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  • Un vent nouveau sur le référencement de votre site espagnol
    https://www.tout-le-web.com/un-vent-nouveau-sur-le-referencement-de-votre-site-espagnol

    Le marché numérique espagnol est en pleine effervescence, et la visibilité en ligne y est devenue une compétition sans merci. Pour qu’un site internet espagnol se démarque, il doit adopter une stratégie de SEO (Search Engine Optimization) et de référencement adapté à sa cible et à ses spécificités culturelles et linguistiques. Avec les bonnes pratiques, […]

    #Entreprise

  • GNOME Shell Extension Manager App Gets Updated
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/03/gnome-shell-extension-manager-app-updated

    A big update to Extension Manager, a popular 3rd-party tool to browse, install, and manage GNOME Shell extensions without the need for a web browser, has been released. If you’re into customising Ubuntu, be it changing the look and layout, adding animated effects, patching in new features and capabilities, or modifying underlying behaviour, you’ll know that GNOME Shell extensions are essential — as is this terrific, user-friendly tool. Extension Manager 0.5 is described as a “Performance & Polish” release by its developer Matt Wakeman, and with an update to libadwaita 1.5, smarter adaptive behaviour, (much needed) search fixes, and other […] You’re reading GNOME Shell Extension Manager App Gets Updated, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without (...)

    #News #App_Updates #GNOME_Extensions

  • One in Three Migrant Deaths Occurs En route While Fleeing Conflict: IOM Report
    https://mailchi.mp/abbdbba817e3/one-in-three-migrant-deaths-occurs-en-route-while-fleeing-conflict-iom-repor

    One in Three Migrant Deaths Occurs En route While Fleeing Conflict: IOM Report
    Geneva/Berlin, 26 March – As the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Missing Migrants Project marks its ten-year milestone, a new report reveals alarming trends in migrant deaths and disappearances over the past decade.   More than one-third of deceased migrants whose country of origin could be identified come from countries in conflict or with large refugee populations, highlighting the dangers faced by those attempting to flee conflict zones without safe pathways.   However, the information on the identities of missing migrants is highly incomplete. Among the report’s key findings is the high number of unidentified deaths. More than two-thirds of migrants whose deaths were documented remain unidentified, leaving families and communities grappling with the ambiguous loss of their loved ones. This underscores the need for better coordinated data collection and identification processes to provide closure to affected families. 
    “Despite the many lives lost whose identities remain unknown, we know that almost 5,500 females have perished on migration routes during the last ten years and the number of identified children is nearly 3,500,” said Ugochi Daniels, IOM Deputy Director General for Operations. “The toll on vulnerable populations and their families urges us to turn the attention on the data into concrete action.” 
    The report, A decade of Documenting Migrant Deaths, looks back at the last ten years, with more than 63,000 deaths and disappearances documented during migration over that period —and more deaths recorded in 2023 than in any prior year. These figures demonstrate the urgent need for strengthened search and rescue capacities, facilitation of safe, regular migration pathways, and evidence-based action to prevent further loss of life. Action should also include intensified international cooperation against unscrupulous smuggling and trafficking networks. 
    When the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project began in 2014, information was collected almost exclusively from news articles on a simple spreadsheet. Ten years later, data collection has improved dramatically, but the reality for migrants forced to take dangerous routes has not.  Today, the Missing Migrants Project remains the only global open-access database on migrant deaths and disappearances, compiling information from wide-ranging sources including key informants from governments, UN officials, and civil society organizations.  
    Key findings from the report include: 
    Drowning as the Leading Cause of Death: Nearly 60 per cent of deaths documented during migration are linked to drowning with over 27,000 related deaths in the Mediterranean alone. The report emphasizes the necessity of enhancing search and rescue capacities to save lives at sea and underscores the importance of working with governments to facilitate safer migration routes. 
    Underreporting of Migrant Deaths: The more than 63,000 deaths and disappearances recorded during migration over the past decade are likely only a fraction of the actual number of lives lost worldwide. The report highlights the need for improved data collection efforts to accurately assess the scale of the issue and address the broader challenges of unsafe migration. There are more than 37,000 dead for whom no information on sex or age is available, indicating that the true number of deaths of women and children is likely far higher. 
    Rising Death Toll: Despite political commitments and media attention, migrant deaths are on the rise, with 2023 marking the highest annual death toll on record when over 8,500 deaths were recorded. So far in 2024, the trends are no less alarming. In the Mediterranean alone, while arrivals this year are significantly lower (16,818) compared to the same period in 2023 (26,984), the number of deaths are nearly as high as last year. 
    Increased Political Attention: An increasing number of global, regional and national initiatives and instruments advocate for action on missing migrants. Data from the Missing Migrants Project are used as a measure of (lack of) progress toward the SDG Agenda’s goal of safe migration. The UN Secretary-General’s 2022 Progress Declaration on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration underscores the crucial role of governments in preventing migrant deaths and calls for actionable recommendations to improve international coordination and humanitarian assistance. These recommendations, due to be released in 2024, will provide a global roadmap for addressing the ongoing crisis.

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#OIM#mortalite#routemigratoire#traversee#humanitaire#disparition#sante#migrationirreguliere

  • “Action file” on Tunisia outlines EU’s externalisation plans

    An “action file” obtained by Statewatch lays out the objectives and activities of the EU’s cooperation on migration with Tunisia – whose government was heavily criticized by the European Parliament this week for “an authoritarian reversal and an alarming backslide on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

    Externalisation of migration control

    The document (pdf), produced as part of the #Operational_Coordination_Mechanism_for_the_External_Dimension_of_Migration (#MOCADEM) and circulated within the Council in December 2023, summarizes ongoing EU efforts to externalise migration and border control to Tunisia. It covers the main developments since the signature of the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding of July 2023.

    The MoU is cited in the document as a cooperation “framework” whose implementation shall “continue”. Criticism also continues, with the organization Refugees International arguing:

    “The short-term securitisation approach to Tunisia advanced by Team Europe is… likely to fail on at least two fronts: both on its own terms by failing to stem irregular migration, and on legal and ethical terms by tying EU support to the inevitability of grave human rights abuses by Tunisian authorities.”

    From the document it is clear that the EU has intensified political and technical outreach to Tunisia through high-level visits from both EU and member state representatives and that the Tunisian authorities are involved in different initiatives, including through EU agencies, such as Europol and Frontex. The European Police College (CEPOL), the EU Agency for Asylum (EUAA) and Eurojust are also mentioned as potential actors for cooperation.

    The measures listed in the document target all potential migration from Tunisia to the EU. However, distinctions are drawn – including in the language used – between measures addressed to non-Tunisian nationals and measures addressed to Tunisian nationals.

    Measures addressed to non-Tunisian nationals

    For non-Tunisian nationals, “preventing irregular departures from, as well as irregular arrivals to Tunisia” is the key objective of ongoing cooperation in the areas of border management, anti-smuggling and search and rescue. The EU provides Tunisia different amounts of funding through existing projects.

    Border management, including search and rescue

    the EU finances the projects Strengthening the Tunisian Coast Guard Training Pillar, run by ICMPD (2023-2026) and the EUTF funded Border Management Programme for the Maghreb region (BMP-Maghreb) (2018-2024). Both projects aim at developing the Tunisian authorities’ border control capacity, for both land and sea borders, thus including search and rescue activities. This is done through the donation of equipment and the training of the Garde National of Tunisia and the Navy.

    As for equipment, details about the delivery of boats, engines and spare parts for putting search and rescue vessels to Tunisia are included in the document, including the provision of fuel. A new contract will “build and equip a command-and-control centre for the Tunisian national guard at the border with Libya,” to enhance cross-border cooperation with Libya.

    With regard to training, the document mentions a session for two officials in Rome as well as the participation of the Tunisian border control authorities in a Frontex workshop organised in the context of Joint Operation Themis. The MOCADEM reports that Tunisia considers talks on a working arrangement with Frontex “pre-mature.”

    Anti-smuggling

    The EU pursues the Anti-smuggling Operational Partnership (ASOP) to try to develop the Tunisian police capacity to investigate, prosecute and convict smugglers. Training is also key in this area.

    The document mentions a mentorship programme between Tunisia and the EU Member States on migrant smuggling. Cross-border cooperation in investigations is encouraged, also through Europol, information campaigns (in North Africa and along the Central Mediterranean), and regional action. There is an ongoing discussion on a Europol agreement to exchange personal data between Europol and Tunisian authorities.

    Return and reintegration of non-Tunisian nationals

    the EU finances IOM’s project on Migrant Protection, Return and Reintegration in North Africa, concretely supporting assisted voluntary return from Tunisia to countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The MOCADEM document states that the EU engages “with Tunisian authorities to develop a national mechanism for returns facilitation.”

    Direct capacity-building of national authorities to return non-Tunisian nationals to their country of origin is a novelty in the EU migration policies. This is a follow-up of the objective spelled out in the EU-Tunisia MoU of “developing a system for the identification and return of irregular migrants already present in Tunisia”. It is reported that a “new technical assistance programme to further support the return system in Tunisia is under preparation.”

    International protection for non-Tunisian nationals

    As usual, protection programmes receive much lower funding than other cooperation objectives for the securitisation of migration. In Tunisia, the EU will fund a project run by the UNCHR to enhance reception and access to international protection for asylum seekers and refugees.

    Measures addressed to Tunisian nationals

    For Tunisian nationals, the EU aims to increase return and readmission of Tunisian nationals deemed to be irregularly staying in the EU to Tunisia, privileging so-called “assisted voluntary return” and reintegration projects for Tunisian nationals over forced returns. At the same time, the EU stresses the importance of increasing opportunities for legal migration through the launch of a “Talent Partnership” and better visa conditions for Tunisian nationals.

    Deportations

    the EU finances a national reintegration support mechanism called “Tounesna,” as well as the Frontex Joint Reintegration Services, for which Frontex launched a new call for proposals. Key actors in this area are the High Level Network for Return, chaired by the EU Return Coordinator and composed of representatives of all Member States and Frontex.

    In October 2023, Tunisia was identified as one of the seven countries targeted for joint deportation actions. The document reports that the negotiations for an EU-Tunisia readmission agreement and visa facilitation agreements, which started in 2016, have been on hold since 2019 and that “Tunisia has shown no interest to date to relaunch the negotiations.”

    Legal migration

    The EU finances pilot projects under the Mobility Partnership Facility (MPF) and the regional project THAMM (2018-2023), which received extra funding. Again, the launch of an EU-Tunisia Talent Partnership is announced through a Joint Roadmap for a Talent Partnership, which is yet to be finalized.

