Authorities in Belarus raided the homes of dozens of journalists and activists Wednesday, according to a human rights group, in what appeared to be the biggest one-day crackdown on dissent in the past three months.

Independent journalists, human rights advocates and activists in at least nine large Belarusian cities had phones and computers seized during the searches and were interrogated, the Viasna human rights center reported.

In the capital, Minsk, authorities targeted 10 people accused of funding anti-government protests and spreading information deemed extremist.

Some 300 chats on the popular messaging app Telegram have been designated extremist by authorities, and users of those chats can be sentenced to up to seven years in prison, if charged and convicted.

Freelance journalist Larysa Shchyrakova said she was brought in for questioning after an hours-long search of her home in Gomel, a city 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Minsk. Shchyrakova used to work with the Belsat TV channel, which authorities in Belarus have declared extremist.

“I was being pressured to confess to funding the protests, but I refused to incriminate myself,” Shchyrakova told The Associated Press by telephone. “They took my phone, audio and video equipment, which was still in my home after the two previous raids.”

Activists and journalists in Brest, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Grodno, Mazyr and other cities experienced similar raids and detentions on Wednesday. Leaders of regional branches of the United Civil Party, the oldest opposition party in Belarus, in Gomel and Rechytsa were targeted as well.

“The new wave of repressions shows that the authorities in Belarus don’t feel confident and are forced to tighten the screws because discontent in the country is growing,” party leader Anatoly Lebedko told the AP by phone from Vilnius.

“The situation with civic freedoms and human rights in Belarus is deteriorating rapidly, edging closer to the standards of North Korea,” Lebedko said.

The authoritarian leader of Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, survived months of unprecedented mass protests prompted by his August 2020 reelection in a vote the opposition and Western countries denounced as a sham.

Lukashenko unleashed a violent crackdown on the demonstrators, with police arresting more than 35,000 and beating thousands.

Since last year’s election, Lukashenko’s government has shut down the majority of independent media outlets and rights groups.

According to human rights advocates, 889 political prisoners, including top opposition activists, remain behind bars in Belarus. 

 
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned his Russian counterpart Thursday of “serious consequences” if Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine and appealed to him to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict between the Eastern European countries.

Blinken’s warning to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came before the two senior diplomats met in Stockholm and one day after Blinken declared the U.S. would “respond resolutely” to a Russian attack against Ukraine, “including with a range of high impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past.”

“The best way to avert the crisis is through diplomacy, and that’s what I look forward to discussing with Sergei,” Blinken said during a media briefing before meeting with Lavrov.

Blinken said the U.S. would help Russia and Ukraine fulfill their obligations under a 2014 peace agreement aimed at ending the war between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in the eastern part of the former Soviet republic. 

But “if Russia decides to pursue confrontation, there will be serious consequences,” Blinken warned.

Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that Russia was prepared for talks with Ukraine. “We, as President [Vladimir] Putin has stated, do not want any conflicts.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on a conference call in Moscow with reporters that Ukraine’s “aggressive and increasingly intensive provocative action” along the border with Russia raises concerns over a possible flare-up of hostilities.

“The probability of hostilities in Ukraine still remains high,” Peskov said.

After Blinken’s meeting with Lavrov, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement that Blinken “reiterated the United States’ call for Russia to pull back its forces and return to a peacetime posture and to adhere to the Minsk agreements and a ceasefire in the Donbas.”

A senior U.S. official told reporters the meeting was “serious, sober and business-like.” The official said no agreements were reached in the talks, but the two sides agreed to continue dialogue.

Blinken earlier expressed concern about what he called Russia’s “aggressive posture” toward Ukraine as he met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

Kuleba said Ukraine would “continue to demonstrate restraint” while calling on allies to prepare potential actions that would make Russian President Putin “think twice before resorting to military force.”

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told members of the parliament Wednesday that direct negotiations with Russia were the only path to resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine. 

Russia and Ukraine have each accused the other side of massing troops in the area along their shared border. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has backed separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine. 

Speaking Wednesday in Moscow, Putin said his government would seek guarantees against NATO’s further expansion to the east and precluding deployment of weapons systems near Russia’s borders.

