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More than 60 migrants feared dead on perilous sea route
to Spain's Canary Islands
Migration advocacy group says fishing boat with migrants departed July 10
The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 17, 2023 5:45 AM PDT |
Children play on fishing boats known as pirogues in Dakar, Senegal, on June 24. More than 60 migrants are feared dead in connection with a pirogue that left Senegal on July 10 en route to Spain's Canary Islands. (Zane Irwin/The Associated Press)
More than 60 migrants are feared dead after a Spanish fishing vessel rescued a boat off the Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde that originally had more than 100 people aboard, authorities and migrant advocates said Thursday.
Seven bodies were found on the boat and an estimated 56 people are missing at sea and presumed dead, said International Organization for Migration spokesperson Safa Msehli. According to Senegal's foreign affairs ministry, 38 people were rescued earlier in the week near Cape Verde, about 620 kilometres off the coast of West Africa.
The Spanish migration advocacy group Walking Borders said the vessel was a large fishing boat, called a pirogue, which had left Senegal on July 10.
Families in Fass Boye, a seaside town 145 kilometres north of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, reached out to Walking Borders on July 20 after 10 days without hearing from loved ones on the boat, group founder Helena Maleno Garzon said.
Cheikh Awa Boye, president of the local fishing association, said survivors called home from Cape Verde after the rescue. Boye said two of his nephews are among those missing.
Spain's Maritime Rescue Service confirmed that a Spanish fishing boat named the Zillarri rescued 38 people and recovered seven bodies from a Senegalese pirogue on Aug. 14 after spotting it adrift northeast of Cape Verde.
Surge in crossing attempts
An official of the tropical tuna fishing company Pevaza, which operates the Zillarri, said the survivors were asking for help and were in a "bad state."
The route from West Africa to Spain is one of the world's most dangerous, yet the number of migrants leaving from Senegal on rickety wooden boats has surged over the past year. The boats try to reach Spain's Canary Islands, an archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa that has been used as a stepping stone to continental Europe.
Nearly 1,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea in the first six months of 2023, Walking Borders says. Worsening youth unemployment, political unrest, violence by armed groups and climate change push migrants across West Africa to risk their lives on overcrowded boats.
The vast majority of violence by armed groups in West Africa is committed by Islamic insurgents.
Nearly 10,000 people have reached the Canary Islands by sea from the northwest coast of Africa so far this year, according to Spanish Interior Ministry figures.
On Aug. 7, the Moroccan navy recovered the bodies of five Senegalese migrants and rescued 189 others after their boat capsized off the coast of Western Sahara.
In 2021, an AP investigation found at least seven migrant boats from northwest Africa had become lost in the Atlantic and were found drifting across the Caribbean and even off Brazil, carrying only lifeless bodies.
France charges four over Channel migrant deaths, says judicial source
French prosecutors on Wednesday charged four people with involuntary manslaughter over the deaths of at least six migrants whose boat sank in the English Channel last weekend, a judicial source told AFP.
Issued on: 17/08/2023 - 03:46; 1 min
Text by: NEWS WIRES
Migrants picked up at sea while attempting to cross the English Channel, are brought by a UK Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeboat into the Marina in Dover, England, on August 12, 2023. © Stuart Brock, AFP
The suspects, two Iraqis and two Sudanese, were detained shortly after the vessel carrying around 65 people capsized early Saturday, leaving six Afghans dead, the source said, confirming a report in French daily Le Monde.
They also face charges of criminal conspiracy for illegal immigration, with the Iraqis suspected of belonging to a human trafficking network.
Most of those on board the vessel were Afghans along with some Sudanese and "a few minors", French authorities said. The British and French coast guards rescued 59 people, but the death toll remains provisional.
Investigators determined that an engine breakdown led to the vessel's capsizing in the choppy waters of the busy shipping lane, the Paris prosecutor's office said, adding that most of the passengers had no life jackets.
A commercial vessel discovered the shipwreck and alerted authorities, with the French coast guard rescuing 38 people and the British 23, prosecutors said.
The death toll in the latest tragedy is the highest since November 2021 when 27 migrants lost their lives in the Channel, sparking tension between Britain and France over who needed to do more to prevent such disasters.
French authorities have stepped up patrols and other deterrent measures after London agreed in March to send Paris hundreds of millions of euros annually towards the effort.
More than 100,000 migrants have crossed the Channel on small boats from France to southeast England since Britain began publicly recording the arrivals in 2018, official figures revealed last Friday.
(AFP)
U.S. sanctions Green Without Borders for allegedly supporting Hezbollah
By Doug Cunningham
Hezbollah rally in Beirut
Aug. 16 (UPI) -- The U.S. Treasury Department Wednesday sanctioned Lebanon-based Green Without Borders and its leader for allegedly supporting and covering Hezbollah's activities in southern Lebanon near Israel.
That would be 'Green' as in 'greenbacks', not green grass.
