An international flotilla seeking to challenge Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip is nearing its destination, although its exact location is unknown, supporters said on Saturday.
A three-vessel "Freedom Flotilla" left Palermo, Sicily, on 21 July and the first of them, the Awda, or Return in Arabic, may arrive off the Gaza shore as early as Sunday, Pierre Stambul, co-president of the French Jewish Union for Peace, said in an e-mail to AFP.
Stambul, who is not aboard, said that about 40 activists from 15 countries, including two from France, were taking part.
As in previous attempts to breach the blockade, the ships were expected to be stopped at sea by the Israeli navy and taken to an Israeli port.
A video report posted online on Saturday from onboard one of the ships, by Richard Sudan of Iran's Press TV UK, said that one of the smaller vessels had dropped out with an unspecified "problem"
"So two boats are now currently making their way toward the Gaza Strip," he said.
Passengers, he said, include journalists, activists and at least one lawmaker.
"There's a Jordanian MP on the other boast, the Awda, and various activists from across Europe," he said, adding that the blockade challenge "is a gesture of solidarity to the Palestinians."
"There is also some medical aid on board, although the amount of medical aid is merely a gesture,' he added. "We're talking just a few boxes."
In 2010, Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists when they raided a six-ship flotilla trying to reach the Gaza Strip in defiance of the blockade. Another activist died years later.
The botched raid angered Turkey and saw it cut off ties with Israel until 2016.
Other attempts to run the Israeli blockade included a 2016 women's boat with 13 passengers including Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland.
Their sailing boat was halted by the Israeli navy and taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 30km north of Gaza and the women were detained before being deported.
Israel maintains its blockade to keep material it believes could be used for military purposes from entering the coastal enclave, run by the militant Islamic group Hamas.
I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed in all my years of journalism such a hysterical outpouring against a presidential statement as I’ve seen the last week. President Donald Trump has even been accused of treason by prominent columnists and politicians. There’s barely a voice of dissent in the media.
(Maybe it’s written but not published.) No wonder that even some of my normally open-minded friends feel that things are as bad as they are made out to be. Sorry to say it, as I’ve told them, they are being brainwashed.
The issue is Trump’s dishing of his intelligence services during his press conference with President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. He denied their conviction that Russia had meddled in the election that brought Trump to power. In standing by Putin’s denial on this he speared the sacred heart of the American foreign policy establishment, the so-called “Blob”. Only Republican voters stood upright beside him- the same ones who Trump boasted would still support him even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue as they walked along.
I don’t know who is right about this. I’m a Trump opponent too. But I want the truth revealed. Maybe Trump is right, maybe the critics are. But I’m waiting for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, charged with investigating the election and the allegations swirling in its aftermath, to present his full report. Before reading a word of it I lean towards believing it. Why?
I don’t know who is right about this. I’m a Trump opponent too. But I want the truth revealed. Maybe Trump is right, maybe the critics are. But I’m waiting for the special counsel, Robert Mueller, charged with investigating the election and the allegations
When Richard Nixon was president two successive Special Prosecutors did a superb job in investigating Watergate. It didn’t matter that Nixon was a paid-up Cold War warrior, he had done a grievous wrong in trying to influence in an underhand way the coming election and it had to be exposed. Facing impeachment Nixon resigned. This is why I have a good deal of faith in Mueller. But I don’t have faith in America’s public opinion being whipped into an anti-Trump shape by overstating and misleading the public on what transpired in Helsinki without proof at hand. I prefer to wait and see until the evidence is fully sifted.
No other country has twisted and misrepresented its intelligence findings more than the US. There would have been no war against Iraq if US intelligence, with British MI6 connivance, hadn’t said that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction when they knew it hadn’t. This time we need to be allowed to read the intelligence given to the President for ourselves. That’s what the media should be digging for. But will they? So many of its most influential members supported going to war against Iraq.
It’s unlikely, given their display of wrath last week, they will do any better this time around.
Today it’s an accepted fact that US and British intelligence connived to misrepresent the state of Iraq’s military power in order to justify going to war. They said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when it didn’t. Many of the big voices in the media supported going to war.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The New York Times in February interviewed Steven Hall who had been the chief of Russian operations at the CIA. “Did the Russians break the rules, the answer is no, not at all”. The US “absolutely” has carried out such election influence operations historically, Hall said, “and I hope we keep doing it”.