Oleksandr Yanevskyy contributed to this report. Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

A top U.S. defense official says Washington will not be alone if it needs to take action in response to Russia’s massive troop buildup along its border with Ukraine. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in Seoul for meetings with South Korean officials, said Thursday that while he would not speculate on how Washington will respond to Russia’s provocations against Ukraine, Moscow should know the U.S. will not be alone. 

“Whatever we do will be done as a part of an international community,” Austin said during a news conference with his South Korean counterpart, further calling on Russian President Vladimir Putin to “lower the temperature in the region.” 

“The best case, though, is that we won’t see an incursion,” the U.S. defense secretary added, noting Russia’s “substantial” troop presence in the border areas is only part of the problem. 

“We also see troubling rhetoric, rhetoric in the info space,” Austin said. “We’ve heard President [Volodymyr]Zelenskiy expressed concern about efforts to undermine his administration.” 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, meeting with NATO counterparts in Latvia Wednesday, warned the U.S. was preparing to ratchet up economic sanctions against Moscow, if needed. 

“We’ve made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we have refrained from using in the past,” he said. 

Blinken is scheduled to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later on Thursday in Stockholm. 

Ukrainian officials have said Russia has positioned at least 90,000 troops along the border and in Crimea, which Moscow seized illegally in 2014. 

But Russian officials have accused Ukraine of conducting its own military build up. 

Earlier this week Russian President Vladimir Putin also repeated concerns about U.S. and NATO exercises in the Back Sea, and warned NATO against installing what he described as “strike systems” on Ukrainian soil. 

“What are we to do in such a scenario? We will have to then create something similar in relation to those who threaten us in that way,” he said at an investment forum in Moscow. “We can do that now.” 

Information from Reuters was used in this report. 
…

Last week, a small inflatable boat capsized in the English Channel killing 27 migrants who were attempting to cross from France to the United Kingdom. The family of one of the victims spoke to VOA’s Ahmad Zebari from Soran, Iraqi Kurdistan, about the tragedy’s impact. Rikar Hussein narrates the story.

Camera:  Ahmad Zebari 
Produced by:  Ahmad Zebari
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warns Russia Wednesday that any military action in Ukraine will have severe consequences. He plans to meet separately Thursday with both the Ukrainian and the Russian foreign ministers in Stockholm to discuss the heightened border tensions. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would seek Western guarantees precluding any further NATO expansion and deployment of its weapons near his country’s borders, a stern demand that comes amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Ukrainian and Western officials have worried about a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, saying it could signal Moscow’s intention to attack. Russian diplomats countered those claims by expressing concern about Ukraine’s own military buildup near the area of the separatist conflict in the eastern part of the country. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noting that Putin could quickly order an invasion of Ukraine, warned that Washington stands ready to inflict heavy sanctions on Russia if he does. 

Speaking at a Kremlin ceremony where he received credentials from foreign ambassadors, Putin emphasized that Russia will seek “reliable and long-term security guarantees.” 

“In a dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on working out specific agreements that would exclude any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory,” Putin said. 

He charged that “the threats are mounting on our western border,” with NATO placing its military infrastructure closer to Russia and offered the West to engage in substantive talks on the issue, adding that Moscow would need not just verbal assurances, but “legal guarantees.” 

“We aren’t demanding any special conditions for ourselves and realize that any agreements must take interests of Russia and all Euro-Atlantic countries into account,” Putin said. “A calm and stable situation must be ensured for all and is needed for all without exclusion.” 

Putin’s statement came a day after he sternly warned NATO against deploying its troops and weapons to Ukraine, saying it represented a red line for Russia and would trigger a strong response. 

Tensions have been increasing in recent weeks over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, which worried Ukrainian and Western officials, who saw it as a possible sign of Moscow’s intention to invade its former Soviet neighbor. NATO foreign ministers warned Russia on Tuesday that any attempt to further destabilize Ukraine would be a costly mistake. 

The Kremlin insists it has no such intention and has accused Ukraine and its Western backers of making the claims to cover up their own allegedly aggressive designs. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the concentration of Ukrainian troops looks “alarming,” adding that he was going to raise the issue during a ministerial meeting in Stockholm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday. 

Speaking Wednesday in Riga, Latvia, Blinken said that “we don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade.” 

