‘Don’t Let Love Disappear’

27 February 2019

W.P. Ariyasena was last seen on the evening of December 12, 1989. Caught between the violence of two forces of the Government and rebels, Ariyasena was one among hundreds who never returned home during the reign of terror. “He left for the town, during the curfew, to bring home a bag of rice. He only wanted to feed our children. That was the last time I saw my husband” his wife, Charlotte Mangalika from Hambantota, recalled.

Four months pregnant at the time, Mangalika received the message that her husband was ‘taken’. “I was helpless, I couldn’t do anything,” she said adding that she feels no different even today.  Thirty years later, Mangalika was joined by the Families of the Disappeared, in Colombo, to celebrate Missing Lovers Day at the Dutch Hospital on the eve of February 14, the day designated for love and affection.


As countless loving couples strolled about the cobblestone precinct, lost in conversation, S.H. Nandaseeli, also from Hambantota, gazed at them dotingly.  Sitting at a table decorated with a posy of white roses and strings of light, she said that days like this are evocative of both warm and violent memories. “Soldiers took my husband away in 1990. They dragged him away alleging that he was involved in JVP activity. Our house was doused in fire. Friends became foes. I was left with three traumatised children. I searched for my husband far and wide, in every Army camp and police station,” Nandaseeli recollected, her eyes welled with tears.  “But on days like this, I remember how fond we were of each other. We too had a loving family life with our children. He disappeared without a trace. But they can’t make my love for him disappear,” she charged.

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• The Missing Lovers Day 2019 was an evening of observance, reminiscence and hope
• The economic difficulties expressed by these families of missing persons have deep roots
• While poverty is widespread among these families, they highlight a lack of support

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Social media campaign

The Missing Lovers Day 2019, organised by the Families of the Disappeared was an evening of observance, reminiscence and hope. Weeks ahead of Valentine’s Day, an attractive social media campaign invited lovers, old and new, to join these families awaiting their loved ones. As aggrieved families shared their cherished memories, brutal truths and overwhelming feelings of love and hope, the evening progressed into an important and empowering discussion of justice and accountability.
Clutching a framed photograph of her long lost lover, 56-year-old Chandralatha recalls how worrying it was to raise their children following the disappearance of her husband. “If not for my family, I wouldn’t have been able to take care of my children. I had an aunt who was willing to look after my children while I worked. But my son didn’t continue with his education beyond
the Ordinary Level Examination,” she said, adding that her son was a bright student in school. “He asked me one day, if I can afford to pay for university education. I had no answer. Now he is a fisherman, and takes on various odd jobs to provide for his sister and me,” Chandralatha revealed.
Since the abduction of her spouse, 61-year-old Wimalawathi from Devundara has worked as a casual labourer for over thirty years. “I wasn’t employed when they took my husband away. I searched high and low for my husband Nandapala. We were married for eight years, but I didn’t know how to manage on my own,” she said. Since the abduction in 1989, Wimalawathi has relied on various means of income, including drying fish, domestic labour as well as various odd jobs such as assisting masons at constructions sites. “I did everything I could think of to keep my children alive. But I couldn’t educate all of them,” she said regretfully. The youngest three of her seven children were more fortunate as they sat for the O/L Examination. The others were unable to follow educational pursuits and couldn’t even complete their elementary schooling.

“My children couldn’t receive the education they deserved. Now they’re stuck in the same rut as the rest of us, because they depend on a day’s wage working as casual labourers,” Wimalawathi lamented.

The economic difficulties expressed by these families of missing persons have deep roots in a variety of factors including the loss of the breadwinner and in most cases, the loss of property. These are the concerns they expressed in addition to the expenses related to the search of their loved ones.

