(Reuters) – European Union foreign ministers met on Monday under pressure to produce more than words and save desperate migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, as bodies of the deadliest known wreck of its kind were brought ashore in Malta.
The death toll from Sunday’s disaster off the coast of Libya was uncertain but likely to be the highest in modern times among migrants trafficked in rickety boats across the Mediterranean. Officials said there had been at least 700 people on board, some reportedly locked in the hold. It comes days after another wreck believed to have killed around 400 people.
Hundreds of kilometers (miles) to the east, coast guards were struggling to save migrants from another vessel destroyed after running aground off the Greek island of Rhodes.
Greek coast guards said at least three people were killed there. Television pictures showed survivors clinging to floating debris while rescuers pulled them from the waves.
The International Organization for Migration said three more vessels had sent out distress calls on Monday.
European officials are struggling to come up with a policy to respond more humanely to an exodus of migrants traveling by sea from Africa and Asia to Europe, without worsening the crisis by encouraging more to leave.
An Italian naval operation in the southern Mediterranean, known as “Mare Nostrum”, was canceled last year because of its cost and domestic opposition to sea rescues that could encourage more migration.
It was replaced in November by a far smaller EU mission with a third of the budget, a decision that seems to have made the journey much deadlier for migrants packed into rickety vessels by traffickers who promise a better life in Europe.
(Aljazeera) — Video released online shows one group of captives being shot and another group being beheaded on a beach
A new video from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) purportedly shows the group killing captured Ethiopian Christians in Libya.
The 29-minute video released online on Sunday shows two groups of dark-skinned captives. It says one group is held by an ISIL affiliate in eastern Libya and the other by an affiliate in the south.
A masked fighter delivers a long statement before the video switches between footage of the captives in the south being shot to death and the captives in the east being beheaded on a beach.
The footage released online shows one group of about 12 men being beheaded by armed men on a beach and another group of at least 16 being shot in the head in a desert area.
It was not immediately clear who the captives were.
The video bore the official logo of the ISIL media arm Al-Furqan and resembled previous videos released by the group.
A text on the screen identifies the men as “followers of the cross from the enemy Ethiopian Church”.
(Djoubti Talk) — On March 30, over 45 Ethiopian refugees were killed in a Saudi-led airstrike on Mazraq camp in Hajjah province of Yemen. The refugees were living in a camp run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), said Grum Teklehaimanot, an Ethiopian journalist in Yemen. Reuters news agency also confirmed the deaths of ‘dozens of displaced people’ in a camp now in the hands of the Yemeni Shiite rebels known as Hauthis.
The Ethiopian government never said a word about the tragedy. Instead, Tedros Adhanom, the foreign minister, said on April 3 that the embassy in Sana’a had come under attack earlier in the day. He said no one was injured. Tedros Adhanom’s story was a surprise for many Ethiopian residents in the Yemeni capital, according to Nebiyu Sirak, a respected Ethiopian journalist resident in Saudi Arabia.
As if posing for a picture with a 14-year-old girl winner of a false $20 million prize was not enough, why did Tedros lie again about an embassy or a consular office that was never attacked? His cover-up invites many questions. Was it a cover to divert public attention from the tragedy that befell the refugees that perished at Mazraq Camp? Or it is to justify to the rest of the people that even the embassy was unable to defend itself let alone to save the thousands of Ethiopians stranded in Yemen?
As Yemen continued to sink into civil war, foreign nationals were making frantic appeals to be saved from the violence. A frigate from the Chinese navy rescued some 220 foreign nationals and took them to Djibouti. Of those, about 30 were Ethiopians. Though Tedros Adhanom’s government had secretly appealed for the Chinese help, he didn’t mention that in public. Why?
Once Ethiopia’s Red Sea Port of Assab, now under Eritrean sovereignty, is only a stone’s throw away from the southern Yemeni city of Eden. Ethiopia had its own naval force before Meles Zenawi, an ultra Eritrean mercenary nationalist who died in 2012, and his retarded TPLF chieftains, turned Ethiopia into a landlocked nation in 1991. When the TPLF cadre Tedros Adhanom evaded the truth that TPLF had asked the far-away Chinese for a rescue operation in Ethiopia’s neighborhood, was he scared to stoke the fires still burning within the hearts of many Ethiopians?
“Dr Tedros also expressed his gratitude to the Ethiopian diplomatic staff in Yemen for their bold courage and commitment to support the speedy registration and safe evacuation of Ethiopian citizens residing in Yemen,” according to the Foreign Ministry’s website.
The staff are determined to help about 2000 Ethiopians evacuate Yemen? Really, Tedros? The staff known to have no courage to help Ethiopian nationals in peace time are ‘determined’ to help in war time? Forget about Ethiopian nationals, how are you to save your own staff? Or your response is the usual EPRDF staff, “Who cares if the staff perish in the inferno of the Yemeni war!”
Whatever the reason, Ethiopians duly know that they have fallen on bad times. They duly know they are under an enemy rule. An enemy that treats an Ethiopian journalist, a staunch peace activist, as a terrorist, and condemns him to 18 grueling years in prison. Google the name Eskinder Nega, and the facts are all over the wall for all to see. Ethiopians in the first place become stateless refugees as they run away from their number one enemy – the TPLF/EPRDF – a cruel enemy that creates and uses hunger to weaken and subdue the Ethiopian people to eternal slavery.
A large group, wielding sticks and pangas, tried to disrupt the gathering at the City Hall.
