#opéra

International Women’s Day: Israel Killed 66 Women in Gaza, Including 22 Minors, in One Year - Palestine Chronicle
▻https://www.palestinechronicle.com/international-womens-day-israel-killed-66-women-in-gaza-includin

https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/girl-gaza.png

Russia’s Putin: Ukraine military operation going according to plan,...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/14221482

Russia’s Putin: Ukraine military operation going according to plan, will end when our demands met

#Russia #Putin : #Ukraine #military #operation going according to #plan, will #end when our #demands met #politics

Egypt Papers : le gouvernement étouffe le débat démocratique
▻https://disclose.ngo/fr/article/egypt-papers-gouvernement-etouffe-debat-democratique

https://admin.disclose.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/macron_partage.jpg

Depuis les révélations de Disclose sur les dérives de l’opération Sirli, en Egypte, le gouvernement refuse de rendre des comptes. Retour sur une stratégie de paralysie du débat démocratique, au nom du secret de la défense nationale. Lire l’article

https://admin.disclose.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/macron_partage.jpg

L’#Algérie sous #Vichy

http://d1023456-2104.hosting.hegerys.com/projet/multimedia/film/56994.jpg

De l’été 1940 à l’été 1943, l’#Algérie_française se donne avec enthousiasme à la révolution nationale voulue par #Pétain. Ce dont de nombreux Européens d’Algérie rêvent depuis longtemps s’accomplit : rétablissement de l’#ordre_colonial, mise au pas des populations et abrogation du #décret_Crémieux qui, en 1870, avait fait des Juifs d’Algérie des citoyens français.

▻http://www.film-documentaire.fr/4DACTION/w_fiche_film/64265_0

#WWII #seconde_guerre_mondiale #histoire #Juifs #antisémitisme #Maréchal_Pétain #collaborationnisme #impérialisme #France #Georges_Hardy #général_Weygand #Maxime_Weygand #Juifs_d'Algérie #déchéance_de_nationalité #licenciement #citoyenneté #exclusion_scolaire #Juifs_indigènes #catégorisation #Italiens_d'Algérie #indigènes #extrême_droite #Edouard_Drumont #Drumont #émeutes_antijuives #musulmans #Gabriel_Lambert #Messali_Hajj #assimilation #Ferhat_Abbas #égalité_par_le_bas #propagande #pauvreté #discriminations #typhus #Georges_Claude #confiscation_des_biens #aryanisation_économique #service_des_questions_juives #terres #camps #internement #camps_de_travail #camps_d'éloignement #indésirables #torture #Bedeau #chasse_aux_Juifs #service_d'ordre_de_la_légion (#SOL) #étoile_jaune #fascisme #oppression #résistance #José_Aboulker #Opération_Torch #général_Juin #Alphonse_Juin #François_Darlan #général_Giraud #unités_de_travail #Henri_Giraud #rafles #Fernand_Bonnier_de_la_Chappelle #Marcel_Peyrouton #débarquement #Etats-Unis #USA #spoliation #Jean_Monnet #Sidney_Chouraqui #armée_d'Afrique #camp_de_Bedeau #de_Gaulle #déshumanisation

ping @postcolonial @isskein @karine4 @cede

▻https://afriquexxi.info/article4919.html

Aux origines coloniales de Barkhane (4)
Maréchal (Lyautey), nous voilà !

Rémi Carayol, 7 février 2022

Figure de la conquête coloniale, le maréchal Hubert Lyautey, célèbre notamment pour avoir fait en sorte de « gagner les cœurs et les esprits » en Afrique du Nord, est aujourd’hui cité comme une référence par les officiers français. Ses méthodes, soi-disant humanistes, inspirent les stratèges qui élaborent les doctrines contre-insurrectionnelles et sont recyclées par les commandants de la force Barkhane au Sahel. Un héritage contestable, pourtant totalement assumé par les militaires.

La franchise n’était pas la moindre des qualités du général François Lecointre lorsqu’il était encore en fonction. À plusieurs reprises au cours des quatre années qu’il a passées à la tête de l’armée française, de juillet 2017 à juillet 2021, ses interlocuteurs ont pu s’en rendre compte – et notamment les parlementaires, qui l’ont régulièrement auditionné. Ainsi, le 6 novembre 2019, c’est en toute simplicité que François Lecointre confie, devant les membres de la commission des affaires étrangères de l’Assemblée nationale, que la doctrine de l’armée française, dans cette région où elle se bat depuis 2013, est en grande partie basée sur un logiciel certes actualisé, mais vieux de plus d’un siècle, et que l’une de ses références, en la matière, a pour nom Hubert Lyautey, une figure de la conquête coloniale, célèbre pour s’être battu en Indochine, à Madagascar et en Algérie, mais aussi pour avoir administré le Maroc et organisé la fameuse exposition coloniale de Paris en 1931.

Il est un peu moins de 17 heures, ce mercredi, quand le général tire les choses au clair devant les députés : « Je décrirai notre vision de l’“approche globale” comme une stratégie de gestion de crise centrée sur les populations et sur leur perception du développement de la crise. Ce concept est hérité de notre aventure coloniale. Dans la manière dont les militaires français, de [Joseph] Gallieni à Lyautey, ont pensé l’établissement d’un empire colonial, il y avait d’abord une vision humaniste [sic] de la gestion de crise et de la guerre ». Le général marche sur des œufs. Il prend donc soin d’apporter cette précision : « Ne voyez pas dans mon propos un jugement, positif ou négatif, sur l’époque coloniale ». Pas d’ode à la colonisation donc. Pas de condamnation non plus. Mais ce constat : « J’observe simplement que ce qui fait le savoir-faire français dans la gestion de crise, c’est aussi cet héritage : nous entretenons depuis très longtemps la conception d’une approche globale et d’une victoire qui doit essentiellement être remportée dans les cœurs et les esprits
des populations au secours desquelles nous venons dans les régions que nous cherchons à stabiliser. »

(...)

#Maroc #impérialisme #opérations_extérieures #Lyautey #armée_française #héritage_colonial

Status agreement with Senegal : #Frontex might operate in Africa for the first time

The border agency in Warsaw could deploy drones, vessels and personnel. It would be the first mission in a country that does not directly border the EU. Mauretania might be next.

As a „priority third state“ in West Africa, Senegal has long been a partner for migration-related security cooperation with the EU. The government in Dakar is one of the addressees of the „#North_Africa_Operational_Partnership“; it also receives technical equipment and advice for border police upgrading from EU development aid funds. Now Brussels is pushing for a Frontex mission in Senegal. To this end, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen travelled personally to the capital Dakar last week. She was accompanied by the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, who said that a contract with Senegal might be finalised until summer. For the matter, Johansson met with Senegal’s armed-forces minister and foreign minister.

For operations outside the EU, Frontex needs a so-called status agreement with the country concerned. It regulates, for example, the use of coercive police measures, the deployment of weapons or immunity from criminal and civil prosecution. The Commission will be entrusted with the negotiations for such an agreement with Senegal after the Council has given the mandate. The basis would be a „model status agreement“ drafted by the Commission on the basis of Frontex missions in the Western Balkans. Frontex launched its first mission in a third country in 2019 in Albania, followed by Montenegro in 2020 and Serbia in 2021.

New EU Steering Group on migration issues

The deployment to Senegal would be the first time the Border Agency would be stationed outside Europe with operational competences. Johansson also offered „#surveillance equipment such as #drones and vessels“. This would take the already established cooperation to a new level.

Frontex is already active in the country, but without uniformed and armed police personnel. Of the only four liaison officers Frontex has seconded to third countries, one is based at the premises of the EU delegation in #Dakar. His tasks include communicating with the authorities responsible for border management and assisting with deportations from EU member states. Since 2019, Senegal has been a member of Frontex’s so-called AFIC network. In this „Risk Analysis Cell“, the agency joins forces with African police forces and secret services for exchanges on imminent migration movements. For this purpose, Frontex has negotiated a working agreement with the Senegalese police and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The new talks with Senegal are coordinated in the recently created „Operational Coordination Mechanism for the External Dimension of Migration“ (MOCADEM). It is an initiative of EU member states to better manage their politics in countries of particular interest. These include Niger or Iraq, whose government recently organised return flights for its own nationals from Minsk after Belarus‘ „instrumentalisation of refugees“ at the EU’s insistence. If the countries continue to help with EU migration control, they will receive concessions for visa issuance or for labour migration.

Senegal also demands something in return for allowing a Frontex mission. The government wants financial support for the weakened economy after the COVID pandemic. Possibilities for legal migration to the EU were also on the agenda at the meetings with the Commission. Negotiations are also likely to take place on a deportation agreement; the Senegalese authorities are to „take back“ not only their own nationals but also those of other countries if they can prove that they have travelled through the country to the EU and have received an exit order there.

Deployment in territorial waters

Senegal is surrounded by more than 2,600 kilometres of external border; like the neighbouring countries of Mali, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, the government has joined the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Similar to the Schengen area, the agreement also regulates the free movement of people and goods in a total of 15 countries. Only at the border with Mauritania, which left ECOWAS in 2001, are border security measures being stepped up.

It is therefore possible that a Frontex operation in Senegal will not focus on securing the land borders as in the Western Balkans, but on monitoring the maritime border. After the „Canary Islands crisis“ in 2006 with an increase in the number of refugee crossings, Frontex coordinated the Joint Operation „Hera“ off the islands in the Atlantic; it was the first border surveillance mission after Frontex was founded. Departures towards the Canary Islands are mostly from the coast north of Senegal’s capital Dakar, and many of the people in the boats come from neighbouring countries.

The host country of „Hera“ has always been Spain, which itself has bilateral migration control agreements with Senegal. Authorities there participate in the communication network „Seahorse Atlantic“, with which the Spanish gendarmerie wants to improve surveillance in the Atlantic. Within the framework of „Seahorse“, the Guardia Civil is also allowed to conduct joint patrols in the territorial waters of Senegal, Mauritania and Cape Verde. The units in „Hera“ were also the only Frontex mission allowed to navigate the countries‘ twelve-mile zone with their vessels. Within the framework of „Hera“, however, it was not possible for Frontex ships to dock on the coasts of Senegal or to disembark intercepted refugees there.

Spain wants to lead Frontex mission

Two years ago, the government in Madrid terminated the joint maritime mission in the Atlantic. According to the daily newspaper „El Pais“, relations between Spain and Frontex were at a low point after the border agency demanded more control over the resources deployed in „Hera“. Spain was also said to be unhappy with Frontex’s role in the Canary Islands. The agency had seconded two dozen officers to the Canary Islands to fingerprint and check identity documents after a sharp increase in crossings from Senegal and Mauritania in 2020. According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 1,200 people died or went missing when the crossing in 2021. The news agency AFP quotes the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras which puts this number at over 4,400 people. Also the Commissioner Johansson said that 1,200 were likely underestimated.

The new situation on the Canary Islands is said to have prompted Frontex and the government in Madrid to advocate the envisaged launch of the joint operation in Senegal. With a status agreement, Frontex would be able to hand over refugees taken on board to Senegalese authorities or bring them back to the country itself by ship. The Guardia Civil wants to take over the leadership of such an operation, writes El Pais with reference to Spanish government circles. The government in Dakar is also said to have already informed the EU of its readiness for such an effort.

The idea for an operational Frontex deployment in Senegal is at least three years old. Every year, Frontex Director Fabrice Leggeri assesses in a report on the implementation of the EU’s External Maritime Borders Regulation whether refugees rescued in its missions could disembark in the respective eligible third countries. In the annual report for 2018, Leggeri attested to the government in Senegal’s compliance with basic fundamental and human rights. While Frontex did not even consider disembarking refugees in Libya, Tunisia or Morocco, the director believes this would be possible with Senegal – as well as Turkey.

Currently, the EU and its agencies have no concrete plans to conclude status agreements with other African countries, but Mauritania is also under discussion. Frontex is furthermore planning working (not status) arrangements with other governments in North and East Africa. Libya is of particular interest; after such a contract, Frontex could also complete Libya’s long-planned connection to the surveillance network EUROSUR. With a working agreement, the border agency would be able to regularly pass on information from its aerial reconnaissance in the Mediterranean to the Libyan coast guard, even outside of measures to counter distress situations at sea.

