Robert Mugabe, who ruled the southern African nation of Zimbabwe for 37 years following the end of white minority rule in 1980, has died. He was 95 years old. Some hailed Mugabe as a liberation hero, but others say he destroyed the economy of what was once Africa’s breadbasket, rigged elections and terrorized his people for decades. VOA’s Anita Powell looks at his life and legacy.
Month: September 2019
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe: From Liberator to Oppressor
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation when he first came to power in a nation divided by nearly a century of white colonial rule.
Nearly four decades later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.
Former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe Dies
Mugabe died in Singapore, where he has often received medical treatment in recent years
Mugabe, was ultimately ousted by his own armed forces in November 2017.
He demonstrated his tenacity — some might say stubbornness — to the last, refusing to accept his expulsion from his own ZANU-PF party and clinging on for a week until parliament started to impeach him after the de facto coup.
His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. For Mugabe, it was an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and left him a broken man.
Confined for the remaining years of his life between Singapore where he was receiving medical treatment and his sprawling “Blue Roof” mansion in Harare, an ailing Mugabe could only observe from afar the political stage where he once strode tall. He was bitter to the end over the manner of his exit.
On the eve of the July 2018 election, the first without him, he told reporters he would vote for the opposition, something unthinkable only a few months before.
Took power in 1980
Educated and urbane, Mugabe took power in 1980 after seven years of a liberation bush war and — until the army’s takeover — was the only leader Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, knew since independence from Britain.
But as the economy imploded starting from 2000 and his mental and physical health waned, Mugabe found fewer people to trust as he seemingly smoothed a path to succession for his wife, Grace, four decades his junior and known to her critics as “Gucci Grace” for her reputed fondness for luxury shopping.
“It’s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife,” Chris Mutsvangwa, leader of Zimbabwe’s influential liberation war veterans, told Reuters after Mugabe’s removal.
‘A jewel’
Born on Feb. 21, 1924, on a Roman Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa’s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism.
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Founding Father Hailed as Hero and Villain, Dies at 95 video player.
Returning to then-Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics but was jailed for a decade four years later for opposing white rule.
When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral, a decision by the government of white-minority leader Ian Smith that historians say played a part in explaining Mugabe’s subsequent bitterness.
After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the “thinking man’s guerrilla” on account of his seven degrees, three of them earned behind bars.
Later, as he crushed his political enemies, he boasted of another qualification: “a degree in violence.”
After the war ended in 1980, Mugabe was elected the nation’s first black prime minister.
“You have inherited a jewel in Africa. Don’t tarnish it,” Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere told him during the independence celebrations in Harare.
At first, reconciliation
Initially, Mugabe offered forgiveness and reconciliation to old foreign and domestic adversaries, including Smith, who remained on his farm and continued to receive a government pension.
In his early years, he presided over a booming economy, spending money on roads and dams and expanding schooling for black Zimbabweans as part of a wholesale dismantling of the racial discrimination of colonial days.
With black and white tension easing, by the mid-1980s many whites who had fled to Britain or South Africa, then still under the yoke of apartheid, were trying to come home.
No challengers
But it was not long before Mugabe began to suppress challengers, including liberation war rival Joshua Nkomo.
Faced with a revolt in the mid-1980s in the western province of Matabeleland that he blamed on Nkomo, Mugabe sent in North Korean-trained army units, provoking an international outcry over alleged atrocities against civilians.
Human rights groups say 20,000 people died, most of them from the minority Ndebele tribe from which Nkomo’s partisans were largely drawn. The discovery of mass graves prompted accusations of genocide.
After two terms as prime minister, Mugabe tightened his grip on power by changing the constitution, and he became president in 1987. His first wife, Sally, who had been seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him, died in 1992.
A turning point came at the end of the decade when Mugabe, by now a leader unaccustomed to accommodating the will of the people, suffered his first major defeat at the hands of voters, in a referendum on another constitution. He blamed his loss on the white minority, chastising them as “enemies of Zimbabwe.”
Days later, a groundswell of black anger at the slow pace of land reform started boiling over and gangs of black Zimbabweans calling themselves war veterans started to overrun white-owned farms.
Mugabe’s response was uncompromising, labeling the invasions a correction of colonial injustices.
“Perhaps we made a mistake by not finishing the war in the trenches,” he said in 2000. “If the settlers had been defeated through the barrel of a gun, perhaps we would not be having the same problems.”
The farm seizures helped ruin one of Africa’s most dynamic economies, with a collapse in agricultural foreign exchange earnings unleashing hyperinflation.
The economy shrank by more than a third from 2000 to 2008, sending unemployment above 80%. Several million Zimbabweans fled, mostly to South Africa.
Brushing aside criticism, Mugabe portrayed himself as a radical African nationalist competing against racist and imperialist forces in Washington and London.