In the 1950s the US-engineered coups against democratically elected regimes in Iran and Guatemala. It connived in the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961 and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, both democratically elected. The CIA supported brutal anti-communist governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
More recently, the US successfully funded opposition in the election which aided the successful effort to depose Slobodan Milosevic, the war-minded leader of Serbia. The retired secretary of defence, Robert Gates, has written in his memoirs about “our clumsy and failed putsch” in Afghanistan. Not least, and most relevantly, President Bill Clinton, fearing that Boris Yeltsin would be defeated in Russia’s election, authorized a secret effort to help him.
Hall has his reasons for interference and meddling in elections. He says, in effect, the US is on the side of the angels, doing good by working against authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, while Russia’s activities are aimed against Western democracies. “The motivations matter.”
How can he say that when America is riddled by ballot cheating- during the Kennedy/Nixon election, during the Bush/Gore election and the widespread gerrymandering today. Moreover, when one considers the large amounts of cash swilling around elections in order to get favoured candidates elected it’s difficult to accept that the US is an honest democracy.
Russian interference in a US election, even if proved, is a minor influence compared with these. Let’s have a level playing field when we debate the rights and wrongs of outside intervention.
(For 17 years Jonathan Power was a foreign affairs columnist for the International Herald Tribune- see www.jonathanpowerjournalist.com) Copyright: Jonathan Power.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Saturday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the U.S. Catholic Church’s most prominent figures, who has been at the centre of a widening sexual abuse scandal.
McCarrick, 88, the former archbishop of Washington, D.C., is the first cardinal in living memory to lose his red hat and title. Other cardinals who have been disciplined in sexual abuse scandals kept their membership in the College of Cardinals and their honorific “your eminence”.
The allegations against McCarrick, which first surfaced publicly last month, came with Francis facing an image crisis on a second front, in Chile, where a growing abuse scandal has enveloped the Church.
A Vatican statement said the pope, acting only hours after McCarrick offered his resignation on Friday night, ordered his suspension from the exercise of any public ministry. This means he remains a priest but will be allowed to say Mass only in private.
Francis also ordered McCarrick to go into seclusion “for a life of prayer and penance until the accusations made against him are examined in a regular canonical trial”.
The Vatican said the pope wanted to send a strong message that high rank would no longer be a shield.
“The important point is that McCarrick is no longer a cardinal. What this means is that, no matter how important your position, no matter how prestigious, when it comes to sex abuse you’re going to be held accountable. That is the message being sent today,” spokesman Greg Burke told Reuters Television.
McCarrick’s sudden fall from grace stunned the American Church because he was a widely respected leader for decades and a confidant of popes and presidents.
Last month, American Church officials said allegations that he sexually abused a 16-year-old boy almost 50 years ago were credible and substantiated..
Since then, another minor has come forward with allegations that McCarrick abused him when he was 11 years old, and several men have come forward to allege that McCarrick forced them to sleep with him at a beach house in New Jersey when they were adult seminarians studying for the priesthood.
NO RECOLLECTION
McCarrick has said that he had “absolutely no recollection” of the alleged abuse of the teenager 50 years ago but has not commented on the other allegations.
The New York Times reported last week that two dioceses in New Jersey, where McCarrick served as bishop before being promoted to Washington in 2000, had reached financial settlements in 2005 and 2007 with men who said they were abused by McCarrick as adults decades ago.
Some U.S. Catholics have said the Vatican should send an inspector to the United States to determine who in the U.S. Church hierarchy knew of the alleged incidents and why McCarrick’s rise was not impeded.
“The Vatican must investigate and publish its conclusions regarding McCarrick’s advancement and very successful career,” said Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based group that tracks abuse cases.
“The officials responsible must be identified and disciplined, and the investigative file must be made public,” McKiernan said in a statement.
In 2013, Cardinal Keith O’Brien of Scotland recused himself from participating in the conclave that elected Francis after he was caught up in a sexual abuse scandal involving seminarians. He later renounced rights and privileges of being a cardinal but kept his red hat and title until his death earlier this year.
Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick from U.S. arrives for a meeting at the Synod Hall in the Vatican March 7, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/File Photo
The last person to resign from the College of Cardinals is believed to be French theologian Louis Billot, who left over a disagreement with Pope Pius XI in 1927, according to the U.S. newspaper, National Catholic Reporter.
Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Andrew Bolton and Kevin Liffey
WHILE Indian students make up the bulk of international students worldwide, the same can hardly be said about the number of foreigners enrolling in India’s higher education institutes.