“We do know that his is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide,” Blinken told reporters. “We must prepare for all contingencies.” 

The U.S. has “made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past,” he said. 

Blinken gave no details on what kind of sanctions were under consideration if Russia did invade Ukraine. 

In April, the European Parliament approved a nonbinding resolution to cut off Russia from the so-called SWIFT system of international payments if its troops entered Ukraine. Such a move would go far toward blocking Russian businesses from the global financial system, even though Moscow has developed its own parallel system in preparation for such a move. 

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Ukraine has amassed about 125,000 troops — about half of the size of its military — near the conflict zone. She also pointed at an increasing number of violations of a cease-fire in the east. 

Amid the tensions, Moscow on Wednesday launched drills in southwestern Russia involving over 10,000 troops. A smaller exercise also began in Russia’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad on the Baltic, involving 1,000 personnel from armored units. 

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 after the country’s Kremlin-friendly president was driven from power by mass protests. Moscow also threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, known as the Donbas. More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting. 

 
…

A French military spokesperson has denied an accusation that French soldiers shot into a crowd of protesters in Niger late last month. The deteriorating security situation in Africa’s Sahel region has been accompanied by protests against the French forces sent to help African governments battle the Islamist militant groups who are increasingly active in the region. 

Demonstrations against the French are driven by misinformation spread online that French forces are arming groups linked to Islamic State and al-Qaida — the same groups the French were deployed to fight in the Sahel nearly a decade ago.

On November 26, a French military convoy, which was stranded in Burkina Faso for more than a week as protesters blocked its progress, passed into Niger. The next day, as had happened in Burkina Faso, Nigerien protesters blocked the convoy, demanding to know what was being transported. 

Nigerien authorities say two protesters were killed and 16 injured on November 27, while eyewitnesses told the French TV station TV5 Monde that they saw French soldiers firing into the crowd.

In an interview with VOA, Colonel Pascal Ianni, the spokesman for the French Army Chief of Staff, was asked if the French troops had fired on protesters.

“I repeat what I just said, the French forces did not shoot at the crowd,” he said. “French forces fired above the crowd and fired in front of the crowd, at the feet of the crowd, to stop the most violent demonstrators.” 

Ianni said that the French troops and Nigerien military police needed to take action against the protesters, armed with stones and battens, to prevent the convoy being burned and looted. 

Regarding the deaths and injuries reported by the Nigerien authorities, he said, “I cannot confirm or affirm the results which were announced by the Nigerien authorities.” 

Asked if there would be an investigation, since it was unclear what had happened, the colonel said that would be up to authorities in Niger. 

“I think they will collect testimonies; they will recover all the videotapes or photos that were taken on this occasion, and they will try to determine exactly who is responsible,” Ianni said. 

Philippe M. Frowd, associate professor at Ottawa University and an expert on the Sahel, said anti-French sentiment has been growing in the Sahel for years.

“So, many of these fault lines and much of this sentiment, very sort of generic anti-French sentiment, has found a much clearer expression when it comes to blocking this convoy,” he said. 

Frowd also pointed out that the Nigerien president said last month that French military support is essential to state security. 

“The French presence is indispensable and if the French were to leave their base in Gao, in Mali, there would be chaos, so I think that this reflects some sense of the calculus of the Sahel states, looking at French intervention as something that’s actually primordial in terms of assuring the security of the state,” Frowd said. 

Asked if the next French military supply convoy headed for Niger and Mali via Burkina Faso would take a different route, Ianni said officials were “studying different options.” 

 
…

European Union leaders said Wednesday they are considering a number of public health options, including vaccine mandates, to address the growing threat posed by the omicron variant of the virus that causes COVID-19. 

Speaking to reporters in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said little is currently known about the variant, but enough is known to be concerned. She said they expect scientists to have a handle on the nature of the variant in about two to three weeks, but in the meantime are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. 

Von der Leyen said the best use of that time is to get more people vaccinated, and those who are inoculated should get booster shots. She said more than one-third of the European population — 150 million people — are not vaccinated.

The European Commission president said that while not everyone can be vaccinated, the majority of people can.

“This needs discussion. This needs a common approach, but it is a discussion that I think has to be had,” she said. 

