Doctors Without Borders opens first migrant camp in France

March 07, 2016

GRANDE-SYNTHE, France (AP) — Doctors Without Borders did something in France on Monday that aid groups normally do in much poorer, more troubled places: opened a humanitarian camp for migrants. More than 1,000 people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa have been living in squalid shelters in a muddy field near the English Channel shore, hoping to sneak across to Britain. Local authorities say the number includes 74 children.

About 150 people abandoned the camp in Grande-Synthe, near Dunkirk, to move Monday to wooden sheds with access to toilets and electricity built nearby by Doctors Without Borders, spokesman Samuel Hanryon said.

Families pushed luggage and piled bags on buses taking them across town to the new site. The aid group, known by its French acronym MSF, hopes hundreds more will join them in the coming days. The move is part of efforts to improve conditions for thousands of migrants who have converged on northern France amid Europe's migrant crisis.

It's MSF's first such camp in France — a sign of how bad things have become for the migrants in Grande-Synthe, whose camp is even more rudimentary than one dubbed the "jungle" in nearby Calais. The 2.5 million-euro site at Grande-Synthe comprises 4-person sheds and access to showers, kitchens and electricity.

A few police guarded the area but did not take part in Monday's move. In Calais, authorities are gradually evicting residents of part of the "jungle" camp and trying to get them to seek asylum in France or move to cleaner container facilities. A few Calais migrants came to the new MSF site Monday, Hanryon said.

Hundreds of Calais merchants and residents, meanwhile, converged on Paris on Monday to seek government help because the local economy has suffered amid the migrant crisis. A presidential adviser announced a new hotline to help struggling Calais businesses.

Europe effectively shuts its borders, stranding thousands

March 09, 2016

IDOMENI, Greece (AP) — After welcoming hundreds of thousands of people into its heartland, Europe seems to be finally closing its doors. The thousands of people massing at Greece's northern border are incredulous they won't be allowed onward to its prosperous countries, but after a year of dithering European leaders seem resolved now to keep all but a select few from going any further.

"This is horrible, unbelievable, unbearable. There is war in my country, and they are closing the border," said Mahmoud Hassan, a 23-year-old Syrian. "Where are we supposed to go? Please if you can do anything — help us. The situation is very, very terrible."

A relentless rain Wednesday after an overnight thunderstorm added to the misery in the overflowing camp at Idomeni, which now consists of thousands of small camping tents set up in nearby fields and along railway tracks.

The camp turned into a sodden, muddy mess, with refugees huddling in tents and under ponchos handed out by volunteers to ward off the worst of the wet and cold. Parents covered their children with whatever they could, sometimes resorting to plastic bags. In the brief intervals in the rain, long lines formed in the mud for sandwiches, tea and soup.

A lucky few managed to set up their tents on the train station platform, whose awning provides some shelter, while others slept in disused train carriages. EU and Turkish leaders agreed at a summit Monday to the broad outlines of a deal that would essentially outsource Europe's refugee emergency. They said people arriving in Greece having fled war or poverty would be sent back to Turkey unless they apply for asylum. For every migrant sent back, the EU would take in one Syrian refugee, thus trying to prevent the need for people to set out on dangerous sea journeys, often arranged by unscrupulous smugglers.

But Greece has a notoriously slow asylum process, and a crippling six-year financial crisis that has left unemployment at about 25 percent. Few of those stuck in Idomeni could envisage a future in Greece as a viable option.

"Greece is a poor country, for us and for (its) people," said 17-year-old Ahmed Merza from Syria's Qamishli, who had been in the camp for eight days. "I don't know anything. It's bad news for us, like a bomb."

Shortly after the summit, countries along the Balkan route decided to allow through only people with valid EU visas and nobody has crossed through the gate in the razor wire-reinforced fence in Idomeni since 6 a.m. Monday.

For the nearly 14,000 people in and around the camp, the news about the border closures was a crushing blow, with many just unable to fathom how Europe could turn away people fleeing war. A few dozen sat on the railway tracks in protest — a frequent occurrence in the camp, where refugees occasionally try to block the passage of freight trains to press their point.

"We're not here to stay. We are here to pass only," said Sami Yanes, a 24-year-old information technology student from the Syrian capital of Damascus hoping to continue his studies in Germany. "We are going to keep protesting and keep doing what we are doing until they know we are human beings and we deserve simple human rights," he said as he sat on the tracks in the pouring rain after seven nights spent in the camp.

"This is my path," he said, indicating the railroad leading into Macedonia. "I'm going to stay here until my path is open." But the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the camp, where the sound of men, women and children coughing is as ubiquitous as the sight of people trying to start camp fires with sodden logs and branches ripped from nearby trees, was too much for some.