    In the EU-Tunisia MoU, the EU promised to “take appropriate measures to facilitate legal mobility between the two Parties, including facilitating the granting of visas by reducing delays, costs and administrative procedure.” However, in this document there are no prospects for cooperation on visa policy. The document merely contains a reminder that visa policy is conditional on readmission cooperation.

    Ongoing cooperation

    While the European Parliament this week condemned a decision by the Commission to release €150 million to Tunisia through an urgent written procedure, bypassing the normal-decision making process, with a resolution that said the North African country is undergoing “an authoritarian reversal and an alarming backslide on democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”

    The resolution goes on to say that “over the last year, President Kais Saied has had opposition politicians, judges, media workers and civil society activists arbitrarily arrested and detained.”

    However, the cooperation being coordinated through MOCADEM remains largely beyond the reach of parliamentary scrutiny. As highlighted by a separate article published today by Statewatch and Migration-Control.info, the parliament’s lawyers agree with MEPs that this needs to change.

    https://www.statewatch.org/news/2024/march/action-file-on-tunisia-outlines-eu-s-externalisation-plans
    #Tunisie #externalisation #migrations #réfugiés #financement #Kais_Saied #accord #frontières #EU #UE #Union_européenne #contrôles_frontaliers

    –—

    ajouté à la métaliste sur le #Memorandum_of_Understanding (#MoU) avec la #Tunisie :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1020591

  • Sink the Boats

    The UK government is paying France to ‘Stop the Boats’. Now first-time footage reveals French police have violently intercepted dinghies sailing for Britain, risking the lives of people on board

    For decades, people have tried to reach the UK from northern France in order to claim asylum in Britain. With tightened security at French ports making it harder for stowaways, tens of thousands of people have crossed the English Channel in rubber dinghies, prompting the British government to make stopping the boats one of its top priorities.

    Last year, the UK announced that it would allocate nearly £500m to France over three years to prevent boats from leaving its shores.

    The British government has repeatedly pressured France to intercept the boats at sea. France has previously refused on the basis that it would place lives at risk.

    But in collaboration with Le Monde, The Observer and Der Spiegel, Lighthouse Reports can reveal that French police officers have carried out so-called “pullbacks” in the Channel, in moves experts say mirror the deadly and illegal tactics used in the Aegean and the Central Mediterranean by the Greek and Libyan coast guards.

    We’ve established through sources that the patrol boat used by the French police to carry out at least one of these dangerous manoeuvres was funded by the British.

    Meanwhile, over the last two years there has been a sharp increase in the number of drownings in the sea off northern France where most of the pullbacks have taken place.
    METHODS

    We obtained previously unseen footage, leaked documents and witness testimony showing French police have used aggressive methods to intercept migrant vessels at sea, including circling a small boat, causing waves to flood it; ramming into a small boat while threatening passengers with pepper spray; and puncturing boats while they are already at sea, forcing people to swim back to shore. We were able to geolocate the videos to confirm their veracity.

    We showed the videos to a number of maritime experts, UK Border Force officers and French coast guards, who said the tactics would have clearly endangered the lives of those on board and appeared to be illegal. Leaked maritime documents helped us to establish that these types of interceptions at sea are not compatible with French law.

    We then obtained an additional crucial piece of evidence: a complaint filed by a coast guard officer to the prosecutor about an incident in which French police officers had ordered a National Society of Sea Rescues (SNSM) crew to puncture a migrant dinghy that had already set sail despite the risk of drowning being “obvious and imminent”.

    To find out whether these interceptions were happening on a wider scale, we travelled to Northern France to speak to people on the ground trying to reach the UK in boats. A number of people described having their dinghies slashed by police once they had already set sail.

    We were able to link the hundreds of millions of pounds provided by Britain to France with these tactics when sources confirmed that police patrol vessels, including the exact vessel seen in one of the videos, had been bought by the French with funding provided by the British government.

    An analysis of data by charity Alarm Phone meanwhile showed a sharp increase in the number of people known to have drowned within the vicinity of the French coastline, where most of the pullbacks we documented took place – with one in 2022 compared to five already this year.
    STORYLINES

    We met Satinder* from Punjab, a predominantly Sikh region in northern India, in Calais.

    Five days earlier, he and two friends had tried to make it to Britain by boat. The dinghy was overcrowded with around 46 people, mainly Indians and Afghans, on board. “We sailed for around 10 minutes at dawn without a hitch in an overloaded boat,” he said. “Then a boat came. It was a gendarmerie boat, they had uniforms. They said: ‘Stop the boat’.

    “They went around the boat like in a circle and then they stabbed the boat and left. We had to swim for about 10 minutes […] We nearly died.”

    The two friends Satinder was with in the boat gave matching accounts. We spoke to four other people who recounted similar stories on different occasions.

    “It reminds me of the Greek and Turkish coast guards,” said French customs coast guard Rémi Vandeplanque.”And that’s shameful for the French. If the police continue to use such tactics, there is likely to be a death at some point.”

    https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/sink-the-boats
    #Manche #La_Manche #migrations #réfugiés #sauvetages #UK #Angleterre #France #stop_the_boats #externalisation #enquête #contre-enquête #pull-backs #financement #mourir_aux_Frontières #morts_aux_frontières

    • Revealed: UK-funded French forces putting migrants’ lives at risk with small-boat tactics

      Exclusive: newly obtained footage and leaked documents show how a ‘mass casualty event’ could arise from aggressive tactics employed by border forces

      French police funded by the UK government have endangered the lives of vulnerable migrants by intercepting small boats in the Channel, using tactics that search and rescue experts say could cause a “mass casualty event”.

      Shocking new evidence obtained by the Observer, Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde and Der Spiegel reveals for the first time that the French maritime police have tried physically to force small boats to turn around – manoeuvres known as “pullbacks” – in an attempt to prevent them reaching British shores.

      Newly obtained footage, leaked documents and witness testimonies show that the French authorities have used aggressive tactics including circling a migrant boat, causing waves to flood the dinghy; ramming into a small boat while threatening passengers with a large tank of pepper spray; and puncturing boats when they are already at sea, forcing migrants to swim back to shore.

      The French authorities have previously refused the UK’s requests for them to carry out interceptions at sea, stating that they contravened international maritime law. But evidence indicates there has been an escalation in the use of these tactics since last summer.

      Rishi Sunak has pledged to “stop the boats” crossing the Channel and has promised hundreds of millions of pounds to France to pay for more surveillance and border guards to prevent people making the journey. Last Wednesday the government’s safety of Rwanda (asylum and immigration) bill suffered several defeats in the House of Lords, delaying the prime minister’s plan to see flights for Kigali take off until after Easter.

      Ministers claim that the bill will act as a deterrent to all those crossing the Channel from northern France to the UK. In the first video obtained and verified for this investigation, a police boat in Dunkirk harbour circles close to a dinghy holding about 25 people, creating a wake that floods the boat.

      The police vessel is seen advancing towards the dinghy at speed, before turning sharply to create waves, circling and coming back again. Migrants are seen wearing foam-packed lifejackets and attempting to bale water out using their shoes.

      Sources confirmed that the police patrol vessel used to carry out the manoeuvre seen in the video was bought by the French authorities with funding provided by the UK government under the “Sandhurst treaty”, a bilateral border security deal signed at the royal military academy in 2018.

      “This is a textbook pushback – exactly the same as we see in Greece,” said one search and rescue expert who was shown the footage. “That one manoeuvre alone could cause a mass casualty event. The water is deep enough to drown in. I’ve seen this in the central Mediterranean many times, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this happening in the Channel.”

      Previous evidence has shown how the Greek coastguard has forced boats carrying migrants back into Turkish waters in the Aegean Sea, in some cases by manoeuvring around them at high speed to create waves.

      Two senior UK Border Force sources confirmed that the tactic could lead to multiple deaths and injuries. “If the blades [of the French boat] make contact with the vessel, it will slash right through it,” said one operational Border Force official.

      “The other thing is a collision. The weight and the force of that vessel could ride straight over the top of the rib. It would knock the passengers out, knock them unconscious and into the water. It could potentially lead to death. I can’t believe any mariner could condone that.”

      Maritime experts added that they would be “very surprised” if Border Force and HM Coastguard were not aware of these tactics being used, with one adding: “One hundred per cent, someone high up will definitely be aware of this.”

      In a second video, members of the French gendarmerie drive alongside a dinghy in a speedboat about 12 miles from the French coast, threatening to use a large tank of pepper spray against a boat carrying migrants. They then proceed to ram their vessel into the dinghy. “They don’t even know who’s on board – whether there’s someone asthmatic that you’re using pepper spray against, or pregnant women,” said a Border Force official. “That could really harm people.”

      In evidence of a third attempted pullback, a complaint filed by a member of the French customs coastguard to the public prosecutor in Boulogne-sur-Mer alleges that on 11 August 2023 police officers ordered a National Society of Sea Rescues (SNSM) crew to puncture a small boat that had already set sail. In an email seen by this investigation, the complainant, Rémi Vandeplanque, states that the SNSM crew “obviously refused” to do this, adding that the risk of drowning if they had done so was “obvious and imminent”.

      Testimony from several sources who boarded small boats bound for the UK supports the claims that French police have used such tactics. “There were four of them [French gendarmes] on the boat,” said one man, who was from India. “They went round the boat in a circle and then they stabbed the boat and left. We had to swim for about 10 minutes … We nearly died.” On 9 February 2024, the man lodged a complaint with the French human rights ombudsman. The incident is under investigation.

      Sources within France’s interior ministry have described the UK government’s “enormous pressure on a daily basis” for the French maritime police to prevent small boat departures, with one French civil servant describing the pressure as “intense” and “nonstop”.

      Another senior civil servant, who was in post until the end of 2020, added: “As far as the British were concerned, the boats had to be caught at sea. They sometimes insisted on it.”

      In September last year, then immigration minister Robert Jenrick said in the House of Commons that “there is clearly more that we need the French to do for us”, pointing to a recent trip to Belgium, where he said the authorities had “been willing to intercept in the water small boats leaving its shores”. He added: “That has proven decisive. Small boats from Belgian waters are now extremely rare, so that is an approach that we encourage the French to follow.”

      In August 2021, during a visit to the Greek island of Samos, then home secretary Priti Patel went out on patrol with the Greek coastguard, which is known for its use of aggressive pushbacks in the Aegean.

      “She came back invigorated,” said a Home Office source with knowledge of the trip. “They were very aggressive, had a good success rate of detection and were swift in how they processed them [asylum seekers]. She liked their posturing of ‘protecting borders’ and working with the military, though there was recognition that a lot of this wouldn’t be lawful in the UK.”

      Britain has allocated more than £700m to France to prevent irregular migration since 2014.

      At a summit in March 2023, Sunak announced that Britain would give France £500m over three years to fund additional border guards and a new detention facility, as well as video surveillance cameras, drones and night-vision binoculars, among other equipment.