►https://digit.site36.net/2022/02/11/status-agreement-with-senegal-frontex-wants-to-operate-in-africa-for-t

#Sénégal #asile #migrations #réfugiés #externalisation #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #Afrique #Mauritanie #Afrique_de_l'Ouest #renvois #expulsions #AFIC #Risk_Analysis_Cell #services_secrets #police #coopération #accord #MOCADEM #Operational_Coordination_Mechanism_for_the_External_Dimension_of_Migration #accords_de_réadmission #accord_de_réadmission #frontières_maritimes #Atlantique #Seahorse_Atlantic #Hera

–-
ajouté à la métaliste sur l’externalisation des contrôles frontaliers :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/731749
et plus précisément ici :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/731749#message765327

ping @isskein @reka @karine4

#EMSA signs cooperation agreements with EU Naval Missions to provide enhanced maritime awareness for operations in Somalia and Libya

http://www.emsa.europa.eu/images/2020/PR/coop_eunavfor_tw.jpg

EMSA is supporting EU Naval Force operations – #Atalanta and #Irini – following the signature of two cooperation agreements with EU #NAVFOR-Somalia (#Operation_Atalanta) on the one hand and #EUNAVFOR_MED (#Operation_Irini) on the other. Operation Atalanta targets counter piracy and the protection of vulnerable vessels and humanitarian shipments off the coast of Somalia, while operation Irini seeks to enforce the UN arms embargo on Libya and in doing so contribute to the country’s peace process. By cooperating with EMSA in the areas of maritime security and #surveillance, multiple sources of ship specific information and positional data can be combined to enhance maritime awareness for the #EU_Naval_Force in places of particularly high risk and sensitivity. The support provided by EMSA comes in the context of the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy.

EUNAVFOR-Somalia Atalanta

EMSA has been supporting the EU NAVFOR-Somalia Atalanta operation since April 2011 when piracy off the coast of Somalia was at its peak. The various measures taken to suppress piracy have been successful and the mandate of the operation was not only renewed at the beginning of last year but also expanded to include measures against illegal activities at sea, such as implementing the arms embargo on Somalia, monitoring the trafficking of weapons, and countering narcotic drugs. Through the cooperation agreement, EMSA is providing EU NAVFOR with access to an integrated maritime monitoring solution which offers the possibility of consulting vessel position data, central reference databases and earth observation products. This is integrated with EU NAVFOR data – such as vessel risk level based on vulnerability assessments – creating a specifically tailored maritime awareness picture. The new cooperation agreement extends the longstanding collaboration with EU NAVFOR for an indefinite period and is a great example of how EMSA is serving maritime security and law enforcement communities worldwide.

EUNAVFOR MED Irini

The EUNAVFOR MED operation Irini began on 31 March 2020 with the core task of implementing the UN arms embargo on Libya using aerial, satellite and maritime assets. It replaces #operation_Sophia but with a new mandate. While EMSA has been providing satellite AIS data to EUNAVFOR MED since 2015, the new cooperation agreement allows for access to EMSA’s #Integrated_Maritime_Services platform and in particular to the Agency’s #Automated_Behaviour_Monitoring (#ABM) capabilities. These services help EUNAVFOR officers to keep a close eye on Libya’s ports as well as to monitor the flow of maritime traffic in the area and target specific vessels for inspection based on suspicious behaviour picked up by the ABM tool. While the agreement is open ended, operation Irini’s mandate is expected to run until 31 March 2023.

http://www.emsa.europa.eu/images/2020/PR/EMSA_IMS_SEG_Horn_of_Africa2.jpg

▻https://www.emsa.europa.eu/newsroom/press-releases/item/4648-emsa-signs-cooperation-agreements-with-eu-naval-missions-to-provide

#coopération #Somalie #Libye #mer #sécurité #sécurité_maritime #Agence_européenne_pour_la_sécurité_maritime (#AESM) #piraterie #piraterie_maritime #armes #commerce_d'armes #drogues #trafic_maritime

ping @reka @fil

▻https://afriquexxi.info/article4907.html

Aux origines coloniales de l’opération Barkhane

Rémi Carayol 10 janvier 2022

Disons-le dès le début afin d’éviter tout malentendu : la guerre que la France mène dans la bande sahélo-saharienne depuis huit ans n’est pas une guerre de colonisation. Il ne s’agit pas, pour la France, de reconquérir un territoire qui fut jadis un des fleurons de son Empire (et une fierté de son armée), ni d’imposer son joug sur les populations, ni d’y piller les richesses naturelles – même si cet enjeu, qui concerne essentiellement les réserves d’uranium du Niger, ne doit pas être négligé.

On peut difficilement la comparer, également, aux nombreuses interventions militaires, de type néo-colonial, menées après les indépendances en Afrique de l’Ouest, en Afrique Centrale et dans l’océan Indien, et qui avaient pour objectif, la plupart du temps, de déstabiliser un régime jugé trop indépendant ou, au contraire, de soutenir un président « ami ». Certes, cette guerre s’inscrit dans la logique interventionniste de la France dans son ancien « pré-carré », qui est un des marqueurs de sa politique post-coloniale. Ces dernières années, l’armée française a pu être amenée à intervenir pour venir en aide à des alliés, comme au Burkina en 2014 (pour exfiltrer Blaise Compaoré et ainsi lui permettre d’échapper à la justice de son pays) et au Tchad en 2019 (lorsqu’elle a bombardé une colonne de rebelles qui se dirigeait vers N’Djamena, en détournant la vocation des moyens mobilisés dans le cadre du mandat de l’opération Barkhane).

À la faveur de ce déploiement militaire, la diplomatie française a elle aussi joué un rôle primordial ces dernières années, n’hésitant pas, parfois, à s’immiscer dans des affaires intérieures, comme au Mali pour empêcher tout début de discussion avec les groupes djihadistes, ou au Tchad pour soutenir la confiscation du pouvoir par le camp Déby après la mort d’Idriss Déby Itno. Mais l’objectif final de cette opération militaire n’est pas d’installer ou de pérenniser un homme lige de Paris. Il s’agit officiellement de lutter contre le « terrorisme international » et contre l’émergence d’une idéologie considérée par les dirigeants français comme une menace : le djihadisme.

Il n’empêche, l’intervention française qui a débuté en janvier 2013 avec l’opération Serval, alors cantonnée au territoire du Mali, et qui s’est poursuivie à partir d’août 2014 avec l’opération Barkhane, élargie à quatre autres pays (le Burkina Faso, la Mauritanie, le Niger et le Tchad), a comme un parfum de IIIe République. Elle a réveillé de vieux fantasmes que l’on pensait enterrés depuis la fin de l’ère coloniale. L’armée de Terre (et tout particulièrement les troupes de marine), qui a façonné une partie de sa légende dans cette bande aride à la fin du XIXe siècle et au début du XXe, a convoqué ses anciennes gloires, dépoussiéré ses vieilles cartes et recyclé certaines de ses méthodes passées.

Alors que sur le terrain, des officiers, bercés durant leur jeunesse aux « exploits » de la conquête coloniale, pouvaient fièrement marcher sur les pas de leurs aînés, à Paris, l’état-major ressuscitait de vieux mythes et remettait au goût du jour la stratégie de contre-insurrection expérimentée par quelques célèbres coloniaux. Si l’opération Barkhane n’est pas une guerre coloniale, elle se nourrit de cette époque. Et c’est peut-être ce qui explique en partie son échec.

Rémi Carayol

#opérationsextérieures #barkhane #Sahel #arméefrançaise #néocolonialisme

#Frantz_Fanon

https://extranet.editis.com/it-yonixweb/IMAGES/DEC/P3/9782707198907.JPG

Le nom de Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), écrivain, psychiatre et penseur révolutionnaire martiniquais, est indissociable de la #guerre_d’indépendance algérienne et des #luttes_anticoloniales du XXe siècle. Mais qui était vraiment cet homme au destin fulgurant ?
Nous le découvrons ici à Rome, en août 1961, lors de sa légendaire et mystérieuse rencontre avec Jean-Paul Sartre, qui a accepté de préfacer Les Damnés de la terre, son explosif essai à valeur de manifeste anticolonialiste. Ces trois jours sont d’une intensité dramatique toute particulière : alors que les pays africains accèdent souvent douloureusement à l’indépendance et que se joue le sort de l’Algérie, Fanon, gravement malade, raconte sa vie et ses combats, déplie ses idées, porte la contradiction au célèbre philosophe, accompagné de #Simone_de_Beauvoir et de #Claude_Lanzmann. Fanon et Sartre, c’est la rencontre de deux géants, de deux mondes, de deux couleurs de peau, de deux formes d’engagement. Mais la vérité de l’un est-elle exactement celle de l’autre, sur fond d’amitié et de trahison possible ?
Ce roman graphique se donne à lire non seulement comme la biographie intellectuelle et politique de Frantz Fanon mais aussi comme une introduction originale à son œuvre, plus actuelle et décisive que jamais.

▻https://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/frantz_fanon-9782707198907

#BD #bande_dessinée #livre

#indépendance #Algérie #Organisation_armée_secrète (#OAS) #décolonisation #biographie #colonisation #France #souffrance_psychique #syndrome_nord-africain #violence #bicots #violence_coloniale #lutte_armée #agressivité #domination #contre-violence #violence_politique #violence_pulsionnelle #Jean-Paul_Sartre #Sartre #socialthérapie #club_thérapeutique_de_Saint-Alban #François_Tosquelles #Saint-Alban #Septfonds #narcothérapie #négritude #école_d'Alger #Blida #primitivisme #psychiatrie_coloniale #insulinothérapie #cure_de_Sakel #sismothérapie #choc #autonomie #révolution #Consciences_Maghrébines #André_Mandouze #Amitiés_Algériennes #Wilaya #Association_de_la_jeunesse_algérienne_pour_l'action_sociale (#AJASS) #Alice_Cherki #maquis #montagne_de_Chréa #torture #attentats #ALN #FLN #El_Moudjahid #congrès_de_la_Soummam #pacification_coloniale #Septième_Wilaya #massacre_de_Melouze #opération_Bleuite #histoire

Schengen : de nouvelles règles pour rendre l’espace sans contrôles aux #frontières_intérieures plus résilient

La Commission propose aujourd’hui des règles actualisées pour renforcer la gouvernance de l’espace Schengen. Les modifications ciblées renforceront la coordination au niveau de l’UE et offriront aux États membres des outils améliorés pour faire face aux difficultés qui surviennent dans la gestion tant des frontières extérieures communes de l’UE que des frontières intérieures au sein de l’espace Schengen. L’actualisation des règles vise à faire en sorte que la réintroduction des #contrôles_aux_frontières_intérieures demeure une mesure de dernier recours. Les nouvelles règles créent également des outils communs pour gérer plus efficacement les frontières extérieures en cas de crise de santé publique, grâce aux enseignements tirés de la pandémie de COVID-19. L’#instrumentalisation des migrants est également prise en compte dans cette mise à jour des règles de Schengen, ainsi que dans une proposition parallèle portant sur les mesures que les États membres pourront prendre dans les domaines de l’asile et du retour dans une telle situation.

Margaritis Schinas, vice-président chargé de la promotion de notre mode de vie européen, s’est exprimé en ces termes : « La crise des réfugiés de 2015, la vague d’attentats terroristes sur le sol européen et la pandémie de COVID-19 ont mis l’espace Schengen à rude épreuve. Il est de notre responsabilité de renforcer la gouvernance de Schengen et de faire en sorte que les États membres soient équipés pour offrir une réaction rapide, coordonnée et européenne en cas de crise, y compris lorsque des migrants sont instrumentalisés. Grâce aux propositions présentées aujourd’hui, nous fortifierons ce “joyau” si emblématique de notre mode de vie européen. »

Ylva Johansson, commissaire aux affaires intérieures, a quant à elle déclaré : « La pandémie a montré très clairement que l’espace Schengen est essentiel pour nos économies et nos sociétés. Grâce aux propositions présentées aujourd’hui, nous ferons en sorte que les contrôles aux frontières ne soient rétablis qu’en dernier recours, sur la base d’une évaluation commune et uniquement pour la durée nécessaire. Nous dotons les États membres des outils leur permettant de relever les défis auxquels ils sont confrontés. Et nous veillons également à gérer ensemble les frontières extérieures de l’UE, y compris dans les situations où les migrants sont instrumentalisés à des fins politiques. »

Réaction coordonnée aux menaces communes

La proposition de modification du code frontières Schengen vise à tirer les leçons de la pandémie de COVID-19 et à garantir la mise en place de mécanismes de coordination solides pour faire face aux menaces sanitaires. Les règles actualisées permettront au Conseil d’adopter rapidement des règles contraignantes fixant des restrictions temporaires des déplacements aux frontières extérieures en cas de menace pour la santé publique. Des dérogations seront prévues, y compris pour les voyageurs essentiels ainsi que pour les citoyens et résidents de l’Union. L’application uniforme des restrictions en matière de déplacements sera ainsi garantie, en s’appuyant sur l’expérience acquise ces dernières années.

Les règles comprennent également un nouveau mécanisme de sauvegarde de Schengen destiné à générer une réaction commune aux frontières intérieures en cas de menaces touchant la majorité des États membres, par exemple des menaces sanitaires ou d’autres menaces pour la sécurité intérieure et l’ordre public. Grâce à ce mécanisme, qui complète le mécanisme applicable en cas de manquements aux frontières extérieures, les vérifications aux frontières intérieures dans la majorité des États membres pourraient être autorisées par une décision du Conseil en cas de menace commune. Une telle décision devrait également définir des mesures atténuant les effets négatifs des contrôles.