Veena still has belief

While a majority of the participants at the event were from the South of Sri Lanka, families from the North searching for their loved ones, shared their experiences, not too different from their counterparts of the South.  Veena Yogendran from Batticaloa took the stage as attentive crowds began to gather around slowly. “Valentines was always a special day for us as my husband would take me sightseeing, it was to a new place every year,” recalled Veena with tears streaming down her cheeks. As she recollected memories of her marriage of five years, in a strong and determined tone, Veena said that she still believes that her lover is alive. “Where ever you are, I love you!’ she asserted to a moved audience. “I cannot utter anymore words other than my love for you, because I’m overcome with grief,” she moaned. “I would never wish this pain on anyone,” she added before she left the stage. Neeta Abeydeera took the stage next and recalled the difficulty of raising her children without a father’s love, she requested the young members of the audience to protect their loved ones. “Don’t make love disappear” she appealed.
As prominent activists including wife of disappeared journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda, Sandya Ekneligoda and President of the Families of the Disappeared organisation’s Brito Fernando looked on, young groups of musicians soothed the crowds with their renditions of popular romantic tunes. Observing the evening’s proceedings in a corner, with a toddler in tow, is the sister of Balasumbramaniam Nageswaran from Chenkalady, Batticaloa.   Balasubramaniam, only 19 years old at the time, was last seen in 1996, while working in the family field. He disappeared without a trace, leaving his sister and mother in charge of the family’s dairy cows. Balasubramaniam was the breadwinner of the family and his disappearance left the family not only in dire straits, but also in complete shock. “Unable to cope with my brother’s disappearance, our mother suffered repeated strokes and is now bedridden,” Balasubramaniam’s sister who was accompanied by an aunt,said.

The disappearances of these young men, during the dark days of unrest, has left distraught and disrupted families headed by females. While poverty is widespread among these families, they highlight a lack of support and systematic initiatives to ensure that the family is sustained. Having searched for answers together, wives, mothers and children later that evening, shared their bittersweet stories with audience members, gifted couples in the audience  a red rose, with the humble request, ‘protect your love. Don’t let love disappear’

Pix by Kushan Pathiraja 

Israel stops parents joining seriously ill children during treatment

Having a parent at a child’s side is hugely important during convalescence.  (

 Mahmoud AjourAPA images)

Sarah Algherbawi -26 February 2019

Ola al-Waheidi acted quickly when she heard that her 9-year-old daughter Mais had leukemia.

Within a few days of learning about the diagnosis in early December, Ola had undertaken the paperwork required for Mais to receive medical treatment outside Gaza. Yet Ola’s efficiency proved no match for Israel’s cruel bureaucracy.

Ola was soon informed that she may not accompany her daughter through Erez, the military checkpoint separating Gaza and Israel. Mais would have to travel without her parents for treatment.

The family then had to give the Israeli military various names, requesting that someone on the list should accompany Mais. Israel rejected most of the suggestions, before deciding that Balqis al-Waheidi, a 72-year-old distant relative with diabetes and rheumatism, may travel with the child.

Mais was granted permission to travel on 10 December. When they reached Erez that day, Ola had still not told her daughter about the arrangements.

“I didn’t know how to tell her that I wouldn’t be with her,” said Ola. “She was holding my hand the whole way, telling me to not leave her.”

“Heart torn apart”

Once she had gone through the required procedures, Ola spoke to Mais, who was in an ambulance.

Ola said that she was would be back shortly with a bottle of water. Ola then called their relative Balqis over, asked the woman to take care of Mais and walked away. Mais had not known Balqis before this trip.

“I watched her [Mais] from a short distance and she had already started to cry,” said Ola. “My heart was torn apart at that moment.”

Mais was brought to Beit Jala Hospital near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

Muhammad al-Jarusha, who heads the hospital’s department for pediatric cancer, said that Mais was “sad and bored.”

“Mais needed her mother to be with her,” he added.

Because her immunity system has been compromised, Mais has to be kept in isolation at the hospital so that the risk of infection can be minimized. She underwent a 33-day chemotherapy program.

During convalescence, it is vital that a patient’s morale is as high as possible. The forced absence of Mais’ mother had a “negative effect” on the child’s health at a crucial time, al-Jarusha said.

Ola grew increasingly distressed as she thought of how “my daughter is dying slowly and I can’t do anything, even be with her,” she said.

After Ola gave details of her family’s plight to a number of human rights organizations, she was eventually allowed join Mais.

“Humiliating”

On the morning of 31 December, Ola was contacted by an Israeli soldier and summoned to Erez. She hurriedly packed a bag and went directly to the checkpoint.

She was kept waiting seven hours, without being provided with any information until a female soldier inspected her.

“I was made to take off most of my clothes and searched for 45 minutes,” Ola said. “It was very humiliating but I didn’t have any choice. I wanted to reach Mais, whatever it took.”

Mais is still in hospital. “When I saw Mais, it was like we both came back to life,” said Ola. “We will fight her illness together.”

Mais is one of many children for whom treatment outside Gaza was essential. On average 58 percent of medicines for leukemia and other types of cancer were unavailable in Gaza during 2018.

Throughout last year, more than 1,800 patients were stopped from traveling through Erez, compared to 700 for 2017.

The ordeal faced by Ola and Mais actually took place at a time when there was a slight easing of the movement restrictions placed on Gaza’s inhabitants.