      The package was, according to several sources at the French interior ministry, a turning point. “This has really put the relationship between the two countries on a contractual footing,” said one senior official.

      Last month the UK signed a working agreement with the European border agency Frontex to bolster intelligence sharing and deploy UK Border Force officials to coordinate the Channel response.

      When contacted by this investigation, the prefecture for the north of France confirmed that a police boat had circled a dinghy and that the aim of the intervention was to “dissuade passengers” from approaching the open sea, adding: “It’s the only time we’ve been able to intercept a small boat using this manoeuvre and it was a deterrent. All the migrants were recovered and the smugglers arrested.”

      A Home Office spokesperson said: “An unacceptable number of people are crossing the Channel and we will do whatever is necessary to end these perilous and fatal journeys. We remain committed to building on the successes that saw arrivals drop by more than a third last year.

      “Not only have we introduced tougher legislation and agreements with international partners, but we continue to work closely with our French counterparts, who are working tirelessly to save lives and stop the boats.”

      https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/23/uk-funding-french-migrants-small-boat-border-forces

    • Dans la Manche, les techniques agressives de la police pour empêcher les traversées de migrants

      Officiellement, la police a interdiction formelle d’intercepter en mer les embarcations de migrants qui tentent de traverser la Manche. Après plusieurs mois d’enquête, « Le Monde » et ses partenaires de Lighthouse Reports, de « The Observer » et du « Der Spiegel » ont pourtant pu documenter différentes situations où les forces de l’ordre emploient des manœuvres dangereuses à l’encontre de ces « small boats » pourtant déjà à l’eau.

      Il pleut des cordes et la grande tonnelle blanche, sous laquelle plusieurs dizaines de personnes viennent s’abriter, a du mal à supporter le poids de l’eau qui s’accumule. Il est presque 11 heures, dans une zone périphérique de Loon-Plage Nord), ce mardi 12 mars, à l’entrée de l’un des nombreux campements de personnes migrantes présents depuis des années maintenant sur la commune, voisine de Dunkerque.

      Ziko (les personnes citées par leur prénom ont requis l’anonymat), 16 ans, vivote ici depuis cinq mois. Le jeune Somalien a déjà essayé cinq fois de gagner le Royaume-Uni. A chaque fois en bateau. A chaque fois sans succès. Systématiquement, les policiers sont intervenus pour stopper l’embarcation à bord de laquelle lui et d’autres espéraient traverser la Manche. « A chaque fois, ils ont crevé le bateau », se souvient-il.

      Il y a environ deux semaines de cela, les policiers ont fait une manœuvre au large de la plage de Gravelines (Nord) que le jeune homme n’est pas près d’oublier. Les fonctionnaires ont fait obstacle au canot alors qu’il était déjà en mer. « On était à plusieurs dizaines de mètres des côtes quand un bateau pneumatique avec cinq ou six policiers s’est approché et a crevé notre embarcation. » Ziko rapporte que lui et la cinquantaine de passagers sont tous tombés à l’eau. « J’avais de l’eau jusqu’à la poitrine, c’était très dangereux. Il y avait des enfants qui étaient portés à bout de bras par des adultes pour ne pas se noyer. »

      De ses cinq tentatives de traversée, c’est la seule au cours de laquelle le bateau de Ziko a été crevé en mer. Son témoignage, rare, vient percuter la version officielle livrée par les autorités depuis 2018 et l’explosion du phénomène des small boats, ces petites embarcations de migrants dont le but est de rejoindre le Royaume-Uni. Officiellement, la police a interdiction formelle d’intervenir lorsque les small boats sont déjà en mer. Dans une directive à diffusion restreinte du 10 novembre 2022, le préfet maritime de la Manche et de la mer du Nord, Marc Véran, rappelait que « le cadre de l’action des moyens agissant en mer (…) y compris dans la bande littorale des 300 mètres (…) est celui de la recherche et du sauvetage en mer » et « ne permet pas de mener des actions coercitives de lutte contre l’immigration clandestine ».

      Et ce, en dépit de la pression constante sur le littoral : alors que moins de 2 000 personnes ont traversé la Manche en 2019, elles étaient plus de 45 000 en 2022 et près de 30 000 en 2023. Un phénomène qui est devenu un irritant majeur dans la relation franco-britannique.

      Manœuvre dangereuse

      Au terme de plusieurs mois d’enquête, Le Monde, ses partenaires du collectif de journalistes Lighthouse Reports, du journal britannique The Observer et de l’hebdomadaire allemand Der Spiegel ont pourtant pu documenter différentes situations, parfois filmées, où des tactiques agressives similaires à celles que dénonce Ziko ont été employées depuis juillet 2023. D’après nos informations, elles sont même comptabilisées par le ministère de l’intérieur sous la dénomination explicite d’« interceptions en mer ». Des données d’une sensibilité telle qu’elles ne font l’objet d’aucune publicité.

      D’autres que Ziko en témoignent. La Défenseure des droits explique au Monde que quatre saisines sont en cours d’investigation portant sur des interceptions en mer en 2022 et 2023. Par ailleurs, l’inspection générale de la police nationale est saisie depuis l’automne 2023 d’une enquête préliminaire à la suite d’un signalement au parquet de Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) effectué par Rémi Vandeplanque, un garde-côte douanier et représentant du syndicat Solidaires.

      Ce dernier rapporte que, le 11 août 2023, au petit matin, un gendarme aurait demandé à un membre d’équipage de la Société nationale de sauvetage en mer (SNSM) de l’aider à percer un bateau au large de la plage de Berck-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) avec une dizaine de personnes à son bord. Une manœuvre dangereuse que le sauveteur a refusé d’effectuer, tout en avisant le centre régional opérationnel de surveillance et de sauvetage (Cross) de Gris-Nez (Pas-de-Calais).

      L’échange a été entendu sur l’un des canaux radio utilisés par le Cross. « En tant que policier, on ne peut pas agir d’une manière qui met la vie d’autrui en danger, affirme Rémi Vandeplanque. On doit respecter les règles. » Sollicitée, la préfecture maritime de la Manche et de la mer du Nord assure que, « si elle est avérée, cette initiative ne pourrait être qu’une initiative individuelle de la personne en question et inappropriée ».

      Rares sont les images qui documentent ces pratiques, mais une vidéo inédite que nous nous sommes procurée, datée du 9 octobre 2023, montre un semi-rigide de la police nationale tourner autour d’un small boat dans le port de Dunkerque en créant à dessein des vagues qui déstabilisent la petite embarcation. A bord se trouvent pourtant une trentaine de passagers. Une partie d’entre eux se tient sur le boudin du canot. De l’eau entre dans l’embarcation au point que ceux assis au milieu sont immergés jusqu’aux genoux. Le policier semble ensuite dire aux occupants du petit bateau de retourner sur le bord. Les migrants seront finalement débarqués sains et saufs.

      Une manœuvre dangereuse, jugent plusieurs experts maritimes, d’autant que, en cas de chavirement, les embarcations légères des forces de l’ordre ne sont pas dimensionnées pour conduire des opérations de sauvetage. « Cette vidéo m’a choqué, raconte Kevin Saunders, ancien officier de la Border Force britannique en poste à Calais jusqu’en 2016 et connu pour ses positions extrêmement critiques à l’égard de l’immigration. Elle me rappelle ce que les Grecs faisaient à la frontière maritime avec la Turquie. Je suis surpris que les Français fassent cela parce que c’est contraire à leur interprétation du droit de la mer. »

      « Les Français sont poussés à jouer le même rôle dans la Manche que celui que l’Union européenne offre aux pays africains. Paris reçoit beaucoup d’argent des Anglais pour empêcher les migrants de partir ou les arrêter en mer », renchérit de son côté le politiste autrichien Gerald Knaus, architecte de l’accord de lutte contre l’immigration irrégulière entre l’Union européenne et la Turquie, faisant référence à la pression grandissante des autorités britanniques.

      Crever des bateaux bondés

      De son côté, la préfecture de la zone de défense et de sécurité Nord relativise : « On était en journée, dans une enceinte portuaire. Le but de l’intervention est de dissuader les passagers de s’approcher de la digue du Braek [qui mène à la mer du Nord]. C’est la seule fois où on a pu intercepter un small boat par cette manœuvre et ça a été dissuasif. Toutes les personnes migrantes ont été sauvées et les passeurs interpellés. »

      Dans une seconde vidéo, diffusée sur le réseau social TikTok en juillet 2023, un semi-rigide appartenant à la vedette de gendarmerie maritime Aber-Ildut, déployée depuis 2022 dans la Manche, est filmé en train de percuter à deux reprises une embarcation de migrants à pleine vitesse, au large des côtes de Boulogne-sur-Mer. Trois gendarmes sont à bord. L’un d’entre eux brandit une bombe de gaz lacrymogène en direction du small boat et intime à ses passagers de s’arrêter. Une pratique, encore une fois, contraire au cadre opérationnel français.

      « Refusant le contrôle coopérant, aucune action de coercition n’a été réalisée et cette embarcation a librement poursuivi sa route, précise la préfecture maritime, interrogée sur cette action. Le nombre de ces contrôles reste très modeste, aucun naufrage, blessé ou procédure non conforme n’a été signalé. »

      D’autres témoignages, recueillis auprès de migrants à Calais (Pas-de-Calais) ou à Loon-Plage, décrivent des tentatives de traversées empêchées par des forces de l’ordre, qui s’avancent dans l’eau, jusqu’aux épaules parfois, pour crever des bateaux bondés de passagers. « A aucun moment de telles consignes ne sont données ni même suggérées aux équipes coordonnées, assure pourtant la préfecture maritime, bien au contraire, la préservation de la vie humaine en mer est le seul credo qui vaille. »

      La lutte contre l’immigration irrégulière franchit-elle la ligne rouge ? Le 10 mars 2023, une grappe de journalistes trépignent dans la cour de l’Elysée balayée par un vent hivernal. Tous attendent la poignée de main entre le chef de l’Etat, Emmanuel Macron, et le premier ministre britannique, Rishi Sunak, sur le perron du palais présidentiel. C’est le premier sommet bilatéral entre les deux pays depuis cinq ans. Le rapprochement qui doit être mis en scène ce jour-là va s’incarner sur un sujet : l’immigration. Londres annonce le versement sur trois ans de 543 millions d’euros à la France pour « stopper davantage de bateaux », au titre du traité de Sandhurst de 2018.