"The United States rejects Hezbollah's cynical efforts to cloak its destabilizing terrorist activities with false environmentalism," Brian E. Nelson, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement. "We will continue to support the many Lebanese civil society groups protecting Lebanon's unique and sensitive natural environment while also relentlessly pursuing Hezbollah and their support networks."
Green Without Borders and Zuhair Subhi Nahla allegedly used the guise of environmentalism since 2013 to hide its support for Hezbollah, according to Treasury.
And it only took you 10 years to figure that out. Wow!
"It has served as a cover for Hezbollah's activities in southern Lebanon along the Blue Line, where GWB has outposts manned by Hezbollah operatives in more than a dozen locations," Treasury's statement said. "These outposts, which are manned by Hezbollah operatives, serve as cover for Hezbollah's underground warehouses and munitions storage tunnels."
Nahla claims that he and GWB are not part of Hezbollah, but according to the Treasury Department he has acknowledged his and the group's Hezbollah affiliation.
Treasury said GWB outposts were used by Hezbollah for weapons training, to patrol the surrounding area and to maintain "containerized housing units 25 meters from the Blue Line" separating Lebanon from Israel and the Golan Heights.
The U.S. government alleged that these outposts have impeded UN peacekeepers in Lebanon under a Security Council mandate.
Hezbollah is a militant Shiite group formed with help from Iran in the early 1980s. It has militarily clashed with Israel and was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997.
And, its political wing is largely responsible for the completely incompetent government in Lebanon.
100 arrested after Pakistani mob ransacks churches,
homes in Christian community
Violence sparked by alleged blasphemy toward the Koran
By A.L. Lee
Pakistani Rangers stand guard after mobs attacked Christian churches and homes following blasphemy allegations in Jaranwala, near Faisalabad, Pakistan. Armed mobs in Jaranwala targeted two churches and private homes, setting them on fire and causing widespread destruction, according to the police. Photo by Ilyas Sheikh/EPA-EFE
Aug. 17 (UPI) -- Pakistani authorities arrested more than 100 people Wednesday after a mob set fire to churches and vandalized homes in a minority Christian enclave as part of a riot sparked by allegations of blasphemy toward the Koran.
The interim Punjab government said it was investigating the rampage in the east of the country, on the outskirts of the industrial city of Faisalabad, where it was rumored that the Koran had been desecrated.
No deaths were reported, but at least four churches in Jaranwala were burned, and as many as a dozen religious buildings were damaged as the angry mob ransacked the city.
"They broke the windows, doors and took out fridges, sofas, chairs and other household items to pile them up in front of the Church to be burnt," said 31-year-old Yasir Bhatti, who witnessed the chaos that forced him to flee his home. "They also burnt and desecrated Bibles, they were ruthless."
Government sources told news outlets that the Islamist opposition party known as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan incited the uprising, but the coalition later denied any responsibility.
The violence erupted after two men were accused of desecrating the ancient scripture, but there were few if any details about what exactly happened or what the suspects did.
There doesn't need to be any details, or any truth, for that matter, to stir up Islamic hysteria.
Police only said they filed charges against two local Christian residents for violation of blasphemy laws, while local reports indicated that a particular Koran had its pages defaced and torn out before the book was found discarded near a Christian colony.
Meanwhile, several thousand police stormed the city to restore peace, according to Amir Mir, the information minister for Punjab province, who denounced the violence but also condemned the alleged insults toward the Koran.
"This was a well thought out plan to disrupt peace and a high-level investigation is underway regarding the desecration of the Holy Koran and incidents that take place afterward," said a statement from the provincial government, adding that police had thwarted several attacks on religious minorities.
Officials said religious violence has surged in the country in recent years due to the perceived mishandling of the Koran.
"The frequency and scale of such attacks -- which are systematic, violent and often uncontainable -- appear to have increased in the last several years," the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said in a statement following the latest furor.
Blasphemy is a life-or-death matter in Pakistan, with insults toward Islam or Islamic figures punishable by execution under a strict 1980s law that arose from the British colonial period to punish those who disparage the dominant religion.
About 96% of Pakistan's population is Muslim.
The attacks left the Christian community "deeply pained and distressed" according to Pakistani bishop Azad Marshall, who resides in the neighboring city of Lahore.
"We cry out for justice and action from law enforcement and those who dispense justice and the safety of all citizens to intervene immediately and assure us that our lives are valuable in our own homeland," Marshall said.
On Wednesday, the advocacy group called on police to protect religious minorities and their places of worship and cited a 2014 Pakistani Supreme Court ruling that required them to do so.
Pakistan's interim Prime Minister Anwar ul Haq Kakar called Wednesday's violence appalling and said those responsible would be held accountable.
"I am gutted by the visuals coming out," he wrote.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel put pressure on the Pakistani government to investigate the attacks.
"We are deeply concerned that churches and homes were targeted in response to reported Koran desecration in Pakistan," Patel told reporters, adding "violence or the threat of violence is never an acceptable form of expression."
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