Von der Leyen said Pfizer-BioNTech has indicated it can accelerate the production and distribution of its children’s vaccine, which will be available to European children beginning December 13.

She also said Pfizer and Moderna are set to deliver 360 million more doses of their vaccines by the end of March 2022, and that boosters are available to those who received their initial shots. 

The commission also urged EU members to commit to a day-by-day review of travel restrictions and a readiness to impose all necessary controls, including decisive action, if clusters of the omicron variant are found. 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. 

 
…

The border between Belarus and Poland drew global media attention after thousands of migrants tried to enter the EU encouraged by the government of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. The root of this crisis is the dispute between Warsaw and Minsk, over Poland’s practice of providing refuge to Belarusian political exiles. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report by Ricardo Marquina in Warsaw.
…

Greece Is introducing steep fines for unvaccinated people aged 60 and over as infections surge, straining the Greek state healthcare system. The decision is generating debate about civil liberties and freedom in the land that gave birth to western-style democracy.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis appeared visibly concerned as he announced the mandate after an urgent cabinet meeting.

Mitsotakis said he could not hide that he was – in his words – personally troubled in taking the decision. But, he explained, he was ultimately compelled to do so in order to protect the most vulnerable – even if that means upsetting them.

Under the new rules, Greeks over the age of 60 will have to be vaccinated or face a fine of 113 dollars which the country’s tax authorities have been authorized to impose and collect beginning next month.

As of early Wednesday, Greece had yet to record a case of the Omicron variant, but COVID-19 infections have surged to record highs despite recent measures that include banning unvaccinated people from entering indoor restaurants, gyms and theaters.

As upsetting as the new mandate may be for some Greeks, Mitsotakis said it does not amount to punishment. The Greek leader said the decision aims to mobilize senior citizens to get the jab.

He said he has no doubt that this will help save many lives.

About 63 percent of Greece’s population of eleven million are fully vaccinated, well below the EU average of about 66 percent.

With the Omicron variant sweeping across the continent, government officials tell VOA, Mitsotakis’ decision was part of a last-ditch effort to avoid another nationwide lockdown — a move that could damage the country’s already weak economy.

Political analyst Vassilis Chiotis explains.

Chiotis says it is a message to key sectors of the Greek economy and society, from tourism to the Orthodox church and its millions of followers, to conform to the government’s call for vaccination to avert the potential of a lockdown.

Austria last week became the first Western democracy to make vaccinations mandatory for all those who are eligible. Those who do not get the shot by a February deadline face fines as high as four thousand dollars and possible prison time.

Opposition parties have criticized Greece’s decision to fine violators. They say the government should have exhausted other options before threatening to fine senior citizens on meager pensions.

Vaccine opponents say the move is a breach of their civil liberties. Others, including this unidentified middle-aged Athens resident speaking on Greek television, say the new mandate was long overdue

She says this is a health crisis and upholding democratic values does not mean that people should behave recklessly, at the expense of others. She says that would be a wrong interpretation of democracy.

It is unclear whether the vaccine mandate will be effective, but officials see reason for optimism. Within hours of the Greek leader’s announcement of the fines, health officials said vaccination requests tripled to six thousand. 
…

After NATO foreign ministers expressed solidarity against any Russian aggression toward Ukraine, the United States on Wednesday confirmed plans for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to hold separate meetings with his counterparts from both countries.

A State Department official said the meetings with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will take place Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden on the sidelines of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ministerial gathering.

Kuleba on Wednesday urged NATO to pursue a three-prong strategy to deter Russia that includes preparing economic sanctions and boosting military support to Ukraine.

Both Russia and Ukraine in recent days have accused the other side of massing troops in the area along their shared border. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and has backed separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told members of parliament Wednesday that the only way to resolve the conflict with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region is through direct negotiations with the Russian government.

“We must tell the truth that we will not be able to stop the war without direct negotiations with Russia,” Zelenskiy said.

Blinken on Tuesday warned Russia that “any renewed aggression would trigger serious consequences,” while in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his military may be forced to respond if NATO’s expansion of Ukraine’s military infrastructure crosses “red lines.”

