G-L-O-B-A-L T-E-N-S-I-O-N!
……………………………………MIGRANT SAGA
………………………………………I.S.IS LATEST ONSLAUGHTS
……………………………………….YEMENI WAR
………………………………………..XENOPHOBIA IN SOUTH AFRICA
BY ABDULMUMINI ADEKU
A WOMAN ANGRY AT FOREIGNERS IN SOUTH AFRICA,PREPARES TO ATTACK DURING THE ON GOJNG XENOPHOBIC CAMPAIGN AGAINST NON-SOUTH AFRICANS OF BLACK DESCENT
Details have emerged about the
capsize of a migrant boat in the Mediterranean on Sunday that killed more than
800.
Prosecutors in Italy say the
captain, who survived and faces multiple homicide charges, crashed the boat by
mistake against a merchant rescue ship.
The capsize is the deadliest
recorded in the Mediterranean, the UN says.
The International Organisation for
Migration (IOM) says deaths in 2015 are 30 times higher than the same period
last year and could rise to 30,000.
Italian police said they issued an
arrest warrant for the Tunisian captain of the boat, Mohammed Ali Malek, 27,
and crew member Mahmud Bikhit, a 25-year-old Syrian, as soon as the coastguard
vessel Bruno Gregoretti docked.
More than a dozen survivors of the
weekend shipwreck are being guarded in a house inside the Mineo migrant centre.
They've become the most important
witnesses in an official criminal investigation into the wreck of their boat.
Italian officials instructed us not to approach or speak to them.
After midday the survivors came out
of the house and were escorted the few steps to a waiting minibus. The
survivors - all young men - boarded the bus in single file and in silence.
One of them sat next to the window.
I caught his eye and signalled a thumbs up or thumbs down sign as a question.
He replied with a thumbs up - and then broke out into a smile.
The survivors were then driven a
short distance to the dining hall, where they were served a lunch of pasta,
rice, chicken and vegetables. They ate in silence.
Capt Malek was accused of causing a
shipwreck, multiple first degree homicides and being accomplice to clandestine
immigration. Mr Bikhit was accused only of the third charge.
The charges on both men have yet to
be formally laid by a judge. The pair will appear in court on Friday.
The Italian prosecutors said there
appeared to be two causes of the capsize.
Malek (left) and Bikhit will appear
in court in Catania, Sicily, on Friday
They said the migrant boat captain
had tried to come alongside the rescue vessel and "accidentally caused the
small fishing boat to collide with the bigger merchant ship".
The second cause was the
"overcrowding of the fishing boat, so the boat was tipped off balance by
the wrong manoeuvre, causing the migrants on board to shift. It then
capsized".
Chief prosecutor Giovanni Salvi said
the huge death toll was as a result of so many migrants being locked below on
the three-deck boat.
The prosecutors said it appeared the
merchant vessel, the Portuguese ship King Jacob, was not to blame.
The IOM's Flavio Di Giacomo said the
survivors were "very tired, very shocked" when they arrived in
Catania.
Adrian Edwards, a spokesman for the
UN refugee agency, said it had interviewed most of the 28.
He said about 350 on board were
believed to be Eritreans, with refugees from other nations including Syria,
Somalia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia and
Bangladesh.
The British aunt of one of those
feared dead, Baboucarr Ceesay, a promising footballer from The Gambia, told the
BBC the traffickers "must be held to account".
More than 1,700 migrants are
believed to have died so far in 2015.
IOM spokesman Joel Millman told
reporters in Geneva: "The 2015 death toll now is more than 30 times last
year's total at this date... when just 56 deaths of migrants had been reported
on the Mediterranean.
"IOM now fears the 2014 total
of 3,279 migrant [deaths] on the Mediterranean may be surpassed this year in a
matter of weeks, and could well top 30,000 by the end of the year, based on the
current death toll. It could actually be even higher."