Recently, however, the Indian government appears to be aggressively pushing to get those numbers up. It’s investing around US$22 million in a two-year program that will offer fee waivers, discounts and expedited visa approvals to attract students in 30 countries to study in India.
At the Indian Educatio Expo 2018, the country’s lower university fees and education standards comparable to that of institutions in Europe and the US were also touted as reasons for more Africans to enrol.
“Indian universities provide much more for the African students in addition to the fact that the fees are affordable,” said Nitesh Mahajan, assistant director of international admissions at Lovely Professional University in Punjab, as quoted by the Business Standard.
India has good reason to want to attract more international students.
A report last year revealed international students are just not applying to Indian universities, which recorded a drop in the number of enrolments – a result researchers say reflects the unfulfilled potential of the country’s education system.
While India has seen a massive increase in the number of international students since 2000 – a mere 7,791 then – there were only 30,423 international students in 2014, according to the Association of Indian Universities’ annual report.
The figure is a far cry from the 4.85 million allocated seats for international students that universities are allowed to admit. Under the country’s policy framework, universities and colleges are allowed to admit international students up to 15 percent of their total student cohort.
Students with their faces smeared in coloured powder dance as they celebrate Holi at a university campus in Chandigarh, India March 1, 2018. Source: Reuters/Ajay Verma
In a bid to expand its soft power and attract more international students, the new Study in India program aims to award partial or complete fee waivers to more than half (55 percent) of the 15,000 seats offered for the academic year 2018-19.
Indian External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj referred to how scholars all over the world had been attracted to the ancient Indian universities of Nalanda and Takshila.
“The quest for knowledge has always been fundamental to India’s culture and civilisation,” said Swaraj during the launch of the initiative, as quoted by The Indian Express. “We can rightly say that India is one of the very few places in the world where ancient traditions and modernity coexist in harmony.”
By 2023, the government plans to reserve up to 200,000 seats in its 160 public and private education institutions for international applicants.
Welcoming international applicants is touted as a “win-win” approach for students in emerging economies, whose higher-education needs “are not met by traditional first-world systems,” according to Meeta Sengupta, founder of the Centre for Education Strategy.
Compared to traditional study destinations dominated by the Western world, studying in India means fees will be lower, visas will be easier to obtain and competition will likely be lesser, Meeta said.
Whatever the U.S. president's intentions, his efforts to rock the foundation of international politics are hopeless.
US President Donald Trump watches the Palm Beach Central High School marching band perform as it greets him upon his arrival to watch the Super Bowl at Trump International Golf Club Palm Beach in West Palm Beach, Florida on February 5, 2017. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
BYJAMES KIRCHICK-
Following a weeklong European tour during which he disparaged America’s closest allies and flattered its greatest adversary, there no longer can be any doubt that U.S. President Donald Trump wants to dismantle the liberal world order. That order—a system of multilateral arrangements, alliances, and institutions—was built in the ashes of World War II under U.S. tutelage and strength of arms. It extends from the European Union and NATO to the long-standing security guarantees Washington has established with Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. The resulting Pax Americana laid the groundwork for the greatest period of peace and prosperity in human history.
Such has been the U.S. political consensus on NATO that, since the alliance’s creation in 1949, criticizing America’s membership was akin to advocating the abolition of child labor laws: It simply wasn’t done by serious candidates seeking the presidency. Trump changed all that.
Among the many taboos he broke during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Trump went so far as to call NATO “obsolete,” and since taking office, he has repeatedly questioned America’s security commitment to treaty allies.
Although U.S. presidents of both parties since Harry Truman have supported the political and economic integration of Europe, Trump supported the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the EU.
And after having campaigned as the most pro-Russia candidate since Henry Wallace, it was fitting that Trump would utterly abase himself before President Vladimir Putin at their joint press conference in Helsinki. When Trump validated Putin’s denials of election meddling, not only did he endorse the Russian autocrat’s lies over the unanimous assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies and senior congressional leaders of his own Republican Party, but he also obfuscated how Russia is hostile to U.S. interests, values, and alliances.
But the fact that Trump wants to dismantle the liberal world order has obscured the more important question of whether he can. According to Stewart Patrick, the order is already unraveling. “In 18 short months, he has torn at the roots and hacked at the branches of Western solidarity that his predecessors painstakingly cultivated over seven decades,” he writes in Foreign Policy. U.S. allies, he says, are “pursuing strategic autonomy,” “working with China to safeguard globalization,” and “grasping to defend what remains of the open world from the depredations of its erstwhile creator.” And with “U.S. abdication of global leadership,” the European Union stands as “the best hope for liberal internationalists.”