Around 7,000 people in Durban’s streets joined the peace march saying No to Xenophobia on 16 April 2015. Picture: Govan Whittles/EWN
JOHANNESBURG (EWN) – As the president, Members of Parliament, leaders and ordinary South Africans call for an end to xenophobia, fresh violence has once again broken out in the Durban CBD.
A march by an estimated 10 000 people against xenophobia has been met with clashes between locals and the police after they tried to march on a gathering attended by ministers and KwaZulu-Natal Premier Senzo Mchunu.
A large group, wielding sticks and pangas, tried to disrupt the gathering at the City Hall where thousands of people denounced xenophobia and pledged to resolve their differences without violence.
Police fired rubber bullets, water cannons and tear gas into the angry crowd.
There is a massive people police contingent, but the CBD remains volatile.
The march was called by Mchunu in the wake of the killing of five people in Durban’s townships during the xenophobic flare up.
Durban Mayor James Nxumalo said, “Looking at the turnout I think we are sending a very clear message. It is also a very clear and positive statement where people are united and saying no to xenophobia. We are hoping that after today’s march the situation will go back to normal.”
MPs across the political spectrum have condemned the recent wave of xenophobic violence gripping parts of the country, after President Jacob Zuma used his appearance in the National Assembly to call for calm and an end to the unrest.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s foreign minister says xenophobic violence in South Africa has displaced around 800 Zimbabweans and killed at least one.
The country is setting up a team to help those who want to return home.
Foreign Minister SimbarasheMumbengegwi says a number of Zimbabweans have told embassy officials in Durban that they want to go home.
The minister says government officials are working with the Zimbabwe embassy officials in South Africa to put the logistics in place for this to happen.
The official Herald newspaper say the embassy is investigating reports that two Zimbabweans may have been killed in the violence, including a toddler.
(Aljazeera) — After weeks of violence, primarily in KwaZuluNatal, thousands expected take part in solidarity rally in Durban.
Thousands of people are expected to attend a march in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban in solidarity with the country’s foreign nationals.
The march, on Thursday, which includes religious leaders and concerned citizens, comes after weeks of attacks against foreign nationals in which at least five people have been killed and 74 people arrested since the end of March, according to Colonel Jay Naicker, the police spokesperson.
As many people prepared to march in the coastal city of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, many shops also remained closed in the business capital of the country, Johannesburg in the Gauteng province fearing attacks as well.
Groups of people were said to be travelling to Durban from other provinces to join in the show of solidarity with the foreign nationals.
Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa, reporting from Durban, tweeted the following:
She said that people had been gathering and that while the numbers were not yet big, the crowd was expected to grow.
Similar attacks occurred in 2008 in which at least 60 people were killed.
Messages circulating on social media warned people in Gauteng province and KwaZulu-Natal to be on high alert for possible attacks and to also remain indoors.
Seeking refuge
In Malawi, officials have set up transit camps expected to house Malawians returning to the country, Kondwani Nankhumwa, the country’s information minister, said.
More than 2,000 foreigners have already sought shelter in refugee camps in Durban, a South African aid group said on Wednesday.
The refugee camps, set up on sports fields around Durban, will not be large enough if attacks on immigrants continue, said Imtiaz Sooliman of the Gift of the Givers organisation.
Those who can afford it are planning to leave the country, he said.
“They’ve lost their houses, they’ve lost their businesses, they’ve lost everything,” Sooliman said.
The organisation made the following appeal to the government on social media on Wednesday:
Whilst we make a call on all South Africans to support our initiative to show that we are a nation that cares, we also call on government…
South Africa President Jacob Zuma condemned the violence and assigned several cabinet ministers to work on the problem with officials in KwaZulu-Natal province.
The government is addressing South African citizens’ “complaints about illegal and undocumented migrants, the takeover of local shops and other businesses by foreign nationals as well as perceptions that foreign nationals perpetrate crime”, Zuma’s office said in a statement.
He also issued a warning to illegally operating foreign-owned businesses to close their doors.
Some foreign nationals boycotted the march in protest against the South African government’s efforts to resolve the problem.
Our correspondent tweeted the following from the march:
Thousands of foreigners flee to South African police stations after attacks
April 16, 2015 (CNN)–More than 2,000 people fled to South African police stations Thursday after mobs armed with machetes attacked foreigners in Durban, leaving at least five people dead, an aid group said.
The attacks in the port city killed two foreigners and three South Africans, including a 14-year-old boy, authorities said.
Heavily armed police scrambled to stop the clashes after local residents took to the streets this week, accusing foreigners from other African nations of taking their jobs.
“There has been an outpouring of support from ordinary South Africans who are disgusted with the attacks not only because they are foreign, or African, but because they are fellow human beings,”said Gift of the Givers charity, which is helping those seeking refuge at police stations.
“We are preparing aid packages for those who may journey onwards to their home countries.”
The aid group said it hopes the violence is limited to Durban, but assured foreigners it has a facility in Johannesburg to help those who might need shelter there.
“We have tents and all essential supplies on standby but pray that sanity prevails and this does not become necessary,” it said.
In the past, Johannesburg has been the epicenter of anti-foreigner tensions.
In 2008, scores were killed in attacks on foreigners in the poorest areas of Johannesburg. Most of the victims were Zimbabweans who had fled repression and dire economic circumstances. In that attack, police arrested more than 200 people for various crimes including rape, murder, robbery and theft.