De nouvelles règles visant à promouvoir des alternatives effectives aux vérifications aux frontières intérieures

La proposition vise à promouvoir le recours à d’autres mesures que les contrôles aux frontières intérieures et à faire en sorte que, lorsqu’ils sont nécessaires, les contrôles aux frontières intérieures restent une mesure de dernier recours. Ces mesures sont les suivantes :

- Une procédure plus structurée pour toute réintroduction des contrôles aux frontières intérieures, comportant davantage de garanties : Actuellement, tout État membre qui décide de réintroduire des contrôles doit évaluer le caractère adéquat de cette réintroduction et son incidence probable sur la libre circulation des personnes. En application des nouvelles règles, il devra en outre évaluer l’impact sur les régions frontalières. Par ailleurs, tout État membre envisageant de prolonger les contrôles en réaction à des menaces prévisibles devrait d’abord évaluer si d’autres mesures, telles que des contrôles de police ciblés et une coopération policière renforcée, pourraient être plus adéquates. Une évaluation des risques devrait être fournie pour ce qui concerne les prolongations de plus de 6 mois. Lorsque des contrôles intérieurs auront été rétablis depuis 18 mois, la Commission devra émettre un avis sur leur caractère proportionné et sur leur nécessité. Dans tous les cas, les contrôles temporaires aux frontières ne devraient pas excéder une durée totale de 2 ans, sauf dans des circonstances très particulières. Il sera ainsi fait en sorte que les contrôles aux frontières intérieures restent une mesure de dernier recours et ne durent que le temps strictement nécessaire.
– Promouvoir le recours à d’autres mesures : Conformément au nouveau code de coopération policière de l’UE, proposé par la Commission le 8 décembre 2021, les nouvelles règles de Schengen encouragent le recours à des alternatives effectives aux contrôles aux frontières intérieures, sous la forme de contrôles de police renforcés et plus opérationnels dans les régions frontalières, en précisant qu’elles ne sont pas équivalentes aux contrôles aux frontières.
- Limiter les répercussions des contrôles aux frontières intérieures sur les régions frontalières : Eu égard aux enseignements tirés de la pandémie, qui a grippé les chaînes d’approvisionnement, les États membres rétablissant des contrôles devraient prendre des mesures pour limiter les répercussions négatives sur les régions frontalières et le marché intérieur. Il pourra s’agir notamment de faciliter le franchissement d’une frontière pour les travailleurs frontaliers et d’établir des voies réservées pour garantir un transit fluide des marchandises essentielles.
- Lutter contre les déplacements non autorisés au sein de l’espace Schengen : Afin de lutter contre le phénomène de faible ampleur mais constant des déplacements non autorisés, les nouvelles règles créeront une nouvelle procédure pour contrer ce phénomène au moyen d’opérations de police conjointes et permettre aux États membres de réviser ou de conclure de nouveaux accords bilatéraux de réadmission entre eux. Ces mesures complètent celles proposées dans le cadre du nouveau pacte sur la migration et l’asile, en particulier le cadre de solidarité contraignant, et doivent être envisagées en liaison avec elles.

Aider les États membres à gérer les situations d’instrumentalisation des flux migratoires

Les règles de Schengen révisées reconnaissent l’importance du rôle que jouent les États membres aux frontières extérieures pour le compte de tous les États membres et de l’Union dans son ensemble. Elles prévoient de nouvelles mesures que les États membres pourront prendre pour gérer efficacement les frontières extérieures de l’UE en cas d’instrumentalisation de migrants à des fins politiques. Ces mesures consistent notamment à limiter le nombre de points de passage frontaliers et à intensifier la surveillance des frontières.

La Commission propose en outre des mesures supplémentaires dans le cadre des règles de l’UE en matière d’asile et de retour afin de préciser les modalités de réaction des États membres en pareilles situations, dans le strict respect des droits fondamentaux. Ces mesures comprennent notamment la possibilité de prolonger le délai d’enregistrement des demandes d’asile jusqu’à 4 semaines et d’examiner toutes les demandes d’asile à la frontière, sauf en ce qui concerne les cas médicaux. Il convient de continuer à garantir un accès effectif à la procédure d’asile, et les États membres devraient permettre l’accès des organisations humanitaires qui fournissent une aide. Les États membres auront également la possibilité de mettre en place une procédure d’urgence pour la gestion des retours. Enfin, sur demande, les agences de l’UE (Agence de l’UE pour l’asile, Frontex, Europol) devraient apporter en priorité un soutien opérationnel à l’État membre concerné.

Prochaines étapes

Il appartient à présent au Parlement européen et au Conseil d’examiner et d’adopter les deux propositions.

Contexte

L’espace Schengen compte plus de 420 millions de personnes dans 26 pays. La suppression des contrôles aux frontières intérieures entre les États Schengen fait partie intégrante du mode de vie européen : près de 1,7 million de personnes résident dans un État Schengen et travaillent dans un autre. Les personnes ont bâti leur vie autour des libertés offertes par l’espace Schengen, et 3,5 millions d’entre elles se déplacent chaque jour entre des États Schengen.

Afin de renforcer la résilience de l’espace Schengen face aux menaces graves et d’adapter les règles de Schengen aux défis en constante évolution, la Commission a annoncé, dans son nouveau pacte sur la migration et l’asile présenté en septembre 2020, ainsi que dans la stratégie de juin 2021 pour un espace Schengen pleinement opérationnel et résilient, qu’elle proposerait une révision du code frontières Schengen. Dans son discours sur l’état de l’Union de 2021, la présidente von der Leyen a également annoncé de nouvelles mesures pour contrer l’instrumentalisation des migrants à des fins politiques et pour assurer l’unité dans la gestion des frontières extérieures de l’UE.

Les propositions présentées ce jour viennent s’ajouter aux travaux en cours visant à améliorer le fonctionnement global et la gouvernance de Schengen dans le cadre de la stratégie pour un espace Schengen plus fort et plus résilient. Afin de favoriser le dialogue politique visant à relever les défis communs, la Commission organise régulièrement des forums Schengen réunissant des membres du Parlement européen et les ministres de l’intérieur. À l’appui de ces discussions, la Commission présentera chaque année un rapport sur l’état de Schengen résumant la situation en ce qui concerne l’absence de contrôles aux frontières intérieures, les résultats des évaluations de Schengen et l’état d’avancement de la mise en œuvre des recommandations. Cela contribuera également à aider les États membres à relever tous les défis auxquels ils pourraient être confrontés. La proposition de révision du mécanisme d’évaluation et de contrôle de Schengen, actuellement en cours d’examen au Parlement européen et au Conseil, contribuera à renforcer la confiance commune dans la mise en œuvre des règles de Schengen. Le 8 décembre, la Commission a également proposé un code de coopération policière de l’UE destiné à renforcer la coopération des services répressifs entre les États membres, qui constitue un moyen efficace de faire face aux menaces pesant sur la sécurité dans l’espace Schengen et contribuera à la préservation d’un espace sans contrôles aux frontières intérieures.

La proposition de révision du code frontières Schengen qui est présentée ce jour fait suite à des consultations étroites auprès des membres du Parlement européen et des ministres de l’intérieur réunis au sein du forum Schengen.

Pour en savoir plus

Documents législatifs :

– Proposition de règlement modifiant le régime de franchissement des frontières par les personnes : ▻https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/proposal-regulation-rules-governing-movement-persons-across-borders-com-20

– Proposition de règlement visant à faire face aux situations d’instrumentalisation dans le domaine de la migration et de l’asile : ▻https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/proposal-regulation-situations-instrumentalisation-field-migration-and-asy

– Questions-réponses : ▻https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_21_6822

– Fiche d’information : ▻https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/fs_21_6838

▻https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/ip_21_6821

#Schengen #Espace_Schengen #frontières #frontières_internes #résilience #contrôles_frontaliers #migrations #réfugiés #asile #crise #pandémie #covid-19 #coronavirus #crise_sanitaire #code_Schengen #code_frontières_Schengen #menace_sanitaire #frontières_extérieures #mobilité #restrictions #déplacements #ordre_public #sécurité #sécurité_intérieure #menace_commune #vérifications #coopération_policière #contrôles_temporaires #temporaire #dernier_recours #régions_frontalières #marchandises #voies_réservées #déplacements_non_autorisés #opérations_de_police_conjointes #pacte #surveillance #surveillance_frontalière #points_de_passage #Frontex #Europol #soutien_opérationnel

–—

Ajouté dans la métaliste sur les #patrouilles_mixtes ce paragraphe :

« Lutter contre les déplacements non autorisés au sein de l’espace Schengen : Afin de lutter contre le phénomène de faible ampleur mais constant des déplacements non autorisés, les nouvelles règles créeront une nouvelle procédure pour contrer ce phénomène au moyen d’opérations de police conjointes et permettre aux États membres de réviser ou de conclure de nouveaux accords bilatéraux de réadmission entre eux. Ces mesures complètent celles proposées dans le cadre du nouveau pacte sur la migration et l’asile, en particulier le cadre de solidarité contraignant, et doivent être envisagées en liaison avec elles. »

►https://seenthis.net/messages/910352

#Agent_orange, la dernière bataille

https://ensemble28.forum28.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Agent-orange-la-derniere-bataille-Affiche.jpg

Utilisé pendant la guerre du Vietnam, l’agent orange a fait des ravages. Cet herbicide était utilisé par l’armée américaine pour détruire les forêts où se cachaient les résistants du Front National de libération et les cultures agricoles qui les nourrissaient. Pourtant, ce produit chimique contenant un produit cancérigène, la dioxine, reste encore autorisé aujourd’hui dans les forêts et les pâturages américains comme dans l’Oregon. En 2014, une ancienne reporter dans la jungle du sud Vietnam a assigné en justice vingt-six fabricants américains, dont Monsanto, depuis la France son pays de résidence, pour dénoncer les épandages. Carol Van Strum, une activiste américaine, mène quant à elle depuis plus de quarante ans, une guerre sans relâche pour dénoncer la responsabilité de l’industrie agrochimique face à cette catastrophe humaine et écologique. Pendant ce temps au Vietnam, une nouvelle génération d’enfants est née avec des malformations effroyables. Dans ce documentaire, Alan Adelson et Kate Taverna enquêtent sur cette arme de destruction massive.

–-> #film_documentaire passé sur arte, ajourd’hui plus disponible.
A voir ici (pour l’instant au moins) :
▻https://cs-cz.facebook.com/MouvCommuniste1/videos/agent-orange-la-derni%C3%A8re-bataille-sur-arte-cest-un-proc%C3%A8s-politique-historique-u/356341652390208

#film #documentaire #Vietnam #guerre_chimique #déforestation #coupe_à_blanc #Oregon #Michael_Newton #sylviculture #justice #Tran_To_Nga #herbicide #Dow_chemical #défoliant #histoire #guerre_du_Vietnam #opération_Ranch_Hand #dioxine #propagande #citizens_against_toxic_spray (#CATS) #cancer #malformations #Bayer #Monsanto #poison_papers

#métaliste sur les formations des #gardes-côtes_libyens sur le territoire européen recensées sur seenthis (liste non exhaustive)

#formation #gardes-côtes_libyens #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Italie #Libye #frontières #Méditerranée

Épisode 4
Au service des ventes d’armes - Les mémos de la terreur
Mercredi 24 Novembre 2021
▻https://egypt-papers.disclose.ngo/fr/chapter/france-egypte-vente-armes

https://egypt-papers.disclose.ngo/social/fb-5.jpg?v=4

Pour assurer des exportations d’armement vers l’Égypte, l’État français a relégué ses diplomates au second plan. Au cœur de cette stratégie mercantile, le ministre de la défense puis des affaires étrangères, Jean-Yves Le Drian, et l’Etat-major des armées. (...)

Episode 1 : Opération Sirli - Les mémos de la terreur
▻►►https://seenthis.net/messages/937340

Episode 2 Les mercenaires du ciel - Les mémos de la terreur
►►https://seenthis.net/messages/937425

Épisode 3 Surveillance made in France - Les mémos de la terreur
►https://seenthis.net/messages/937592

#FranceEgypte

Opération Sirli - Les mémos de la terreur
▻https://egypt-papers.disclose.ngo/fr/chapter/operation-sirli

https://egypt-papers.disclose.ngo/social/fb-2.jpg?v=3

e projet de la mission Sirli naît le 25 juillet 2015. Ce jour-là, Jean-Yves Le Drian, alors ministre de la défense de François Hollande, s’envole pour Le Caire en compagnie du directeur du renseignement militaire, le général Christophe Gomart. Il y rencontre son homologue égyptien, le ministre Sedki Sobhi dans un contexte « extrêmement favorable (…) reposant sur les récents succès des contrats Rafale et [frégates] FREMM », souligne une note diplomatique obtenue par Disclose – en avril, l’Egypte a acheté 24 avions de chasse Rafale et deux navires de guerre pour un montant de 5,6 milliards d’euros.