Patrick is right about Trump’s intentions. But like many analysts prematurely mourning the downfall of the liberal international order, he writes as if the president of the United States acts unconstrained by Congress or even his own administration. Were Trump to exist in a different political system, one with fewer checks and balances and external limitations on a leader’s power, he would be far more dangerous. Trump’s behavior as a businessman, his authoritarian rhetoric, and his frequently expressed admiration for strongmen suggest dictatorial tendencies.
But as Trump would probably be the first to admit, running a democratic country—with a free media, independent judiciary, active civil society, energized opposition party, and regular elections—isn’t at all like running a family business. If Trump were president of a banana republic like Venezuela, or a nonconsolidated democracy like Hungary, it would be much easier for him to single-handedly undermine his country’s democratic institutions and geopolitically reorient it away from the free world. Fortunately, Trump—however despotic his inclinations—is the democratically elected leader of the world’s oldest constitutional republic, and his attempts to undo the seven-decade-old liberal world order that republic built and sustained have thus far largely been frustrated.
The primary reason for this is that, at least in the realm of foreign and defense policy, Trump has either been unwilling or unable to staff his administration with like-minded “America First” nationalists. The U.S. diplomatic and security apparatus is a behemoth, comprising tens of thousands of people, and it requires a great number of ideologically committed and bureaucratically skilled individuals to transform America’s world role in the way Trump desires. Beginning with Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisor John Bolton, and continuing further down the bureaucratic chain to Wess Mitchell, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Fiona Hill, the National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs, there is no one in the upper echelons of the U.S. diplomatic and military firmament who even remotely shares the president’s antipathy to the EU, NATO, or U.S. global leadership, never mind his bizarre affinity for Putin. (The role of these patriotic officials in restraining Trump’s worst impulses, and the likelihood of their replacement by incompetent and obsequious ideologues, makes the recurring calls for them to resign shortsighted.) Until he was fired last summer, Steve Bannon was the closest thing Trump had to an advisor capable of translating his gut prejudices, conspiratorial delusions, and half-baked proposals about the world into actual policies. For a taste of the damage Bannon might have wreaked were he still in the White House, look to Brussels, where he has decamped to set up a nationalist political network he claims will rival George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
Absent Bannon whispering in his ear, Trump’s ability to wreck the liberal world order hinges upon the degree to which he can translate his nationalistic, zero-sum worldview into actions on the world stage. Thus far, the damage he has done is mostly rhetorical. And nowhere has the gap between wild presidential rhetoric and actual governmental deeds been more apparent than Russia. The media’s obsessive coverage of the Trump-Putin summit as if it were a major title boxing match—with television news outlets dispatching entire teams to Helsinki for nonstop coverage—exemplifies its simplistic reduction of U.S.-Russia relations to mere personalities and is seriously distorting analysis. For all the talk of Trump’s “treasonous” behavior last week (and it was indeed morally despicable), there were no actual U.S. policy concessions to Russia as a result of his disastrous performance. From expulsions of Russian diplomats to sanctions on Russian individuals and entities to Ukrainian arms sales and increased support for—yes— NATO, the posture of the United States toward Russia is tougher than it has ever been since the end of the Cold War. “Trump and the U.S. are not exactly the same thing right now,” a person close to a Russian business tycoon recently lamented to the Financial Times, with more than a little understatement.
A common misperception of presidents (not least Trump’s predecessor) is that they can change the world by their mere presence on the international stage. By treating Trump’s rhetoric as if it constitutes policy, many are essentially endorsing a simplistic “great man theory” of history. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Celeste Wallander, a former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, says that because of Trump’s comportment, “Americans must face the fact that the biggest threat to NATO today may be the United States itself”—not the country that has perpetrated the first territorial annexation on European soil since World War II, whose military doctrine paints NATO as its main adversary, and that simulates nuclear strikes on NATO territory. If the biggest threat to NATO is its most powerful member, the other nations in the alliance certainly are not acting like it.