Separately in Greece, two Syrian men
rescued from a vessel which ran aground off Rhodes on Monday, killing three of
about 90 migrants on board, will face charges linked to illegal transportation.
UK
pledge
The charges came after the EU set
out a package of measures to try to ease the migrant crisis in the
Mediterranean.
They include an increase in the
financial resources of Frontex, the border agency runs the EU's Mediterranean
rescue service Triton, and an extension of Triton's operational area.
The EU had been criticised over the
scope of Triton, which replaced the larger Italian operation Mare Nostrum at
the end of last year.
On Tuesday, UK PM
David Cameron said it was right to extend the rescue efforts and that Britain would
contribute.
There will also be a new campaign to
destroy traffickers' boats.
In Nigeria,news as at press time
with the News Office of Paedia Express Multimedia in Lagos suggests that very
rich Nigerians were in the habit of laundering money through the ocean.
A sailor who spoke to this reporter
said that a cadet that worked for a ship attached to the Shell Petroleum Development
Corporation was nabbed by the law about three years ago.
He revealed that a lot of bunkering
was also ongoing in the high seas .
(CNN)A
year after ISIS became a household name in America, using brutality and savvy
propaganda to challenge al Qaeda and its affiliates for jihadist adherents,
U.S. prosecutions of would-be recruits have exploded.
The flurry of arrests -- at least 25
people have been detained since January, a dramatic increase from last year --
is a sign that complicated, manpower-intensive investigations begun when ISIS
started seizing swaths of territory a year ago are finally being completed.
But they also highlight the unique
challenges that ISIS poses in comparison with al Qaeda, which has attracted
fewer U.S.-based recruits.
Like a new rock band storming the
music charts, ISIS has benefited from a media environment that amplifies its
propaganda, law enforcement officials said. The group quickly reached early
recruits through videos that showcased the fear its adherents instilled in
nonbelievers.
At first, most of the recruits were
self-starters -- people radicalized on their own from consuming ISIS propaganda
from YouTube videos and other social media. Much of the propaganda comes in the
form of slick movie trailer-style videos, some glorifying brutal practices such
as the beheading of anyone who ISIS leaders decide doesn't comport with their
medieval brand of Islam.
But once those initial Western
recruits arrived, living in the self-declared ISIS caliphate spanning parts of
Syria and Iraq, they started to directly entice friends and other contacts back
home to join them.
In Minnesota, nine men have been charged as part
of an alleged cell of recruits linked to American Abdi Nur, who turned up
fighting with ISIS in Syria in 2014 and began to appeal to his friends to come
to the Middle East.
"Each one of those folks who
makes it over there has the capability to reach out back to their contacts back
here," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.
It's a phenomenon observed in Norway
and other European nations, where clusters of young people have been lured to
ISIS.
And the ISIS recruiters have an
easier path to drawing supporters than al Qaeda has had. A decade ago, that
group's recruits faced formidable obstacles trying to get to training camps
deep in hard-to-reach areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal region. Few
Westerners went through the trouble.
Today, ISIS occupies much more
accessible territory, mostly reachable through Turkey. Istanbul's airport has
easy connections to Western Europe and much of the rest of the world. From
there, Turkey's modern infrastructure offers quick access to the border regions
where smugglers can help jihadis get across to Syria.
The informal recruitment networks
and ease of travel have presented a difficult puzzle to intelligence and
counterterrorism officials, who are used to tracking networks of facilitators
and fundraisers that funnel recruits eastward.
"It's harder for us to pick up
on," the U.S. counterterrorism official said of the peer-to-peer
recruitment, which is well below the radar.
Before ISIS, investigators could
often focus on radicalizing mosques and clerics to figure out those networks.
Al Qaeda recruitment focused on
attracting radicals who were motivated to join the fight to protect Islamic
holy lands. Much of the recruitment occurred in countries with strong
conservative Islamic histories, including Saudi Arabia and Yemen, U.S.
officials said.