      Cet argent va permettre de financer le déploiement de réservistes et l’installation de barrières et de caméras de vidéosurveillance sur la Côte d’Opale, mais aussi la surveillance aérienne du littoral ou encore l’équipement des forces de l’ordre en drones, jumelles à vision nocturne ou semi-rigides, comme celui que l’on voit à l’œuvre dans la vidéo prise dans le port de Dunkerque. Une tranche importante d’une centaine de millions d’euros est aussi dévolue à des projets immobiliers tels que la création d’un centre de rétention administrative vers Dunkerque ou d’un lieu de cantonnement pour les CRS à Calais. Désormais, plus de 700 policiers et gendarmes sillonnent vingt-quatre heures sur vingt-quatre heures les 150 kilomètres de littoral.

      « Pression énorme » des Britanniques

      Il n’est pas question ici de sauvetage en mer, au grand dam de certains opérateurs qui verraient bien leur flotte renouvelée alors que les naufrages d’embarcations sont récurrents et mettent à rude épreuve les équipages. Ainsi la SNSM a échoué à plusieurs reprises à bénéficier des fonds Sandhurst, « parce que son action n’est pas assimilable à de la lutte contre l’immigration illégale », justifie à regret un cadre de l’association dans un document que nous avons pu consulter.

      L’enveloppe d’un demi-milliard d’euros débloquée par les Britanniques en 2023 constitue, de l’aveu de plusieurs sources au ministère de l’intérieur, un tournant. « Cela a vraiment contractualisé la relation entre les deux pays, rapporte un cadre de la Place Beauvau, sous le couvert de l’anonymat. Les Anglais se comportent avec nous comme nous on le ferait avec un pays tiers. Ils mettent une pression énorme au quotidien sur le déblocage des crédits, si les chiffres ne s’améliorent pas. C’est non-stop et à tous les niveaux. »

      Déjà présents au sein d’un centre conjoint d’information et de coordination franco-britannique ainsi que dans une unité de renseignement à Coquelles (Pas-de-Calais), des officiers de liaison britanniques de la Border Force participent aussi, officiellement comme simples observateurs, à la réunion hebdomadaire de l’état-major de lutte contre l’immigration clandestine. « Ils sont extrêmement intrusifs, mais ils connaissent bien la zone, ils savent où on contrôle bien, où on est en difficulté », affirme un cadre de la gendarmerie.

      Pour tarir les flux de migrants, les Britanniques ne manquent pas d’idées. En octobre 2020, le gouvernement conservateur de Boris Johnson disait réfléchir à installer des machines à vagues pour repousser les small boats. En août 2021, la ministre britannique de l’intérieur d’alors, Priti Patel, est revenue enthousiasmée d’une visite en Grèce où elle a effectué des patrouilles avec les gardes-côtes helléniques en mer Egée, l’une des portes d’entrée en Europe. « Elle a dit que nous devrions apprendre des Grecs, se souvient une source au Home Office. Ils étaient très agressifs, avaient un bon taux de détection. » Et ont, à de nombreuses reprises, fait l’objet d’accusations de refoulements illégaux de demandeurs d’asile vers la Turquie.

      Toutes ces idées sont partagées avec la France lors de réunions bilatérales. « Pour les Britanniques, il fallait attraper les bateaux en mer. Ils le disaient de façon par moment insistante, lâche un haut fonctionnaire du ministère de l’intérieur, en poste jusqu’à fin 2020. Ils nous ont même expliqué comment faire, par exemple en lançant des grappins ou des filets. » A la préfecture de la zone de défense et de sécurité Nord, on reconnaît que « de nouvelles techniques sont essayées en permanence », à l’image de celle qui consiste à paralyser l’hélice d’un bateau de migrants à l’aide de filets.

      Mais « cela n’a pas été concluant », assure-t-on. « Notre stratégie, ça a été plutôt de dire qu’il fallait une forte présence sur les plages et empêcher les livraisons de bateaux, corrobore un ancien directeur de la police aux frontières. En mer, on porte secours aux personnes, on ne les intercepte pas. » D’autres croient que ce qui a freiné les autorités tient plutôt à des contingences matérielles : « Il n’y avait pas de moyens nautiques pour cela », assure l’ancien haut fonctionnaire du ministère de l’intérieur.

      Vingt-quatre noyades depuis 2023

      L’ampleur du phénomène des traversées persistant, les digues ont-elles sauté ? Les manœuvres en mer des forces de l’ordre « se comptent sur les doigts d’une main », balaye une source au ministère de l’intérieur.

      Le 10 mars 2023, tandis qu’Emmanuel Macron et Rishi Sunak enterrent à l’Elysée des années de brouille diplomatique, le préfet maritime Véran signe une nouvelle directive à diffusion restreinte. Elle précise le cadre de certaines manœuvres opérationnelles face à l’apparition du phénomène des taxis boats, ces embarcations qui longent la côte et récupèrent les migrants directement à l’eau pour éviter les interceptions sur les plages. La directive ouvre la voie à l’interception de small boats en mer par les forces de sécurité intérieure, à condition d’opérer « uniquement de jour », dans la bande côtière de 200 mètres de littoral, avant que le taxi boat n’embarque des passagers et dans le cas où « moins de trois personnes » seraient à bord.

      L’intervention est conditionnée, explique le vice-amiral, au comportement coopératif des occupants du bateau, mais aussi à l’absence de risques de mise en danger de la vie humaine. « En dehors des missions dédiées de contrôle des taxis boats, (…) le cadre juridique de la lutte contre l’immigration clandestine en mer se limite à l’exercice de pouvoirs de police à l’encontre des passeurs et non des passagers eux-mêmes », insiste M. Véran. Le préfet maritime ordonne d’éviter à tout prix des « routes de collision ».

      A la garde-côte douanière, Rémi Vandeplanque s’inquiète : « C’est une évolution choquante, mais ce n’est vraiment pas une surprise. » Un sentiment partagé par l’association d’aide aux migrants Utopia 56, présente sur le littoral et qui fustige, par la voix de son porte-parole, Nikolaï Posner, une « violence stérile et illégitime ». « Depuis octobre 2021 et la mise en place d’une maraude qui sillonne la côte, l’association est souvent la première à recueillir les témoignages de ceux qui ont tenté la traversée. »

      Sollicitée sur les différents cas de pratiques dangereuses des forces de l’ordre à l’encontre de small boats déjà à l’eau, la préfecture de la zone de défense et de sécurité Nord renvoie vers la préfecture maritime de la Manche et de la mer du Nord, qui est l’autorité compétente en mer. De plus, elle insiste sur la violence des réseaux de passeurs, confrontés à « la montée en puissance des saisies de bateaux en amont du littoral et sur les plages ».

      Les autorités décrivent ainsi comment « des personnes migrantes sont parfois sommées de créer des lignes de défense » et de jeter des pierres aux forces de l’ordre, pour permettre la mise à l’eau des small boats. Quarante et un policiers et gendarmes ont été blessés à cette occasion en 2023 et la préfecture a dénombré sur la même période « 160 confrontations sur les plages, c’est-à-dire avec usage de la force et de gaz lacrymogènes, alors qu’il n’y en a quasiment pas eu en 2022 ».

      C’est ce qui s’est notamment passé le 15 décembre 2023, à Sangatte, dans le Pas-de-Calais. D’après les éléments partagés par le parquet de Boulogne-sur-Mer, un groupe de migrants aurait fait barrage à des policiers pour permettre à un bateau de partir. Les policiers auraient essuyé des jets de projectiles et fait usage de gaz lacrymogènes en retour. Un récit en substance corroboré par plusieurs témoins présents sur place ce jour-là. Parvenu à prendre la mer, le small boat aurait rapidement subi une avarie de moteur et voulu regagner le rivage.

      Un migrant somalien parmi les passagers assure que, à bord du bateau, un jeune homme de 25 ans a par ailleurs été victime d’un malaise. La police aurait continué d’user de gaz lacrymogènes et se serait avancée pour crever le bateau avant qu’il n’ait pu atteindre le rivage. « Une personne de nationalité soudanaise se retrouve inanimée sur la plage », selon le parquet, et décède peu de temps après d’un arrêt cardio-respiratoire, en dépit des tentatives de le réanimer. « Depuis août 2023, on observe une recrudescence des événements dramatiques », dit le procureur de Boulogne-sur-Mer, Guirec Le Bras. Sans parvenir à expliquer cette particularité, il note que sa juridiction a recensé dix-neuf décès par noyade, survenus pour « la plupart au bord de l’eau ».

      Au total, selon l’estimation de la préfecture du Nord, vingt-quatre personnes sont décédées par noyade depuis 2023. Les autorités incriminent des « embarcations beaucoup plus chargées et une dégradation de la qualité des bateaux ». Dans un rapport publié en janvier, le réseau d’activistes Alarm Phone alertait sur ces morts près des côtes : « L’augmentation des fonds alloués à la France s’est traduite par un renforcement de la police, une augmentation de la violence sur les plages et, par conséquent, une augmentation des embarquements dangereusement surpeuplés et chaotiques au cours desquels des personnes perdent la vie. »

      « Nous avons dû nager »

      C’est peu ou prou ce que rapportent des migrants après une tentative de traversée échouée dans la nuit du 2 au 3 mars. Un exilé syrien de 27 ans, Jumaa Alhasan, s’est noyé dans le canal de l’Aa, un fleuve côtier qui se jette dans la mer du Nord. Plusieurs témoins, interrogés par Le Monde, assurent l’avoir vu tomber dans l’eau lors d’une intervention des forces de l’ordre qui aurait provoqué la panique des passeurs et poussé le Syrien à s’élancer depuis les rives de l’Aa pour tenter de sauter sur le canot en marche, là où le bateau était censé accoster et embarquer tout le monde. « Pour moi, il ne serait pas mort si les policiers français n’avaient pas été là », ne décolère pas Youssef, témoin de la scène. Le corps de Jumaa Alhasan a été retrouvé dans le chenal de l’Aa mardi 19 mars.

      Il est près de midi sur un des campements de Calais, ce 22 janvier. Sous le crachin habituel, un homme débite du bois pour alimenter un brasero autour duquel viennent se masser une demi-douzaine d’hommes. La plupart viennent du Pendjab, une région à majorité sikhe du nord de l’Inde. Tous sont arrivés il y a quelques semaines dans le nord de la France.

      Cinq jours plus tôt, Satinder, Paramjit et Gurfateh ont tenté une traversée. Ils ont longé l’autoroute qui mène jusqu’au port de Calais pour arriver au pied des dunes. « On a mis le bateau sur la plage, on l’a gonflé, tout se passait bien », rappelle Satinder, grand gaillard barbu, emmitouflé dans un cache-cou. Les trois hommes naviguent une petite dizaine de minutes au petit jour sans anicroche. Ils sont quarante-six à bord, la plupart avec des gilets de sauvetage. La météo n’est pas mauvaise, la mer presque plate.