Yes, a handful of European leaders—namely German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister, Heiko Maas—have repeatedly made statements to the effect that Europe can no longer fully depend on the United States as it used to in the past. But like Trump’s alleged single-handed destruction of the liberal world order, their pursuit of alternate arrangements to work around or replace the status quo has been almost entirely rhetorical. Aside from the activation of an EU defense collaboration initiative called PESCO (“Permanent Structured Cooperation”), which was envisioned long before the arrival of Trump and is not intended to replace NATO, there is little evidence to indicate that European policymakers are genuinely preparing for a post-American future. In Asia, meanwhile, “Trump’s focus on China as a great-power rival will compel him or some future administration to refurbish and expand U.S. alliances rather than withdraw from them,” Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry write in Foreign Affairs.
The liberal world order, Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post, requires “constant tending, above all by the United States.” But just as the liberal order is not self-sustaining, so can it not simply be destroyed by the whims of a single individual, even the president of the United States. The liberal world order is “sticky” in that it contains fundamental elements—military-to-military relationships, shared political and cultural values, massive economic ties—which outlast any one president’s time in office. While it’s certainly possible that Trump could seriously or even permanently wreck these elements, it is too early at this point to state definitively that he has.
While Trump’s ability to dismantle the liberal world order has been overstated, there is one way in which his rhetoric and behavior have already done incalculable damage and could indeed potentially prove catastrophic: his undermining NATO’s collective security guarantee, enshrined in Article 5 of its founding charter. Trump’s constant questioning of this treaty obligation, explicitly conditioning America’s responsibility to protect allies upon their defense expenditure, weakens the alliance’s deterrent capability and invites Russian aggression. When Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump last week why his son should fight to defend newly inducted NATO member Montenegro (a tiringly isolationist trope beloved by Carlson, whose son, for what it’s worth, does not serve in America’s all-volunteer military), Trump ought to have responded, “Because our NATO allies have died for us.” Instead, he replied, “I’ve asked the same question,” and gratuitously threw in a line about Montenegrins being “very aggressive” and potentially getting the United States mired in World War III—an old Soviet trope. Trump’s equivocations in this regard are significantly more injurious to the liberal world order than Obama’s Syrian red line flub, as they concern written security guarantees to treaty allies, not an off-the-cuff remark uttered at a press conference.
In the form of Trump, we could indeed be witnessing a tectonic shift in international relations, with the United States voluntarily relinquishing its role as, in Patrick’s words, “the custodian of world order and the champion of human freedom” and a return to 19th-century-style nationalism and competition. Equally plausible, however, is that we are being daily subjected to the colossal vanity of a world historical narcissist, whose bark has more power than his bite, and whose deeply corrosive rhetoric is influenced not by close readings of Noam Chomsky and Pat Buchanan but the experience of producing top-rated reality television trash. This is a man who, just a week after calling the European Union a “foe,” tweets a photo of the EU Commission president embracing him with the caption that the EU and United States “love each other.” When future generations look back on the tenure of the current leader of the free world, the words of another mad king may come to mind, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
What Barbara Carroll says was meant to be a quick trip turned into a nearly three-hour ordeal after a Wells Fargo branch accused the 78-year-old black woman of forgery.
Carroll, who holds a doctorate in criminal justice and worked as an assistant bank manager for 17 years, last week filed suit against the country’s third-largest commercial bank, alleging racial discrimination. A Wells Fargo spokeswoman, Michelle Palomino, told The Washington Post that the bank is investigating Carroll’s claim. “Wells Fargo opposes discrimination of any kind,” Palomino said in an email. “We take Dr. Carroll’s allegations very seriously.”
In November 2017, Carroll says, she went to a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., branch of the bank to cash a $140 check. Carroll was asked by a teller to present two forms of identification, a standard company policy for non-customers, Palomino said. After she endorsed the check with a signature and a fingerprint, Carroll told The Post, the teller, who was white, turned her back and flipped over the passport and driver’s license to look at them. After waiting 30 minutes on a couch in the back of the building, Carroll said, she knew something was awry.
Barbara Carroll (Courtesy of Yechezkel Rodal.)
Carroll told The Post she went to the counter to inquire about the delay. Frustrated with the wait, Carroll asked the teller to return her identification and check. She refused and fetched the manager, Carroll said. The manager also refused to return her items, according to Carroll, and informed her that they had called the police, refusing to explain why they had done so.
After waiting another 30 minutes, Carroll told the teller to keep the check and give back her passport and ID, according to the legal complaint filed by Carroll. The teller refused once more and would not say when the police would arrive, Carroll said.
While standing in front of the teller, Carroll called 911, and officers came within minutes, according to the complaint.