In contrast, ISIS takes a somewhat
secular approach, portraying how much better life purportedly is in the
caliphate as compared to the corrupt West. And people attracted to ISIS'
marketing run the gamut from rich to poor, educated to dropout, male to female,
teenaged to middle-aged.
There are signs Western recruits
have risen to high levels in the ISIS organization, with their influence
reflected in the latest propaganda, counterterrorism and intelligence officials
said. The English is proper, with fewer grammatical and spelling mistakes.
And while the large number of
arrests show that law enforcement officials are succeeding in their disruption
efforts, it also means that U.S. authorities don't see the lure of ISIS
receding any time soon.
"We are opening cases quicker
than we are closing them," the U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Brigadier-General Ahmed al-Asiri, the coalition's spokesperson, said on Tuesday that the coalition had achieved its military goals in Yemen and a new operation, called "Renewal of Hope", would aim to protect civilians and combat "terrorism".
The new operation started at midnight on Tuesday local time (22:00 GMT).
However, the deputy governor of Aden Nayef Al Bakri told Al Jazeera that the Saudi-led coalition conducted an air strike against Houthis in Aden early on Wednesday. The raid targeted tanks which were being moved into areas in the city that were captured earlier, Al Bakri said.
Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi gave a televised address from Riyadh, where he thanked the coalition partners for their support.
"I extend on my behalf and on behalf of the Yemeni people sincere thanks and appreciation for the Arab and Muslim brothers and our partners in the coalition for supporting legitimacy," he said.
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Asiri hailed "Decisive Storm", a military campaign launched by Saudi Arabia and Arab allies on March 26, a "success". He called the new operation a "combination of political, diplomatic and military action".
"The coalition has completed the 'Decisive Storm' campaign at the request of the Yemeni government and the president of Yemen," Asiri said.
"The primary goals of the campaign have been achieved and sovereignty has been protected.
"We are able to confirm that the Houthis are no longer a threat to Yemenis or neighbouring countries.
"The Yemeni government will now undertake all necessary actions to start rebuilding the country."
However, Asiri did not rule out future air strikes against the Houthis and said the coalition would continue to impose a naval blockade on Yemen.
The United States welcomed the coalition's announcement in a statement issued by National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey.
"We continue to support the resumption of a UN-facilitated political process and the facilitation of humanitarian assistance,” the statement said.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defence had earlier said that all heavy weapons and ballistic missiles belonging to the Houthis had been destroyed, that they had imposed restrictions over Yemen's airspace, and that any possible threats on the kingdom and neighbouring countries had been removed.
Al Jazeera's Mohamed Vall, reporting from Jizan on the Saudi-Yemen border, said there had been signs that a change in policy was on the horizon.
"Iranian officials were optimistic of a ceasefire earlier in the day with US naval ships arriving in the region and greater levels of contact between the US and the Saudi monarchy," Vall said.
"Most likely Iran, Saudi Arabia and others have come to some kind of agreement on the conflict."
The National Guard is regarded as the country's best equipped military force, and until now has not been involved in the campaign.
Led by Miteb, the son of the late King Abdullah, the unit is recruited from tribes that have traditionally backed the Saudi royal family.
Earlier on Tuesday, the US defence department confirmed to Al Jazeera that it was sending the USS Theodore Roosevelt and Normandy to ensure vital shipping lanes in the region remain open and safe.
The narrow Bab el-Mandeb strait is a strategic passage separating Yemen from East Africa and serves as a key trade and oil route linking Europe to the east.
The WHO said the number of patients able to access health facilities had plummeted since the escalation of hostilities, with a 40 percent drop in the number of daily consultations.
Prices of essential medicines have increased by more than 300 percent, and the shortage of water has increased the risk of diarrhoea and other diseases and is affecting basic hygiene in hospitals and clinics.
