Migrant rescuers, island mayor win UNESCO peace prize

Yahoo – AFP, Ella IDE, April 19, 2017

Migrants are rescued off the coast of Libya by SOS Mediterranee's Aquarius
vessel in May 2016 (AFP Photo/GABRIEL BOUYS)

Rome (AFP) - UNESCO awarded its prestigious peace prize on Wednesday to migrant rescue association SOS Mediterranee and the mayor of Lampedusa, the tiny Italian island on the frontline of the refugee crisis.

The Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize goes to the European NGO and mayor Giuseppina Nicolini "for their work to save the lives of refugees and migrants and welcome them with dignity," the UN cultural body said in a statement.

The plight of migrants constitutes "one of the crucial issues of our day, notably in the Mediterranean where nearly 13,000 men, women and children have perished in shipwrecks since 2013," said acting jury head Joaquim Chissano, former president of Mozambique.

Lampedusa, Italy's most southerly outpost, was the first port of arrival for thousands of migrants setting off from North Africa in the first years of the crisis, which began in 2011 and has developed into the worst since World War II.

SOS Mediterranee, founded in 2015, rescues hundreds of men, women and children each week from flimsy dinghies and boats in the Mediterranean, along with other NGOs.

Nicolini was recognised for "her boundless humanity and unwavering commitment to refugee crisis management and integration in response to the arrival of thousands of refugees on the shores of Lampedusa and elsewhere in Italy".

The mayor of Lampedusa, Giuseppina Nicolini, has been recognised for her

work at the frontline of the refugee crisis (AFP Photo/ANDREAS SOLARO)

'Watery grave'

"I dedicate this prize to all those who did not make it across the sea because they were swallowed up, and also to Gabriele Del Grande," said Nicolini, referring to an Italian journalist arrested in Turkey this month while researching the lives of Syrian refugees.

"He was the first to count the Mediterranean's dead on a website, back when nobody even knew people were dying in the Mediterranean. He is now a prisoner in Turkey," she said, calling on the government to "bring him home".

The jury said SOS Mediterranee's Aquarius vessel, co-run by Doctors Without Borders, had saved more than 11,000 lives since it began search and rescue missions off Lampedusa in early 2016.

"We're so happy to be given this award together with Nicolini. We visited her when we were starting up and she said 'you are crazy but I am with you, because this is what we need after the failures of the EU'," said Sophie Beau, SOS Mediterranee co-founder.

The jury appealed to the international community "to ensure that the Mediterranean sea becomes, once again, a place where solidarity and intercultural dialogue hold sway, and that it ceases to serve as a watery grave".

Private rescue vessels sounded the alarm this weekend over the "unprecedented mass rescues" of people fleeing horrors in conflict-torn Libya, recovering seven bodies including that of an eight-year-old, and warning more migrants risked drowning without EU action.

Close to 37,000 people have been brought to safety in Italy so far this year, a 45 percent increase on the same period in 2016.

Migrants waiting to disembark from the Aquarius which has saved more than

11,000 lives since early 2016, the jury said (AFP Photo/Giovanni ISOLINO)

Solidarity

The EU's border control agency Frontex has accused donor-funded vessels of doing more harm than good by acting "like taxis" off Libya and tempting human traffickers to put as many people as possible out to sea in flimsy vessels.

Italian prosecutors have suggested they may have links with traffickers and in March named SOS Mediterranee's activity as being of interest to investigators, along with other private rescue vessels.

Their charges have been fiercely rejected by the NGOs, with SOS Mediterranee saying Wednesday it had "never, not once" been put in contact with migrants via smugglers.

"European governments need to show more solidarity to the humanitarian organisations that are working on the front line of this humanitarian crisis. Border control is not the solution," said Regina Catrambone, the director of MOAS rescue service.

UNESCO's Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize, created in 1989 to honour those making a significant contribution to peace, has gone in the past to Nelson Mandela, Israel's Shimon Peres and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, King Juan Carlos of Spain and former US president Jimmy Carter.

Aid groups create huge peace sign of life jackets on Greek isle

Yahoo – AFP, January 2, 2016

A photo released by Greenpeace and taken on January 1, 2016 on the Greek
island of Lesbos shows a peace sign created from over 3,000 discarded refugee
 life jackets, calling for safe passage to those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.
(AFP Photo/Florian Schulz)

Athens (AFP) - Rights groups briefly transformed a mountain of discarded life jackets used by refugees who crossed the Aegean Sea into a huge peace sign on the hills of the Greek island of Lesbos.

The giant symbol, which was made out of around 3,000 flourescent orange life jackets, was created on a hillside overlooking the 10-kilometre (six mile) stretch of water between the island's northern shores and the Turkish coastline, the Greenpeace website said.

