Only 38% of illegal migrants return home

Migrants face physical violence

BRUSSELS, July 29, (Agencies): Every year since 2008, half a million foreign nationals on average are ordered to leave the European Union because they have entered or are staying irregularly.

However, only 38 percent return to their country of origin or to the country from which they travelled to the EU, the European Court of Auditors said in a report published Tuesday.

One of the reasons for the low returns is the difficulty of cooperating with migrants countries of origin, say the auditors.

“How to deal best with migration is a pressing issue for the EU and its Member States,” said Leo Brincat, the Member in the court leading the audit.

“As the EUs external auditors, we have recently carried out several audits of the arrangements within the EU on asylum and relocation of migrants. We will now take a deeper look at their return and readmission to third countries,” said Brincat.

To make it easier to implement readmission obligations, the EU has concluded 18 legally binding readmission agreements with third countries (nonEU countries).

However, third countries may be reluctant to engage in negotiations, mainly due to internal political considerations, since these agreements can be a source of public hostility, says the report

Meanwhile, a new U.N. refugee agency report on migrants who braved long and often-deadly land routes to Libya has found that government officials, such as border guards, police and soldiers, in the African countries they crossed were responsible for nearly

widely used by the Russian military to fly from mainland Russia to the nation’s Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. The route passes a narrow international air corridor over the Gulf of Finland.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said four Su-27 naval aviation aircraft had conducted a scheduled flight on Tuesday from the northwestern Karelia region to Kaliningrad, without violating the airspace of other countries. (AP)

Crack down on govt critics:

Serbia’s finance ministry has launched a probe into possible money laundering and financing of terrorism against dozens of rights groups, independent journalists and opposition politicians who have criticized alleged government corruption and anti-democratic policies.

The ministry has denied that the investigation, which sought half of all cases of physical violence against them.

The finding, which is bound to raise calls for greater accountability, comes in a report Wednesday from refugee agency UNHCR and the Danish Refugee Council. It seeks to chronicle cases of violence and death that have been hard to track along the often deserted routes to Libya – the top launch pad for Mediterranean crossings toward Europe.

The report, entitled “‘On this journey, no one cares if you live or die,” also warns that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to border closures, could make such treks even more dangerous as human smugglers try riskier techniques to evade detection.

Collected

Based on nearly 16,000 interviews and data collected by the council’s Mixed Migration Center, the report found at least 1,750 people died on the journeys across both east and west Africa in 2018 and 2019 - making the land route one of the deadliest for migrants and refugees in the world.

UNHCR says the count is believed to fall far short of the actual death toll.

“We’ve learned report after report that there were abuses along those roads, either committed by security forces, either committed by smugglers and traffickers,” said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR’s Special Envoy for the Central Mediterranean. “Now, we have much more detailed information as to where are the abuses committed, by whom they are committed. So no one can say:

access to private bank data of several groups and individuals, is a targeted attack on critics, saying it is part of regular proceedings.

“These are regular activities aimed at assessing the risk of terrorism financing,” said Zeljko Radovanovic, acting director of the state authority against money laundering.

The civic groups have demanded that the Serbian government immediately ceases what they say is abuse of the mechanism against money laundering and financing terrorism to intimidate organizations which act as checks and balances for the executive.

They have accused the populist government of trying to silence critics amid mounting discontent over the increasingly autocratic rule of President Aleksandar Vucic and his government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis in the Balkan state. (AP) ‘We don’t know.’”

The report found 47 percent of incidents of physical violence reported by migrants along the entire route – both east and west – were reportedly caused by security forces, police, military, immigration officers and border guards, compared to 29 percent by smugglers.

The report divvies up much of Africa north of the Equator into three sections, and lays out individual accounts: Some spent a year detained in warehouses; others faced physical abuse from traffickers to extract payments; some faced sexual and gender-based violence at the hands of officials.

“On the West African routes leading to Libya, it’s mainly the security forces, immigration officials, border officials involved in acts of sexual, gender-based violence,” Cochetel said in an interview at UNHCR’s headquarters. “Whereas if we look at other type of physical abuse along the routes, the majority of the perpetrators are smugglers, traffickers or criminal gangs associated with them.”

The authors say more work is needed to boost protections for the people on the move, and provide better, legal alternatives for their journeys, and cited “pockets of progress” such as through arrests of some criminals responsible.

“There has to be proper accountability for those crimes. There do have to be very accessible complaint mechanisms on access to justice for victims of trafficking once they have reached safety,” said Cochetel – adding that home, transit and destination countries need to be involved in that.

Danish prince recovering:

Prince Joachim, the younger son of Queen Margrethe of Denmark, who underwent emergency surgery for a blood clot in his brain won’t suffer any long-term effects, the royal palace said Tuesday.

The 51-year-old prince, who had been on vacation in France, was admitted to the Toulouse University Hospital late Friday and was operated on early Saturday.

“The blood clot in the brain was due to a sudden dissection of an artery, and the hospital’s medical team assesses that the risk of recurrence is very small when the artery has healed,” Lene Balleby, a spokeswoman for the royal household, said in a statement.

“It is the doctors’ assessment that Prince Joachim will not have any physical effects or other injuries as a result of the blood clot,” Balleby said. “Prince Joachim is expected to be moved out of the intensive care unit as soon as possible but will continue to be hospitalized for some time to come.”

Joachim married Marie Cavallier, with whom he has two children, in 2008, and she became Princess Marie. He also has two children from his first marriage to Hong-Kong born Alexandra Manley, who became Countess of Frederiksborg after their divorce in 2005, the first split in nearly 160 years in Europe’s oldest monarchy.

Joachim is sixth in the line to Denmark’s throne after his elder brother, Crown Prince Frederik, and his brother’s four children. (AP)

Treason suspect isolated:

An adviser to Russia’s space agency jailed on suspicion of treason has been moved into isolation because he has possibly contracted

COVID-19, reports said Monday.

Eva Merkacheva of the public commission that monitors Russian detainees’ human rights was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying Ivan Safronov has been placed in isolation at Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison.

Safronov, a former journalist well-known for his coverage of military issues for two major daily newspapers, became a Roscosmos adviser in May.

He was arrested in early July on charges of passing sensitive information to Czech intelligence about Russian arms sales to the Middle East and Africa in 2017. (AP)

Poles split over govt plan:

Poles are bitterly divided over steps being taken by the rightwing government to leave a European treaty against domestic violence, claiming it promotes gender “ideology” and links violence to religion.

Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said Monday he has formally asked the Ministry of Family to start preparations for Poland’s exit from the Istanbul Convention – an initiative of the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights organization. It was not clear when an official withdrawal notice would be filed.

Ziobro, who is head of a small grouping inside the ruling coalition, said he was taking the steps of his own accord and was ready to discuss their timing with other government members.

“It is time to take decisions .... to protect women, children and the family against violence but also time to give no consent to them being demoralized by norms that have been insidiously added to the valid slogans and demands for protection against domestic violence,” Ziobro said on Catholic Radio Maryja. (AP)