Almost 3,000 patients and people accompanying them were permitted to travel through Erez in December. That represented a 21 percent increase on the average previously recorded for 2018, according to United Nations data.

Yet even when official statistics indicate that improvements have occurred, the siege on Gaza still causes immense suffering.

It is not uncommon for Israel to deny a parent a travel permit when their child needs treatment.

Mohammad Abu Salmiyeh, head of al-Rantisi Hospital in Gaza City, argued that Israel’s practices can worsen a child’s anxiety.

“Children don’t feel comfortable if they are accompanied with elderly people,” Abu Salmiyeh said. “Children can’t talk to them about their feelings, about their fear of death or the implications of chemotherapy. Having their mothers present would reduce the stress which these children suffer from.”

According to Abu Salmiyeh, approximately 50 children from Gaza are being treated for cancer in Jerusalem and Beit Jala, without their parents being present.

About 350 children from Gaza have to visit Jerusalem’s hospitals for chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The children are usually accompanied by distant relatives on their journeys.

“I miss my family”

Since April last year, 14-year-old Musab al-Daya has traveled from Gaza to Haifa, a city in Israel, on at least five occasions so that he could be treated for lung cancer. Musab’s parents were not allowed to accompany him even once.

Even though Musab’s grandparents are both older than 50, Israel also forbade them from joining him, giving “security” as a reason. The only chaperone deemed acceptable by Israel was Muayad Hillis, 70, a neighbor of Musab’s family in the Shujaiya district of Gaza City.

“At the beginning, I agreed to go with Musab on his journey for treatment,” said Hillis. “But I found it very tough. I’m not healthy enough to take care of him. I wasn’t able to travel with him every time.”

Hillis was too unwell to travel with Musab on his third trip outside Gaza. The family contacted the Israeli authorities, suggesting substitutes for Hillis. But the suggestions were rejected, so Musab had to travel alone.

“I hope my mom can come with me – if only once,” said Musab. “I miss my family a lot, especially at nighttime. No one is as kind to me as my parents.”

Six-year-old Muhammad al-Baqa has stomach cancer. He also has a rare condition which means he needs help going to the bathroom.

Applications made by both of Muhammad’s parents to join him while receiving treatment outside Gaza have been turned down. Israel has decided that the only person who may accompany him is Muhammad’s grand-aunt, who is aged 74.

The al-Baqa family did its best to explain to the Israeli authorities that Muhammad must have a parent with him constantly. But Israel refused to budge. The parents found the experience so frustrating that they decided against sending Muhammad outside Gaza.

“My aunt is very old and she can’t deal with Muhammad’s condition,” said the boy’s father. “He needs special care. If his mother cannot travel with him, we would prefer to see him die with us beside him than to leave him alone.”

Sarah Algherbawi is a freelance writer and translator from Gaza.

UK spy agency under pressure to open up over support for CIA torture programme

GCHQ's support of the CIA post-9/11 is becoming clearer, but MEE understands plans for a new inquiry are being resisted

The brother of then-detained Amanatullah Ali holds up his identity card in Afghanistan in 2013 (AFP)

By 

Ian Cobain

, Clara Usiskin-

 in 

London--

 27 February 2019

The role the UK’s GCHQ surveillance agency played in supporting the CIA’s post-9/11 kidnap and torture programme is finally becoming clear, fuelling calls for a judge-led inquiry into British involvement in rendition operations.

For more than a decade, GCHQ, which collects intelligence by monitoring communications, has claimed that it had a clean pair of hands, repeatedly denying that it had assisted the CIA.

The agency’s claim that it had “never knowingly provided support to a US rendition operation” was fully accepted by the UK Parliament’s oversight body, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).

However, the committee has now unearthed a number of examples of GCHQ’s intelligence being used to locate and detain terrorism suspects who were subsequently rendered and tortured.
The committee has also found that the agency provided intelligence to assist the interrogation of terrorism suspects held at CIA black sites.

MPs and peers who are members of Parliament’s All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition say the discoveries underline the need for an inquiry.

The government said last July that it would announce within 60 days whether it would convene a judge-led inquiry, but has not done so.

Ken Clarke, the former home secretary and justice secretary who chairs the group, says that the delay raises suspicions that more is being concealed.

Inquiry campaign disrupted by Brexit

Middle East Eye has learnt that a number of senior UK parliamentarians, including Clarke, are understood to be planning a fresh campaign aimed at persuading the government to convene an inquiry.

But they are waiting until the country’s politics are no longer fully consumed with the problems caused by Brexit – the UK’s departure from the European Union.