It was formed on New Year's Day by around 100 volunteers from Greenpeace, Doctors Without Borders, Sea-Watch and the Dutch Refugee Boat Foundation as well as the local community group, Starfish.

The groups created the peace sign "on New Year's Day to bring in 2016 with a message of hope," with Greenpeace's Florian Schulz telling AFP it took three-to-four hours to create the giant symbol, which measured 10 metres from side-to-side.

But it was later removed as the group did not have permission to leave it there.

"We had no permission for the sign to stay in the hills so we dismantled it and cleaned up the dump," Schulz told AFP.

UN figures show that more than half a million people have crossed Aegean Sea to Lesbos alone over the past year, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the 850,000 who reached Greece by boat in 2015.

The vast majority were refugees fleeing war and violence in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, with the life jackets they used left at a dump near the village of Molyvos, Greenpeace said.

A man reacts as he arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek

 island of Lesbos, on October 28, 2015, after crossing the Aegean sea from

Turkey (AFP Photo/ARIS MESSINIS)

'A silent reminder'

"The dump site stands as a statue, a silent reminder of the risks and that so many more still hold out hope of a safe crossing. It also includes the life jackets of those who never made it, of those who lost their lives at sea and can never return home or continue their journey north," it said.

More than one million migrants and refugees have entered Europe this year, four out of five of whom reached the continent via the Greek islands. Although the arrivals has declined since the autumn, around 60,000 arrived on Lesbos in December, UN figures show.

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei on Friday said he was planning to create a memorial on Lesbos to the plight of refugees, many of whom have died trying to reach Europe.

"A lot of people have lost their lives under the waves... we need a memorial," he told AFP after a news conference on the project.

"I already set up a studio in Lesbos. Next year we are going to be involved with different projects," he added.

Chinese artist Weiwei to create refugee memorial on Lesbos https://t.co/CQZDJPsrDR pic.twitter.com/S1lyTTU0PA

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) January 1, 2016

Fears for migrants as S.E. Asia refuses safe haven

Yahoo – AFP, M Jegathesan, 13 May 2015

A Malaysian sailor stands guard as a truck carrying Bangladeshi and Rohingya

 migrants from a temporary detention centre arrives at a naval base in Langkawi, 

on May 13, 2015 (AFP Photo/Manan Vatsyayana)

Malaysia joined Indonesia on Wednesday in vowing to turn back vessels bearing a wave of migrants, drawing warnings that the hardline policy could be a death sentence for boatloads of people at risk of starvation and disease.

As the UN's refugee agency accused regional authorities of playing with lives, more grim accounts emerged from among hundreds of migrants who endured weeks of torment at sea before being dumped by human-traffickers.

Mizanur Rahman, a 14-year-old Bangladeshi boy, said he and a friend spent two agonising months crammed aboard a boat with an estimated 600 other people.

A rescued migrant receives medical 

treatment at a temporary shelter in a 

government sports auditorium in 

Lhoksukon, Indonesia's Aceh 

province, on May 12, 2015 (AFP

Photo/Chaideer Mahyuddin)

They subsisted on a single plate of rice per day, but were given nothing to eat the final two weeks, Rahman told AFP.

He spoke in the northern Indonesian region of Aceh, where the two friends washed up this week after traffickers told them to "swim to shore if we wanted to stay alive".

"We wanted to go to Malaysia, dreaming of a better future of our families. After everything that happened to us, I would now prefer to die here rather than go back home," Rahman said.

Migrant groups are warning that thousands more men, women and children are believed stuck at sea or at risk of abandonment by smugglers since a Thai police crackdown disrupted people-smuggling routes.

Thailand has called for a May 29 regional summit to address what it called an "unprecedented increase" in arrivals of ethnic Rohingya refugees from Myanmar and impoverished Bangladeshi migrants.

But Malaysia -- where more than 1,100 migrants came ashore this week -- said it would turn away boats entering its waters unless they were about to sink.

"The policy has always been to escort them out of Malaysian waters after giving them the necessary provisions" including fuel, water and food, First Admiral Tan Kok Kwee of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency told AFP.

The Indonesian navy already has turned away at least one vessel packed with hundreds of abandoned migrants.

'Maritime ping-pong'

Vivian Tan, Bangkok-based spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the policy was "really worrying".

"We continue to appeal for countries in the region to share responsibility and avert a humanitarian crisis," she said.

"The first priority should be to save lives and provide humanitarian aid."

A group of rescued mostly Rohingya migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh,

 rest at a government sports auditorium in Lhoksukon, Indonesia's Aceh 

province, on May 12, 2015 (AFP Photo/Chaideer Mahyuddin)

Joe Lowry, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Bangkok, said authorities were playing "maritime ping-pong".