Rock bottom
The country hit rock bottom in 2008, when 500 billion percent inflation drove people to support the challenge of Western-backed former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Facing defeat in a presidential run-off, Mugabe resorted to violence, forcing Tsvangirai to withdraw after scores of his supporters were killed by ZANU-PF thugs.
South Africa, Zimbabwe’s neighbor to the south, squeezed the pair into a fractious unity coalition but the compromise belied Mugabe’s grip on power through his continued control of the army, police and secret service.
As old age crept in and rumors of cancer intensified, his animosity towards Tsvangirai eased and the two men enjoyed weekly meetings over tea and scones, in a nod to Mugabe’s affection for British traditions.
On the eve of the 2013 election, Mugabe dismissed cries of autocracy and likened dealing with Tsvangirai to sparring in the ring.
“Although we boxed each other, it’s not as hostile as before,” he told reporters.
Even as he spoke, Mugabe’s agents were busy finalizing plans to engineer an election victory through manipulation of the voters’ roll, according to the Tsvangirai camp.
It was typical of Mugabe’s ability to outthink — and if necessary outfight — his opponents, a trait that drew grudging respect from even his sternest critics.
Writing in a 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, then-U.S. ambassador to Harare Christopher Dell reflected the views of many: “To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician.”
your ad hereFormer Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe Dies
Robert Mugabe, the guerrilla leader who led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 and ruled with an iron fist until his own army ended his almost four decade rule, has died. He was 95.
Mugabe died in Singapore, where he has often received medical treatment in recent years, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.
His death was confirmed by Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President, Cde Robert Mugabe (1/2)
— President of Zimbabwe (@edmnangagwa) September 6, 2019
On leading Zimbabwe to independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was feted as an African liberation hero and champion of racial reconciliation.
But later, many at home and abroad denounced him as a power-obsessed autocrat willing to unleash death squads, rig elections and trash the economy in the relentless pursuit of control.
Mugabe was forced to resign in November 2017 after an army coup.
His resignation triggered wild celebrations across the country of 13 million. Mugabe denounced his removal as an “unconstitutional and humiliating” act of betrayal by his party and people, and it left him a broken man.
In November, Mnangagwa said Mugabe was no longer able to walk when he had been admitted to a hospital in Singapore, without saying what treatment Mugabe had been undergoing.
Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent private media reports that he had prostate cancer.
your ad hereDorian Bashes US Carolinas After Pounding Bahamas
Hurricane Dorian has hit the Southeastern U.S. states of North and South Carolina, bringing tornadoes and flooded roads.
“We know we’re in for a long night and we’ll be eager to see the sunshine in the morning,” North Carolina’s Governor Roy Cooper told the Atlanta-based cable news network, CNN.
Dorian weakened to a Category 1 hurricane early Friday, with maximum sustained winds of 150 kilometers per hour (90 mph).
The National Hurricane Center says “slow weakening” is expected of Dorian “during the next few days.” The center says Dorian is expected to remain “a powerful hurricane as its center moves near the coasts of South and North Carolina.”
Forecasters do not expect Dorian to make a direct landfall Friday but will instead skirt the North Carolina coast, bringing life-threatening storm surges to North Carolina and southern Virginia before moving away from land.
A potent storm
Dorian will remain a potent storm straight into the weekend, however, with tropical storm warnings posted as far north as Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The Canadian Hurricane Center has issued a hurricane watch for all of Nova Scotia.
Thousands of people in the Bahamas have begun the long, painful struggle to rebuild their lives following Hurricane Dorian.
International search-and-rescue teams are spreading across Abaco and Grand Bahamas islands looking for survivors.
Late Thursday, the death toll in the Bahamas had risen to 30.
Bahamian Health Minister Duane Sands told the Associated Press he expects that number to become “significantly higher.”
The French news agency AFP reported teams of men in masks and white protective suits were seen placing bodies enclosed in green body bags onto a flatbed truck.
Homes have been transformed into matchsticks.
“It’s hell everywhere,” said Brian Harvey, a Canadian who was on his sailboat when Dorian hit.
The U.S. Coast Guard and British Royal Navy have ships docked off the islands, and the United Nations is sending eight tons of ready-to-eat meals and satellite communications equipment.
The Royal Caribbean and Walt Disney cruise lines, which usually carry happy tourists to Bahamian resorts, are instead using ships to deliver food, water, flashlights and other vital aid.
Hampton University, a historically black college in Virginia, has offered free classes and room and board to students from the University of the Bahamas for the current fall semester.
After the fall semester, any students who remain will be charged the regular rates.
your ad hereFamilies: ‘We Didn’t Get Justice Today’ in California ‘Ghost Ship’ Fire
A jury Thursday didn’t convict two men charged after flames tore through a party at a San Francisco Bay Area warehouse that had been converted into a mazelike artist space, stunning families of the 36 victims who had opposed a deal that would have put the pair behind bars.