Under its current chair Dominic Grieve, a former attorney general, the ISC appears to have lost patience with GCHQ’s position: that it cannot be held responsible for rendition operations, on the grounds that it is unaware of the way in which its intelligence is used once it has been passed on to other agencies or countries.

In a damning report published last year, the committee said that it could no longer accept GCHQ’s claim that its role in rendition and the mistreatment of detainees was at worst peripheral, not least because “it is by far the largest sharer of material with the US”.

It added that the agency’s attempts to distance itself from the abuses that its operations have enabled was worrying.

“GCHQ was in fact aware of the risks of large-scale sharing of information with the US but regarded it as neither practical, desirable nor necessary to second guess how that material might be used,” the committee said.

“That GCHQ regarded the treatment of any individual whose detention it had enabled as being beyond its knowledge and therefore not its business, is not – in our opinion – a valid excuse.”

The committee’s findings pose a serious challenge to GCHQ, an agency whose operations appear at times to be inextricably linked, through routine intelligence sharing, with those of its US partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

It is unclear whether intelligence shared with the NSA may enable the future kidnap and mistreatment of individuals. American president Donald Trump expressed enthusiasm for torture while on the campaign trail, although he has remained silent on the matter since election.

Rendition victims tracked by GCHQ

MEE has identified two rendition victims who were captured by UK forces in Iraq after being tracked and located by GCHQ.

Both men were immediately handed to US troops and rendered to Afghanistan, where they spent 10 years detained without trial. On eventual release, both said they had been tortured.

UK government demands secrecy for high-profile torture case

Read More »

The two men - Amanatullah Ali and Yunus Rahmatullah – were detained by British special forces soldiers following a raid on a house in Baghdad in February 2004.

They are both said by the British government to have been members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group with links to al-Qaeda.

Drawing upon military sources, a BBC journalist, Mark Urban, has written that the raid followed a British intelligence and special forces enterprise code-named Operation Aston.

One British soldier was wounded during the raid and two occupants of the house were killed.
Within hours, Ali and Rahmatullah were handed over to US forces and were later flown to the notorious US military prison at Bagram, north of Kabul.

The British government was made almost immediately aware of the location at which they were being held, but made no representations over their treatment until 2009.

Investigations by the legal non-governmental organisation Reprieve found that by that time,
Rahmatullah was described by fellow prisoners as being in “catastrophic mental and physical shape” as a result of his ill-treatment.

Both men were released without charge in 2014.

Why was the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan?

+ Show

 

Lawyers representing the two men are already suing the British government for damages as a consequence of the way in which the British military handed them over to the US after capture.

Details of their subsequent rendition and detention have been confirmed in court judgements.

On examining documents relating to other operations, the ISC also discovered evidence of GCHQ providing intelligence relating to the location of about four other individuals prior to their detention and rendition.

In a further case, the agency provided information that was used to enable an arrest and probably a rendition.

Direct 'support' for operations

The ISC also says it found evidence of direct links between GCHQ intelligence sharing and US rendition operations.

It discovered that in April 2006, for example, GCHQ’s senior legal adviser had queried an item in an annual report compiled by one of the agency’s operational teams, which was entitled “Support to RENDITION operations”.

This was seven months before GCHQ’s then director, Sir David Pepper, told the ISC that the agency had “never knowingly” supported rendition operations. The committee was also told that the agency had scoured its records as far back as 1995.

The following year, in a report that is now widely seen as discredited, the committee cleared the UK’s intelligence agencies of involvement in rendition.

It concluded that GCHQ “has played no role in any US renditions” and added that its legal safeguards “provide a high level of confidence that their material has not been used for such operations”.

MEE contacted Pepper, who is now the chair of the government’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, but he declined to comment.

EXCLUSIVE: UK spy agencies knew source of false Iraq war intelligence was tortured

Read More »

In its most recent report on rendition, the ISC also criticised GCHQ for passing on intelligence about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks, despite knowing that he was being held in secret CIA detention and was at risk of being mistreated.

A US Senate committee investigation has found that Mohammed was already being subjected to waterboarding by March 2003, when GCHQ passed on its intelligence. According to CIA records, he was subjected to the torture technique at least 183 times.

Responding to questions from MEE, GCHQ declined to say why the committee that provides parliamentary oversight of its activities had not been informed earlier about the existence of the internal report on its support for rendition operations.

The agency also declined to explain why the ISC had previously been allowed to publish a misleading report. Nor would it say whether it was continuing to withhold information from the committee about its involvement in rendition operations.