Karen Donfried, the top U.S. diplomat for European Affairs, told reporters in a telephone briefing Friday that Blinken would also use the OSCE talks to raise the issue of Russian occupation of Ukrainian and Georgian territories, as well as the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

On Tuesday in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his military may be forced to respond to the Western-led expansion of Ukraine’s military infrastructure if “red lines” were crossed by NATO.

“If some kind of strike systems appear on the territory of Ukraine, the flight time to Moscow will be 7-10 minutes, and five minutes in the case of a hypersonic weapon being deployed. Just imagine,” said Putin.

“We will have to then create something similar in relation to those who threaten us in that way. And we can do that now,” Putin added.

The Russian leader noted his military had just successfully tested a new sea-based hypersonic missile that would be in service at the beginning of next year.

Donfried also said while in Stockholm Blinken would also be discussing the situation in Belarus.

The European Union accuses Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of enticing thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, to travel to Belarus and try to cross into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to destabilize those countries. The EU says Lukashenko is retaliating for sanctions it imposed against his government.

Blinken said Tuesday the U.S., in coordination with the EU, is preparing additional sanctions against Belarus for what he called “its ongoing attacks on democracy, on human rights, on international norms.”

In response to a question from VOA, Blinken said he and Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics focused “on the actions unfortunately Belarus has been taking both in terms of repressing its own people and their democratic aspirations as well as using migration as a weapon to try to sow division and destabilization in Europe.”

“We are in close coordination with the European Union preparing all U.N. sanctions,” Blinken told reporters.
…

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has again warned Russia of “serious consequences” for any escalatory actions toward Ukraine, as he meets with NATO allies during a trip to Latvia and Sweden. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
…

The United States is reaching out to allies in response to Russia’s military build-up along its border with Ukraine.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone with Polish Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak Tuesday to discuss what the Pentagon has repeatedly described as Moscow’s “unusual military activity.”

The two also shared concerns about the situation along Poland’s border with Belarus, where Polish officials have accused the Belarus regime of using thousands of migrants to raise tensions.

They “discussed ways to enhance deterrence along NATO’s Eastern Flank,” according to a U.S. Defense Department readout of the call.

Austin made the call while en route to Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart.

Ukrainian intelligence officials say Russia has positioned about 90,000 troops along the border with Ukraine and in Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Multiple U.S. officials have said Washington and its European allies are planning for “a number of contingencies,” fearing Moscow’s saber-rattling may be more than tough talk.

U.S. officials have called U.S. support for Ukraine “rock solid” and are considering a number of tools to deter Moscow.

Separately, a top British intelligence official warned Tuesday that Moscow is engaging in increasingly “brazen activity.”

“We and our allies and partners must stand up to and deter Russian activity which contravenes the rules-based international system,” MI6 Chief Richard Moore said during a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“Moscow should be in no doubt of our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, within its internationally-recognized borders, including Crimea,” Moore added.

Russian officials, for their part, have accused the U.S. and its allies of stoking tensions in the region.

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu last week as saying Moscow was “witnessing a considerable increase in the U.S. strategic bombers’ activity near the Russian borders.”

Shoigu also alleged U.S. strategic bombers “practiced employing nuclear weapons against Russia actually simultaneously from the western and eastern directions.”

The U.S. has provided Ukraine with $2.5 billion in security assistance since 2014, including $400 million in 2021 alone.

Recent deliveries include patrol boats for the Ukrainian navy and 80,000 kilograms of ammunition for Ukrainian forces.
…

When Pope Francis visited the Greek island of Lesbos in 2016, he was so moved by the stories he heard from families fleeing war in Iraq and Syria that he wept and brought a dozen refugees home with him.

Speaking to reporters on the way home that day, he held up a drawing handed to him by a child from the island’s sprawling refugee camp.

“Look at this one,” he said, revealing a bird neatly decorated in colored pencil, the word “peace” scrolled in English underneath it. “That’s what children want: Peace.”

Francis is returning to Lesbos this week for the first time since that defining day of his papacy, making a repeat visit to the island where hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have passed through on their journey to Europe. 

But he will find attitudes toward migrants here have only hardened in the intervening five years, as they have elsewhere in Europe, with tensions flaring on the border between European Union country Poland and Belarus and more deadly crossings — most recently in the English Channel. 