After she provided the police with six additional forms of identification, Carroll said, the officers told the manager they had found no irregularities. The manager, who Carroll said had previously verified the validity of the check with its writer, placed $140 in cash alongside her identifications on the counter and left.
“That was really insulting to me,” Carroll said. “She did not apologize.”
Carroll told The Post she was disturbed by the experience. As a former banker, she said, she thought the manager’s behavior was irregular and inappropriate.
In the ensuing days, Carroll lodged a formal complaint with the bank’s corporate office. Carroll told The Post that a representative told her in a phone conversation that the bank branch, which is located in an affluent white area, was notorious for treating black customers poorly. Carroll told The Post that Wells Fargo apologized and placed the two workers in “sensitivity” training. Wells Fargo declined to confirm whether the two were enrolled in training.
“I was humiliated,” said Carroll, who said she thinks this happened because she is black. “I’m a human being, and I wasn’t treated as I should have been.”
“We always want to make sure we’re doing right by our customers, guarding against fraud and taking extra precautions to protect them,” said Palomino, the spokeswoman.
Carroll is seeking an unspecified amount of money, according to the complaint. She requested a jury to decide how much to award.
“It’s not really a case about damages,” Carroll’s attorney, Yechezkel Rodal, told The Post. “It’s more to raise awareness and hold Wells Fargo accountable.”
Save the Children report says children resorting to desperate measures to pay for lift across border
A demonstration in support of migrants in Ventimiglia. The town is a major transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, Photograph: Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
Migrant children are prostituting themselves in order to get a safe passage into France from the Italian border, according to a report from Save the Children Italy. The minors, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, are selling sex if they cannot afford the €50-€150 asked by drivers in exchange for a lift across the border.
The children are also being offered food or shelter in return for sex. The charity says it has evidence of many cases, particularly since the beginning of this year.
“These are very young, and particularly at-risk girls, who are among the invisible flow of unaccompanied migrant minors in transit at the northern Italian border who, in an attempt to reunite with their relatives or acquaintances in other European countries, are deprived of the opportunity to travel safely and legally,” Raffaela Milano, the director of Italy-Europe programmes at Save the Children, said in the report.
She added that the girls “are strongly exposed to very serious risks of abuse and exploitation” and in many cases find themselves living in conditions “of great degradation”.
The situation in the Italian border town of Ventimiglia, a major transit hub for migrants attempting to cross into France, was aggravated after a makeshift camp by the Roya river was cleared in April. Since then, migrant children had been forced to live on the streets in “degrading, promiscuous and dangerous conditions”, the report said.
The report said migrant children were also being exploited for sex in other parts of Italy, including in Rome and the regions of Veneto, Abruzzo and Marche, as well as the island of Sardinia.
The charity said more than 1,900 girls had been sexually exploited across the areas between January 2017 and March 2018, out of which it was proven that 160 were children. The report said the rest had either recently reached the age of 18 or were pretending to be adults.
“It is unacceptable that in our country children and adolescents end up in the network of unscrupulous exploiters,” added Milano.
The report follows an Oxfam report in Junethat accused French border police of illegally sending migrant children back to Italy. They were also accused of detaining children as young as 12 in cells without food or water, cutting the soles off their shoes so they did not try to attempt the journey again, and stealing Sim cards from their mobile phones.
Oxfam said at least 16,500 migrants, a quarter of them children, had passed through Ventimiglia in the nine months to April.
“In Northern Ireland, if you are raped and you have become pregnant and you seek a termination, as a result you could face a longer prison sentence than the person who attacked you.”
Stella Creasy, 23 July 2018
The background
Campaigners are calling for the UK government to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland.
It’s much harder to get a termination in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, prompting hundreds of women and girls to travel to England for treatment.
Abortion pills are illegal but can be bought over the internet, and an unknown number of women end pregnancies unlawfully rather than making the trip.
The Labour MP Stella Creasy is among campaigners from across the political spectrum calling for a change in the law, and she made a dramatic claim about the potential risk for Northern Irish women who decide to carry out abortions themselves.
Can it really be true that a woman who terminates a pregnancy after being raped could end up getting a longer prison sentence than her attacker?
The law
It’s illegal for women to “unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing” to cause a miscarriage.
If the language sounds archaic, it’s because the relevant law is section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act, passed in 1861.
Ms Creasy and others are trying to get parliament to amend the Act in an effort to effectively decriminalise abortion in the province without waiting for the currently non-existent Northern Ireland Assembly to legislate on abortion.