Jurors acquitted Max Harris of involuntary manslaughter but said they could not agree on whether to convict or acquit Derick Almena after deliberating over a two-week period.
As the judge declared a mistrial, sobs and gasps erupted from family and friends of the victims who packed the courtroom for the emotional three-month trial. The men were accused of filling the building in Oakland with so much clutter that it trapped people at an electronic music party nearly three years ago.
Mazelike building
“I’m in shock,” said David Gregory, whose 20-year-old daughter Michela perished in the fast-moving fire. “We were hoping for justice, but we didn’t get justice today.”
Michela Gregory and her 22-year-old boyfriend, Alex Vega, died when fire roared through the so-called Ghost Ship warehouse, which had been illegally converted into a live-work space for artists and held events.
The building was packed with furniture, extension cords and other flammable material but had only two exits and no smoke detectors, fire alarms or sprinklers, prosecutors say.
The blaze killed many young people trapped on the illegally constructed second floor. Prosecutors said the victims received no warning and had little chance to escape down a narrow, ramshackle staircase.
Plea deal rejected
Almena, 49, and Harris, 29, had pleaded no contest to manslaughter and were set to be sentenced last year to nine and six years in prison, respectively. But a judge threw out their pleas last year after many of the victims’ families objected.
Vega’s mother, Mary, was angry about Thursday’s outcome but didn’t regret the plea agreement being tossed. She said she was glad that Harris served more than two years behind bars awaiting trial.
“It’s something. Doesn’t matter, it’s not going to bring my son back,” Mary Vega said.
Emotional toll
Prosecutors acknowledged the emotional toll of the trial on the victims’ loved ones and said they would meet with families and others to evaluate their next steps in the case against Almena. He remains in custody and is to be in court again Oct. 4.
One of Almena’s attorneys, Brian Getz, broke into tears, while another, Tony Serra, said he was pained and anguished but vowed to win the case.
“In the next trial, we’ll do better,” Serra said. “It may be hung again, or he may be acquitted, but we’re not going to lose.”
Almena, 49, was the master tenant of the warehouse and Harris, 29, acted like a manager by collecting rent and settling household disputes, prosecutors said.
In closing arguments, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Autrey James said the men didn’t obtain permits because they didn’t want inspections and they violated the fire code by refusing to install safety devices.
The defendants argued that city workers were to blame for not raising concerns about fire hazards and said the fire was arson. Investigators have never found its cause, meaning arson cannot be ruled out.
USAGM Chief Executive John Lansing Resigns
The U.S. Agency for Global Media’s Chief Executive John Lansing said he will be leaving his post at the end of the month.
Lansing, a veteran government broadcast and cable television executive, was named four years ago by U.S. President Barack Obama to be the first chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the Voice of America, Radio and Television Martí, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Lansing made his mark at the agency early on by championing a free press.
“Despite some very dark moments, we have not been silenced. We will continue to report the truth. We will continue to find new ways to get independent reporting and programming to global audiences who rely on it,” he said this year on World Press Freedom Day.
USAGM board Chairman Kenneth Weinstein said in a statement, “John has put USAGM on solid footing to advance our mission to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. … The Board is very grateful for, and deeply impressed by, the results achieved during his tenure.”
Lansing has boosted the networks’ global weekly audience by more than 100 million and expanded the agency’s use of platforms from encrypted live broadcasting to shortwave radio to push content into countries that jam or ban American programming.
Under his watch, the agency also created Current Time, a network broadcasting news, features and documentaries for Russian speakers in 2017. Polygraph and Faktograph are websites aimed at combating a stream of disinformation by Russia state-controlled media. A new Persian-language service, VOA365, also started broadcasting earlier this year.
In a statement released late Thursday, Lansing said he would be starting a new position at chief executive at National Public Radio, a publicly funded nonprofit membership media organization based in Washington.
Lansing acknowledged challenges ahead for the agency with countries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran trying to control information and spread their influence throughout the world.
“Please keep abiding by the highest standards of professional journalism. Please keep fighting for press freedom. Please keep telling the truth. The world needs you now more than ever,” he concluded in his statement to employees.
Weinstein said in his statement, “It is the Board’s top priority to find the best individual to run USAGM upon John’s departure.”
your ad hereUS Woman Arrested at Manila Airport With Baby Hidden in Bag
An American woman who attempted to carry a 6-day-old baby out of the Philippines hidden inside a sling bag has been arrested at Manila’s airport and charged with human trafficking, officials said Thursday.
They said Jennifer Erin Talbot was able to pass through the airport immigration counter on Wednesday without declaring the baby boy but was intercepted at the boarding gate by airline personnel.