Australia signs deal with Nauru to keep asylum seeker detention centre open indefinitely

Australia will continue its policy of offshore processing of asylum seekers indefinitely, with the home affairs minister signing a new agreement with Nauru to maintain “an enduring form” of offshore processing on the island state.Since 2012 – in the second iteration of the policy – all asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat seeking protection have faced mandatory indefinite detention and processing offshore.

There are currently about 108 people held by Australia on Nauru as part of its offshore processing regime. Most have been there more than eight years. About 125 people are still held in Papua New Guinea. No one has been sent offshore since 2014.

However, Nauru is Australia’s only remaining offshore detention centre.PNG’s Manus Island centre was forced to shut down after it was found to be unconstitutional by the PNG supreme court in 2016. Australia was forced to compensate those who had been illegally detained there, and they were forcibly moved out, mostly to Port Moresby.

But the Nauru detention facility will remain indefinitely.

In a statement on Friday, home affairs minister #Karen_Andrews said a new #memorandum_of_understanding with Nauru was a “significant step forwards” for both countries.

“Australia’s strong and successful border protection policies under #Operation_Sovereign_Borders remain and there is zero chance of settlement in Australia for anyone who arrives illegally by boat,” she said.“Anyone who attempts an illegal maritime journey to Australia will be turned back, or taken to Nauru for processing. They will never settle in Australia.”Nauru president, #Lionel_Aingimea, said the new agreement created an “enduring form” of offshore processing.

“This takes the regional processing to a new milestone.

“It is enduring in nature, as such the mechanisms are ready to deal with illegal migrants immediately upon their arrival in Nauru from Australia.”Australia’s offshore processing policy and practices have been consistently criticised by the United Nations, human rights groups, and by refugees themselves.

The UN has said Australia’s system violates the convention against tortureand the international criminal court’s prosecutor said indefinite detention offshore was “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” and unlawful under international law.

At least 12 people have died in the camps, including being murdered by guards, through medical neglect and by suicide. Psychiatrists sent to work in the camps have described the conditions as “inherently toxic” and akin to “torture”.In 2016, the Nauru files, published by the Guardian, exposed the Nauru detention centre’s own internal reports of systemic violence, rape, sexual abuse, self-harm and child abuse in offshore detention.

The decision to extend offshore processing indefinitely has been met with opprobrium from those who were detained there, and refugee advocates who say it is deliberately damaging to those held.

Myo Win, a human rights activist and Rohingyan refugee from Myanmar, who was formerly detained on Nauru and released in March 2021, said those who remain held within Australia’s regime on Nauru “are just so tired, separated from family, having politics played with their lives, it just makes me so upset”.

“I am out now and I still cannot live my life on a bridging visa and in lockdown, but it is 10 times better than Nauru. They should not be extending anything, they should be stopping offshore processing now. I am really worried about everyone on Nauru right now, they need to be released.

”Jana Favero from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the new memorandum of understanding only extended a “failed system”.“An ‘enduring regional processing capability’ in Nauru means: enduring suffering, enduring family separation, enduring uncertainty, enduring harm and Australia’s enduring shame.

“The #Morrison government must give the men, women and children impacted by the brutality of #offshore processing a safe and permanent home. Prolonging the failure of #offshore_processing on Nauru and #PNG is not only wrong and inhumane but dangerous.”

▻https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/24/australia-signs-deal-with-nauru-to-keep-asylum-seeker-detention-centre-

#Australie #Pacific_solution #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Nauru #externalisation #île #détention #emprisonnement

Réseaux télécoms : les actes de vandalisme se multiplient La Tribune - Pierre Manière
►https://www.latribune.fr/technos-medias/telecoms/reseaux-telecoms-les-actes-de-vandalisme-se-multiplient-892271.html

Depuis environ un an, les dégradations et destructions visant des antennes de téléphonie mobile ou les réseaux Internet fixe grimpent en flèche, privant à chaque fois des milliers de foyers et d’entreprises de moyens de communiquer. Les opérateurs et le gouvernement se mobilisent pour enrayer ce fléau. Décryptage.

C’est presque devenu monnaie courante. Pas une semaine ne se passe sans que les réseaux télécoms, mobiles et Internet fixe, essuient des sabotages, incendies volontaires, dégradations ou vols. Ce week-end, des habitants du Tarn en ont fait les frais. Dans la journée de samedi, une antenne-relais a été incendiée près d’Albi. Résultat : pas moins de 52.000 abonnés de Bouygues Telecom et de SFR se sont retrouvés, en un éclair, dépourvus de téléphonie mobile. S’il y a du mieux, « la situation n’est toujours pas totalement rétablie », explique à La Tribune ce lundi Arthur Dreyfuss, le secrétaire général de SFR et président de la Fédération française des télécoms (FFT), le lobby du secteur.

https://static.latribune.fr/full_width/1769117/telecoms-antennes-mobile-4g.jpg

Le dirigeant précise que c’est un pylône de TDF qui a subi d’importants dégâts. « Or celui-ci irrigue des pylônes d’autres opérateurs, détaille-t-il. Au total, une soixantaine de sites mobiles ont été impactés. » Cette attaque n’a rien d’un cas isolé. Aux côtés de SFR et de Bouygues Telecom, Orange et Free voient régulièrement leurs installations vandalisées dans tout l’Hexagone. Tous sont confrontés à des dégradations d’antennes. « Chez Orange, en moyenne, environ une antenne par semaine est la cible de vandalisme, précise Cyril Luneau, le directeur des relations avec les collectivités locales de l’opérateur. Nous déplorons également des actes de malveillance sur le réseau fixe, dont des vols de câbles en cuivre [essentiels pour apporter la téléphonie et l’ADSL, Ndlr], à hauteur de dix actes par mois. » Il arrive aussi, chez tous les opérateurs, que les points de mutualisation, des installations critiques pour apporter l’Internet fixe à un grand nombre de foyers, soient attaqués.

Des sabotages en forte hausse en Ile-de-France
« C’est un fléau », alarme Arthur Dreyfuss. « Les réseaux télécoms sont très sensibles parce qu’ils permettent la connectivité des Français, des entreprises, mais aussi de l’ensemble des services d’urgence, rappelle-t-il. Cela fait dix à douze mois que nous constatons une multiplication des actes de vandalisme. » Le dirigeant précise que les territoires les plus touchés sont aussi, bien souvent, « ceux qui souffrent d’une couverture télécoms compliquée, ce qui est très dommageable pour les habitants et les entreprises ». Lesquels sont parfois extrêmement nombreux à en subir les conséquences. Arthur Dreyfuss se rappelle qu’en début d’année, l’incendie d’une antenne-relais près de Limoges a privé plus d’un million de personnes de télévision pendant plusieurs jours.

Toutes les régions sont touchées. Mais depuis la fin du mois d’août, les actes de vandalisme vont crescendo en Ile-de-France. « Plusieurs dizaines de sites ont déjà subi des dégradations », relève le chef de file de la FFT. Qui sont, alors, les responsables de ces attaques ? Jusqu’à présent, les enquêteurs semblaient privilégier les pistes de l’ultra-gauche, des anarchistes ou des anti-5G. L’arrivée de la nouvelle génération de téléphonie mobile a notamment suscité une forte opposition et des débats électriques. A gauche et chez les écologistes, beaucoup craignent encore que cette technologie nuise à la planète, et certains redoutent l’impact des ondes sur la santé. Des thèses complotistes ont également circulé, comme celle d’une propagation du coronavirus par la 5G. En mars dernier, le tribunal correctionnel de Valence a ainsi condamné un résident de Pierrelatte (Drôme), opposé à la nouvelle génération de téléphonie mobile, à trois ans de prison - dont un an ferme -, a rapporté France Bleu ▻https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/incendies-a-pierrelatte-un-anti-5g-condamne-a-trois-ans-de-prison-dont-un . En janvier et février, il avait incendié une antenne-relais et une chambre de télécommunications d’Orange. Cela dit, il apparaît bien difficile, aujourd’hui, de dresser des profils types.

« La question d’un renforcement du dispositif pénal se pose »
Face à ce vandalisme, les opérateurs et le gouvernement se mobilisent. Ce dimanche, Cédric O, le secrétaire d’Etat en charge du Numérique, a « [condamné] fermement » l’incendie du pylône de TDF dans le Tarn sur Twitter. « Avec Gérald Darmanin [le ministre de l’Intérieur, Ndlr], nous agissons aux côtés de l’ensemble des opérateurs pour mettre fin à ces actes inacceptables, dans le cadre de la convention nationale de lutte contre la malveillance visant les réseaux télécoms, qui met en danger des vies humaines », a-t-il insisté. Cette convention « a vocation à être déclinée localement par les préfectures », précise Arthur Dreyfuss. Elle vise à favoriser le partage d’informations entre les opérateurs, les gestionnaires de sites télécoms, la police, la gendarmerie et la justice. L’objectif est que tous puissent réagir au plus vite lorsque des installations sont vandalisées. Mais aussi d’agir de manière préventive. « Dans ce cadre, nous pouvons transmettre à la police et à la gendarmerie, à l’échelle départementale, des listes de sites sensibles, afin qu’une surveillance puisse, dans certains cas, être mise en place », explique le président de la FFT.

A ses yeux, cette convention va « dans le bon sens ». Mais « la question d’un renforcement du dispositif pénal et des sanctions se pose lorsque les auteurs de ces faits extrêmement graves sont retrouvés », poursuit-il. Même son de cloche pour Cyril Luneau : « Nous militons notamment pour une politique pénale adaptée en cas de récidive », affirme-t-il. Le message a été bien reçu par le gouvernement. La balle est désormais dans son camp.

#surveillance #télécoms #internet #orange #pouvoirs #arcep #free #fai #france #opérateurs #neutralité_des_réseaux #smartphone #bigdata #télécommunications #sfr #5g #FFT #numérique #Internet #réseaux #sabotages

Comment un clic peut-il polluer autant ?
▻https://www.rts.ch/info/sciences-tech/12326607-podcast-comment-un-clic-peutil-polluer-autant.html

Saviez-vous qu’envoyer un mail avec une pièce jointe d’un mega revient à allumer une ampoule de 60W pendant 25mn ? Dans le Point J, Solange Ghernaouti, professeure à l’Université de Lausanne, détaille l’impact environnemental de nos activités numériques.

« Il y a d’abord les coûts de fabrication des équipements ; l’extraction des terres rares et des matériaux, la production et le transport des marchandises. Et puis la consommation en énergie des appareils et des serveurs », note la spécialiste des questions numériques.

https://www.cybertek.fr/images_produits/65a631a6-4db8-4cdc-8e92-b58ef4ea3121.jpg

Des coûts dont les consommatrices et consommateurs n’ont pas forcément conscience. « On n’a pas encore compris le lien entre l’usage, la praticité et le plaisir que l’on peut avoir en utilisant nos outils numériques et les impacts sur l’environnement », déplore Sonia Ghernaouti.

Comment limiter cet impact ?
Des pratiques plus locales sont-elles envisageables dans le monde très globalisé du numérique ?

▻https://rts-aod-dd.akamaized.net/ww/12333491/6e7f696d-de63-3f60-897c-e598a0fe59ba.mp3

#pollution #équipement #environnement #climat #pollutions_ #eau #écologie #multinationales #décrypter #smartphone #PC #MAC #communication #internet #facebook #mail #wifi #opérateurs #télécommunications

Smoking guns. How European arms exports are forcing millions from their homes

https://www.tni.org/files/styles/cover_image/public/cover-images/smokingguns-report-tnicover.jpg?itok=9_8ur5lE#.jpg

The #nexus between the arms trade and forced displacement is rarely explored and the role of European arms trade policies that facilitate gross human rights violations in third countries is often absent from displacement and migration studies. This report joins the dots between Europe’s arms trade and forced displacement and migration.

Key findings

- Arms and military equipment manufactured and licensed in Europe and sold to third countries provokes forced displacement and migration. This arms trade is motivated by how highly lucrative the industry is and current control and monitoring mechanisms facilitate rather than curtail problematic licensing and exportation.

– The arms trade is political and is driven by profit but is under-regulated. Although other sectors, such as food and agriculture, do not undermine the fundamental right to life and other human rights in the same way that the arms trade does, they are far more stringently regulated.

- It is possible to methodically trace arms, military equipment and technology, from the point of origin and export to where these were eventually used, and document their devastating impact on the local population. The report confirms beyond any reasonable doubt that European arms are directly used not to defend populations or to enhance local or regional security as is often claimed, but to destabilise entire countries and regions.

- The arms industry is involved in clear violations of non-transfer clauses and end user agreements (EUAs) despite a supposedly robust system of controls. The evidence shows that once arms are traded, and although they may be traced, it is virtually impossible to control how they may eventually be used. Furthermore, although importing countries were known to have breached EUAs, EU member states continued to sell them arms and military equipment.