      Ils entendent finalement une voix qui semble les poursuivre : « Stop the boat. » Un bateau s’approche du leur. La voix répète : « Stop the boat. » Satinder aperçoit une embarcation de la gendarmerie qui arrive par l’ouest. Le conducteur panique, remet les gaz sans parvenir à distancer les gendarmes. « Ils étaient quatre sur le bateau. Ils ont tourné autour de nous et ils nous ont dit que les conditions météorologiques étaient trop dangereuses, qu’ils ne pouvaient pas nous laisser partir », explique Satinder. L’un des gendarmes sort alors un « click-knife [un couteau d’attaque] », raconte Gurfateh, et assène un coup dans l’embarcation. L’air s’échappe du boudin. Le bateau s’affaisse.

      Le conducteur met alors le cap sur la terre ferme, mais le bateau coule avant de rejoindre la plage. « Nous avons dû nager une dizaine de minutes. Heureusement qu’il n’y avait presque que des adultes. Il y avait juste une petite fille de 4 ans », complète Satinder. Sur la plage, le groupe, hébété, reprend ses esprits avant de regagner la route du campement. Les trois hommes n’ont pas abandonné l’idée de traverser. Le 9 février, ils ont saisi la Défenseure des droits. « Ce jour-là, nous avons failli mourir. »

      https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/03/23/dans-la-manche-les-techniques-agressives-de-la-police-pour-empecher-les-trav

  • The impact of the climate crisis on gender inequality. Looking to the frontlines in search of priorities for policy
    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2024.1304535

    The climate crisis disproportionately impacts women and girls all over the world. To understand what the priorities in terms of policy are, an examination is conducted on the impacts taking place in South Asia (focusing on the countries of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan), an area of the globe that is highly vulnerable to climate change and is characterized by having strong patriarchal values. Gender stereotypes and roles in the region heighten women and girls’ vulnerability to climate impacts, both in general and in situations of crisis resulting from extreme weather events. Deepening the understanding of the climate crisis’ impact on gender in South Asia, a region at the frontline of these effects, can assist in reaching a baseline understanding of the challenge from a global (...)

  • Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00478-x

    Most experts agree that nuclear fusion won’t contribute significantly to the crucial goal of decarbonizing by mid-century to combat the climate crisis. Helion’s most optimistic estimate is that by 2029 it will produce enough energy to power 40,000 average US households; one assessment suggests that ChatGPT, the chatbot created by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, is already consuming the energy of 33,000 homes. It’s estimated that a search driven by generative AI uses four to five times the energy of a conventional web search. Within years, large AI systems are likely to need as much energy as entire nations.

    And it’s not just energy. Generative AI systems need enormous amounts of fresh water to cool their processors and generate electricity. In West Des Moines, Iowa, a giant data-centre cluster serves OpenAI’s most advanced model, GPT-4. A lawsuit by local residents revealed that in July 2022, the month before OpenAI finished training the model, the cluster used about 6% of the district’s water. As Google and Microsoft prepared their Bard and Bing large language models, both had major spikes in water use — increases of 20% and 34%, respectively, in one year, according to the companies’ environmental reports. One preprint1 suggests that, globally, the demand for water for AI could be half that of the United Kingdom by 2027 . In another2, Facebook AI researchers called the environmental effects of the industry’s pursuit of scale the “elephant in the room”.

  • #GNOME 46 : The Best New Features
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/03/gnome-46-new-features

    GNOME 46 is released on March 20 and the update will be at the heart of the upcoming Ubuntu 24.04 release — so are you wondering what sort of improvements it brings? Well, I gotcha’ covered, innit. In this post I run-through the best #GNOME_46 features, changes, and usability enhancements. And there’s a fair bit, including super-charged search features in the Nautilus file manager, streamlining to the Settings app, support for remote login over RDP, and some small but sensible buffs to GNOME Shell notifications. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS ships with GNOME 46 by default so if this round-up leaves […] You’re reading GNOME 46: The Best New Features, a blog post from OMG! Ubuntu. Do not reproduce elsewhere without (...)

    #News



  • Macron Destitution

    4 initiatives citoyennes à l’Assemblée ouvertes au vote populaire demandent la destitution de Macron.


    ☆ votez pour les 4 ☆


    La dernière action notable en destitution, n°1123 https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives/i-1123 a fini classée sans suite par la commission des lois, malgré un franc succès populaire, un avion publicitaire et 66k voix au compteur - 2ème meilleur score de tous les temps.

    La vidéo du passage en commission https://videos.assemblee-nationale.fr/video.13990068_65264c8799955?timecode=2119320 montre les arguments, dont : « 66k certes, mais Macron a été élu avec 18.8 millions de voix », sous-entendu « faites mieux ».


    ☆ viser 19 millions de voix ☆



    publiées entre le 09/10/2023 et le 29/02/2024
    commission des lois
    admissibilité : 5k en 6 mois

    https://politipet.fr/destitution
    https://petitions.assemblee-nationale.fr/initiatives?filter[search_text]=destitution&order=rece

  • WebAIM: Screen Reader User Survey 10 Results
    https://webaim.org/projects/screenreadersurvey10

    In December 2023 and January 2024, WebAIM surveyed preferences of #screen_reader users. We received 1539 valid responses. This was a follow-up to 9 previous surveys that were conducted between January 2009 and June 2021.

    In order, the most problematic items are:

    – CAPTCHA - images presenting text used to verify that you are a human user
    – Interactive elements like menus, tabs, and dialogs do not behave as expected
    – Links or buttons that do not make sense
    – Screens or parts of screens that change unexpectedly
    – Lack of keyboard accessibility
    – Images with missing or improper descriptions (alt text)
    – Complex or difficult forms
    – Missing or improper headings
    – Too many links or navigation items
    – Complex data tables
    – Inaccessible or missing search functionality
    – Lack of “skip to main content” or “skip navigation” links

    #accessibilité

  • Deadliest Year on Record for Migrants with Nearly 8,600 Deaths in 2023
    https://mailchi.mp/c8c9bd3ed530/deadliest-year-on-record-for-migrants-with-nearly-8600-deaths-in-2023?e=e777

    Deadliest Year on Record for Migrants with Nearly 8,600 Deaths in 2023
    In the ten years since the Missing Migrants Project was established, more than 63,000 deaths and disappearances have been documented worldwide. Illustration: Roberta Aita, IOM GMDAC
    Geneva/ Berlin, 6 March – At least 8,565 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2023, making it the deadliest year on record, according to data collected by IOM’s Missing Migrants Project. The 2023 death toll represents a tragic increase of 20 percent compared to 2022, highlighting the urgent need for action to prevent further loss of life. “As we mark the Missing Migrants Project’s ten years, we first remember all these lives lost. Every single one of them is a terrible human tragedy that reverberates through families and communities for years to come,” said IOM Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels. “These horrifying figures collected by the Missing Migrants Project are also a reminder that we must recommit to greater action that can ensure safe migration for all, so that 10 years from now, people aren’t having to risk their lives in search of a better one.”
    Last year’s total surpasses the number of dead and missing globally in the previous record year of 2016, when 8,084 people died during migration, making it the deadliest year since the Missing Migrants Project’s inception in 2014. As safe and regular migration pathways remain limited, hundreds of thousands of people attempt to migrate every year via irregular routes in unsafe conditions. Slightly more than half of the deaths were a result of drowning, with nine per cent caused by vehicle accidents, and seven per cent by violence.
    The Mediterranean crossing continues to be the deadliest route for migrants on record, with at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances. This is the highest death toll recorded in the Mediterranean since 2017. Regionally, unprecedented numbers of migrant deaths were recorded across Africa (1,866) and Asia (2,138). In Africa, most of these deaths occurred in the Sahara Desert and the sea route to the Canary Islands. In Asia, hundreds of deaths of Afghan and Rohingya refugees fleeing their countries of origin were recorded last year.
    In 2024, ten years since the establishment of the Missing Migrants Project as the only open-access database on migrant deaths and disappearances, the project has documented more than 63,000 cases worldwide. The true figure, however, is estimated to be much higher due to challenges in data collection particularly in remote locations such as the Darien National Park in Panama and on maritime routes, where IOM regularly records reports of invisible shipwrecks where boats disappear without a trace.
    Established in 2014 following two devastating shipwrecks off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy, the Missing Migrants Project is recognized as the sole indicator measuring the level of ’safety’ of migration in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.
    An upcoming report provides detailed analysis of missing migrants data from 2023 and key facts and figures on migrant deaths and disappearances over the last ten years. It provides an opportunity for IOM and partners to assess ongoing work to expand safe and regular migration pathways, enhance search and rescue operations, and support affected individuals and families. IOM, alongside many other organizations, and as Coordinator of the UN Network on Migration, calls on governments and the international community to continue working together to prevent further loss of life and uphold the dignity and rights of all individuals.
    Table: Data on migrant deaths 2014-2023
    Sign up to receive the upcoming report ‘Ten Years of Counting Migrant Deaths – and Counting’ here.
    For more information about the Missing Migrants Project, visit: missingmigrants.iom.int

    #Covid-19#migrant#migration#IOM#mortalite#disparition#routemigratoire#GMDAC#sante

  • On Aaron Bushnell’s action in solidarity with Gaza
    https://fr.crimethinc.com/2024/02/26/this-is-what-our-ruling-class-has-decided-will-be-normal-on-aaron-bus

    “This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.” These words of Aaron’s haunt us. He is right. We are rapidly entering an era in which human life is treated as worthless. Let’s admit that the kind of protest activity that has taken place thus far in the United States has not served to compel the US government to compel a halt to the genocide in Gaza. It is an open question what could accomplish that. Aaron’s action challenges us to answer this question. Source: Crimethinc

  • Jared Kushner says Gaza’s ‘waterfront property could be very valuable’ | Jared Kushner | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/924c5c95136a383dee2fe74a3d23b1bfe00fc139/404_0_2140_1285/master/2140.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali

    L’équipe de Baiden c’est pathétique, mais le beau-fils de Trump arrive à faire encore mieux.

    Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.

    The former property dealer, married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 15 February. The interview was posted on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, earlier this month.

    Kushner was a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency and was tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East. Critics of the plan, which involved Israel striking normalisation deals with Gulf states, said it bypassed questions about the future for Palestinians.

    His remarks at Harvard gave a hint of the kind of Middle East policy that could be pursued in the event that Trump returns to the White House, including a search for a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

    “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told his interviewer, the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative, Prof Tarek Masoud. Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.

    “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

    Masoud replied that there was “a lot to talk about there”.

    Kushner also said he thinks Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.

    He said that if he were in charge of Israel his number one priority would be getting civilians out of the southern city of Rafah, and that “with diplomacy” it could be possible to get them into Egypt.

    “But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there,” he said. “I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”

    He reiterated the point a little later, saying: “I do think right now opening up the Negev, creating a secure area there, moving the civilians out, and then going in and finishing the job would be the right move.”