In a one-sentence statement, the agency said: “We won’t be commenting on this, however the government will formally respond to the [ISC] report in due course.”

The government’s response did not address the way in which the committee had apparently been previously misled.

GCHQ's headquarters, near Cheltenham in England (GCHQ)

In its response to the ISC’s criticisms, the government said: “GCHQ does not share intelligence with the US or other foreign nations where they believe it will contribute to an unlawful act.”

It added that the agency’s operations are now being overseen by the newly-created Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office.

Even when conducting the investigation which unearthed evidence of GCHC’s involvement in rendition operations, the ISC says its hands were partly tied.

Its committee’s members - all members of Parliament or peers sitting in the House of Lords - complained that their inquiry was brought to a premature end.

They also complained that they were not able to interview government ministers who were responsible for those agencies, or the agencies’ staffs, who could have shed light on actions on the ground.

Following the UK’s 2010 general election, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government established a judge-led inquiry into the country’s role in post-9/11 human rights abuses.

That inquiry was shelved in January 2012, however, because of a parallel police investigation into the involvement of the UK’s intelligence agencies in the mistreatment of detainees. The police investigation did not result in any criminal charges being brought.

The British government says it has not decided whether to reinstate any form of further investigation. A spokesperson said: “These are extremely important issues and the government is carefully considering the calls for another judge-led inquiry.”

This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

Here’s My Super-Abridged Green New Deal

KEVIN DRUMFEBRUARY 24, 2019

Let’s noodle some more about climate change today. On Thursday I regaled you with my abridged Green New Deal. It’s still fine, but I think it can be abridged even more. Bear with me here.

First off, I want to acknowledge that for all the infighting in liberal circles, the real problem is that full-scale climate denialism has taken over the Republican Party. This is what’s keeping us from making serious inroads into carbon emissions. In Europe, by contrast, there is no equivalent to the Republican Party. Nobody denies that climate change is real, and there’s no monolithic political opposition to doing something about it. As a result, over the past two decades Europe has been far more successful at reducing carbon emissions than the United States:

Wait. What’s going on here? In fact, the United States has reduced per-capita carbon emissions slightly more than Europe, and neither one has managed much reduction at all except when they’re forced to.¹ Nearly all of the reduction since 2000 came during the five-year period when oil prices spiked and the Great Recession killed off economic activity.

In other words, it doesn’t seem as if either the Republican Party or America’s dysfunctional politics is really the problem. So what is? It must be something common to both Europe and the US, and the obvious answer is that we all live in democracies. Roughly speaking, our governments do what the public wants, and the public doesn’t have much interest in reducing carbon emissions. Oh, we say we do, and we’ll support minor things like ETS or CAFE that have a barely noticeable effect on us. We’ll support solar power—if it produces electricity nearly as cheaply as coal. We’ll all buy electric cars—but only when the price comes down and the batteries get better. We’ll check out the energy star rating the next time we buy a new refrigerator. And that’s about it.

As for the rest of the world, I won’t even show you the chart. It’s too depressing. Outside of Europe and the US, carbon emissions are just going steadily up, up, up. Even the Great Recession barely made a dent. For the world as a whole, carbon emissions have increased more than 20 percent in the past two decades as poor countries try to catch up to the living standards of the West.

This is one reason I don’t really care one way or the other about the Green New Deal. Here is how Dave Roberts describes it:

The GND resolution is not a policy or a series of policies. It is a set of goals, aspirations, and principles. It purposefully puts the vision up front and leaves the policymaking for later.

Precisely. It’s just a bunch of goals: “net zero” greenhouse emissions and 100 percent renewable power via a “10-year mobilization”; a 40-60 percent reduction in global carbon emissions by 2030; “millions” of new green jobs; etc. These are familiar goals. We all know them and we all support them—but only as long as nobody is rude enough to talk about what it would take to actually meet these goals. The GND certainly doesn’t. That’s because the folks who wrote it know perfectly well what would happen if it did: it would die instantly.

None of what I’m saying should be even slightly controversial. Outside of war, I can’t think of an example in all of human history where a large polity—let alone the entire world—willingly made significant sacrifices in service of a fuzzy, uncertain hazard that’s decades away. We are overclocked hairless apes who are simply not designed to think that way. Why would anyone deny this?