Several buses headed for refugee camps in and around Athens departed from Idomeni on Tuesday and Wednesday, carrying those who could no longer bear the mud, rain, cold and scant food that require hours-long waits in queues.

Some were hesitant, however, to get on buses without knowing what they would find on the other side. Tariq Mohammed, a 27-year-old from Aleppo travelling with his wife and daughters, aged 5 and 2, was one of them.

"I don't know what will happen to us," he said, standing in the rising mud near his tent as water dripped off the hood of his donated green poncho. Mohammed said both his children had fallen very sick, as had his wife. The doctor had given them antibiotics, but in such conditions he worried about how they would recover their health.

"Last night in the rain, my tent was swimming in water," he said. Although most people say they want to go to Germany, which they see as a welcoming country, Mohammed said he would happily go to any European country that would take in his family. Staying in Greece wasn't an option because there was no work, he said.

"I need to work, to have a life for my children and family," he said, the desperation visible on his face. "You need life." He left Aleppo a month ago, where the conditions were incredibly dangerous. "There are bombs everywhere, war everywhere," he said, describing a city where children as young as 10 have been recruited to fight and tote guns in the street.

For now, he plans to remain put in the sodden field by the railway tracks in Idomeni. "I will wait for the border to open," he said. "I can't go back to Turkey, can't go back to Syria. I am here. Where to go?"

Amer Cohadzic in Idomeni contributed.

Thai ex-premier says ruling junta seeks 'backward democracy'

March 10, 2016

NEW YORK (AP) — Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006, has accused the ruling junta of trying to push through a new constitution designed to limit democracy.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday after an event at the World Policy Institute, Thaksin also wished a long life to Thailand's ailing King Bhumibol Adulyadej. After dismissing Thaksin and seizing power, the military held elections in 2007, which Thaksin's party won easily. But after a series of political upheavels, during which Thaksin fled the country, new elections were held in 2011 that also were won by Thaksin's party led by his sister, who became the prime minister.

But her government was removed in a 2014 coup by the military, which is now drafting a constitution that allows for an unelected prime minister and proposes giving wide powers to the Constitutional Court and appointing an unelected Senate. Coup leader Prime Minister Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha has promised to hold elections by the end of 2017.

Thaksin said any elections held under the new constitution will deny the will of the majority of the people. "That is backward democracy," he said. "Under democracy, you have to give the power to the people."

He said Thais are very patient people, and were willing to believe the military when it said it is taking over power to "reconcile the differences of the people in the country." "But so far, one-and-a-half years (later), they have nothing (to show for) on reconciliation," he said, adding that in fact the opposite is true. The military rulers are "only trying to use the law to benefit their own politics."

Thaksin was convicted of corruption in absentia in 2008 and sentenced to two years in jail. His passport was revoked, and he now travels on passports from Montenegro and Nicaragua. His sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, has also been charged with alleged mismanagement of a rice subsidy program for which she faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Thaksin, 66, said he speaks to Yingluck "quite often, but everyone knows this is the only case in the world" where a prime minister has been prosecuted over a policy, which has effectively banned her from politics for five years.

"This is really ridiculous and we worry about the justice that she will receive," he said. Thaksin said he misses home but is not really in a rush to return. "I wish I can go (home). I'm quite settled outside Thailand and if I go back to Thailand it should benefit the country and the people. Otherwise I'm not really serious about going back," said Thaksin, who lives in the United Arab Emirates.

It was an attempt by Yingluck's government to push a plan for an amnesty bill that would have allowed her brother to return to Thailand that triggered the 2014 coup.

Suu Kyi loyalist confirmed for Myanmar presidential race

March 11, 2016

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar (AP) — A longtime confidante of Aung San Suu Kyi was confirmed Friday in a parliamentary vote as one of the three final candidates to be Myanmar's next president, albeit as a proxy for the Nobel laureate.

Htin Kyaw of the National League for Democracy party was approved by a 274-29 vote in the lower house of parliament to be a finalist for the presidential election next week. A second NLD candidate. Henry Van Tio, was chosen as the second finalist by the upper house with a 148-13 vote. A third candidate will be put forward by the military bloc, which has a constitutionally mandated 25 percent of reserved seats in parliament.

Legislators from both houses of parliament will hold another round of voting — for which no date has been set — to choose one of them as president, which almost certainly will be the 70-year-old Htin Kyaw (pronounced Tin CH-yaw). The other two will become vice presidents.

"We are satisfied that Htin Kyaw has won to become one of the presidential candidates. We believe that we soon will be able create a better future for our country. We chose him because he is skillful and a very suitable person to be the president," said Myo Zaw Aung, an NLD legislator.