Talbot, from Ohio, was unable to produce any passport, boarding pass or government permits for the baby, airport officials said.
Clad in an orange detainee shirt and in handcuffs, Talbot, 43, was presented to reporters in Manila on Thursday. She kept her head low and appeared at times to be on the verge of tears. She did not issue any statement.
Talbot had planned to board a Delta Air Lines flight to the United States with the baby, airport officials said.
“There was really an intention to hide the baby,” immigration official Grifton Medina said by telephone.
After discovering the baby, airline staff called immigration personnel, who arrested Talbot at the airport. She was later turned over to the National Bureau of Investigation and the baby was given to government welfare personnel.
The investigation bureau said Talbot presented an affidavit at the airport, allegedly from the baby’s mother, giving consent for the baby to travel to the U.S., but it had not been signed by the mother.
Officials said no government travel approval had been issued for the baby, prompting them to file human trafficking charges against her. The charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
U.S. Embassy officials have been notified of her arrest.
Officials are searching for the baby’s parents, who have been charged under a child protection law.
your ad hereAnalysis: Trump’s Conservative Critics Are Speaking a Code
Like whisperers in a tempest, conservative-minded officials across the breadth of Donald Trump’s government are letting it be known what they think of him, and some of it isn’t pretty.
But they are speaking oh so softly, in a kind of code, to a country that may only hear shouting.
Jim Mattis is just the latest in a string of leading lights from the conservative establishment to throw shade at Trump. As with others — the chief justice, a special counsel, various Republican lawmakers who hope to have a political future — the ex-Pentagon chief’s words are subtle, filtered through notions of duty, decorum, deference to history, the greater good.
Crack the code and you can sometimes see deep discomfort with Trump, the contours of a searing repudiation. In the view of many institutionalists of the right as well as the left, he is bulldozing values that America holds dear.
Yet the negativity is couched in words of moderation and caution. What effect does that have in Trump’s America?
These are sober, restrained players in a fracas produced, directed and dominated by an in-your-face president.
“The well-informed public understands what they’re saying and how deeply concerned they are,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor and historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The rest of the public might not get it.”
Says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management specialist who has studied Trump’s rise in business and politics: “In a fight between crassness and discretion in the new millennium, crassness will win every time.”
Washington’s well-known partisan fever coexists with a more decorous tradition in some quarters — of raising eyebrows instead of raising hell, of saying things in so many words without actually using the words. People such as Mattis, former special counsel Robert Mueller and Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways.
When certain people let down their guard, history can happen. So it was when Joseph Nye Welch, a lawyer representing the buttoned-up U.S. Army, assailed Sen. Joseph McCarthy in a 1954 congressional hearing remembered for his putdown of the senator’s scorched-earth pursuit of men and women he deemed communist sympathizers in government and society:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
In the McCarthy and Richard Nixon eras, “it took a long time for congressional leaders for the Republican Party to see the damage to their party and step in,” Jillson said, and no such tipping point has been reached in Republican ranks. If it comes, he said, “that’s when they’ll talk and then everybody will hear them.”
“Republicans will not do it while they think there are still gains to be made through the Trump presidency,” he said. But if the fear that was stirred by 2018 losses and Trump’s behavior since then “consolidates into wide-eyed terror,” that’s “when they cut their people loose,” loyalty fractures and more in the GOP abandon the president.
For now, censure comes in coded form from power players in the nonpartisan world — as well as frontally from a few Republican lawmakers as they exit their careers and from, predictably, Democrats.
“Mattis, Mueller and others have lived in a world of consequences which, combined with their natures, has made them discreet,” says Dezenhall, the crisis-management specialist. “They’re not about to blast Trump because they view it as dishonorable.” But they hint at what they think.
When The Associated Press asked the chief justice last fall to address Trump’s criticism of judges who had ruled against his wishes — like the “Obama judge” who had just rejected his migrant asylum policy — it did not really expect an answer. It got one.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” the Republican-nominated Roberts responded in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.” He added: “The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
His words were both startling and circumspect, no more provocative on the surface than a civics lesson, yet a rare engagement by the high court in the fray.
Roberts had never addressed Trump’s past personal criticisms, whether as president or pundit (“Congratulations to John Roberts for making Americans hate the Supreme Court because of his BS,” Trump tweeted in 2012). But when Trump rhetorically charged through the firewall of the independent judiciary, the chief justice subtly called him out.
Among the elites, those without robes also maintain stoicism through slings and arrows, to a point.
Trump-nominated Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell bites his lip in silence when the president, upset that interest rates aren’t lower, takes on a target that past presidents only jousted with obliquely. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi?” Trump demanded in a tweet misspelling the Fed chairman’s name and referring to China’s president.