Francis will first stop in Cyprus, another predominantly Orthodox Christian country in the Mediterranean that is also coping with a rise in refugees so significant that the government is seeking to stop processing asylum claims.

As he did in Lesbos five years ago, Francis has arranged for around 50 would-be refugees in Cyprus to travel to Italy after his visit, Cypriot officials say. And Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni wouldn’t rule out that Lesbos-based migrants might also be transferred after the visit.

“They are our brothers and sisters,” Francis said in a video message to Greek and Cypriot faithful before the trip. “How many have lost their lives at sea! Today our sea, the Mediterranean, is a great cemetery.” 

The pontiff starts his five-day trip on Thursday in Cyprus before heading to Greece on Saturday. He returns home on Monday. 

While Francis’ renewed messages of compassion and welcome for migrants isn’t quite resonating in European capitals, they are a welcome salvo for the migrants themselves.

“His presence here will strengthen us, spiritually, and give us hope, some comfort,” said Christian Tango Muyaka, a 30-year-old asylum-seeker from Congo who is due to participate in a Sunday service with the pope at a new migrant camp on Lesbos.

“It gives us faith, it strengthens our faith,” he said.

Muyaka was separated from his wife and youngest daughter a year ago on the Turkish coast when they scrambled to board a boat bound for Greece. He has had no news of what happened to them since.

The north coast of Lesbos, just 10 kilometers (six miles) from Turkey, served as the main landing point for boats crossing into Europe during the 2015-16 migration crisis.

Piles of discarded orange life vests covered beaches, local fishermen helped daily rescue operations, and island residents took pride in setting up campaigns to provide hundreds of refugees arriving daily with food and clothing.

Fast forward five years, and the welcome mat is gone. 

Migrants reaching the eastern Greek islands are now being held in detention camps, newly built and funded by the EU. Coast guard patrols are instructed to intercept dinghies and boats heading west and send them back to Turkey.

The overcrowded camp on Lesbos that Francis was taken to in 2016 burnt to the ground last year during protests against pandemic restrictions. 

And along Greece’s land border with Turkey, a new steel wall and hi-tech sensor network have been installed to stop illegal crossings. 

Eva Cosse at Human Rights Watch said Francis’ visit will serve as an urgent reminder of the human nature of the crisis.

“At a time when people are suffering and their rights are threatened, having the pope standing up for them and expressing these concerns is more important than ever,” she told The Associated Press. “Since the pope’s last visit, Greece continues to host large numbers of asylum-seekers while failing to protect their rights.

“Thousands seeking refuge in Greece are violently pushed back to Turkey. Migrant children face homelessness and a lack of access to health care, education and food. And nongovernmental groups face legislative restrictions and criminal harassment by officials.”

Greek authorities deny allegations of summary deportations. They argue that tougher border policing is necessary to counter hostility by several EU neighbors accused of exploiting the crisis and to limit arrival numbers to manageable levels.

“(Francis’) message is that we are one world, that we don’t have borders, that everybody is a child of God. Look, this is the religious point of view,” said Dimitris Vafeas, the deputy director of Mavrovouni migrant camp on Lesbos where the pope will visit.

“In practical terms, I think Greece has delivered … so I think (Francis) will see calm faces. I don’t dare say happy faces, but calm for sure.”

 
…

The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has condemned the sentencing of a journalist who works for the independent network. 

The news network learned on Tuesday that Andrey Kuznechyk had been tried and convicted of petty hooliganism one day after his arrest, RFE/RL told VOA. 

Four men in plain clothing detained the journalist outside his Minsk apartment on November 25. The men, believed to be Belarusian security agents, searched the journalist’s home and took him away, along with electronic devices belonging to Kuznechyk and his wife, according to RFE/RL. 

When his wife called the local prison to see if Kuznechyk was being held there, she said officials denied the journalist was there. 

Kuznechyk, who denies wrongdoing, was sentenced to 10 days in prison.

RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said Belarus should immediately release the journalist. 

“The regime of Alexander Lukashenka continues its effort to crush all independent media in Belarus. Andrey was kidnapped by agents of the regime for nothing more than being a journalist,” Fly said in a statement. 

RFE/RL and VOA are both independent news networks under the U.S. Agency for Global Media. 