    The suggestion drew a startled response from Masoud. “Is that something that they’re talking about in Israel?” Masoud asked. “I mean, that’s the first I’ve really heard of somebody, aside from President Sisi [Egypt’s leader], suggesting that Gazans trying to flee the fighting could take refuge in the Negev. Are people in Israel seriously talking about that possibility?”

    “I don’t know,” Kushner replied, shrugging his shoulders.

    “That would be something you’d try to work on?” Masoud asked.

    “I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now,” Kushner said. “And I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?”
    Israel should ‘finish the job’ by moving Palestinians to Negev, says Kushner – video

    Asked by Masoud about fears on the part of Arabs in the region that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would not allow Palestinians who flee Gaza to return, Kushner paused and then said: “Maybe.”

    He went on to say: “I am not sure there is much left of Gaza at this point. If you think about even the construct, Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic]. It was the result of a war. You had tribes in different places and then Gaza became a thing. Egypt used to run it and then over time different governments came in.”

    Responding to a question about whether the Palestinians should have their own state, Kushner described the proposal as “a super bad idea” that “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”.

    • Kushner was a senior foreign policy adviser under Trump’s presidency and was tasked with preparing a peace plan for the Middle East.

      Si beau-papa repasse, je ne vois pas qui pourrait être plus qualifié que Jared pour se voir confier une mission de médiation au Proche-Orient.

      It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there,…

      oh pôvre !

      … but from Israel’s perspective

      tout est dit,

      I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.

      je crois qu’ils ne l’ont pas attendu.

  • The real reason Israel stormed al-Shifa Hospital yet again
    By Mondoweiss Editors March 18, 2024 – Mondoweiss
    https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/the-real-reason-israel-stormed-al-shifa-hospital-yet-again

    In the past two days, a number of things happened that seemingly had nothing to do with each other. At 2:00 a.m. on Monday, the Israeli army stormed al-Shifa hospital, entering with tanks and heavy gunfire and killing and injuring dozens. It was the fourth invasion of al-Shifa since October, resulting in the arrest of over 80 people.

    The day before, 13 aid trucks arrived in northern Gaza for the first time in four months without being turned back by the Israeli army or resulting in the massacre of starving Palestinian aid-seekers. People flocking to the UNRWA warehouse in Jabalia refugee camp to receive the aid stood in uncharacteristically orderly lines and patiently waited for the handouts of flour, rice, and other foodstuffs. Many could be seen cheering once the aid arrived, a scene captured by Al Jazeera’s coverage.

    But what few people know is that this successful delivery of sorely needed food aid to northern Gaza is what led the Israeli army to launch its deadly raid on al-Shifa Hospital the next day.

    The connection between these two events can only be explained by understanding who Israel was targeting in the raid — the now-martyred Faiq Mabhouh.

    #génocide #sociocide

    • Mabhouh was the Director of Operations of the Gaza police force, a part of the Gaza government’s civilian administration. Unlike Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, Mabhouh did not operate clandestinely at the start of the war, because he didn’t have to — he was in charge of civil law enforcement. Hamas released a statement after his death confirming that he “engaged in purely civil and humanitarian activity.”

      Voir aussi https://seenthis.net/messages/1046277

    • Israeli army withdraws from al-Shifa Hospital, but surrounding areas still under attack

      19 mars 2024 (08:30 GMT) | Hani Mahmoud | Reporting from Rafah
      https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/19/israels-war-on-gaza-live-israel-holds-al-jazeera-reporter-for-12-hours

      The Israeli military withdrew from inside al-Shifa Medical Complex after storming the hospital, bulldozing the courtyard, and conducting an aggressive and extensive detailed search.

      We’re getting reports of about 150 people detained from inside the hospital. At least 20 people were killed, including a top security commander who had been coordinating the efforts between Gaza clans and the UNRWA and successfully secured the delivery of aid trucks within the past two days to Gaza City and northern Gaza.

      Killing this security commander will result in chaos. This has shattered the sense of safety and security for other people to continue coordinating this kind of work to deliver aid to these areas.

      Air strikes continue in the vicinity. Residential buildings are being relentlessly bombed. We’ve heard of two buildings at the northern gate of al-Shifa Hospital being completely destroyed.

      We’ve also heard from the southern part of the complex of one more residential building attacked, and a mosque to its west.

  • Why are women embracing the ’run philosophy’ and leaving China?
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-12/women-and-the-run-philosophy-in-china/101636536

    11.11.2022 by Iris Zhao and Jenny Tang

    Vicky Wei says when she “ran” away from China and moved to Australia, she felt immense relief.

    “It felt like leaving a prison behind,” Ms Wei said.

    After graduating from university in Melbourne in 2019, she went back to visit her family but became stuck in China because of COVID-19 border closures.

    “There was no life. Except for work and study, I couldn’t earn recognition anywhere in life.”

    Despite China’s harsh pandemic restrictions, Ms Wei said what she disliked most were some men’s misogynistic attitudes towards women.

    “[Many men I came across in China] were scared of signs of feminism. They don’t like women to comment or express opinions,” she said.

    “Some of them are good in nature, but I lost the appetite to share [my thoughts] with them.”
    ’Run philosophy’ and women in China

    Ms Wei said that running away from China was in her best interests.

    The urge to run away from China is referred to as the “run philosophy” — or “runxue” — a term coined during the pandemic.
    A woman in a blue top stands in front of a wooden wall.

    Dr Wang Pan says there are many issues in China that cause discontent for women. (Supplied: Pan Wang)

    The coded phrase emerged because the idea is considered too sensitive to discuss openly in China.

    “Run [philosophy] is a subculture growing out of dissatisfaction about the [social] environment,” said Dr Wang Pan, an expert on China’s gender issues at the University of New South Wales.

    “Some people were feeling pessimistic about the future given the COVID-zero policy during the pandemic.”

    China doesn’t publish data on the number of people leaving the country, or migration figures, but its growing prevalence can be traced in what people are searching for online.

    According to WeChat Index, a tool for analysing trending search topics on the Chinese social media platform, the number of searches for the word “migration” has risen over the past year.

    On November 8 the keyword “migration” appeared 33 million times on the index, compared to 7 million times in 2021.

    This means that more content and searches related to migration are occurring on WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users.

    The “run philosophy” idea was gender-neutral at the beginning, but some people have started to connect it with the experiences of women in China.

    Recently, an online discussion board on “feminists in run philosophy” looked at why the idea was important to Chinese women.

    The discussion included guidance for women on ways to leave China, including seeking work permits overseas or studying abroad.
    international students: Graduating

    Many women from China study in Australia.(Reuters: Jason Reed)

    Last month, a short essay in Chinese was posted on a popular open publishing platform, based in Taiwan, on the topic of women leaving China.

    The essay, titled On My Run Philosophy, was by an author who herself left China.

    “Any woman like me, as long as they have the wisdom of survival and the patriarchy does not swallow their female instinct, also will choose ’the run’,” wrote the woman, who goes by the pen-name “unouno”.

    Some other online forums with themes of studying abroad and migration have also been overwhelmed by discussions around run philosophy, with many posts by women.
    A group of Chinese children play on a slide

    Women in China are now encouraged to have three children. (Reuters: Aly Song)

    Dr Wang said the links between run philosophy and feminism are “complex” but migration data published in countries like Australia does show women are leaving China.

    “Certainly there is a growing number of women who are pursuing study or proceeding to work or live overseas, but we don’t have any data on [how many women want to run away]”, Dr Wang said.

    “A lot of people are going overseas for different purposes, rather than feeling bad about living in China.”

    In Australia, there are more female Chinese-born migrants than men, 55.6 per cent compared with 44.4 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
    ’They wouldn’t ask men the same questions’
    A woman looks through cutouts in a door locked with a bike lock.

    Lockdowns in China continue to impact people’s lives. (Reuters: Aly Song)

    Jessica Chuh lives in Shanghai but would also like to leave China.

    “There are far more women than men who want to ’run’, as far as I can see, it’s like one in 10 [among] people I know,” she said.

    Ms Chuh has gone through several strict lockdowns in Shanghai and said harsh pandemic policies have caused her a lot of distress.

    But Ms Chuh added that her discontent with life in China was also related to being a woman in her early 30s and the unfair judgements that were placed on her in the workplace.

    “I’m turning 31 this year. When I was looking for a job earlier, recruiters would assume I would get married or be going to have a baby soon, and they asked me whether I had plans,” she said.

    “They wouldn’t ask men the same questions.”

    While the three-child policy has been promoted in China since 2021, the country has not yet strengthened parental leave schemes and anti-discrimination laws, as experts suggested.

    Ms Chuh said this type of gender discrimination was subtle but commonplace in China.

    “It is sad people have grown so used to it,” she said.
    Three women walk down a street with a chain attached to one in a white dress. They all wear masks

    Chinese women protest after news that a mother-of-eight was chained at home.(Supplied: Free Chinese Feminists)

    Ms Chuh also said she was becoming more upset at the increasing number of reports of violence against women in China.

    A TikTok video showing a mother of eight children chained to a bed at home sparked outrage across China in January.

    Then in August, a group of men brutally attacked four women late at night.

    CCTV captured the scene, and showed the men in the video turning to violence when sexual harassment was met with resistance.

    Men also outnumber women in China — the decades-long One Child Policy saw baby boys prioritised, and years later there are around 34 million more men than women in the country.

    The Chinese Communist Party has also ramped up online harassment of women with opinions and expertise on China, as recently highlighted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Danielle Cave and Albert Zhang.
    The shadow pandemic
    Crouched woman with young child look through fence.

    The phrase “run philosophy” was coined to capture the sentiment of people wanting to leave China.(Reuters: Aly Song)

    As lockdowns in China continue with the country striving to keep the number of COVID cases to zero, experts are also concerned these strict policies are making the lives of vulnerable women in domestic violence situations more difficult.

    The UN has described the violence against women around the world during the pandemic as the shadow pandemic.

    Dr Sara Davies, an international relations professor at Griffith University, is researching domestic violence during lockdowns in China but said it was hard to get data.

    “It was really important [to have research about this] because all kinds of intimate violence we know across the world was occurring with lockdowns,” she said.

    “What’s striking in the case of mainland China is that you have such massive numbers of populations under lockdowns.”

    Dr Davies said some of her research during the pandemic showed women in China were posting less online during restrictions, which could be because women are required to conform to social norms like being peacemakers and caregivers.

    Ms Chuh said she felt lucky that she wasn’t experiencing violence, but felt helpless about the problem.

    “I don’t know what I can do to prevent things like that from happening to myself, or to other women in general,” she said.

    "I just can’t let myself get too deep into this. The anger and depression is overwhelming.

    “I told myself what I need first is to get myself out of [here].”