- Regardless of whether arms were exported to official state security forces or were eventually used by non-state armed actors, or whether EUAs and other control mechanisms were respected, the result was the same – European arms were used in military operations that led to destabilisation and resulting forced displacement and migration. The destabilisation, facilitated by arms supplied by Europe, then contributed to Europe hugely expanding its border security apparatus to respond to the apparent threat posed by refugees attempting to arrive and seek asylum.

- European countries are among the top exporters of lethal arms equipment worldwide, comprising approximately 26% of global arms exports since 2015. The top five European arms exporters are France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK – together accounting for 22% of global arms exports in the 2016–2020 period.

- Arms exports from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania have soared in recent years, a large proportion of which is exported to West Asian countries. For example, before 2012, Croatia exported ammunition worth less than €1 million a year, but with the start of the Syrian war this surged every year to reach €82 million in 2016. The European Parliament called on Bulgaria and Romania to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia and the US (if there was a risk that these arms may be diverted), so far to no avail.

– In Syria an estimated 13 million people need humanitarian assistance and more than half of the population remains displaced from their homes – including 6.6 million refugees living in neighbouring countries, such as Jordan and Lebanon, who subsequently attempt to flee to Europe in a reverse movement to the arms that displaced them. Another 6.7 million are internally displaced persons (IDPs) inside Syria.

–-

Five case studies document that:

Italian T-129 ATAK helicopter components were exported to Turkey and used in 2018 and 2019 in two attacks in the district of Afrin in Northern Syria as part of Operation Olive Branch and in Operation Peace Spring on the Turkish–Syrian border. According to UN figures, 98,000 people were displaced during the Afrin offensive between January and March 2018, while 180,000, of whom 80,000 were children, were displaced, in October 2019 as a result of Operation Peace Spring.

Bulgaria exported missile tubes and rockets to Saudi Arabia and the US, which eventually ended up in the hands of IS fighters in Iraq. The equipment was diverted and used in Ramadi and the surrounding region, where the International Organisation for Migration reported that from April 2015, following the outbreak of the Ramadi crisis, over half a million people were displaced from Anbar province, of which Ramadi is the capital city, while 85,470 were displaced specifically from Ramadi City between November 2015 and February 2016. Around 80% of all housing in Ramadi was severely damaged after the offensive. In 2017 another missile tube originating in Bulgaria was found to have been used by IS forces in the town of Bartella, located to the east of Mosul. At least 200,000 people from minority groups were displaced from the greater Mosul area between 2014 and January 2017. By July 2019, over two years after military operations had ended in Mosul, there were still over 300,000 people displaced from the city.

British, French, and German components and production capacity, including missiles, missile batteries, and a bomb rack, were exported to Turkey, where they were mounted on Turkish-made drones and exported to Azerbaijan. These same drones, loaded with European-manufactured arms components, were used in the 44-day conflict in Naghorno- Karabakh, which provoked the forced displacement of half of the region’s Armenian population – approximately 90,000 people.

Between 2012 and 2015 Bulgaria exported assault rifles, large-calibre artillery systems, light machine guns, hand-held under-barrel and mounted grenade launchers to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) national police and military. The conflict in DRC is one of the world’s longest, yet Europe continues to supply arms that are used to perpetrate gross human rights violations. In 2017, Serbia exported 920 assault rifles and 114 light machine guns that were originally manufactured in Bulgaria. That same year, 2,166,000 people were forcibly displaced, making it one of the worst since the conflict began. Specifically, Bulgarian weapons were in use in North Kivu in 2017 coinciding with the forced displacement of 523,000 people.

At least four Italian Bigliani-class patrol boats were donated to Libya and used by its coastguard to forcibly pull back and detain migrants who were fleeing its shores. In 2019, the Libyan coastguard mounted a machine gun on at least one of these boats and used it in the internal conflict against the Libyan National Army. Many of those fleeing Libya had most likely already fled other conflicts in other African and West Asian countries that may have purchased or were in receipt of European arms, so that at each step along their journey from displacement to migration, the European arms trade is making massive profits by firstly displacing them, and then later deterring and pushing them back.

The arms companies we identified in these case studies include: Airbus (Franco-German), ARSENAL (Bulgaria), BAE Systems (UK), Baykar Makina (Turkey), EDO MBM (UK), Intermarine (Italy), Kintex (Bulgaria), Leonardo (Italy), Roketsan (Turkey), SB Aerospatiale (France), TDW (Germany), Turkish Aerospace Industry (Turkey), and Vazovski Mashinostroitelni Zavodi ЕAD (Bulgaria).

▻https://www.tni.org/en/publication/smoking-guns
#rapport #tni
#armes #commerce_d'armes #migrations #asile #réfugiés #Europe #armée #militaire #industrie_de_l'armement #droits_humains #droits_fondamentaux #France #Allemagne #Italie #UK #Angleterre #Espagne #Bulgarie #Croatie #Roumanie #Arabie_Saoudite #Syrie #T-129_ATAK #Turquie #Operation_Olive_Branch #Operation_Peace_Spring #Irak #Ramadi #Bartella #Azerbaïjan #arméniens #Congo #RDC #République_démocratique_du_Congo #Serbie #Kivu #Nord_Kivu #Bigliani #Libye #gardes-côtes_libyiens #complexe_militaro-industriel
#Airbus #ARSENAL #BAE_Systems #Baykar_Makina #EDO_MBM #Intermarine #Kintex #Leonardo #Roketsan #SB_Aerospatiale #TDW #Turkish_Aerospace_Industry #Vazovski_Mashinostroitelni_Zavodi_ЕAD

La #Guardia_Civil de #Alicante ordena a sus agentes que no compartan información con #Frontex

Un documento interno insta a no acceder “en ningún caso” a cualquier solicitud de la Agencia Europea de Fronteras

La Guardia Civil de Alicante se niega a facilitar información de cualquier tipo al equipo que la Agencia Europea de Fronteras (Frontex) tiene desplegado en la provincia en el marco de sus operaciones conjuntas contra la inmigración irregular. Así lo ha hecho constar a todas las unidades de la comandancia de Alicante el teniente coronel #Francisco_Poyato_Sevillano en un oficio al que ha tenido acceso EL PAÍS. Fuentes del instituto armado confirman la veracidad de esta instrucción, pero la achacan a que unos agentes al servicio de la agencia intentaron recabar información directa sin pasar por los canales oficiales y eludiendo el procedimiento establecido de acceso a datos.

En la circular, el alto mando de la comandancia alicantina se dirige a todas las compañías y unidades a su cargo. “Esta jefatura”, indica, “ha tenido conocimiento de que en la provincia de Alicante existe un equipo desplegado de Frontex compuesto por personal de Policía Nacional”. “Cabe la posibilidad”, continúa Poyato, “de que este equipo pueda dirigirse directamente a alguna de las unidades de esta comandancia solicitando algún tipo de información sobre inmigración irregular, o cualquier otro tipo”. Ante esa eventualidad, prosigue el teniente coronel, “no se accederá en ningún caso a dicha solicitud, debiendo contestarle que no se dispone de autorización para dar ninguna clase de información”. La instrucción señala que cada petición de información será comunicada a la jefatura, la unidad de Operaciones a cuyo frente está Poyato. La circular está firmada y validada el pasado 2 de julio.

Los rifirrafes entre el personal que trabaja para Frontex y la Guardia Civil no son raros. Suceden a nivel operativo, como en este caso, pero también en los despachos. El pulso constante es un reflejo de las relaciones entre el instituto armado y la Policía Nacional, de donde salen los agentes españoles que sirven a la agencia. Pero es también una muestra de la desconfianza ante un organismo que tiene presupuestados 5.600 millones de euros para los próximos siete años y que busca cada vez más poder.

Fuentes oficiales de la Guardia Civil aseguran que el “detonante” que motivó esta orden fue “una llamada” en la que agentes de la #Policía_Nacional al servicio de Frontex “pidieron datos que no se pueden facilitar por no estar autorizados”. El equipo de Frontex en Alicante, destino de la ruta migratoria desde #Argelia, es parte de la #Operación_Índalo, una de las tres operaciones de la agencia en España que controla la inmigración irregular a través del Estrecho y el mar Alborán. En esta misión, en teoría, la agencia trabaja conjuntamente con la Guardia Civil y la Policía Nacional. En el marco de esta operación, explican las mismas fuentes, “hay una base de datos en la que los integrantes de ambos cuerpos graban toda la información” recabada, y la llamada de los agentes policiales que trabajan para la agencia se saltó este procedimiento. Después, añaden, tuvo lugar una reunión “en la que se les explicó que el acceso a información se tiene que gestionar a través del centro de control” de Madrid.

Para la Asociación Unificada de Guardias Civiles (AUGC), se trata de una muestra más del “recelo” y la “falta de colaboración y cooperación” entre las Fuerzas y Cuerpos de Seguridad del Estado. A juicio de AUGC, es “perentoria” la “necesidad de reformar el modelo policial” con el fin de “sincronizar y homogeneizar la cooperación”.

A principios de este año, Frontex amagó con retirarse de España tras una tensa negociación sobre los términos en los que se renovarían las tres operaciones en las que trabajan cerca de 200 oficiales a sueldo de la agencia. Frontex reclamaba a España mayor control sobre la inteligencia, las investigaciones y el acceso a los datos de carácter personal en las fronteras españolas, algo que los negociadores españoles no ven con buenos ojos. Las fuerzas de seguridad españolas, especialmente la Guardia Civil, no quieren ceder espacios de su competencia y existen recelos acerca de la operatividad, la capacidad y eficiencia de los oficiales la agencia. La pugna se saldó con la aceptación por parte de España de la propuesta de Frontex, pero las tensiones se mantienen.

La agencia, además, afronta la peor crisis reputacional desde que se creó en 2004. A las críticas que lleva años recibiendo por su opacidad, se ha sumado en los últimos meses las investigaciones por su supuesta colaboración en devoluciones ilegales de inmigrantes en el mar Egeo. También la amonestación del Tribunal de Cuentas de la UE y del Parlamento Europeo por su ineficacia, por las dudas que genera su función operativa y por la falta de transparencia que envuelve a sus cuentas.

▻https://elpais.com/espana/2021-07-15/la-guardia-civil-de-alicante-ordena-a-sus-agentes-que-no-compartan-informaci
#résistance #Espagne #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #gardes-frontière #Méditerranée #Méditerranée_occidentale #données #échange_de_données

–—

#Operation_Minerva (#Indalo) :

The area stretching between Spain and Morocco, known as the Western Mediterranean route, has long been used by migrants. For many years, it has also been the main route used by criminal networks to smuggle narcotics into the EU.

Frontex supports the national authorities with border control and surveillance, identification and registration and its ships and airplanes contribute to search and rescue operations. The agency has been assisting the Spanish authorities not only at sea, but in various sea ports and at international airports.

https://i.imgur.com/Kbz6JNi.png

The Western Mediterranean region has also long been a major conduit for drug smugglers seeking to bring hashish, cannabis and cocaine by sea to the lucrative European markets. Frontex vessels and aircraft assist the Spanish authorities to disrupt the drug smuggling operations.

Frontex currently deploys in Spain more than 180 officers from several European countries who assist with border checks, help register migrants and collect information on criminal smuggling networks, which is shared with national authorities and Europol in support of criminal investigations. They also provide support in identifying vulnerable migrants, such as victims of trafficking, including those in need of international protection. Finally, Frontex also helps Spanish authorities to seize drugs, weapons and cigarettes.

Officers deployed by Frontex in Spain take part in various joint operations, including three focused on Spain’s sea borders: Hera, Indalo and Minerva.

▻https://frontex.europa.eu/we-support/main-operations/operations-minerva-indalo-spain-

#Frontex #Zeppelin in trial flights from #Alexandroupoli airport. The militarisation of the #Evros border continues.

▻https://twitter.com/lk2015r/status/1415069475238551561

#Evros #asile #migrations #réfugiés #frontières #Grèce #militarisation #militarisation_des_frontières

–—

Κάτι τρέχει στον Έβρο

https://www.e-evros.gr/uploads/rsz_217142330_10159416833937389_2427409743951862414_n-1626165388.jpg

Τα βλέμματα τράβηξε το λευκό αερόστατο τύπου Zeppelin, όσοι το αντίκρυσαν στον ουρανό της Αλεξανδρούπολης σήμερα το πρωί.

Από το πρωί πραγματοποιεί το συγκεκριμένο Ζέπελιν δοκιμαστικές πτήσεις στο αεροδρόμιο « Δημόκριτος » και σύντομα θα μπει στη « μάχη » της φύλαξης των συνόρων.

Tα βλέμματα όσων το αντίκρυσαν στον ουρανό της #Αλεξανδρούπολης τράβηξε το αερόστατο τύπου Zέπελιν το οποίο στέλνει η...