A STREET vendor from Mozambique,
Emmanuel Sithole, lay begging for his life in a gutter as four men beat him and
stabbed him in the heart with a long knife. Images of his murder have shaken
South Africa, already reeling from a wave of attacks on foreigners, mostly poor
migrants from the rest of Africa. Soldiers were deployed on April 21st to
Alexandra, a Johannesburg township, and other flashpoints to quell the
violence, though only after seven people had been killed. Thousands of fearful
foreigners, many from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, have sought refuge in
makeshift camps. Others have returned home.
South Africa has experienced such
horrors before. During widespread anti-foreign violence in 2008, 62 people were
killed and some 100,000 displaced. Photographs of the murder of another
Mozambican man, Ernesto Nhamuave, whom a jeering mob burned alive in a squatter
camp, led to declarations that such atrocities would never happen again. Yet no
one was charged in Mr Nhamuave’s death: the case was closed after a cursory
police investigation apparently turned up no witnesses (who were easily found
by journalists earlier this year). The latest violence flared up in the Durban
area earlier this month after King Goodwill Zwelithini, the traditional leader
of the Zulus, reportedly compared foreigners to lice and said that they should
pack up and leave.
His comments poured fuel on an
already-smouldering fire. Jean Pierre Misago, a researcher at the African
Centre for Migration and Society in Johannesburg, estimates that at least 350
foreigners have been killed in xenophobic violence since 2008. But Mr Misago
says he has heard of only one conviction for murder. Attacks on foreigners and
foreign-run businesses have been committed with virtual impunity; few cases ever
make it to court. “Migrant lives are low-value lives,” says Marc Gbaffou,
chairman of the African Diaspora Forum in Johannesburg.
So it is progress that four men have
been arrested in connection with Mr Sithole’s murder. The police have been
praised for responding better to the violence this time. Yet the attacks on
foreigners will continue until the government acts decisively to stamp out the
xenophobic attitudes that permeate South Africa, from the townships to the
country’s top echelons.
When, after an outcry, King
Zwelithini held an anti-xenophobia imbizo, or assembly, in a Durban
stadium, some of the audience booed African ambassadors and religious leaders,
chanted that foreigners should leave, and waved spears, axes and clubs.
Meanwhile President Jacob Zuma, who has made only an emotionless plea to halt
the violence, blamed journalists for publicising the death of Mr Sithole. “This
makes us look bad,” he said. His eldest son, Edward (born in Swaziland), agreed
foreigners should leave, saying that “we are sitting on a ticking time-bomb of
them taking over the country.”
Such comments find a receptive
audience. There is anger among poor South Africans at the lack of opportunities
and change in the country, with frustrations often boiling over into violent
street protests. Officially, unemployment runs at 24%, though the real figure
is much higher, with more than half of under-25-year-olds out of work.
Foreigners are an easy scapegoat, especially Somalis and Pakistanis resented
for running successful small shops in the townships. The last census, in 2011,
found 2.3m foreign-born people living in South Africa, though the number is
probably higher. Some think there are as many as 5m-6m foreigners in a country
of 54m.
The government’s response has often
been to describe incidents as “criminality” rather than admit to a specific
problem with violence against foreigners. Recent policies have, moreover,
fostered a negative view of foreigners, such as the debate over proposals to
prevent them from buying land. South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations, a
liberal think-tank, points to the “absolute failure” of government policy to
deal with unemployment and with deficiencies in the education system. It warns
that xenophobic attacks may well increase as the economy weakens.
Across Africa, there have been
boycotts of South African musicians, and demonstrations at South African
embassies. South African lorries were stoned at a border crossing and Sasol, a
petrochemicals firm, suspended some of its operations in central Mozambique and
repatriated South African staff for fear of retaliatory attacks. Desmond Tutu,
a former archbishop of Cape Town and an anti-apartheid stalwart, captured the
mood of many: “Our rainbow nation that so filled the world with hope is being
reduced to a grubby shadow of itself. The fabric of the nation is splitting.”
ADDITIONAL REPORTS FROM THE
CNN,BBC,AL JAZEERA,ECONOMIST
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