Media crackdown 

Media in Belarus have come under increasing pressure since Lukashenko claimed victory in contested elections in August 2020. 

At least 480 journalists were detained in 2020 and a further 245 violations against the media, including arrests, fines and attacks, were recorded in 2021 by the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ).

Authorities have raided newsrooms and journalists’ homes, stripped correspondents of accreditation, blocked access to news websites for local and foreign media, including RFE/RL, Tut.by and Deutsche Welle (DW), and applied legal pressures to civil society, including the BAJ and PEN Belarus.

The Belarusian embassy in Washington did not respond to VOA’s request for comment. 

The country’s Information Ministry in October said it had blocked websites that were spreading extremist content. 

But DW’s director general, Peter Limbourg, said the accusations were “ridiculous.” 

“The heavy use of independent news outlets clearly shows that people in Belarus no longer trust the government-controlled media,” Limbourg said in a statement at the time. “We protest against the suspension of our offering because the people there have a right to objective information on the situation in their country.” 

Kuznechyk is not the first RFE/RL journalist to be detained in Belarus since the contested elections. 

Six of the network’s journalists were detained for 15 days while covering protests in August 2020, and a further six were briefly jailed in November 2020. In July, authorities raided the outlet’s Minsk bureau and searched the homes of some of its journalists. 

While most are detained for relatively brief periods, Ihar Losik, a blogger and consultant for the media outlet, has been in prison for more than 520 days. 

Losik is on trial with five others on accusations of using social media to “disrupt social order.” 

A verdict is expected in the closed-door trial on December 14, according to a Facebook post by one of the defendant’s relatives. 

The journalist has been allowed to see his wife only once since being detained and has been prevented from seeing his young daughter or parents, RFE/RL said. 

Separately, independent blogger Raman Pratasevich is awaiting the outcome in his case as well.

Pratasevich was arrested in May after Belarus diverted a passenger jet carrying him. 

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in late November that Pratasevich is under house arrest at an undisclosed location. 

“The physical and psychological pressure to which Raman Pratasevich has been subjected for the past six months constitutes inhuman treatment and even torture,” Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said in a statement. 

The watchdog has referred his case to the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. 

Pratasevich is editor of the Telegram channel Nexta, which Belarus declared “extremist” in October 2020. News websites, including the popular Tut.by, have similarly been labeled extremist by authorities. 

Journalists who work for such sites and their audiences risk criminal prosecution for sharing what authorities deem as extremist content, a charge which can carry a prison term of up to seven years, RSF reported.
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The migrant crisis on Poland’s border, which Western powers accuse Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of engineering, caught international attention in November. But asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border aren’t alone in being shunted back and forth across Europe’s land and sea borders, say rights organizations and other monitors.

Throughout the year, irregular migration to Europe has been increasing, with more than 160,000 migrants entering the European Union this year, mostly through the Balkans and Italy. That’s a 70% jump from 2020, when pandemic travel restrictions are thought to have impacted the mobility of would-be migrants, and a 45% increase over the previous pre-pandemic year.

And with irregular migration picking up again, rights campaigners say the EU and national governments are increasingly skirting or breaking international humanitarian laws in their determination to prevent war refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants from entering or remaining on the continent.

They say European leaders appear determined to avoid a repeat of 2015, when more than a million asylum seekers from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia arrived in Europe, roiling the continent’s politics and fueling the rise of anti-migrant political parties.

Reports have multiplied of refugees and migrants being forcibly pushed back over the EU’s external borders. So, too, have reports of refugees being prevented from filing asylum applications. Poland passed a law in August stipulating that migrants who cross the border are to be “taken back to the state border” and “ordered to leave the country immediately,” preventing them from making an asylum application.

Pushbacks breach both European human rights laws and the 1951 Geneva Convention, which outline the rights of refugees as well as the legal obligations of the 146 signatory states to protect them.

Signatory states aren’t allowed to impose penalties on refugees who enter their countries illegally in search of asylum, nor are they allowed to expel refugees (without due process). Under the convention, refugees should not be forcibly returned, technically known as “refoul,” to the home countries they fled. Asylum seekers are meant to be provided with free access to courts, and signatory states are required to offer refugees administrative assistance.