This, then, circles back to what I was saying a couple of days ago: A climate plan that requires significant sacrifice might work on planet Vulcan, but not on planet Earth. Assuming otherwise is nonserious. We need a plan that will work with only homo sapiens to carry it out, and that means a plan that takes into account human selfishness and shortsightedness. It means a plan that will appeal to China and India and Brazil and the rest of the world. It means a plan that will somehow reduce atmospheric carbon a lot even while most of us sit around fat, dumb, and happy.

The only such plan I can think of is one that increases global R&D spending on climate mitigation by, oh, 10x or so. Maybe 20x if it’s feasible. This money would be spent on developing new sources of clean energy and energy storage; reducing the price of current sources of clean energy; figuring out ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere; and pretty much anything else that seems remotely useful. The fruits of this research would be turned over to the private sector for free, and they would then compete to sell it all over the globe. This would harness human selfishness instead of fighting it. It’s not guaranteed to work, but unlike the GND and similar manifestos, at least it’s not guaranteed to fail.

POSTSCRIPT: Just to make something absolutely clear, I’m not in any way opposed to taking additional steps to address climate change. In fact, I’m all in favor of trying to scare the hell out of people about just how bad climate change is likely to be. I think the goals of the GND are great. I’m all in favor of ETS and CAFE and the Paris Accords. They don’t accomplish a lot, but they accomplish something, and every little bit helps. I just wouldn’t count on the public ever supporting strong enough versions of this stuff to prevent a catastrophic future.

¹This chart shows relative declines, but Europe’s emissions were far lower than the US at the start and are still far lower today in absolute terms. However, almost none of this has to do with policies aimed at climate change, which are fairly recent. Europe’s per-capita emissions have been lower all along because (a) the modern EU contains a lot of fairly poor countries which have low GDPs and therefore low carbon emissions, (b) even rich European countries generally have lower GDPs than the US, and (c) automobile usage is lower thanks to big taxes on gasoline. Those taxes, and the European devotion to small cars, were a result of postwar policies designed to reduce gasoline use decades before anyone had ever uttered the words climate change.

The west must not abandon Crimea and Ukraine to Russian aggression

We condemn Russia’s illegal occupation, which continues to jeopardise international peace five years after it began
‘The construction of the Kerch bridge by Russia is another violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.’ The rail bridge in 2017. Photograph: Lev Fedoseyev/Tass

Jeremy Hunt, Pavlo Klimkinand nine other foreign ministers-Wed 27 Feb 2019

Five years ago, Russia gravely challenged the idea of a peaceful and free Europe. With its aggression against Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea, Russia openly demonstrated its contempt for the principles of international law, and presented a serious threat to European security.

Today, the people of Ukraine are more united than ever in their support for their country’s European orientation. Ukraine still has many demanding tasks and reforms to implement, but impressive progress has been made despite ongoing Russian aggression. Ukraine of today is profoundly different from Ukraine pre-2014, and has never before been so close to Europe and European values. By contrast, Crimea under Russian occupation is moving backwards. The people living there are ever more isolated, and the situation with respect to human rights and socio-economic conditions continues to deteriorate.

The illegal annexation of Crimea – an act condemned by the international community – has jeopardised the international rules-based system. The illegitimate “referendum” in Crimea on 16 March 2014 was judged illegal and invalid by the international community. During these past five years that community has called, in the strongest terms, for Ukraine’s territorial integrity to be restored. Sanctions and the non-recognition policy pursued by the EU, Nato and G7 member states reflect our common efforts, and our refusal to accept that the illegal occupation of any territory of a sovereign country can become the norm in the 21st century.

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission and other international organisations have reported grave human rights violations in Crimea against the Crimean Tatar ethnic minority, ethnic Ukrainians, the non-Russian orthodox religious minorities and civil society activists. Arbitrary arrests and detentions, enforced disappearances, ill treatment and torture and at least one extrajudicial execution have been documented. A large number of political prisoners and detainees awaiting trial have been transferred from Crimea to the Russian Federation, despite the fact that this practice is strictly prohibited by international humanitarian law.

One of the most poignant cases is the arrest and trial of the Ukrainian filmmaker, Oleg Sentsov, last year’s recipient of the European parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Through his courage and determination, by putting his life in danger, Sentsov has become a symbol of struggle for the release of political prisoners held in Russia and around the world.

Last year there were increased tensions in and around the Sea of Azov. The construction of the Kerch bridge by Russia is not only another violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but has also been used as a tool to create artificial delays in traffic going to and from Ukrainian ports in the Sea of Azov, hindering free navigation and imposing additional hardship on Ukraine’s economy, especially the port cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk. The unjustified attack on Ukrainian vessels near the Kerch strait on 25 November 2018, their seizure and the illegal detention of their crews constituted a blatant violation of international law. We call on Russia to release the arrested Ukrainian sailors, to return the captured vessels and to comply with its international commitments by ensuring free navigation in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch strait.