Mueller’s mastery of restraint drove Trump’s opponents batty in hours of congressional testimony about his special counsel investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and its contacts with the Trump campaign. Democrats pressed him to say what they wanted to hear, but he talked the code.
“Problematic is an understatement,” is how the longtime Republican characterized his view of Trump’s 2016 encouragement of Russia to find missing emails of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“I hope this is not the new normal, but I fear it is,” Mueller said of the idea of a U.S. campaign embracing help from a foreign government. “It is not a witch hunt,” he said of a probe that Trump repeatedly attacked as just that. He was no more animated than the stone statues of the Capitol.
Through the two years of his investigation, Mueller never responded to any of Trump’s attacks, never updated the public on his work and certainly never offered a glimpse of any personal view of the president. Yet his final report had damning detail, wrapped in legalese, about Trump’s efforts to get Mueller fired, to get aides to lie on his behalf, to get an attorney general he perceived as a loyalist to take control of the investigation — all while stopping short of accusing Trump of a crime.
Mueller’s fellow Marine, Mattis, quit as defense secretary before Trump assigned him an insulting nickname, though the president came close in branding Mattis “sort of a Democrat.” Mattis resigned over differences with Trump on Syria and the fight over the Islamic State and is known to have objected to Trump’s disparagement of traditional allies.
Months later, Mattis is promoting his new book, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” which is not a tell-all about Trump despite the title. And, for now, he’s speaking the code.
“He’s an unusual president, our president is,” he said blandly in an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning,” adding elliptically, “just the rabid nature of politics today, we’ve got to be careful.”
Then there was this exchange on “PBS NewsHour” this week when Mattis was asked whether he would say so if he thought Trump or any president wasn’t fit for office.
“Yes.”
So he thinks Trump is fit to be president?
“No, I’m not saying that. I don’t make political assessments one way or the other. I come from the Defense Department.”
In interviews for an article in The Atlantic magazine, Mattis, a student of history, cited the French concept of “the duty of silence” to explain why he won’t say whether he thinks Trump is fit to be in charge.
“I may not like a commander in chief one fricking bit,” he said. But: “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country.”
Yet it seems that the man with the Marine-flavored nickname Trump once loved — Mad Dog — will someday break his leash and growl.
“There is a period in which I owe my silence,” he told the magazine. “It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”
your ad hereTexas Hoping to Revive Law on Burial of Fetal Remains
Arguments over a Texas law requiring that health care clinics bury or cremate fetal remains from abortions and miscarriages are set for a federal appeals court in New Orleans.
A Texas judge blocked the law last year. U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that many clinics would be unable to meet the law’s requirements, thus creating unconstitutional obstacles for women seeking abortions. He also found that violated constitutional equal protection requirements by exempting in-vitro fertilization clinics and some laboratories.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments Thursday.
The Supreme Court has upheld similar law in Indiana. But opponents of the Texas law note that the Indiana ruling case did not address the issue of whether the law created an unconstitutional burden on abortion rights.
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Amid British Brexit Turmoil, EU Braces for Worst
Britain’s political turmoil is again making headlines across the English Channel, with a number of European commentators criticizing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit.
But others, like conservative French lawmaker Nicolas Bay, saluted Johnson for standing firm, and honoring Britain’s 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said the EU’s position toward Brexit has not changed.
“There may be twists and turns in political developments in London right now, but our position is stable,” she said. “We are willing to work constructively with Prime Minister Johnson and to look at any concrete proposals as long as they’re compatible with the withdrawal agreement.”
The commission is freeing up millions of dollars in disaster funds for farmers, workers and companies to cope with a potentially chaotic or hard Brexit — although governments and the EU parliament must sign off on the plan. It also published a checklist for European businesses trading with Britain to prepare for Brexit — and a citizens’ hotline.
Europeans have been preparing for months for a potentially chaotic Brexit. In France, where roughly 20,000 businesses export to Britain, the key port city of Calais is conducting simulations to prepare for both deal and no-deal scenarios. France, along with Belgium and the Netherlands, has hired hundreds more customs agents to cope with expected backlogs.
Experts predict Brexit will deal an economic blow to the EU as well as Britain — at a time when countries like Germany and Italy are braced for economic slowdowns.
your ad hereThe Global Drug Trade: America’s Other War
Illegal drug use is on the rise around the world according to a new UN report. How bad is it and what is being done to stop the spread of dangerous and increasingly deadly drugs? Former US “Drug Czar” Gil Kerlikowske and Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl Inc.” weigh in with Greta Van Susteren. Recorded September 4, 2019
UN Commission Warns of Likelihood of Genocide in Burundi
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Burundi said Wednesday that the country, following years of political turmoil, was primed for a genocide.