Friday's vote became necessary because, in an unexpected move, the outgoing ruling party put forward its own two candidates Thursday, even though their candidacy was doomed from the start. The NLD has an overwhelming majority in both chambers following its landslide victory in the Nov. 8 general elections, which paved the way for the country's first democratically elected government since the military took power in 1962.

The new president will take office April 1. But for all practical purposes Htin Kyaw will be a proxy for Suu Kyi, who has said she will be "above" the president and rule from behind the scenes. This arrangement came into being because Suu Kyi is barred to be president by the constitution, which says anyone with a foreign spouse or children cannot hold the executive office. Suu Kyi's two sons are British, as was her late husband. The clause is widely seen as having been written by the military — Suu Kyi's longtime bitter adversary — with her in mind.

Suu Kyi fought for decades to end dictatorship in Myanmar, and remains her party's unquestioned leader. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel prize while under house arrest, where she spent 15 years locked away by a junta that feared her political popularity.

For the past several weeks Suu Kyi is believed to have held closed-door talks with the military generals to suspend the constitutional clause that bars her from the presidency, apparently without success.

Suu Kyi did not attend Thursday's high-profile nomination session but posted a letter on Facebook to her legions of supporters. She called it a "first step toward realizing the expectations and desires of the people who overwhelmingly supported the National League for Democracy in the elections."

"It is our will to fulfill the people's desire," Suu Kyi said in the letter. "We will try as hard as we can to do that." Kyaw Thiha, an upper house NLD lawmaker, said Thursday that the new president will take orders from Suu Kyi.

"She cannot become the president, but it doesn't really matter because she will be controlling everything. She will be the one to control us," Kyaw Thiha said. "It doesn't really matter that she is not becoming the president."

Htin Kyaw is a computer science graduate from the University of London, and is contemporary of Suu Kyi, who also is 70. He enjoys her full confidence, and was usually seen by her side during her long struggle to bring democracy in Myanmar.

Htin Kyaw's father was a national poet and a National League for Democracy lawmaker from an aborted 1990 election, while his wife is a prominent legislator for the party in the current house. His father-in-law, a former army colonel, was a co-founder of the NLD.

A Myanmar expert expressed misgivings about having a proxy president and the repercussions it will have. Suu Kyi and and her supporters "are quite rightly indignant about the nakedly political nature of the prohibition against her," said John Ciorciari, an assistant professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michgan.

"Yet by insisting that she will pull the strings and continue pursuing the office, she virtually ensures that Htin Kyaw will be perceived as a pass-through president. This makes him an easier target for military leaders keen to reassert control," he said in comments emailed to the AP.

Slovenia awaits birth of new generation of 'baby dragons'

March 08, 2016

POSTOJNA, Slovenia (AP) — Slovenia is counting down the days until the birth of a new generation of "baby dragons." Scientists in the Central European country have proudly announced that a female olm — a Gollum-like, lizard-sized amphibian living in an aquarium in the country's biggest cave — has laid eggs. They have described it as the first example of observed out-of-lab breeding of the species.

The eyeless pink animal, known as the "baby dragon" and "human fish" for its skin-like color, can live a century and breeds only once a decade — usually in laboratories throughout Europe or deep in caves away from people.

Slovenian scientists have been ecstatic about the prospects of having baby olms born in Postojna Cave. The eggs are expected to hatch in about 100 days, or sometime in June. "This is something truly extraordinary," said biologist Saso Weldt, who works at the cave in northwestern Slovenia. "Nobody has ever witnessed (their) reproduction in nature. We even haven't seen an animal younger than two years."

The olm was already in a big aquarium in the cave when the eggs were discovered by chance on Jan. 30 by a tour guide who noticed a little white dot attached to the fish tank's wall. A pregnant olm stood guard next to it, snapping at an intruder who tried to come close.

Scientists removed other inhabitants from the aquarium, leaving the mother alone with the eggs. In the weeks that followed, the olm laid a total of 57 eggs, three of which seem to be developing. Biologists say this is a good number, as olm eggs have a poor record in actually lasting the 120 days that are needed for them to mature and hatch.

"Olms are not really successful when it comes to reproduction," Weldt explained. Two years ago, a Postojna olm also laid eggs, but they fell prey to other cave inhabitants. So, this time biologists have isolated the female and her eggs in a dark spot, added extra oxygen and removed any outside influences.

A record number of visitors in February have been allowed nowhere near the mother and her eggs — tourists could only view a live video screening via special infrared cameras that were installed near the aquarium.

Slovenians, some of whom are contemplating declaring the olm the next "Slovenian of the Year," have been keeping their fingers crossed. "We did all that is in our power," biologist Weldt said. "Now we wait."