The events that unfolded in Crimea five years ago have once again taught us that we cannot take our security and freedom for granted. The international rules-based system that is fundamental for our shared global security has been undermined, and we must stand ready to uphold international law and our individual and collective security. Another lesson is that we have to strengthen the resilience of our societies against various forms of attacks and interference. Ukraine has made real progress in this direction over the course of the past five years, supported by its partners. Other European countries have learned from the events in Ukraine and are working to improve their own resilience.

Bringing stability back to the Euro-Atlantic space is our common goal. Europe and its transatlantic partners have demonstrated their ability to unite in the face of external challenges, but we must continue to strengthen our resilience against attempts to disrupt this unity or weaken our collective security. We will continue our non-recognition policy with respect to the illegal annexation of Crimea, and continue to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in the strongest terms.

Providing help and assistance to Ukraine is crucial as Ukraine’s security is linked to the security of the whole of Europe. The policy of coordinated international sanctions sends a clear message to Russia that disregard for international law has consequences. We will neither forget nor abandon Crimea.

Signatories

Edgars Rinkēvičs, minister of foreign affairs of Latvia
Pavlo Klimkin, minister of foreign affairs of Ukraine
Sven Mikser, minister of foreign affairs of Estonia
Linas Linkevičius, minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania
Jacek Czaputowicz, minister of foreign affairs of Poland
Margot Wallström, minister of foreign affairs of Sweden
Anders Samuelsen, minister of foreign affairs of Denmark
Chrystia Freeland, minister of foreign affairs of Canada
Teodor Meleşcanu, minister of foreign affairs of Romania
Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs
Tomáš Petříček, minister of foreign affairs of the Czech Republic

Israel’s war on its Palestinian citizens

Bedouin women sit next to the ruins of their demolished houses in the village of Umm al-Hiran in the Naqab (Negev) region of southern Israel, January 2017. 

 Faiz Abu RmelehActiveStills

Tamara Nassar-26 February 2019

Israel plans to forcibly displace 36,000 Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab (Negev) region of southern Israel to make way for a military training area and weapons testing facility, according to Adalah, a legal advocacy group for Palestinians in Israel.

That’s one quarter of all Palestinian Bedouins living in the Naqab, all citizens of Israel.

The plan, which was announced late last month, “overtly discriminates against the Bedouin population, and considers them an obstacle that must be removed from the landscape in order to clear a path for Jewish settlement and ‘development,’” Adalah stated.

Israel’s Authority for the Development and Settlement of the Bedouins intends to transfer Bedouins to “poverty-stricken, government-planned townships,” violating both Israeli and international laws.

If implemented, Israel will sieze about 65,000 acres of land – an area about one and a half times the size of Washington, DC.

One of the plan’s projects is to establish the Ramat Beka military industrial zone.

Israel will move a weapons testing facility owned by leading Israeli arms maker Elbit from the city of Ramat HaSharon in central Israel to the Naqab.

The testing facility, which would be twice the size of Tel Aviv, poses “health, safety and environmental risks” to those living around it, and would require the forcible displacement of thousands of Bedouins and more than 1,200 of their structures.

Elbit has supplied white phosphorus munitions and drones that have been used during Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It also manufactures cluster weapons for the Israeli army, helping it circumvent an international ban.

As part of the same plan, Israel intends to establish the Sde Barir phosphate mine, which requires the forcible transfer of thousands of Palestinian Bedouins as well.

The mine would cause serious health hazards to thousands more who remain.

Israel’s National Planning and Building Board and the Israeli government approved the plan on the basis of an environmental survey that Adalah says “ignores the existence of approximately 15,000 Bedouin citizens living in and around the area designated for construction of the mine.”

Adalah, along with 168 Bedouin residents of the most affected village, al-Furaa, and a number of human rights organizations, filed a petition with Israel’s high court demanding it stop the construction of the phosphate project.

A hearing is due on Wednesday.

“In order to Judaize the Naqab (Negev), Israeli authorities are implementing economic and military plans that are not intended to serve the Bedouin and, in fact, ignore their very existence,” Adalah attorney Myssana Morany stated.

Israel has long sought to get rid of the Palestinian Bedouin population in the Naqab.

It has forced residents of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran to agree to be expelled from their homes and resettled to the town of Hura in the southern Naqab region under threats of violence.