The Victorian law still applies across the UK, but the Abortion Act 1967 carves out significant exceptions for most British women.
An abortion can be carried out before 24 weeks if two doctors agree there is a risk “of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant women”. Abortions can be performed later if there is a substantial risk that the baby will have serious disabilities or if the mother’s health is at serious risk.
The Abortion Act doesn’t apply in Northern Ireland, and the grounds for abortion are much narrower.
No exceptions for rape victims
According to guidelines issued by the Northern Ireland executive, abortion is only lawful if “it is necessary to preserve the life of the woman, or there is a risk of real and serious adverse effect on her physical or mental health, which is either long term or permanent.”
Abortion remains illegal in Northern Ireland even if a woman has become pregnant as the result of rape or incest, and even if the foetus has a fatal abnormality.
The issue is a devolved matter, and the Northern Ireland assembly voted against proposals to make abortion laws more liberal in 2016.
The power-sharing assembly collapsed last year and it’s not clear when it will be up and running again.
Life sentence?
The maximum sentence for illegally carrying out an abortion under the Offences Against the Person Act is life imprisonment.
Rape also carries a maximum life sentence, which helps to justify the comparison Stella Creasy makes.
It is theoretically possible for a rape victim to be given a longer spell behind bars for having an unlawful abortion than her rapist, according to the letter of the law.
That doesn’t mean a judge is realistically likely to impose a life sentence on women in this situation, or even a long custodial sentence.
In 2016, a Northern Irish woman pleaded guilty to inducing a miscarriage after buying pills online at the age of 19.
Although the theoretical maximum sentence was life, the defendant – who cannot be named following a court order – was given a three-month suspended sentence, meaning she spent no time behind bars.
The judge reportedly said he knew of no other similar cases being tried and had no guidelines or case law to rely on when deciding on the sentence.
But campaigners say prosecutions are now on the increase, and lenient sentences for are not guaranteed.
Last year a woman aged 21 and a man, 22, were charged over abortion pills, but prosecutors dropped the charges after expert evidence about the woman’s mental health. The pair accepted formal cautions.
Another case, of a mother accused of buying pills for her 15-year-old daughter, is still going through the courts.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has carried out raids and made seizures relating to online purchases of abortion pills.
In 2012 section 58 of the 1861 Act was used to prosecute an English woman, Sarah Louise Catt, who aborted a pregnancy at 38 weeks, past the legal limit.
The judge gave her a sentence of eight years, later reduced to three-and-a-half on appeal. The facts of the case were complex and the judge’s sentencing remarks bear reading in full.
But the case was a reminder that criminal sanctions remain in place for women who terminate pregnancies outside the terms of the Abortion Act, and that serious jail time is a possibility.
FactCheck verdict
It is theoretically possible for a woman in Northern Ireland to get a longer sentence for procuring an abortion than her rapist, depending on the circumstances, although this may not be a very realistic scenario.
Prosecutors would have to be satisfied that it was in the public interest to charge the woman with a crime, and the judge would have to hand down a lengthy prison sentence.
The last time an Ulster woman was convicted for an illegal abortion, the judge gave her a short, suspended sentence (and this case had nothing to do with rape).
However, the possibility of life imprisonment exists as long as section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 remains in force.
HARIM PEIRIS-
July 23 marked the 35th anniversary of one of post independent Sri Lanka’s darkest chapters, the July 1983 pogrom against Tamil civilians throughout the country. An ambush of an Army patrol in Jaffna, by the LTTE, then one of several militant groups operating in the North, in which the entire platoon of thirteen soldiers was wiped out, sparked violence. A couple of days later, amidst rumours the bodies of many of the soldiers were to be brought to the Borella cemetery in Colombo for burial with full military honours, an anti-Tamil pogrom commenced. Several thousand Tamil people were murdered through out Sri Lanka and many more displaced and disposed. Thirty-five years later and ten years after the war which it sparked has ended, we can look back now at this shameful chapter in Sri Lanka’s history and learn some lessons for our slowly progressing post-war reconciliation process.
Current and prior responses
Thirty-five years after the fact, the response of the Sri Lankan State to July ’83 has been more thoughtful and meaningful. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and Finance Minister Samaraweera were in Jaffna on the occasion and engaged in a series of measures including the launch of Enterprise Sri Lanka in the North, laying out a vision for a future of hope, engaging with the people and very importantly for women’s issues, cancelling micro credit loans up to Rs.100,000 mostly for the single women headed households, among other measures. Prior to that in July 2004, President Kumaratunga had issued a national apology for the July ’83 riots as an interim reconciliation measure and appointed a special commission to pay compensation to victims who lodged claims with the Commission.