Hundreds protest in Sudanese capital

Wed Oct 12, 2011

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Hundreds of Sudanese took to the streets of central Khartoum on Tuesday to demonstrate against high food prices and to demand better public transport, witnesses said.

Protests are rare in Sudan but anger has been building over an economic crisis and spiraling inflation after the country lost most of its oil reserves to newly-independent South Sudan.

About 300 people protested in the main bus and taxi station in Khartoum to demand better public transport, witnesses said. Students from the university faculties joined the crowd to protest against food inflation.

"The students shouted: 'No to high prices. Bread, bread for the poor," a witness said, declining to be identified. Police arrived at the scene but did not interfere, he said.

Hundreds of people also protested at a bus station in the suburb of Omdurman, another witness said. The protesters then marched on a Nile bridge linking Omdurman with Khartoum and started throwing stones at private cars and police vehicles, the witness said.

Police said in a statement that a group of citizens had thrown stones at cars crossing the bridge, adding that it had prevented "acts of sabotage."

Sudan has a poor public transport system with commuters mostly relying on private taxis and mini-buses which struggle to meet demand and often get accused of overcharging.

Many Sudanese have been hit hard by inflation which reached 20.7 percent in September due to high food prices, while the Sudanese pound has dived on the black market in past weeks.

The government has reacted with a package of measures, including temporarily waiving duties on basic food imports.

But economists doubt inflation will ease much as Sudan lost most of its oil reserves when South Sudan became independent, reducing the inflow of foreign currency needed to pay for imports, leading to scarcities.

The economy is dependent on oil and small-scale gold exports. The government wants to diversify the economy but progress has been slow, which experts blame on U.S. trade sanctions and poor planning.

© Thomson Reuters 2016 All rights reserved

Source: Reuters.
Link: http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE79B00420111012.

Most suspects freed in Indonesia raid as tough law pending

February 21, 2016

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesian police on Sunday released most of the men detained while attending military-style training at a suspect jihadi camp, as officials lamented weaknesses in the current anti-terrorism legislation that is due to be significantly strengthened following last month's deadly attacks in Jakarta.

The elite anti-terrorism squad early Saturday detained 38 men at a suspected militant camp on the remote slopes of Mount Sumbing in Central Java province, said provincial police spokesman Col. Liliek Darmanto. Police seized air rifles, knives, and jihadi books and flags in the raid.

However, they were released early Sunday after 24-hour questioning as police were unable to prove a string of terrorism-related allegations, he said. "This is the weakness of our laws," said Saud Usman Nasution, head of the anti-terrorism agency. "We cannot arrest before they have committed a crime even though we can detect a radical network."

His agency has been pushing the government to strengthen the anti-terrorism law. It gained momentum following the Jan. 14 suicide and gun attacks in Jakarta, which left eight people dead, including four of the attackers.

In response to the attacks, Indonesia's government submitted a new anti-terrorism law to parliament this past week. The draft bill, obtained by The Associated Press, says an individual suspected of plotting to carry out an act of terrorism could be detained for up to six months without charges. If approved, it would be the first time for such a tough measure to be enacted since the downfall of dictator Suharto in 1998.

Luhut Pandjaitan, a Cabinet minister in charge of security and political affairs, said he expected lawmakers to pass the revisions within the next two months. The bill would also become an offense for Indonesians to join a militant group overseas such as the Islamic State group, or recruit others, with a maximum imprisonment of seven years. It would also authorize the anti-terrorism squad to execute raids and arrest suspects for interrogation based solely on intelligence reports.

In addition to the Central Java raid, five other suspected militants were captured late Friday in Malang, a hilly city in East Java province, said local police chief Lt. Col. Yudho Nugroho. He said police were tipped about their whereabouts after interrogating alleged militants who were arrested on suspicion of links to the Jakarta attack. National police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti told lawmakers last week that police had arrested a total of 33 people in connection with the attack.

Among those arrested Friday was Nazarudin Mukhtar — also known as Abu Ghar. He is believed to have planned the Jakarta attack with Muhammad Ali and Afif Sunakin, who was fatally shot by by police when the two were trying to detonate a bomb in front of a Starbucks cafe, said Lt. Col. Arif Makhfudiharto, head of the anti-terrorism squad unit in West Java province.

Mukhtar, who had recently completed a prison sentence for his role in a deadly 2004 attack on a police station in Maluku province, "returned to his old ways," Arif said. He alleged Mukhtar joined a new militant cell after visiting Abu Bakar Bashir and Aman Abdurrahman, the country's most radical clerics who are now serving sentences on the Nusa Kambangan prison island.

Arif said that Mukhtar had pledged allegiance to Islamic State leaders.