The commission’s warning, contained in its latest report on human rights in Burundi, was based on an analysis developed by the U.N. Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect.
The three-member panel found that eight common risk factors for criminal atrocities leading to a possible genocide were present in Burundi.
Factors included an unstable political, economic and social environment; a climate of impunity for human rights violations; a weak judicial system; and the absence of an independent press and freedom of expression.
Commission member Francoise Hampson said the criteria identified by the Genocide Prevention Committee indicated that in countries where these factors were present, there was a risk the situation could deteriorate.
“On top of that, our own report shows the continuation of violations of human rights law based on human security,” she said. “So, things like arbitrary killings, torture, arbitrary detention. And this year, a deterioration … freedom of expression, freedom of association. Now that is actually already getting worse compared to last year.”
Nkurunziza campaign
Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in 2015, defying critics who said he was violating constitutional term limits. Violence prompted more than 300,000 to flee the country.
Hampson said the crisis in Burundi was essentially a political one. She noted that targeting people because of their political affiliation does not come within the definition of genocide, according to the Genocide Conventions.
However, she said, “There are elements on occasion where there is an ethnic dimension. There are sometimes taunts of people in detention. And, there have in the past been the chants of the Imbonerakure [the youth wing of the ruling party] when they have been gathering, which have got hateful content.”
The U.N. report documented widespread human rights violations by the Imbonerakure, including intimidation and harassment of political opponents, activists, journalists and human rights defenders.
After the report’s release on Wednesday, Willy Nyamitwe, a senior adviser to Nkurunziza, tweeted a message that said, “Burundi is no longer interested in responding to lies and manipulation of opinion on the part of some Westerners whose aim is to destabilize Burundi.”
2019 Among Deadliest Years for Migrants Trekking to US
VOA Immigration Reporter Ramon Taylor contributed to this report.
EAGLE PASS and SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS — Along the Pan-American Highway in Colombia’s Cauca Department, Juan Guillermo Sicilia Álvarez fell unconscious the morning of Jan. 4, surrounded by other migrants traveling on the transcontinental thoroughfare.
He was the first migrant to die in the Americas this year, according to data compiled by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants project. Local media reported he was 30 years old and from Venezuela.
Migrant fatalities happen in the Western Hemisphere from the southwestern U.S. to the Caribbean Sea to Central and South America. Boats capsize and river-crossers are swept away by currents. People get lost or abandoned in the desert without water. Disease and health emergencies strike. Cars crash. Trains crush hangers-on. Fingers pull gun triggers.
By the end of August, more than 520 migrants in the Americas died or went missing and are presumed dead, making 2019 the deadliest year for migrants in five years.
Deadly border
Half of the deaths documented in the Americas this year occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border, where bodies or skeletons are regularly found in the desert. U.S. agents patrolling the Rio Grande frequently search the river for missing children or entire families swept under the current while trying to swim across and reach U.S. soil.
US Border Agents Scramble as Migrants Face Deadly Perils video player.
In Eagle Pass, Texas, Border Patrol agents drive a dirt road parallel to the river all day and night, on the lookout for people who just made the crossing. Several well-worn pathways from the river, through scratchy, dense Carrizo cane lining the Rio Grande, end in a debris field of empty baby formula canisters, abandoned clothes and rusted food tins.
“The saying around here goes, ‘If it doesn’t bite you, sting you or poke you, it’s not native to this area,” Allen Vowell, U.S. Border Patrol’s acting deputy patrol agent in charge at Eagle Pass Station, said of the plants and animals along the border. “If you walk through there, you would find that to be true.”
In just this section of the boundary river, part of U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector, local officials report finding the corpses of 33 migrants in the 11 months from Oct. 1 to Sept. 3.
The previous fiscal year, during the same period from October 2017 to early September 2018, the agency reported 19 migrant deaths in the same area.
The numbers haven’t been this high since the early 2000s, in years when border apprehensions topped 1 million, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.
Death tolls along the U.S.-Mexico border do not always correlate to how many people are crossing. There have been low numbers of deaths reported in some of the highest years for apprehensions, like the late 1990s, and high deaths during the lowest years of apprehensions.
But this year, with an unprecedented number of families with young children crossing into the U.S. without authorization, Border Patrol agents in Eagle Pass say they are conducting more than four times as many rescues as last year — 476 so far in the current fiscal year compared to 111 during the same period a year earlier.
“The water looks very calm and looks shallow,” explained Russell Church, interim Border Patrol agent in charge at the Eagle Pass South Station, who works with search and rescue personnel. “It changes very rapidly. It can go from just a few feet to more than 10-feet deep — and they just step off that ledge, step off that boulder, and now they’re in running water.”
People try to cross the river by swimming, wading or rafting across — sometimes in inflatable swimming pools made for children.