▻https://www.e-evros.gr/gr/eidhseis/3/aerostato-zeppelin-ston-oyrano-ths-ale3androypolhs-poia-h-xrhsimothta-toy/post44126

#Rwanda_1994

https://www.glenat.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/images/livres/couv/9782356261120-T.jpg?itok=sJZvQ7d-#.jpg

Rwanda, 1994, entre avril et juillet, 100 jours de génocide...
Celui que l’on appelle « Le dernier génocide du siècle » s’est déroulé dans un tout petit pays d’Afrique, sous les yeux du monde entier, sous le joug des politiques internationales, et sous les machettes et la haine de toute une partie de la population. Sur environ 7,5 millions de Rwandais d’alors, 1,5 million de personnes ont été exterminées pour le seul fait d’appartenir à la caste « tutsi » (chiffres officiels de 2004) : hommes, femmes, enfants, nouveau-nés, vieillards... De cette tragédie historique, suite à plusieurs années de recherche dont sept mois passés au Rwanda pour récolter des témoignages, les auteurs ont tiré une fiction éprouvante basée sur des faits réels.

https://www.glenat.com/drugstore/rwanda-1994-integrale-9782356261120
#BD #bande_dessinée #livre
#Kigali #Murambi #fosses_communes #Nyagatare #FAR #génocide #Rwanda #France #armée_française #opération_Turquoise #camps_de_réfugiés #réfugiés #Goma #zone_turquoise #aide_humanitaire #choléra #entraide #eau_potable

Sur l’opéraïsme italien (1) : la composition de classe revisitée
▻http://www.revue-ouvrage.org/sur-loperaisme-italien-1

http://www.revue-ouvrage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/image4-1-2.jpg

Les 16 et 17 novembre 1984 sont réuni·e·s à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) des intellectuel·le·s et militant·e·s lié·e·s de plus ou moins près à l’opéraïsme et à l’autonomie italienne, parmi lesquel·le·s Mariarosa Dalla Costa1, Sergio Bologna, Félix Guattari, Harry Cleaver, Franco « Bifo » Berardi et plus encore. Organisé par les sociologues Marie-Blanche Tahon et André Corten, qui peuvent compter sur l’aide du militant Franco Piperno alors en exil au Canada, le « colloque de Montréal » rassemble des interventions extérieures au mouvement sur les pratiques et les théories opéraïstes, ainsi que les liens possibles entre l’autonomie italienne et le contexte politique du Québec, mais il constitue surtout un espace de réflexion (auto)critique interne au mouvement. La contribution du militant #Yann_Moulier-Boutang au colloque cherche, en ce sens, à comprendre l’échec de l’autonomie italienne pour mieux reformuler son projet révolutionnaire. Comme nous le verrons, il rejoint la perspective de Toni Negri, qui affirme, dans une lettre écrite pour ce colloque, que le principal enjeu qui guette tout mouvement autonome futur est de trouver « comment être la catastrophe en la construisant, comment être la totalité sans l’être, comment être le contraire destructeur de la totalité capitaliste et étatique sans en subir l’homologie. »

Nous publions ici une version légèrement modifiée de l’allocution de Moulier-Boutang, parue originellement sous le titre « L’opéraïsme italien : organisation/représentation/idéologie ou la composition de classe revisitée ». Le fondateur des revues (post)opéraïstes Matériaux pour l’intervention, Camarades et Multitudes y présente le contexte particulier au sein duquel se déploie et s’échoue ce mouvement, ainsi que les principales interprétations de cet échec par les deux opéraïsmes à la base l’autonomie italienne : la tendance communiste à la Tronti et la tendance autonome à la Negri. Dans les deux cas, le principal écueil de l’opéraïsme est, selon Moulier-Boutang, de permettre une composition de classe dans et contre le capitalisme sans toutefois arriver à conserver et augmenter ce mouvement dehors et pour. C’est dans cette optique d’une dialectique entre la destruction de l’ancien et la création du nouveau que Moulier-Boutang nous invite à réfléchir à une composition de classe qui ne fait pas l’économie d’une idéologie révolutionnaire positive.

Ce texte est la première partie d’une série de deux textes « sur l’opéraïsme italien » de Moulier-Boutang. Dans la seconde partie, à paraître sur Ouvrage dans les prochaines semaines, il revient sur cette intervention théorique, qu’il met en contexte et complète par une réflexion critique sur la gauche contemporaine et l’utilité du concept de « composition de classe » pour penser et transformer la situation actuelle.

Sur l’opéraïsme italien (2) : au-delà du mythe de l’unité de la classe
▻http://www.revue-ouvrage.org/sur-loperaisme-italien-2

Entre 1978 et 1989, l’extrême-gauche qu’on nommait « extra-parlementaire » en Italie connaissait son déclin, dans un contexte un peu plus dramatique que le reste de l’Europe, puisque les questions de lutte armée finirent par prendre une dimension impossible à esquiver. On appela cela les « années de plomb ». Or, on retrouvait en fait, partout en Europe occidentale, les mêmes questions à des degrés divers d’acuité et de pertinence : celle du référent au communisme (le socialisme soviétique, chinois, cubain ou autres choses ?) ; celle de l’organisation politique de la classe ouvrière (dans les partis communistes ou ailleurs ? sous une forme léniniste ou autres choses ?) ; celle du rôle de la politique volontaire par rapport aux mouvements spontanés de la classe ouvrière (l’avant-garde, les points de liaison, le parasitisme et le superflu).

Il n’est ni partiel ni partial de dire que, après la vague de mai 1968 et ses différentes répliques, le « gauchisme », au sens le plus large, mit entre dix et vingt ans, soit de 1968 à 1988, à être battu en se divisant lui-même de plus en plus ou en sombrant dans des formes spectaculaires, mais peu efficaces et presque autophages, de terrorisme. L’opéraïsme, qui avait bien plus fière allure théorique et politique que les versions classiques du marxisme trotskiste ou maoïste, le tiers-mondisme ou l’anarchisme, n’échappa pas à ce sort commun. Alors, dira-t-on, pourquoi s’intéresser encore à ce passé qui a passé irrémédiablement ? Il y a deux raisons, qui sont, à mon sens, étroitement reliées.

La défaite de l’extrême-gauche italienne avait commencée dès 1977 et culminée avec l’enlèvement et l’assassinat d’Aldo Moro, puis la réaction de l’État italien le 7 avril 1979 et l’emprisonnement massif de militant·e·s de l’autonomie ouvrière pour finalement s’achever, en décembre 1980, avec l’échec de la grève de la FIAT et la reddition de la colonne des Brigades Rouges. Or, si cette défaite s’est concrétisée en 1979-80, une décennie plus tard, en 1989-90, c’est le socialisme réellement existant – ou réalisé, comme disaient les Italien·ne·s – qui s’est effondré avec la chute du mur de Berlin et le démantèlement de l’URSS. Dès 1978, la fin du maoïsme avait débuté en Chine et, si le socialisme à la chinoise continuait d’être revendiqué par le Petit Timonier Deng Xiaoping, c’était plutôt une énorme ouverture à l’économie de marché capitaliste qui s’opérait. La révolution néolibérale du thatchérisme et du reaganisme n’étaient qu’un appendice de la re-mondialisation autour de la Chine – la première mondialisation de la seconde colonisation européenne ayant été interrompue brutalement par la Grande Guerre de 1914-1918.

#opéraïsme #composition_de_classe

Intéressante enquête du New Yorker sur l’incarcération d’un jeune érythréen en Italie, accusé à tort de trafic d’êtres humains.

–-> Je copie-colle ici un fil de discussion qui date de 2017, que je n’ai pas initié, par peur de le perdre si la personne qui l’a mis en ligne le supprime...
►https://seenthis.net/messages/617947

Friends of the Traffickers Italy’s Anti-Mafia Directorate and the “Dirty Campaign” to Criminalize Migration

Afana Dieudonne often says that he is not a superhero. That’s Dieudonne’s way of saying he’s done things he’s not proud of — just like anyone in his situation would, he says, in order to survive. From his home in Cameroon to Tunisia by air, then by car and foot into the desert, across the border into Libya, and onto a rubber boat in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Dieudonne has done a lot of surviving.

In Libya, Dieudonne remembers when the smugglers managing the safe house would ask him for favors. Dieudonne spoke a little English and didn’t want trouble. He said the smugglers were often high and always armed. Sometimes, when asked, Dieudonne would distribute food and water among the other migrants. Other times, he would inform on those who didn’t follow orders. He remembers the traffickers forcing him to inflict violence on his peers. It was either them or him, he reasoned.

On September 30, 2014, the smugglers pushed Dieudonne and 91 others out to sea aboard a rubber boat. Buzzing through the pitch-black night, the group watched lights on the Libyan coast fade into darkness. After a day at sea, the overcrowded dinghy began taking on water. Its passengers were rescued by an NGO vessel and transferred to an Italian coast guard ship, where officers picked Dieudonne out of a crowd and led him into a room for questioning.

At first, Dieudonne remembers the questioning to be quick, almost routine. His name, his age, his nationality. And then the questions turned: The officers said they wanted to know how the trafficking worked in Libya so they could arrest the people involved. They wanted to know who had driven the rubber boat and who had held the navigation compass.

“So I explained everything to them, and I also showed who the ‘captain’ was — captain in quotes, because there is no captain,” said Dieudonne. The real traffickers stay in Libya, he added. “Even those who find themselves to be captains, they don’t do it by choice.”

For the smugglers, Dieudonne explained, “we are the customers, and we are the goods.”

For years, efforts by the Italian government and the European Union to address migration in the central Mediterranean have focused on the people in Libya — interchangeably called facilitators, smugglers, traffickers, or militia members, depending on which agency you’re speaking to — whose livelihoods come from helping others cross irregularly into Europe. People pay them a fare to organize a journey so dangerous it has taken tens of thousands of lives.

The European effort to dismantle these smuggling networks has been driven by an unlikely actor: the Italian anti-mafia and anti-terrorism directorate, a niche police office in Rome that gained respect in the 1990s and early 2000s for dismantling large parts of the Mafia in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy. According to previously unpublished internal documents, the office — called the Direzione nazionale antimafia e antiterrorismo, or DNAA, in Italian — took a front-and-center role in the management of Europe’s southern sea borders, in direct coordination with the EU border agency Frontex and European military missions operating off the Libyan coast.

In 2013, under the leadership of a longtime anti-mafia prosecutor named Franco Roberti, the directorate pioneered a strategy that was unique — or at least new for the border officers involved. They would start handling irregular migration to Europe like they had handled the mob. The approach would allow Italian and European police, coast guard agencies, and navies, obliged by international law to rescue stranded refugees at sea, to at least get some arrests and convictions along the way.

The idea was to arrest low-level operators and use coercion and plea deals to get them to flip on their superiors. That way, the reasoning went, police investigators could work their way up the food chain and eventually dismantle the smuggling rings in Libya. With every boat that disembarked in Italy, police would make a handful of arrests. Anybody found to have played an active role during the crossing, from piloting to holding a compass to distributing water or bailing out a leak, could be arrested under a new legal directive written by Roberti’s anti-mafia directorate. Charges ranged from simple smuggling to transnational criminal conspiracy and — if people asphyxiated below deck or drowned when a boat capsized — even murder. Judicial sources estimate the number of people arrested since 2013 to be in the thousands.

For the police, prosecutors, and politicians involved, the arrests were an important domestic political win. At the time, public opinion in Italy was turning against migration, and the mugshots of alleged smugglers regularly held space on front pages throughout the country.

But according to the minutes of closed-door conversations among some of the very same actors directing these cases, which were obtained by The Intercept under Italy’s freedom of information law, most anti-mafia prosecutions only focused on low-level boat drivers, often migrants who had themselves paid for the trip across. Few, if any, smuggling bosses were ever convicted. Documents of over a dozen trials reviewed by The Intercept show prosecutions built on hasty investigations and coercive interrogations.

In the years that followed, the anti-mafia directorate went to great lengths to keep the arrests coming. According to the internal documents, the office coordinated a series of criminal investigations into the civilian rescue NGOs working to save lives in the Mediterranean, accusing them of hampering police work. It also oversaw efforts to create and train a new coast guard in Libya, with full knowledge that some coast guard officers were colluding with the same smuggling networks that Italian and European leaders were supposed to be fighting.

Since its inception, the anti-mafia directorate has wielded unparalleled investigative tools and served as a bridge between politicians and the courts. The documents reveal in meticulous detail how the agency, alongside Italian and European officials, capitalized on those powers to crack down on alleged smugglers, most of whom they knew to be desperate people fleeing poverty and violence with limited resources to defend themselves in court.

Tragedy and Opportunity

The anti-mafia directorate was born in the early 1990s after a decade of escalating Mafia violence. By then, hundreds of prosecutors, politicians, journalists, and police officers had been shot, blown up, or kidnapped, and many more extorted by organized crime families operating in Italy and beyond.