Meanwhile, Adalah is demanding Israel provide accessible voting stations to 11 unrecognized Bedouin villages whose residents would otherwise need to travel up to 50 kilometers to vote in April’s elections.

Segregated ghetto

Meanwhile in the north of Israel, hundreds of Palestinian citizens protested earlier this week against Israel’s plan to build an Arab-only city on private land east of Acre.

The new city, called Tantur, would be built on land Israel seized in the 1970s.

Israel designated approximately 750 acres of confiscated land – or just over one square mile – for the project, which is set to include about 15,000 housing units and house more than 70,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel, according to the publication Arab48.

About 170 acres Israel intends to use are privately owned.

Several government ministries have adopted the project, including the interior and housing ministries.

Palestinians protested in the city of Jadeidi-Makr, which lies east of Acre and close to the site of the planned city:

شبكة قدس الإخبارية

✔@qudsn

من تظاهرة في جديدة المكر اليوم رفضاً لمصادرة الاحتلال أراض قرب البلدة.

تصوير: فادي قاسم

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2:32 PM - Feb 23, 2019

مسيرة في جديدة المكر بالداخل المحتل رفضاً لمصادرة أراضي تلة الطنطور. pic.twitter.com/aPYZbakAO1

— شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) 23 February 2019

Many held protests in Acre as well:

أهالي قرية جديدة المكر الفلسطينية يتظاهرون ضد مخطط طنطور السلطوي الهادف إلى إبعادهم عن أراضيهم ومصادرتها. pic.twitter.com/mUbB71yi27

— التلفزيون العربي (@AlarabyTV) 19 February 2019

Israeli forces attacked protesters, arresting some of them:

#فييديو يوثق اعتداء قوات الاحتلال على المشاركين بتظاهرة جديدة المكر الرافضة لمصادرة أراضي تلة الطنطور فيها pic.twitter.com/NG6VnxpVkd

— 48 الإخبارية (@48nnews) 14 February 2019

Yousef Jabareen, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament for the Joint List, said that the construction of the new city is part of Israel’s plan to push Palestinians out of Jewish-majority cities and put them in ghettoes.

One purpose for the city is “to prevent the migration of Arabs to existing Jewish cities in the Galilee, including Upper Nazareth, Karmiel and Tiberias.”

Jabareen added that Upper Nazareth mayor, Ronen Plot, is an advocate of this project, as he desperately seeks to limit the migration to the city of Palestinian citizens of Israel unable to find housing elsewhere.

Upper Nazareth was founded in the 1950s as part of Israel’s effort to Judaize the Galilee. As recently as 2012, its then-mayor Shimon Gapso, called for the expulsion of the Palestinian residents of the neighboring city of Nazareth to Gaza.

Gapso proudly admitted to being a “racist” and, like his successor, vowed to do whatever was necessary to keep Upper Nazareth Jewish.

The Israeli government has long sought to increase the number of Jewish residents in the Galilee, where Palestinians remained a sizeable population after the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948.

This has been achieved by building Jewish colonies on land belonging to Palestinian communities, preventing the natural growth and the establishment of new Palestinian towns and villages.

Last year, a town in the Galilee region suspended building tenders for a 2,200-household residential development after its mayor learned that around half of the buyers were Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Although the vast majority of its original population was forced out during the Nakba, Palestinians still make up a third of the residents of the coastal city of Acre.

But Jabareen says the construction of Tantur would “serve the process of emptying” Acre of its Palestinian population “in a deliberate and systematic manner.”

Acre, a historic port and world heritage city, has long been the target of Israeli efforts to force out its remaining Palestinian population.

Israel’s tourism ministry, along with settlement groups, intend to convert Acre to a commercial center for Israeli Jews and tourists.

Forced to demolish own home

Meanwhile, a Palestinian citizen was forced by Israeli authorities to demolish his own two-story commercial building on Saturday in Deir al-Asad in the Galilee.

Ibrahim Ali Badran carried out the demolition himself “to avoid the high demolition costs imposed upon him by Israel if Israel carries out the demolition instead,” Ma’an News Agency reported.

This video shows the demolition:

بدعوى البناء غير المرخص .. فلسطيني يهدم عمارته بنفسه في دير الأسد بالداخل الفلسطيني المحتل، اليوم pic.twitter.com/wEpeEkfkGl

— 48 الإخبارية (@48nnews) 23 February 2019

Abdullah Jabarin, a Palestinian from the city of Umm al-Fahm in northern Israel, was also forced to demolishhis own warehouse earlier this month after a similar order.