In May, Eagle Pass border agents recovered the body of a 10-month-old who died when a raft carrying nine people capsized. The odds of death on the migrant trails of North and South America vary, depending on when, where and how a traveler crosses.
In Arizona, where the border passes through rough, remote desert terrain, dehydration and heatstroke can be fatal. Every year, dozens of bodies are found — so many that a website was created to track them. So far in 2019, officials recovered 111 bodies, some dead for less than a day, others that went for more than six months before being discovered.
With temperatures regularly over 42 degrees Celsius in summer along the border, “There’s not enough water you can carry by yourself to carry you through for a day or two,” said Joel Martinez, deputy chief patrol agent for the Border Patrol’s Laredo Sector in Texas. “There’s no way — your body’s going to give out.”
Improving treatment
Although IOM data does not include migrant fatalities in U.S. custody, several high-profile cases, like the death from sepsis of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin last December, raised concerns about when and how border agents were treating the people they detained, especially children.
As the number of children and families crossing from Mexico to Texas increased sharply in the last year, border agents had to adapt to the demographic shift. Rescue operations have tripled, while at the same time, migrant processing at Border Patrol stations has skyrocketed. Some agents best able to provide emergency medical treatment have been tied to processing duties, keeping them out of the field.
To address that situation at the Eagle Pass South U.S. Border Patrol station, about 3 km from the Rio Grande, officials told VOA they opened a clinic in early August to handle detained migrants’ immediate health needs. Contracting medical work to outside professionals has freed up agents with medical training to provide first aid to rescued or intercepted migrants before they arrive at the station.
“It seems very simplistic to apprehend somebody. You process them, and you look for a place for them,” Church said. “But it’s just so more complex than that.
“Those high-risk individuals — the children, the pregnant women, people that already are coming across that are already sick — they haven’t seen a medical physician or any type of medical facility in months. They just did that long journey, and just the stresses of that — the lack of nutrition, lack of water — they’re already showing up here extremely ill. Now if you put them in those desolate reaches of our sector, then that just compounds the issue,” he said.
For migrants and asylum-seekers, however, the stakes are high enough that even when they know the risks, they are willing to take them on.
“If doing nothing means you’ll die or that something will happen to you (in your home country), you’ll do whatever it takes — risk illness and everything,” said Marvin, a Honduran man traveling with his teenage son, speaking with VOA at a San Antonio, Texas, migrant shelter.
“What worries anyone more than anything is their kids,” he said. ”At least in my case, it’s my kids I worry about. I would risk everything for them.”
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UN Rights Chief Slams US Asylum Policy
The U.S. administration’s asylum policy may be in breach of international human rights law, said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
Policies that restrict migration must be in compliance with standards that do not put people’s lives at risk, she said, adding that migrants unable to enter a country through a legal crossing point will find other routes, which could put them in danger.
She also expressed reservations about the new Trump administration policy of keeping asylum-seekers waiting on the Mexican side of the border until their cases come to court. Before anyone is returned to Mexico, she said, the United States must study the case to determine whether the person is a refugee and entitled to international protection.
“We believe that the policy measures that have been adopted by countries, and in the case of the United States, some countries, like Central American countries, are putting people in more vulnerable situations,” Bachelet said.
Bachelet told VOA she is opposed to the U.S. policy of family separation, adding that she has received reports that family separations also are occurring in Mexico. She noted that in July, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee said that hundreds of children have been separated from their families since the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy was enacted in June 2018.
“We do believe that the arbitrary separation of families constitutes an arbitrary and unlawful interference with family life and a grave violation of the rights of the child,” Bachelet said. “It is against all the legal conventions and international human rights law and the laws of the child.”
Detaining children for longer than 21 days is both unconscionable and unlawful, she said, adding that she has heard it could take up to two years before asylum cases are adjudicated. She called on U.S. authorities to speed up the process and to ensure that asylum-seekers are protected while they are waiting.
your ad hereAlleged American IS Emir Faces Life Behind Bars
A U.S. citizen who allegedly joined the Islamic State terror group as a sniper and eventually rose to the rank of emir is facing new charges and the possibility of life behind bars.
U.S. Justice Department officials filed a new five-count indictment against 43-year-old Ruslan Maratovich Asainov of Brooklyn, New York, in federal court Tuesday.
The indictment charges Asainov with conspiracy to provide material support to IS; providing IS personnel, training, expert advice and weapons; receiving military-type training from IS; and obstruction of justice.
If convicted of all the additional charges, Asainov could face a life sentence. Under the original indictment, Asainov would have faced, at most, 20 years, in prison.