"What we want is for governments to allow people to disembark so they can be treated and policy can be worked out later," he said.

Otherwise, "people are going to die in the hundreds and thousands on the sea".

The UNHCR agency says 25,000 people embarked from Bay of Bengal ports in January-March, double last year's rate.

Thousands of them are feared left in the lurch by the crackdown in Thailand, which began after the discovery of dozens of dead migrants in jungle graves earlier this month.

Bangladeshi authorities said they seized a fishing trawler filled with 116 of its nationals in the Bay of Bengal near Myanmar on Tuesday.

"They have been on the boat from 15 days to three months," coastguard station commander Dickson Chowdhury said, adding some had not eaten in a week.

Thousands of Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group denied citizenship by Buddhist-majority Myanmar, flee annually to escape discrimination and sectarian violence that has targeted them in recent years.

Muhammad Shorif, a 16-year-old Rohingya, fled the squalor of a refugee camp back home in hopes of reaching relatively prosperous Malaysia.

He said he spent a month aboard a smuggling ship jammed with hundreds of others who survived on meagre rations and faced beatings from armed smugglers.

"Six people on our boat died due to illness and hunger, and the captain ordered that their bodies be thrown to the sea," he said, in Aceh.

The IOM has called for search-and-rescue operations to find stricken migrant boats.

The inter-governmental group has also demanded a coordinated and sympathetic response by Europe as the continent grapples with its own migration crisis originating in North Africa.

Indonesia Sends Aid to Cyclone-Hit Vanuatu

Jakarta Globe, Apr 05, 2015

Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, center, sends off the Indonesian aid
delegation to cyclone-hit Vanuatu. (Antara Foto/Rivan Awal Lingga)

Jakarta. The Indonesian government has sent $2 million worth of aid to Vanuatu, which was smashed by a devastating cyclone last month that left 11 people dead and thousands homeless.

A Garuda Indonesia Airbus 330 and Cardig Boeing 737 left with the relief packages from Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on Saturday.

“The aid will be a symbol of Indonesian commitment to strengthening bilateral relations with Vanuatu in terms of disaster mitigation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The aid consists of $450,000 in cash, as well as 6,000 packages of nutrition supplements and food, 6,000 packages of ready-to-eat food and 2,000 packages of biscuits.

The shipment also contained 149 carts of baby food, 333 carts of pregnancy food, 500 packages of children’s clothing, 7,500 blankets, 26 carts of solar cells and 200 family tents.

Cyclone Pam affected more than two thirds of the South Pacific island nation, wiping out crops and destroying fishing fleets.

Vanauata’s government is now coordinating an international relief effort.

Related Article:

Extent of damage by Vanuatu storm 'worst' says President

Meet the American Couple Saving Thousands Trying to Get to Europe

Time, Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, Dec. 22, 2014

Illegal immigrants are escorted by the officers of Turkey's Coast Guard Mediterranean
 Region Command as they arrive in Mersin, Turkey on Dec. 6, 2014. (Anadolu
Agency/Getty Images)

Christopher Catrambone and his wife have spent $7.5 million of their own money rescuing migrants

At first glance, there appears to be little in common between U.S. multi-millionaire Christopher Catrambone and the refugees risking death to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The businessman’s family live in comfort in Malta and take holidays on luxury yachts; the refugees have left their homes and they sail on dilapidated boats.

But rewind a few generations and it was Catrambone’s relatives making sea journeys from Italy and Ireland to seek a better life in the United States. Then when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana in 2005 and destroyed Catrambone’s home, he fled the devastation and relocated to Europe. “I myself was a displaced person,” he says, “a Katrina refugee.”

In the summer of 2014, Catrambone and his wife Regina channelled that empathy – and $7.5m of the family’s personal wealth – into an extraordinary mission to launch the world’s first private search and rescue operation. The aim of the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) was to locate the flimsy vessels overloaded with men, woman and children trying to reach sanctuary in Europe, and save the lives of the passengers if they were in danger.

“We’re not here to save the world, we’re here to help people who are in desperate need,” says Catrambone, whose fortune comes from a business offering services to companies in conflict zones. “We leveraged nearly 50% of our savings on this project because it was that important to us. ”Now they are appealing for the public’s help to keep the operation going. Global conflicts have forced record numbers of people on perilous voyages to Europe, but rich nations have scaled back operations to save them – a situation Catrambone finds astonishing. “We’re talking about our own loss of human dignity as a society,” he says. “We ignore people dying at sea – you cannot ignore that.”