The initial response however by the Sri Lankan State and the political establishment in 1983 weakened democratic and pluralist Sri Lanka and strengthened extremism. The direct beneficiary of which was the LTTE in the North and the JVP in the South, which launched its own second insurrection several years later in 1988.
The Sri Lankan State failed to protect Tamil citizens from gross violence and accordingly demonstrated a significant State failure in that most fundamental of state responsibilities, the protection of life (of persons) and properties. The name of a well-known then Cabinet Minister was often mentioned as an instigator, organizer and patron of the anti-Tamil violence, which as is often the case with political violence is not spontaneous but organized. President J.R. Jayawardena was silent for several days as Sri Lanka burned and only emerged to express his empathy with the just outrage of the majority community, thereby transforming the discourse on Tamil militancy, as an attack on a pluralist Sri Lanka to a Sinhala versus Tamil conflict. Sri Lanka burned for nearly twenty-five years thereafter. A decade after the end of the war, there are lessons to be learnt from those failures of July 1983.
Delegitimising democratic Tamil politics
The anti-Tamil riots of 1983 were not without consequences. The Tamil militancy movement which was still very much on the fringes of Tamil politics was vastly strengthened as the democratic Tamil political leadership lost legitimacy in the light of their inability to get the Sri Lankan State machinery to ensure basic physical and economic security of the Tamil people. Further the Sri Lankan State lost legitimacy in the eyes of the Tamil community, as articulated best by former TULF Member of Parliament late Neelan Tiruchelvam, who described it as “the anomaly of imposing a mono ethnic state on a multi ethnic polity”. The Sri Lankan State, began to be increasingly seen and perhaps also acting, as a Sinhala State, rather than a pluralistic, multi-ethnic and inclusive state.
With the escalation of the armed conflict following July ’83, any accountability for the gross violations of human rights which occurred, including that most basic right to life, was never ensured by the State, until perhaps President Kumaratunga’s Commission twenty-one years later. However, the low-key nature and relative lack of publicity given to the initiative, due to nay Sayers even within her own Cabinet meant that many victims as well as the general public were generally unaware of the same.
Learn the lesson with regard to Muslim Community
It is to the credit of Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans that July 1983 was never repeated though the LTTE escalated violence thereafter. However, the mentality, the politics and rhetoric which enabled and created July’83 has sadly not entirely left our public discourse. When the LTTE attacked the army, the counter measures should have been solely a state response against the perpetrators and not rampaging mobs against innocents. To our collective shame, an entire ethnic minority countrywide were targeted, innocent men, women and children.
Worryingly the same rhetoric is emanating from the self-proclaimed saviors of the Sinhala people today, in relation to the Muslim community. We and democratic Sri Lanka need to be protected from these protectors. As the most venerable Maha Nayaka Thero of the Malwatta Chapter observed after the anti-Muslim violence in Kandy. There are no need for “Balasenas and Balakayas” when we have a democratic state and security structures. Which has at least to date, never failed the majority community, unlike the Tamils in 1983. In the post war decade since 2009, imaginary and perceived threats from the Muslim community are being bandied about to instigate mini pogroms from Dharga Town Beruwala, to Ampara and Digana Kandy.
Today the names of terrorist groups like ISIS, are household names and claim to wage their war on Islamic principles and for Muslim objectives. However, we cannot concede to a self-appointed violent few, the mantle and leadership of the whole. ISIS never represents Muslims, while 969 in Myanmar cannot be considered as representing the Bamar people of Myanmar nor indeed did the LTTE during the war years, legitimise its self-appointed claim to represent the Tamil people. Most interestingly the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) which contested the 2015 general elections basically lost their deposits with a few hundred votes per electoral division in the Sinhala constituencies. Perhaps the most enduring lesson of July 1983 should be “never again”. Violent extremism should always be challenged and not allowed to flourish.
Editor’s Note: To read more content to mark the 35 years since Black July, click here.
I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed in all my years of journalism such a hysterical outpouring against a presidential statement as I’ve seen the last week. President Donald Trump has even been accused of treason by prominent columnists and politicians. There’s barely a voice of dissent in the media.