    #Chine #femmes #émigration

  • Border security with drones and databases

    The EU’s borders are increasingly militarised, with hundreds of millions of euros paid to state agencies and military, security and IT companies for surveillance, patrols and apprehension and detention. This process has massive human cost, and politicians are planning to intensify it.

    Europe is ringed by steel fences topped by barbed wire; patrolled by border agents equipped with thermal vision systems, heartbeat detectors, guns and batons; and watched from the skies by drones, helicopters and planes. Anyone who enters is supposed to have their fingerprints and photograph taken for inclusion in an enormous biometric database. Constant additions to this technological arsenal are under development, backed by generous amounts of public funding. Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there are more walls than ever at Europe’s borders,[1] and those borders stretch ever further in and out of its territory. This situation is the result of long-term political and corporate efforts to toughen up border surveillance and controls.

    The implications for those travelling to the EU depend on whether they belong to the majority entering in a “regular” manner, with the necessary paperwork and permissions, or are unable to obtain that paperwork, and cross borders irregularly. Those with permission must hand over increasing amounts of personal data. The increasing automation of borders is reliant on the collection of sensitive personal data and the use of algorithms, machine learning and other forms of so-called artificial intelligence to determine whether or not an individual poses a threat.

    Those without permission to enter the EU – a category that includes almost any refugee, with the notable exception of those who hold a Ukrainian passport – are faced with technology, personnel and policies designed to make journeys increasingly difficult, and thus increasingly dangerous. The reliance on smugglers is a result of the insistence on keeping people in need out at any cost – and the cost is substantial. Thousands of people die at Europe’s borders every year, families are separated, and people suffer serious physical and psychological harm as a result of those journeys and subsequent administrative detention and social marginalisation. Yet parties of all political stripes remain committed to the same harmful and dangerous policies – many of which are being worsened through the new Pact on Migration and Asylum.[2]

    The EU’s border agency, Frontex, based in Warsaw, was first set up in 2004 with the aim of providing technical coordination between EU member states’ border guards. Its remit has been gradually expanded. Following the “migration crisis” of 2015 and 2016, extensive new powers were granted to the agency. As the Max Planck Institute has noted, the 2016 law shifted the agency from a playing “support role” to acting as “a player in its own right that fulfils a regulatory, supervisory, and operational role.”[3] New tasks granted to the agency included coordinating deportations of rejected refugees and migrants, data analysis and exchange, border surveillance, and technology research and development. A further legal upgrade in 2019 introduced even more extensive powers, in particular in relation to deportations, and cooperation with and operations in third countries.

    The uniforms, guns and batons wielded by Frontex’s border guards are self-evidently militaristic in nature, as are other aspects of its work: surveillance drones have been acquired from Israeli military companies, and the agency deploys “mobile radars and thermal cameras mounted on vehicles, as well as heartbeat detectors and CO2 monitors used to detect signs of people concealed inside vehicles.”[4] One investigation described the companies that have held lobbying meetings or attended events with Frontex as “a Who’s Who of the weapons industry,” with guests including Airbus, BAE Systems, Leonardo and Thales.[5] The information acquired from the agency’s surveillance and field operations is combined with data provided by EU and third country agencies, and fed into the European Border Surveillance System, EUROSUR. This offers a God’s-eye overview of the situation at Europe’s borders and beyond – the system also claims to provide “pre-frontier situational awareness.”

    The EU and its member states also fund research and development on these technologies. From 2014 to 2022, 49 research projects were provided with a total of almost €275 million to investigate new border technologies, including swarms of autonomous drones for border surveillance, and systems that aim to use artificial intelligence to integrate and analyse data from drones, satellites, cameras, sensors and elsewhere for “analysis of potential threats” and “detection of illegal activities.”[6] Amongst the top recipients of funding have been large research institutes – for example, Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute – but companies such as Leonardo, Smiths Detection, Engineering – Ingegneria Informatica and Veridos have also been significant beneficiaries.[7]

    This is only a tiny fraction of the funds available for strengthening the EU’s border regime. A 2022 study found that between 2015 and 2020, €7.7 billion had been spent on the EU’s borders and “the biggest parts of this budget come from European funding” – that is, the EU’s own budget. The total value of the budgets that provide funds for asylum, migration and border control between 2021-27 comes to over €113 billion[8]. Proposals for the next round of budgets from 2028 until 2035 are likely to be even larger.

    Cooperation between the EU, its member states and third countries on migration control comes in a variety of forms: diplomacy, short and long-term projects, formal agreements and operational deployments. Whatever form it takes, it is frequently extremely harmful. For example, to try to reduce the number of people arriving across the Mediterranean, member states have withdrawn national sea rescue assets (as deployed, for example, in Italy’s Mare Nostrum operation) whilst increasing aerial surveillance, such as that provided by the Israel-produced drones operated by Frontex. This makes it possible to observe refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean, whilst outsourcing their interception to authorities from countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.

    This is part of an ongoing plan “to strengthen coordination of search and rescue capacities and border surveillance at sea and land borders” of those countries. [9] Cooperation with Tunisia includes refitting search and rescue vessels and providing vehicles and equipment to the Tunisian coastguard and navy, along with substantial amounts of funding. The agreement with Egypt appears to be structured along similar lines, and five vessels have been provided to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard in 2023.[10]

    Frontex also plays a key role in the EU’s externalised border controls. The 2016 reform allowed Frontex deployments at countries bordering the EU, and the 2019 reform allowed deployments anywhere in the world, subject to agreement with the state in question. There are now EU border guards stationed in Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia.[11] The agency is seeking agreements with Niger, Senegal and Morocco, and has recently received visits from Tunisian and Egyptian officials with a view to stepping up cooperation.[12]

    In a recent report for the organisation EuroMed Rights, Antonella Napolitano highlighted “a new element” in the EU’s externalisation strategy: “the use of EU funds – including development aid – to outsource surveillance technologies that are used to entrench political control both on people on the move and local population.” Five means of doing so have been identified: provision of equipment; training; financing operations and procurement; facilitating exports by industry; and promoting legislation that enables surveillance.[13]

    The report highlights Frontex’s extended role which, even without agreements allowing deployments on foreign territory, has seen the agency support the creation of “risk analysis cells” in a number of African states, used to gather and analyse data on migration movements. The EU has also funded intelligence training in Algeria, digital evidence capacity building in Egypt, border control initiatives in Libya, and the provision of surveillance technology to Morocco. The European Ombudsman has found that insufficient attention has been given to the potential human rights impacts of this kind of cooperation.[14]

    While the EU and its member states may provide the funds for the acquisition of new technologies, or the construction of new border control systems, information on the companies that receive the contracts is not necessarily publicly available. Funds awarded to third countries will be spent in accordance with those countries’ procurement rules, which may not be as transparent as those in the EU. Indeed, the acquisition of information on the externalisation in third countries is far from simple, as a Statewatch investigation published in March 2023 found.[15]

    While EU and member state institutions are clearly committed to continuing with plans to strengthen border controls, there is a plethora of organisations, initiatives, campaigns and projects in Europe, Africa and elsewhere that are calling for a different approach. One major opportunity to call for change in the years to come will revolve around proposals for the EU’s new budgets in the 2028-35 period. The European Commission is likely to propose pouring billions more euros into borders – but there are many alternative uses of that money that would be more positive and productive. The challenge will be in creating enough political pressure to make that happen.

    This article was originally published by Welt Sichten, and is based upon the Statewatch/EuroMed Rights report Europe’s techno-borders.

    Notes

    [1] https://www.tni.org/en/publication/building-walls

    [2] https://www.statewatch.org/news/2023/december/tracking-the-pact-human-rights-disaster-in-the-works-as-parliament-makes

    [3] https://www.mpg.de/14588889/frontex

    [4] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/dec/06/fortress-europe-the-millions-spent-on-military-grade-tech-to-deter-refu

    [5] https://frontexfiles.eu/en.html

    [6] https://www.statewatch.org/publications/reports-and-books/europe-s-techno-borders

    [7] https://www.statewatch.org/publications/reports-and-books/europe-s-techno-borders

    [8] https://www.statewatch.org/publications/reports-and-books/europe-s-techno-borders

    [9] https://www.statewatch.org/news/2023/november/eu-planning-new-anti-migration-deals-with-egypt-and-tunisia-unrepentant-

    [10] https://www.statewatch.org/media/4103/eu-com-von-der-leyen-ec-letter-annex-10-23.pdf

    [11] https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2021/briefing-external-action-frontex-operations-outside-the-eu

    [12] https://www.statewatch.org/news/2023/november/eu-planning-new-anti-migration-deals-with-egypt-and-tunisia-unrepentant-, https://www.statewatch.org/publications/events/secrecy-and-the-externalisation-of-eu-migration-control

    [13] https://privacyinternational.org/challenging-drivers-surveillance

    [14] https://euromedrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Euromed_AI-Migration-Report_EN-1.pdf

    [15] https://www.statewatch.org/access-denied-secrecy-and-the-externalisation-of-eu-migration-control

    https://www.statewatch.org/analyses/2024/border-security-with-drones-and-databases
    #frontières #militarisation_des_frontières #technologie #données #bases_de_données #drones #complexe_militaro-industriel #migrations #réfugiés #contrôles_frontaliers #surveillance #sécurité_frontalière #biométrie #données_biométriques #intelligence_artificielle #algorithmes #smugglers #passeurs #Frontex #Airbus #BAE_Systems #Leonardo #Thales #EUROSUR #coût #business #prix #Smiths_Detection #Fraunhofer_Institute #Engineering_Ingegneria_Informatica #informatique #Tunisie #gardes-côtes_tunisiens #Albanie #Monténégro #Serbie #Bosnie-Herzégovine #Macédoine_du_Nord #Egypte #externalisation #développement #aide_au_développement #coopération_au_développement #Algérie #Libye #Maroc #Afrique_du_Nord

  • The ‘lying flat’ (躺平) movement standing in the way of China’s innovation drive
    https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-lying-flat-movement-standing-in-the-way-of-chinas-innovation-drive

    8.7.2021 by David Bandurski - China’s leaders have staked the country’s future on innovation. In its latest blueprint for national economic development, China has pledged to end its reliance on imported technology and to focus on domestic consumption as the primary driver of growth. At a conference in May for engineers and scientists, Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged greater self-reliance in science and technology, which would serve, he said, as “the strategic support for national development.”

    China’s drive toward technological independence has raised alarm bells in the West, where a resurgent China powered by a leading technology industry is widely considered the key strategic challenge of the 21st century. But these fears all too often fail to consider the internal obstacles facing Beijing’s push toward tech supremacy. Among them is one very low-tech problem: a prevailing sense of social and professional stagnation.