Catrambone’s Phoenix I set sail on the Mediterranean on August 25th, with the 40-meter ship carrying two remote-piloted aircraft, two inflatable boats and a crew of technical and medical experts. During their 60 days in international waters, MOAS assisted nearly 3,000 people in jeopardy at sea. While an impressive figure, that’s still just a small proportion of the 207,000 people the U.N. refugee agency estimates set sail on clandestine voyages in the Mediterranean this year. That figure dwarfs the previous record of 70,000 people who attempted the voyage in 2011, after the Arab Spring sent the first wave of asylum-seekers towards Europe.

Now, the conflict in Syria has created a refugee community of three million people, many who want to find a more stable future outside the overcrowded camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Syria. They join the tens of thousands of economic migrants trying to escape poverty, and other men, women and children seeking asylum from conflict and persecution in countries like Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea. Most leave from Libya, with human traffickers arranging passage on ramshackle boats. It is an extraordinary risk for families: this year, the U.N. estimates that 3,419 migrants died in Mediterranean – that is approximately one out of every 60 people who attempt the journey.

Catrambone has personal experience of the world’s war zones: his company, Tangiers Group, offers insurance, medical services and security analysis for firms working in high-risk environments. The company is based in Malta, which Catrambone chose as home after leaving the US because of its favorable business climate and proximity to his wife’s family in Italy.

Migration is a divisive issue in most European countries and politicians are wary of doing anything to encourage immigration even if it means leaving many to drown as they try to get to Europe. Italy launched its ‘Mare Nostrum’ search and rescue operation in 2013 after a migrant boat sunk near the island of Lampedusa, killing more than 300 people. But the Italian government stopped the mission in October, in part due to a lack of support from other European nations. Now a limited E.U. mission called Triton has taken its place, patrolling a smaller area and operating on a third of Mare Nostrum’s budget.

Catrambone wonders if political concerns have also stopped private donors from rallying to his cause. He hoped to run the first 2014 summer mission using his and his wife’s wealth and then seek private donations to cover the $490,000-a-month running costs and launch again in March 2015 when calmer seas tempt migrants to cross the sea to Europe. But appeals to foundations and companies have proved unsuccessful, so Christopher and Regina have launched a crowd-funding effort, raising around $42,000 so far.

Money has come from small donors rather than Catrambone’s fellow millionaires, whose luxury yachts he sees anchored in Malta’s Grand Harbour. “Their daily cost to sit at that marina and to run their crew and their operation would cover us for an entire month,” he says.

Catrambone says they will keep trying to raise money until March but if they don’t meet their target they will scale back their operation to a level they can afford. If they stop using the drones, they could half their costs, he says. Many more thousands of migrants are expected to attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 but there will be far fewer rescuers to help them if their overcrowded and worn-out boats cannot manage the journey.

Related Article:

Pope Francis visits Italy's migrant island of Lampedusa

Pope Francis met some of those who had survived the trip.

He challenged everyone to take responsibility for the

migrants' desperation.

Interpol probing missing Kiribati fund donated by Taiwan

Want China Times, CNA and Staff Reporter 2014-10-16

A press conference held by Taiwan's foreign ministry on the missing
aid fund in Taipei, Oct. 15. (Photo/CNA)

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati has launched an investigation into a missing aid fund donated by Taiwan earlier this year, a case in which Interpol has involved itself, officials said Wednesday.

Taiwan gave the money to Kiribati to help it purchase a landing craft to improve transportation around the nation. But Radio New Zealand International reported Tuesday that the aid fund has gone missing and Taiwan is demanding an explanation of what happened to the US$1.5 million.

The Kiribati Independent reported that the Kiribati government said "the money was wired to an overseas account, but apparently not that of the boat builder." Kiribati's commerce minister said that "the money has been stolen and there was nothing the government could do, but Kiribati police are now investigating," the report added.

Elliott Charng, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the initial results of the probe will be released soon, without giving a specific timeframe.

Charng said that in addition to the judicial probe launched by the Pacific nation, which has formal ties with Taiwan, Interpol has also involved itself in the investigation. Preliminary results have already been produced and will be released at an appropriate time, he said at a news conference called by Taiwanese lawmakers over the issue.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anna Kao said separately Wednesday that the funds consisted of A$1.7 million (US$1.5 million) donated to the nation of 100,000 people at a ceremony in January. She said Taiwan's embassy in Kiribati has checked with the government there on the progress of the aid project, as Taiwan regularly keeps track of aid given to its diplomatic allies.

"They had also reported to us on the process of the project," Kao added, though the regular checks were apparently not enough to prevent the funds from going missing.

Taiwan has expressed concerns about the lost aid fund and is seeking follow-up information from Kiribati, she said.

The Kiribati government has formed a task force to look into lapses in internal management of the money and will punish anyone found accountable, she said.

Kiribati is one of Taiwan's 22 diplomatic allies, most of which are Pacific island nations and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.