In Palermo, the Sicilian capital, prosecutor Giovanni Falcone was a rising star in the Italian judiciary. Falcone had won unprecedented success with an approach to organized crime based on tracking financial flows, seizing assets, and centralizing evidence gathered by prosecutor’s offices across the island.

But as the Mafia expanded its reach into the rest of Europe, Falcone’s work proved insufficient.

In September 1990, a Mafia commando drove from Germany to Sicily to gun down a 37-year-old judge. Weeks later, at a police checkpoint in Naples, the Sicilian driver of a truck loaded with weapons, explosives, and drugs was found to be a resident of Germany. A month after the arrests, Falcone traveled to Germany to establish an information-sharing mechanism with authorities there. He brought along a younger colleague from Naples, Franco Roberti.

“We faced a stone wall,” recalled Roberti, still bitter three decades later. He spoke to us outside a cafe in a plum neighborhood in Naples. Seventy-three years old and speaking with the rasp of a lifelong smoker, Roberti described Italy’s Mafia problem in blunt language. He bemoaned a lack of international cooperation that, he said, continues to this day. “They claimed that there was no need to investigate there,” Roberti said, “that it was up to us to investigate Italians in Germany who were occasional mafiosi.”

As the prosecutors traveled back to Italy empty-handed, Roberti remembers Falcone telling him that they needed “a centralized national organ able to speak directly to foreign judicial authorities and coordinate investigations in Italy.”

“That is how the idea of the anti-mafia directorate was born,” Roberti said. The two began building what would become Italy’s first national anti-mafia force.

At the time, there was tough resistance to the project. Critics argued that Falcone and Roberti were creating “super-prosecutors” who would wield outsize powers over the courts, while also being subject to political pressures from the government in Rome. It was, they argued, a marriage of police and the judiciary, political interests and supposedly apolitical courts — convenient for getting Mafia convictions but dangerous for Italian democracy.

Still, in January 1992, the project was approved in Parliament. But Falcone would never get to lead it: Months later, a bomb set by the Mafia killed him, his wife, and the three agents escorting them. The attack put to rest any remaining criticism of Falcone’s plan.

The anti-mafia directorate went on to become one of Italy’s most important institutions, the national authority over all matters concerning organized crime and the agency responsible for partially freeing the country from its century-old crucible. In the decades after Falcone’s death, the directorate did what many in Italy thought impossible, dismantling large parts of the five main Italian crime families and almost halving the Mafia-related murder rate.

And yet, by the time Roberti took control in 2013, it had been years since the last high-profile Mafia prosecution, and the organization’s influence was waning. At the same time, Italy was facing unprecedented numbers of migrants arriving by boat. Roberti had an idea: The anti-mafia directorate would start working on what he saw as a different kind of mafia. The organization set its sights on Libya.

“We thought we had to do something more coordinated to combat this trafficking,” Roberti remembered, “so I put everyone around a table.”

“The main objective was to save lives, seize ships, and capture smugglers,” Roberti said. “Which we did.”

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Our Sea

Dieudonne made it to the Libyan port city of Zuwara in August 2014. One more step across the Mediterranean, and he’d be in Europe. The smugglers he paid to get him across the sea took all of his possessions and put him in an abandoned building that served as a safe house to wait for his turn.

Dieudonne told his story from a small office in Bari, Italy, where he runs a cooperative that helps recent arrivals access local education. Dieudonne is fiery and charismatic. He is constantly moving: speaking, texting, calling, gesticulating. Every time he makes a point, he raps his knuckles on the table in a one-two pattern. Dieudonne insisted that we publish his real name. Others who made the journey more recently — still pending decisions on their residence permits or refugee status — were less willing to speak openly.

Dieudonne remembers the safe house in Zuwara as a string of constant violence. The smugglers would come once a day to leave food. Every day, they would ask who hadn’t followed their orders. Those inside the abandoned building knew they were less likely to be discovered by police or rival smugglers, but at the same time, they were not free to leave.

“They’ve put a guy in the refrigerator in front of all of us, to show how the next one who misbehaves will be treated,” Dieudonne remembered, indignant. He witnessed torture, shootings, rape. “The first time you see it, it hurts you. The second time it hurts you less. The third time,” he said with a shrug, “it becomes normal. Because that’s the only way to survive.”

“That’s why arresting the person who pilots a boat and treating them like a trafficker makes me laugh,” Dieudonne said. Others who have made the journey to Italy report having been forced to drive at gunpoint. “You only do it to be sure you don’t die there,” he said.

Two years after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s government, much of Libya’s northwest coast had become a staging ground for smugglers who organized sea crossings to Europe in large wooden fishing boats. When those ships — overcrowded, underpowered, and piloted by amateurs — inevitably capsized, the deaths were counted by the hundreds.

In October 2013, two shipwrecks off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa took over 400 lives, sparking public outcry across Europe. In response, the Italian state mobilized two plans, one public and the other private.

“There was a big shock when the Lampedusa tragedy happened,” remembered Italian Sen. Emma Bonino, then the country’s foreign minister. The prime minister “called an emergency meeting, and we decided to immediately launch this rescue program,” Bonino said. “Someone wanted to call the program ‘safe seas.’ I said no, not safe, because it’s sure we’ll have other tragedies. So let’s call it Mare Nostrum.”

Mare Nostrum — “our sea” in Latin — was a rescue mission in international waters off the coast of Libya that ran for one year and rescued more than 150,000 people. The operation also brought Italian ships, airplanes, and submarines closer than ever to Libyan shores. Roberti, just two months into his job as head of the anti-mafia directorate, saw an opportunity to extend the country’s judicial reach and inflict a lethal blow to smuggling rings in Libya.

Five days after the start of Mare Nostrum, Roberti launched the private plan: a series of coordination meetings among the highest echelons of the Italian police, navy, coast guard, and judiciary. Under Roberti, these meetings would run for four years and eventually involve representatives from Frontex, Europol, an EU military operation, and even Libya.

The minutes of five of these meetings, which were presented by Roberti in a committee of the Italian Parliament and obtained by The Intercept, give an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the events on Europe’s southern borders since the Lampedusa shipwrecks.

In the first meeting, held in October 2013, Roberti told participants that the anti-mafia offices in the Sicilian city of Catania had developed an innovative way to deal with migrant smuggling. By treating Libyan smugglers like they had treated the Italian Mafia, prosecutors could claim jurisdiction over international waters far beyond Italy’s borders. That, Roberti said, meant they could lawfully board and seize vessels on the high seas, conduct investigations there, and use the evidence in court.

The Italian authorities have long recognized that, per international maritime law, they are obligated to rescue people fleeing Libya on overcrowded boats and transport them to a place of safety. As the number of people attempting the crossing increased, many Italian prosecutors and coast guard officials came to believe that smugglers were relying on these rescues to make their business model work; therefore, the anti-mafia reasoning went, anyone who acted as crew or made a distress call on a boat carrying migrants could be considered complicit in Libyan trafficking and subject to Italian jurisdiction. This new approach drew heavily from legal doctrines developed in the United States during the 1980s aimed at stopping drug smuggling.

European leaders were scrambling to find a solution to what they saw as a looming migration crisis. Italian officials thought they had the answer and publicly justified their decisions as a way to prevent future drownings.

But according to the minutes of the 2013 anti-mafia meeting, the new strategy predated the Lampedusa shipwrecks by at least a week. Sicilian prosecutors had already written the plan to crack down on migration across the Mediterranean but lacked both the tools and public will to put it into action. Following the Lampedusa tragedy and the creation of Mare Nostrum, they suddenly had both.

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State of Necessity

In the international waters off the coast of Libya, Dieudonne and 91 others were rescued by a European NGO called Migrant Offshore Aid Station. They spent two days aboard MOAS’s ship before being transferred to an Italian coast guard ship, Nave Dattilo, to be taken to Europe.

Aboard the Dattilo, coast guard officers asked Dieudonne why he had left his home in Cameroon. He remembers them showing him a photograph of the rubber boat taken from the air. “They asked me who was driving, the roles and everything,” he remembered. “Then they asked me if I could tell him how the trafficking in Libya works, and then, they said, they would give me residence documents.”

Dieudonne said that he was reluctant to cooperate at first. He didn’t want to accuse any of his peers, but he was also concerned that he could become a suspect. After all, he had helped the driver at points throughout the voyage.

“I thought that if I didn’t cooperate, they might hurt me,” Dieudonne said. “Not physically hurt, but they could consider me dishonest, like someone who was part of the trafficking.”

To this day, Dieudonne says he can’t understand why Italy would punish people for fleeing poverty and political violence in West Africa. He rattled off a list of events from the last year alone: draught, famine, corruption, armed gunmen, attacks on schools. “And you try to convict someone for managing to escape that situation?”

The coast guard ship disembarked in Vibo Valentia, a city in the Italian region of Calabria. During disembarkation, a local police officer explained to a journalist that they had arrested five people. The journalist asked how the police had identified the accused.

“A lot has been done by the coast guard, who picked [the migrants] up two days ago and managed to spot [the alleged smugglers],” the officer explained. “Then we have witness statements and videos.”

Cases like these, where arrests are made on the basis of photo or video evidence and statements by witnesses like Dieudonne, are common, said Gigi Modica, a judge in Sicily who has heard many immigration and asylum cases. “It’s usually the same story. They take three or four people, no more. They ask them two questions: who was driving the boat, and who was holding the compass,” Modica explained. “That’s it — they get the names and don’t care about the rest.”

Modica was one of the first judges in Italy to acquit people charged for driving rubber boats — known as “scafisti,” or boat drivers, in Italian — on the grounds that they had been forced to do so. These “state of necessity” rulings have since become increasingly common. Modica rattled off a list of irregularities he’s seen in such cases: systemic racism, witness statements that migrants later say they didn’t make, interrogations with no translator or lawyer, and in some cases, people who report being encouraged by police to sign documents renouncing their right to apply for asylum.

“So often these alleged smugglers — scafisti — are normal people who were compelled to pilot a boat by smugglers in Libya,” Modica said.

Documents of over a dozen trials reviewed by The Intercept show prosecutions largely built on testimony from migrants who are promised a residence permit in exchange for their collaboration. At sea, witnesses are interviewed by the police hours after their rescue, often still in a state of shock after surviving a shipwreck.

In many cases, identical statements, typos included, are attributed to several witnesses and copied and pasted across different police reports. Sometimes, these reports have been enough to secure decadeslong sentences. Other times, under cross-examination in court, witnesses have contradicted the statements recorded by police or denied giving any testimony at all.

As early as 2015, attendees of the anti-mafia meetings were discussing problems with these prosecutions. In a meeting that February, Giovanni Salvi, then the prosecutor of Catania, acknowledged that smugglers often abandoned migrant boats in international waters. Still, Italian police were steaming ahead with the prosecutions of those left on board.

These prosecutions were so important that in some cases, the Italian coast guard decided to delay rescue when boats were in distress in order to “allow for the arrival of institutional ships that can conduct arrests,” a coast guard commander explained at the meeting.

When asked about the commander’s comments, the Italian coast guard said that “on no occasion” has the agency ever delayed a rescue operation. Delaying rescue for any reason goes against international and Italian law, and according to various human rights lawyers in Europe, could give rise to criminal liability.

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NGOs in the Crosshairs

Italy canceled Mare Nostrum after one year, citing budget constraints and a lack of European collaboration. In its wake, the EU set up two new operations, one via Frontex and the other a military effort called Operation Sophia. These operations focused not on humanitarian rescue but on border security and people smuggling from Libya. Beginning in 2015, representatives from Frontex and Operation Sophia were included in the anti-mafia directorate meetings, where Italian prosecutors ensured that both abided by the new investigative strategy.

Key to these investigations were photos from the rescues, like the aerial image that Dieudonne remembers the Italian coast guard showing him, which gave police another way to identify who piloted the boats and helped navigate.

In the absence of government rescue ships, a fleet of civilian NGO vessels began taking on a large number of rescues in the international waters off the coast of Libya. These ships, while coordinated by the Italian coast guard rescue center in Rome, made evidence-gathering difficult for prosecutors and judicial police. According to the anti-mafia meeting minutes, some NGOs, including MOAS, routinely gave photos to Italian police and Frontex. Others refused, arguing that providing evidence for investigations into the people they saved would undermine their efficacy and neutrality.

In the years following Mare Nostrum, the NGO fleet would come to account for more than one-third of all rescues in the central Mediterranean, according to estimates by Operation Sophia. A leaked status report from the operation noted that because NGOs did not collect information from rescued migrants for police, “information essential to enhance the understanding of the smuggling business model is not acquired.”

In a subsequent anti-mafia meeting, six prosecutors echoed this concern. NGO rescues meant that police couldn’t interview migrants at sea, they said, and cases were getting thrown out for lack of evidence. A coast guard admiral explained the importance of conducting interviews just after a rescue, when “a moment of empathy has been established.”

“It is not possible to carry out this task if the rescue intervention is carried out by ships of the NGOs,” the admiral told the group.