    The drive toward self-reliance has encountered an unlikely form of resistance in a generation of young Chinese who balk at the Party’s high-minded calls for “continued struggle” alongside an deeply engrained culture of overwork without the promise of real advancement. They opt instead for “lying flat,” or tangping (躺平). The “lying flat” movement calls on young workers and professionals, including the middle-class Chinese who are to be the engine of Xi Jinping’s domestic boom, to opt out of the struggle for workplace success, and to reject the promise of consumer fulfilment. For some, “lying flat” promises release from the crush of life and work in a fast-paced society and technology sector where competition is unrelenting. For China’s leadership, however, this movement of passive resistance to the national drive for development is a worrying trend—a threat to ambition at a time when Xi Jinping has made grand ambition the zeitgeist of his so-called “New Era.”
    ‘Lying flat is justice’

    The “lying flat” movement was jumpstarted in April when a post on Baidu titled “Lying Flat Is Justice” went viral on the platform. A manifesto of renunciation, the post shared the author’s lessons from two years of joblessness. The extraordinary stresses of contemporary life, the author concluded, were unnecessary, the product of the old-fashioned mindset of the previous generation. It was possible, even desirable, he argued, to find independence in resignation: “I can be like Diogenes, who sleeps in his own barrel taking in the sun.” Discussions about “lying flat” picked up pace in May, as young Chinese, over-worked and over-stressed, weighed the merits of relinquishing ambition, spurning effort, and refusing to bear hardship.


    An illustration making the rounds on China’s internet in May 2021 shows a man “lying flat.” “You want me to get up?” he asks. “That’s not possible in this lifetime.”

    On May 20, the Party-state media issued a series of simultaneous rebuttals. “The creative contribution of our youth is indispensable to achieving the goal of high-quality development,” Wang Xingyu, an official at the China University of Labor Relations wrote in the Guangming Daily. “Attending to those ‘lying flat,’ and giving them the will to struggle, is a prime necessity for our country as it faces the task of transitioning development.” Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of Guangdong’s CCP leadership, ran a page-four commentary expressing disgust over the notion of “lying flat,” concerned that talk of resignation might become a self-fulfilled prophecy. “At any time, no matter what stage of development, struggle is always the brightest base color of youth,” it said. “In the face of pressure, choosing to ‘lie flat’ is not only unjust, but shameful. There is no value whatsoever in this poisonous chicken soup.” In a video that made the rounds online the same day, a commentator at the official Hubei Economic Television said in an admonishing tone: “To accept misfortune is fine, but ‘lying flat’ is not.” This condescension was widely ridiculed across Chinese social media.

    As state media made their position clear, the original April post on “lying flat” suddenly disappeared. The search function for “lying flat” on WeChat, where the word had still been trending, was disabled. On the Douban social networking service, a “lying flat” discussion group was also shut down. And on Taobao, the popular online shopping platform run by tech giant Alibaba, t-shirts related to “lying down” were pulled from online stores.

    The social cost of innovation

    Over the past decade, China’s leadership has identified innovation as the way forward for economic and social development. The promise of innovation has been epitomized by China’s tech entrepreneurs, including billionaire founders like Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma. But the dream of innovation has collided with the harsh reality of overwork in a technology sector that seems sapped of opportunities for breakthrough. Jack Ma and others have advocated a severe culture of overtime work that has become known as “996”—working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. At the technology giant Huawei, this extreme work environment has been dubbed “wolf culture,” a climate of fierce internal workplace competition in which workers must either kill or be killed. Observers have drawn a straight line from “996” culture to the “lying flat” movement. “Lying flat was spawned under the persecution of the 996 overtime culture,” one writer argued on the Zhihu platform. “We employees are too tired. We have to lie down and rest.”

    The “lying flat” movement isn’t the first time China’s tech workers have rebelled. In 2019, thousands of tech workers, including programmers and beta testers for major technology firms, responded to China’s extreme working conditions by launching an online campaign called “996.ICU”—a mashup of “996 culture” and “intensive care unit” referencing instances of programmers seeking emergency medical treatment for work-related health crises. “996.ICU” began compiling a list of Chinese companies with extreme work cultures and advocated an industry consensus on reasonable hours.

    While the campaign managed to focus some attention on the issue of extreme overwork, it could not shake the predominant culture in China’s tech industry. Company bosses merely shrugged it off. Confronted with questions about “996” at a meeting that year, Jack Ma said, “In this world, all of us want to be successful, all of us want a good life, and all of us want to be respected. I ask you, ‘How can you achieve the success you want if you don’t put in more effort and time than others?’” In a post to Alibaba’s WeChat account, Ma called the company’s work culture a “huge blessing.”

    Chinese tech executives’ embrace of extreme work culture find justification in the official Party narrative of tireless struggle in the service of China’s global rise. But try as it might to drown out the growing despair among millennials and Generation Z, China’s government will have to grapple with the social costs of breakneck competition in an environment of dwindling returns. And it will have to do more than repeat slogans of struggle and self-sacrifice to inspire the next generation of workers and innovators.

    Consumer remorse

    For China’s young workers, the pressure to forge ahead and innovate is compounded by the pressure to consume. Before the new millennium, Chinese were culturally savers, and consuming on credit was exceptionally rare. It was generally supposed that conspicuous consumption was something unsuited to China’s national conditions. Over the past decade, however, these assumptions have been turned upside-down. Chinese can now be counted among the world’s most conspicuous consumers.

    The consumer boom has been fueled by government policies to encourage domestic consumption. Just eight years ago, in 2013, the government introduced consumer finance pilot programs that encouraged easy credit. These programs came alongside a tech-driven revolution in consumer payment, including the launch in 2013 of WeChat Pay, a digital wallet service connected to the all-purpose social media super-app that enabled users not just to make mobile payments but to transfer money to their contacts. By 2016 in China, barcode payment had been completely normalized, transforming mobile phones into virtual wallets. By 2019, the new trend was to link payment with facial recognition technology.

    Fueled by technology and cheap credit, online shopping has exploded in China in recent years. During last year’s Single’s Day shopping event, e-commerce giants including Alibaba and JD.com made $115 billion in sales. Alibaba’s sales alone doubled over the previous year. During the recent “618” online shopping event, total sales turnover on major Chinese e-commerce platforms reached nearly $90 billion, up more than 26% over 2020. (By comparison, independent sellers on Amazon took in $4.8 billion between Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year.)

    Along with innovation, consumption is the second leg on which China’s economic future is to stand. It was a telling fact last year when China’s Premier, Li Keqiang, refrained from talking about GDP in his annual government work report, focusing instead on consumption. In a press conference after the release of the report, Li said that “consumption is now the primary engine driving growth” and indicated that the bulk of government stimulus funds would be applied “to support the increase in people’s income through direct or relatively direct means in order to spur consumption and energize the market.”

    But as consumption has become a perceived necessity, a form of psychological reprieve from the pressures of work, and even a patriotic duty, some young Chinese have buckled under the immense pressure to keep up. Consumer debt has grown dramatically in China during Xi Jinping’s “New Era,” in what one business analyst has called “an unfolding debt crisis.” The problems facing young borrowers, who have increasingly turned to online consumer finance providers, prompted Chinese regulators to issue a ban in March on new consumer loans to college students, who have frequently been targeted by providers with loans at interest rates sometimes nearly double the 24% allowed by regulations. Skyrocketing living costs in China’s cities have also meant that many young Chinese, even with elite college degrees, find it difficult to cover the basics, much less afford a life of conspicuous consumption.

    For young people struggling under the weight of both extreme competition and its would-be reward, the empty promise of consumerism, it can seem that there is no escape from exploitation. And in a society where more open forms of protest, such as labor activism, are quickly suppressed, they have found release, if not relief, in online expression. The “lying flat” movement, whose forums have drawn upwards of 200,000 members, is one example of this, and a slew of popular online terms have emerged to describe the sense of hopelessness. These include “leek people” and “harvesting leeks,” phrases that liken those caught in the struggle of work and consumption to leeks that are constantly harvested under the blade. “Lying flat-ism,” one Chinese journalist wrote on the Weibo platform, “is a non-violent movement of non-cooperation by the leek people, and the most silent and helpless of actions.” When one opts out of the cycle, or so the reasoning goes, it is no longer possible to be cut down, as the illustration below, appearing on Chinese social media in May, expresses. A harvest knife slashes vainly in the air as the plants below fold themselves down toward the earth. “Leeks that lie down cannot be harvested so easily,” the caption reads.
    An illustration of a sword cutting down leeks.

    “Lying flat-ism” is seen by some as the only possible form of resistance to this cycle of exploitation. One of the dominant slogans of the “lying flat” movement has been, “Don’t buy property; don’t buy a car; don’t get married; don’t have children; and don’t consume.” For this reason, calls to “lie flat” have doubly concerned China’s leadership, as they threaten both to sap the country of the ambition to innovate and to knock down the second leg of the country’s long-term development strategy—the drive to consume.
    Rejuvenation, great and small

    One lesson to emerge from the recent wave of attention to “lying flat” is that there are societal limits to the power of the Party-state to generate economic vibrancy and technological innovation through campaign-style approaches. These limitations can be overlooked or underestimated by the policy community in the West, as the dominance of the Party and the weakness of civil society encourages the perception of a monolithic command state capable of fulfilling its own policy wishes.

    But even if they cannot be expressed openly as constraints on policy, the wishes of the Chinese people remain an important factor—and the “lying flat” movement makes this clear. More Chinese hunger for basic dignity. In China’s current political climate, however, dignity is something abstract, imagined only for the “Chinese nation” as it rises above the indignities of the 19th and 20th centuries to regain its rightful place in the 21st. In an April speech delivered shortly before the “Lying Flat Is Justice” post went viral, Xi Jinping encouraged the youth of China to “constantly strive for the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

    For many of China’s young workers, struggling through a twelve-hour workday and bracing for the next loan payment, such sloganeering about rejuvenation may sound detached from the personal hope for renewal—for better pay, better working conditions and protections, and for more security. With or without anti-slogans like “lying flat,” the attitudes of China’s white-collar workers seem to be changing. A recent survey by Zhao pin, a leading career platform in China, found that more than 80% of white-collar respondents cited fair treatment and respect by companies as the most important factor in company cultures. Workers generally rejected “996” and “wolf culture,” hoping instead for more balance and humanity.

    In Xi’s China, however, where the Party and the state reign supreme, it has become virtually impossible to stand up for one’s own rights and interests—to assert one’s personal needs and desires over the grandiose ambitions of the national self. “Lying flat” is an answer, passive and desperate, to the dehumanizing nature of the struggle, both national and personal. Why should one stand for self-reliance, only to be cut down and harvested?

    David Bandurski is the co-director of the China Media Project, a research program in partnership with the Journalism & Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong.

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