens to shut ports – 28 June 2017

The Guardian – Italy considers closing its ports to boats carrying migrants – 28 June 2017

ABC News – The Latest: Aid group fears for migrants at Italy border – 27 June 2017

Reuters – Italian police use tear gas on migrants trying to enter France – 26 June 2017

 

The C.I.A. Psychologists: Letter to the Editor

The Opinion Pages | LETTER

The C.I.A. Psychologists

Still image from a video deposition of Dr. Bruce Jessen.

To the Editor:

In “Suit Gives New Details of Brutal Interrogations” (“Lasting Scars” series, front page, June 22), the two psychologists who guided the C.I.A. in its post-9/11 interrogations claim that waterboarding and other techniques widely condemned as torture cause no long-term physical or psychological damage.

That claim is incompatible with the experience of several hundred survivors of torture from Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan whom I have treated over two decades as a critical-care physician. The C.I.A.’s psychologists, by contrast, have no medical training on which to base this claim.

The characterization of waterboarding — a technique in which prisoners are deliberately suffocated to induce the terror of impending death — by one psychologist as “distressing” is a chilling illustration of his clinical inability to discern the difference between a life-threatening event and non-life-threatening event, let alone acknowledge waterboarding as a form of mock execution.

Americans seek accountability for the use of torture by the United States government. Citizens in North Carolina created a public commission, of which I am a member, to investigate the state’s role in rendition through an in-state C.I.A. contractor.

ANNIE SPARROW, NEW YORK

The writer is an assistant professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Syria Deeply: Astana talks fall short, rising hostility between Turkey and YPG and cease-fire violations in southern Syria

 

 
Jul. 7th, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to our weekly summary of Syria Deeply’s top coverage of crisis in Syria.

We’ll always have Astana: Another round of talks kicked off in Astana on Tuesday and, in what has become almost tradition for Syria negotiations, they ended with the promise of reconvening at a later date to resume discussions.

Talks in the Kazakh capital aimed to continue negotiations and solidify an earlier memorandum signed by Russia, Iran and Turkey in May to create four de-escalation zones in the country. The three co-sponsors failed to finalize details of the agreement by the original June 4 deadline.

After two days of negotiations this week about the actual implementation of this plan on the ground, Russia’s chief negotiator Alexander Lavrentiev said that the logistics would still “need finalizing,” adding that details were “essentially agreed” upon.

Early in the negotiations, Lavrentiev said that Russian troops could be deployed to secure the boundaries of the four zones within two to three weeks if Moscow, Turkey and Iran reached an agreement in Astana. However, it seems Russia spoke to soon, and on Wednesday, Lavrentiev said they had not reached a definitive agreement about “which specific forces” would police the zones, which has been a major point of contention throughout negotiations.

The opposition delegation was, unsurprisingly, skeptical about this proposal. An opposition representative told Reuters that they believed the agreement aimed “to set out the areas of influence between the three states that sponsor it… if we want to interpret it on the Syria-wide level, it represents the strengthening of Russian and Iranian influence on the ground.”

Iran, Russia and Turkey agreed to resume discussions in Astana in the final week of August.

Turks, Kurds ramp up hostile rhetoric: Turkey has deployed military units near Kurdish-held areas of northwestern Syria, resulting in protests and hostile rhetoric from Kurdish groups.

Speaking to Reuters, Sipan Hemo, the head of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, accused Turkey of preparing for a significant military push in the northern Syria areas of Aleppo and Afrin. “These [Turkish] preparations have reached level of a declaration of war and could lead to the outbreak of actual clashes in the coming days. We will not stand idly by against this potential aggression.”

Turkey’s deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus responded that Turkey was not making a “declaration of war” but rather “making preparations against potential threats.” However, he also claimed that YPG’s “primary goal is a threat to Turkey,” vowing to retaliate if “Turkey sees a YPG movement in northern Syria that is a threat to it.”

Anti-Turkish sentiment has already escalated in the Kurdish-controlled town of Afrin, after thousands of people took to the streets on Wednesday in a Democratic Union Party (PYD)-organized protest against Turkish military intervention. Demonstrations began after shelling from the Turkish military and its opposition allies killed a woman and two of her children in the northern Aleppo countryside on Tuesday.

A shaky cease-fire In southern Syria: A temporary cessation of hostilities has been in effect in Syria’s southern province since Monday, and has been extended until Saturday.

The Syrian army announced the brief cease-fire in the provinces of Daraa, Quneitra and Sweida “to support the peace process and national reconciliations.”