U.S. officials repatriated Asainov in July, sometime after he had been captured in Syria by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Brooklyn Man Charged with Being Islamic State Emir
US officials say 42-year-old Ruslan Maratovich Asainov called IS the ‘real deal’ and was in charge of weapons training before he was captured
According to court documents, Asainov, a naturalized citizen who came to the U.S. from Kazakhstan, traveled to Syria in late 2013, where he began fighting with IS as a sniper.
Eventually, he became one of the terror group’s emirs, responsible for establishing training camps for IS recruits and for teaching them how to use weapons.
“We [IS] are the worst terrorist organization in the world that has ever existed,” he allegedly wrote in one communication to a confidential FBI informant, adding he wished to die on the battlefield.
In other messages, officials say Asainov talked about fighting in places like Kobani, Deir el-Zour and Tabka.
In addition to the messages, U.S. officials said in court documents that some of the evidence against Asainov is based on interviews with “at least one other individual who provided material support and resources to ISIS during part of the same time period as the defendant.”
U.S. citizens
Since the collapse of the Islamic State’s physical caliphate in Syria this past March, U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have been holding an estimated 2,000 foreign fighters from more than 50 countries in make-shift prisons. In addition, the SDF has processed tens of thousands of civilians linked to IS, including the wives and children of the foreign fighters.
There are no official estimates for how many of the IS prisoners were U.S. citizens or residents. But in comments to VOA this past June, Kurdish officials suggested more Americans were in custody.
“It’s up to the U.S. government whether it wants to take back more of its citizens held by our forces,” said Kamal Akif, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria.
Independent research by The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism has identified 80 U.S. citizens or residents who traveled to Syria or Iraq to join extremist groups since 2011, 75% of whom aligned themselves with IS.
In all, the U.S. has repatriated six U.S. citizens from Syria and Iraq to face charges for joining IS.
This past August, the U.S. repatriated 23-year-old Omer Kuzu, a dual American-Turkish citizen, who left the U.S. to join the terror group as a teenager.
US Citizen Accused of Joining IS in Syria Is Repatriated to Texas to Face Charges
Omer Kuzu of Texas is the sixth US citizen or permanent resident to be brought back from Syria or Iraq
Four other U.S. citizens — three men and one woman — who left the country to join IS have also been brought back to face charges.
Mohamad Jamal Khweis of Alexandria, Virginia, who was brought back from Iraq in June 2017, has been convicted.
Additionally, two women and their six children were repatriated to the U.S. this past June, though they have not been charged with any crimes.
U.S. officials have said they continue to work to verify the U.S. citizenship of those individuals in the conflict zone on a case-by-case basis.
Repatriation
U.S officials have repeatedly pleaded with countries involved in the fight against IS to repatriate their citizens and prosecute them, with varying degrees of success.
U.S. counterterrorism officials estimate that more than 45,000 foreign fighters flocked to Syria and Iraq following the start of the Syrian civil war, including 8,000 from Western countries.
An independent estimate by researchers at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, just published by the Combating Terrorism Center’s CTC Sentinel, estimates IS still counts almost 53,000 foreigners among its ranks in Syria and Iraq, including more than 6,900 foreign women and up to 6,600 foreign children.
your ad hereUS Plans for Fake Social Media Run Afoul of Facebook Rules
Facebook said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be violating the company’s rules if agents create fake profiles to monitor the social media of foreigners seeking to enter the country.
“Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear,” Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack told The Associated Press in a statement Tuesday. “Operating fake accounts is not allowed, and we will act on any violating accounts.”
Pollack said the company has communicated its concerns and its policies on the use of fake accounts to DHS. She said the company will shut down fake accounts, including those belonging to undercover law enforcement, when they are reported.
The company’s statement followed the AP’s report Friday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had authorized its officers to use fake social media accounts in a reversal of a previous ban on the practice.
Homeland Security explained the change to the AP in a statement Friday, stating that fake accounts would make it easier for agents reviewing visa, green card and citizenship applications to search for fraud or security threats. The department didn’t provide comment when asked Tuesday.
The plan would also be a violation of Twitter’s rules. Twitter said Friday that it’s still reviewing the new Homeland Security practice. It did not provide further comment.
The change in policy was preceded by other steps taken by the State Department, which began requiring applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames this past June, a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors.
Such a review of social media would be conducted by officers in the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate on cases flagged as requiring more investigation. The privacy assessment notes that officers can only review publicly available social media available to all users on the platform — they cannot “friend” or “follow” an individual — and must undergo annual training.
The officers are also not allowed to interact with users on the social media sites and can only passively review information, according to the DHS document.
While lots of social media activity can be viewed without an account, many platforms limit access without one.
Facebook said it has improved the ability to spot fake accounts through automation, blocking and removing millions of fake accounts daily.
Twitter and Facebook both recently shut down numerous accounts believed to be operated by the Chinese government using their platforms under false identities for information operations.
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