The NGOs were causing problems for the DNAA strategy. At the meetings, Italian prosecutors and representatives from the coast guard, navy, and Interior Ministry discussed what they could do to rein in the humanitarian organizations. At the same time, various prosecutors were separately fixing their investigative sights on the NGOs themselves.

In late 2016, an internal report from Frontex — later published in full by The Intercept — accused an NGO vessel of directly receiving migrants from Libyan smugglers, attributing the information to “Italian authorities.” The claim was contradicted by video evidence and the ship’s crew.

Months later, Carmelo Zuccaro, the prosecutor of Catania, made public that he was investigating rescue NGOs. “Together with Frontex and the navy, we are trying to monitor all these NGOs that have shown that they have great financial resources,” Zuccaro told an Italian newspaper. The claim went viral in Italian and European media. “Friends of the traffickers” and “migrant taxi service” became common slurs used toward humanitarian NGOs by anti-immigration politicians and the Italian far right.

Zuccaro would eventually walk back his claims, telling a parliamentary committee that he was working off a hypothesis at the time and had no evidence to back it up.

In an interview with a German newspaper in February 2017, the director of Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, refrained from explicitly criticizing the work of rescue NGOs but did say they were hampering police investigations in the Mediterranean. As aid organizations assumed a larger percentage of rescues, Leggeri said, “it is becoming more difficult for the European security authorities to find out more about the smuggling networks through interviews with migrants.”

“That smear campaign was very, very deep,” remembered Bonino, the former foreign minister. Referring to Marco Minniti, Italy’s interior minister at the time, she added, “I was trying to push Minniti not to be so obsessed with people coming, but to make a policy of integration in Italy. But he only focused on Libya and smuggling and criminalizing NGOs with the help of prosecutors.”

Bonino explained that the action against NGOs was part of a larger plan to change European policy in the central Mediterranean. The first step was the shift away from humanitarian rescue and toward border security and smuggling. The second step “was blaming the NGOs or arresting them, a sort of dirty campaign against them,” she said. “The results of which after so many years have been no convictions, no penalties, no trials.”

Finally, the third step was to build a new coast guard in Libya to do what the Europeans couldn’t, per international law: intercept people at sea and bring them back to Libya, the country from which they had just fled.

At first, leaders at Frontex were cautious. “From Frontex’s point of view, we look at Libya with concern; there is no stable state there,” Leggeri said in the 2017 interview. “We are now helping to train 60 officers for a possible future Libyan coast guard. But this is at best a beginning.”

Bonino saw this effort differently. “They started providing support for their so-called coast guard,” she said, “which were the same traffickers changing coats.”
Rescued migrants disembarking from a Libyan coast guard ship in the town of Khoms, a town 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of the capital on October 1, 2019.

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Same Uniforms, Same Ships

Safe on land in Italy, Dieudonne was never called to testify in court. He hopes that none of his peers ended up in prison but said he would gladly testify against the traffickers if called. Aboard the coast guard ship, he remembers, “I gave the police contact information for the traffickers, I gave them names.”

The smuggling operations in Libya happened out in the open, but Italian police could only go as far as international waters. Leaked documents from Operation Sophia describe years of efforts by European officials to get Libyan police to arrest smugglers. Behind closed doors, top Italian and EU officials admitted that these same smugglers were intertwined with the new Libyan coast guard that Europe was creating and that working with them would likely go against international law.

As early as 2015, multiple officials at the anti-mafia meetings noted that some smugglers were uncomfortably close to members of the Libyan government. “Militias use the same uniforms and the same ships as the Libyan coast guard that the Italian navy itself is training,” Rear Adm. Enrico Credendino, then in charge of Operation Sophia, said in 2017. The head of the Libyan coast guard and the Libyan minister of defense, both allies of the Italian government, Credendino added, “have close relationships with some militia bosses.”

One of the Libyan coast guard officers playing both sides was Abd al-Rahman Milad, also known as Bija. In 2019, the Italian newspaper Avvenire revealed that Bija participated in a May 2017 meeting in Sicily, alongside Italian border police and intelligence officials, that was aimed at stemming migration from Libya. A month later, he was condemned by the U.N. Security Council for his role as a top member of a powerful trafficking militia in the coastal town of Zawiya, and for, as the U.N. put it, “sinking migrant boats using firearms.”

According to leaked documents from Operation Sophia, coast guard officers under Bija’s command were trained by the EU between 2016 and 2018.

While the Italian government was prosecuting supposed smugglers in Italy, they were also working with people they knew to be smugglers in Libya. Minniti, Italy’s then-interior minister, justified the deals his government was making in Libya by saying that the prospect of mass migration from Africa made him “fear for the well-being of Italian democracy.”

In one of the 2017 anti-mafia meetings, a representative of the Interior Ministry, Vittorio Pisani, outlined in clear terms a plan that provided for the direct coordination of the new Libyan coast guard. They would create “an operation room in Libya for the exchange of information with the Interior Ministry,” Pisani explained, “mainly on the position of NGO ships and their rescue operations, in order to employ the Libyan coast guard in its national waters.”

And with that, the third step of the plan was set in motion. At the end of the meeting, Roberti suggested that the group invite representatives from the Libyan police to their next meeting. In an interview with The Intercept, Roberti confirmed that Libyan representatives attended at least two anti-mafia meetings and that he himself met Bija at a meeting in Libya, one month after the U.N. Security Council report was published. The following year, the Security Council committee on Libya sanctioned Bija, freezing his assets and banning him from international travel.

“We needed to have the participation of Libyan institutions. But they did nothing, because they were taking money from the traffickers,” Roberti told us from the cafe in Naples. “They themselves were the traffickers.”
A Place of Safety

Roberti retired from the anti-mafia directorate in 2017. He said that under his leadership, the organization was able to create a basis for handling migration throughout Europe. Still, Roberti admits that his expansion of the DNAA into migration issues has had mixed results. Like his trip to Germany in the ’90s with Giovanni Falcone, Roberti said the anti-mafia strategy faltered because of a lack of collaboration: with the NGOs, with other European governments, and with Libya.

“On a European level, the cooperation does not work,” Roberti said. Regarding Libya, he added, “We tried — I believe it was right, the agreements [the government] made. But it turned out to be a failure in the end.”

The DNAA has since expanded its operations. Between 2017 and 2019, the Italian government passed two bills that put the anti-mafia directorate in charge of virtually all illegal immigration matters. Since 2017, five Sicilian prosecutors, all of whom attended at least one anti-mafia coordination meeting, have initiated 15 separate legal proceedings against humanitarian NGO workers. So far there have been no convictions: Three cases have been thrown out in court, and the rest are ongoing.

Earlier this month, news broke that Sicilian prosecutors had wiretapped journalists and human rights lawyers as part of one of these investigations, listening in on legally protected conversations with sources and clients. The Italian justice ministry has opened an investigation into the incident, which could amount to criminal behavior, according to Italian legal experts. The prosecutor who approved the wiretaps attended at least one DNAA coordination meeting, where investigations against NGOs were discussed at length.

As the DNAA has extended its reach, key actors from the anti-mafia coordination meetings have risen through the ranks of Italian and European institutions. One prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, now runs the anti-mafia directorate. Salvi, the former prosecutor of Catania, is the equivalent of Italy’s attorney general. Pisani, the former Interior Ministry representative, is deputy head of the Italian intelligence services. And Roberti is a member of the European Parliament.

Cafiero de Raho stands by the investigations and arrests that the anti-mafia directorate has made over the years. He said the coordination meetings were an essential tool for prosecutors and police during difficult times.

When asked about his specific comments during the meetings — particularly statements that humanitarian NGOs needed to be regulated and multiple admissions that members of the new Libyan coast guard were involved in smuggling activities — Cafiero de Raho said that his remarks should be placed in context, a time when Italy and the EU were working to build a coast guard in a part of Libya that was largely ruled by local militias. He said his ultimate goal was what, in the DNAA coordination meetings, he called the “extrajudicial solution”: attempts to prove the existence of crimes against humanity in Libya so that “the United Nation sends troops to Libya to dismantle migrants camps set up by traffickers … and retake control of that territory.”

A spokesperson for the EU’s foreign policy arm, which ran Operation Sophia, refused to directly address evidence that leaders of the European military operation knew that parts of the new Libyan coast guard were also involved in smuggling activities, only noting that Bija himself wasn’t trained by the EU. A Frontex spokesperson stated that the agency “was not involved in the selection of officers to be trained.”

In 2019, the European migration strategy changed again. Now, the vast majority of departures are intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and brought back to Libya. In March of that year, Operation Sophia removed all of its ships from the rescue area and has since focused on using aerial patrols to direct and coordinate the Libyan coast guard. Human rights lawyers in Europe have filed six legal actions against Italy and the EU as a result, calling the practice refoulement by proxy: facilitating the return of migrants to dangerous circumstances in violation of international law.

Indeed, throughout four years of coordination meetings, Italy and the EU were admitting privately that returning people to Libya would be illegal. “Fundamental human rights violations in Libya make it impossible to push migrants back to the Libyan coast,” Pisani explained in 2015. Two years later, he outlined the beginnings of a plan that would do exactly that.

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The Result of Mere Chance

Dieudonne knows he was lucky. The line that separates suspect and victim can be entirely up to police officers’ first impressions in the minutes or hours following a rescue. According to police reports used in prosecutions, physical attributes like having “a clearer skin tone” or behavior aboard the ship, including scrutinizing police movements “with strange interest,” were enough to rouse suspicion.

In a 2019 ruling that acquitted seven alleged smugglers after three years of pretrial detention, judges wrote that “the selection of the suspects on one side, and the witnesses on the other, with the only exception of the driver, has almost been the result of mere chance.”

Carrying out work for their Libyan captors has cost other migrants in Italy lengthy prison sentences. In September 2019, a 22-year-old Guinean nicknamed Suarez was arrested upon his arrival to Italy. Four witnesses told police he had collaborated with prison guards in Zawiya, at the immigrant detention center managed by the infamous Bija.

“Suarez was also a prisoner, who then took on a job,” one of the witnesses told the court. Handing out meals or taking care of security is what those who can’t afford to pay their ransom often do in order to get out, explained another. “Unfortunately, you would have to be there to understand the situation,” the first witness said. Suarez was sentenced to 20 years in prison, recently reduced to 12 years on appeal.

Dieudonne remembered his journey at sea vividly, but with surprising cool. When the boat began taking on water, he tried to help. “One must give help where it is needed.” At his office in Bari, Dieudonne bent over and moved his arms in a low scooping motion, like he was bailing water out of a boat.

“Should they condemn me too?” he asked. He finds it ironic that it was the Libyans who eventually arrested Bija on human trafficking charges this past October. The Italians and Europeans, he said with a laugh, were too busy working with the corrupt coast guard commander. (In April, Bija was released from prison after a Libyan court absolved him of all charges. He was promoted within the coast guard and put back on the job.)

Dieudonne thinks often about the people he identified aboard the coast guard ship in the middle of the sea. “I told the police the truth. But if that collaboration ends with the conviction of an innocent person, it’s not good,” he said. “Because I know that person did nothing. On the contrary, he saved our lives by driving that raft.”

▻https://theintercept.com/2021/04/30/italy-anti-mafia-migrant-rescue-smuggling

#Méditerranée #Italie #Libye #ONG #criminalisation_de_la_solidarité #solidarité #secours #mer_Méditerranée #asile #migrations #réfugiés #violence #passeurs #Méditerranée_centrale #anti-mafia #anti-terrorisme #Direzione_nazionale_antimafia_e_antiterrorismo #DNAA #Frontex #Franco_Roberti #justice #politique #Zuwara #torture #viol #Mare_Nostrum #Europol #eaux_internationales #droit_de_la_mer #droit_maritime #juridiction_italienne #arrestations #Gigi_Modica #scafista #scafisti #état_de_nécessité #Giovanni_Salvi #NGO #Operation_Sophia #MOAS #DNA #Carmelo_Zuccaro #Zuccaro #Fabrice_Leggeri #Leggeri #Marco_Minniti #Minniti #campagne #gardes-côtes_libyens #milices #Enrico_Credendino #Abd_al-Rahman_Milad #Bija ##Abdurhaman_al-Milad #Al_Bija #Zawiya #Vittorio_Pisani #Federico_Cafiero_de_Raho #solution_extrajudiciaire #pull-back #refoulement_by_proxy #refoulement #push-back #Suarez

ping @karine4 @isskein @rhoumour

Jean Castex songe à faire vacciner Sheila pour redorer l’image de l’AstraZeneca
►https://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/jean-castex-songe-a-faire-vacciner-sheila-pour-redorer-l-image-de-l-astraze

Matignon aurait envisagé que la chanteuse puisse accompagner une campagne de communication incitant les plus de 55 ans à utiliser le vaccin britannique.

D’accord on va tous mourir, mais d’ici là le #gorafi_encore_plagié