However, both sides have violated the cease-fire, after rebel leaders accused the army of carrying out barrel bomb attacks in opposition-held areas of Daraa city, the town of Naima and the Daraa countryside, shortly after the cessation of hostilities came into effect.

 

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Syria Justice and Accountability Centre: The Importance of Protecting Mass Graves in Syria

SJAC Update | July 3, 2017
A mass grave in eastern Bosnia. Photo from Wikimedia

 

The Importance of Protecting Mass Graves in Syria
As Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) advance on Raqqa, Kurdish sources have reported the discovery of an alleged Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) mass gravesite four kilometers east of Tabqa. According to a 2016 Associated Press survey, ISIS has commonly used mass graves since 2014; the survey estimated ISIS has 72 mass gravesites in Iraq and Syria containing up to 15,000 bodies. Satellite imagery and other documentation indicate that both the Syrian government and ISIS use mass graves and burn sites to dispose of dead bodies, making victim identification difficult – but not impossible. Forensic DNA testing can aid in victim identification and crime scene investigation for use in future accountability efforts, but the ongoing conflict in Syria poses challenges to the proper preservation and analysis of mass graves. To avoid mishandling of dead bodies found in and around Raqqa, SDF forces, the US-led coalition, and the international community must commit to protecting the integrity of sites to eventually allow forensic experts unfettered access in conducting accurate investigations that yield evidence for future justice mechanisms and the safe return of bodies to families.

The United Nations (UN) considers a mass grave to be a location with three or more victims “of extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions” who have not died in combat. Under international humanitarian law (IHL), conflict parties should “take all possible measures” to prevent bodies from being despoiled and make all efforts to identify the dead and provide proper burials in marked graves. The use of mass gravesites hinders the accurate identification and recovery of remains, compounding the widespread missing persons crisis the Syrian conflict has produced.
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The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre (SJAC) is a Syrian-led and multilaterally supported nonprofit that envisions a Syria where people live in a state defined by justice, respect for human rights, and rule of law. SJAC collects, analyzes, and preserves human rights law violations by all parties in the conflict — creating a central repository to strengthen accountability and support transitional justice and peace-building efforts. SJAC also conducts research to better understand Syrian opinions and perspectives, provides expertise and resources, conducts awareness-raising activities, and contributes to the development of locally appropriate transitional justice and accountability mechanisms. Contact us at info@syriaaccountability.org.

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U.S. Student Dies After Being Released By North Korea

By: Brian Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia 

PYONGYANG, North Korea – Otto Warmbier, a student at the University of Virginia, died on June 19, 2017 after spending 17 months in a prison in North Korea. Mr. Warmbier returned to Cincinnati on June 13 after being released by the North Korean government.

Otto Warmbier was detained in North Korea for allegedly stealing a propaganda sign. Photo courtesy of Reuters.

When he was traveling in China in 2015, Mr. Warmbier signed up for a five-day tour of North Korea with a Chinese company.

Mr. Warmbier was arrested in early January 2016 and was charged with “hostile act” against the regime for stealing government property. The North Korean government convicted him two months later after a one hour trial and sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor.

The doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center received two M.R.I. scans from North Korea that showed Mr. Warmbier’s brain injury shortly after his conviction. The doctors believe that he suffered a “severe neurological injury.” The extensive loss of brain tissue in all regions of his brain was most likely caused by cardiopulmonary arrest that cut off the blood supply to his brain.

As the doctors are unable to identify what caused the initial injury, they found no evidence of broken bones or injuries that shows physical abuse. The regime blamed Mr. Warmbier’s injuries to a combination of botulism and sleeping pills.

Mr. Warmbier’s death increased tensions between North Korea and the United States as President Donald J. Trump spoke on the “brutality of the North Korean regime.” Previously, the North Korean government called President Trump a “psychopath.”

President Trump firmly stated that he is determined to “prevent such tragedies from befalling innocent people at the hands of regimes that do not respect the rule of law or basic human decency.”

Over 2,500 people gathered at Wyoming High School for Mr. Warmbier’s memorial service. He graduated from the school in 2013.

Three U.S. citizens, Kim Dong Chul, Tony Kim, and Kim Hak Song, are still held in North Korea.

For more information, please see: 

NYT – Otto Warmbier, American Student Released From North Korea, Dies – 19 June, 2017

BBC – Otto Warmbier: North Korea denies mistreating US student – 23 June, 2017

Reuters – North Korea says U.S. student’s death a ‘mystery to us as well’ – 23 June, 2017