The EU, its border agency, Frontex, and the bloc’s national governments, say they do observe international humanitarian law, but according to several recent investigations by rights organizations, the rules are now being flouted routinely and systematically.

“EU member states have adopted increasingly restrictive and punitive asylum rules and are focusing on reducing migration flows, with devastating consequences,” Amnesty International warned recently.

“We are witnessing tremendous human suffering caused by the EU-Turkey deal and by the EU-Libya cooperation, both of which are leaving men, women and children trapped and exposed to suffering and abuse,” the rights organization says in reference to deals struck with Turkey and Libya to block migrants heading to Europe and readmit them when they are ejected from Europe.

In the case of Libya, migrants are often returned to detention camps run by militias where Amnesty International and others have documented harrowing violations, including sexual violence against men, women and children. In a report published earlier this year, Amnesty noted, “Decade-long violations against refugees and migrants continued unabated in Libyan detention centers during the first six months of 2021 despite repeated promises to address them.”

Lighthouse Reports, a Dutch nonprofit journalism consortium, has documented dozens of instances in which Frontex surveillance aircraft were in the vicinity of migrant boats later intercepted by the Libyan Coast Guard. “There is a clear pattern discernible. Boats in distress are spotted, communications take place between European actors and the Libyan Coast Guard,” Lighthouse researchers said in a report this year.

Frontex has routinely denied the allegations but lawmakers in the European Parliament accused the agency, after a four-month investigation, of failing to “fulfill its human rights obligations.” In the Balkans, the Border Violence Monitoring Network and other NGOs say they have gathered testimony from hundreds of refugees who allege they have been beaten back into Bosnia-Herzegovina across the Croatian border by baton-wielding men whose uniforms bear no insignia.

Europe’s peripheral countries have also been erecting border fences and building walls with the prospects of more Afghan refugees appearing on their borders acting as a spur. Greece has completed a 40-kilometer wall along its land border with Turkey and installed an automated surveillance system to try to prevent asylum seekers from reaching Europe. Other countries are following suit and have been pushing the EU to help with funding.

Critics say the wall-building now contrasts with the criticism European leaders leveled four years ago against then-U.S. President Donald Trump over his plan to build a wall on America’s southern border with Mexico. “We have a history and a tradition that we celebrate when walls are brought down and bridges are built,” admonished Federica Mogherini, then the EU’s foreign policy chief.

While migrant advocates complain of rights violations, calls are mounting in Europe for changes to be made to both the Geneva Convention and the bloc’s humanitarian laws. Critics of the convention say it was primarily drawn up to cope with population displacement in Europe in the wake of the Second World War. They say it fails to recognize the nature and scale of the much more complex migration patterns of the 21st century, which could see numbers swell because of climate change.

Last week in Budapest, Balázs Orbán, a deputy minister in the Hungarian government, said the current EU migration laws should be replaced. The current legal system is “catalyzing the influx of illegal migrants, and not helping to stop them on the borders,” he said. “This framework was created during the time of the Geneva Convention in 1951, when refugees from the Soviet Union needed to be accommodated for. Now, times have changed,” he added. 
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A German court Tuesday convicted a former Islamic State member of the 2015 murder of a 5-year-old Yazidi girl.

Taha al-Jumailly, an Iraqi national, was also sentenced to serve life in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. He was ordered to pay the victim’s mother, who survived captivity, $57,000.

It is the first genocide verdict against an Islamic State member.

“This is the moment Yazidis have been waiting for,” said lawyer Amal Clooney, who acted as a counsel for the mother. “To finally hear a judge, after seven years, declare that what they suffered was genocide. To watch a man face justice for killing a Yazidi girl — because she was Yazidi.”

German prosecutors said al-Jumailly bought the mother and child as slaves in Syria in 2015. He then took them to Fallujah in Iraq where he beat them and didn’t give them enough food.  

In 2015, al-Jumailly chained the girl to window bars in a room where the temperature reached 50 degrees Celsius. The girl died.

In 2019, al-Jumailly was arrested in Greece and extradited to Germany, where authorities took the case using the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Al-Jumailly’s German wife was sentenced last month to 10 years in prison for her involvement in the case. She was a witness for the prosecution in al-Jumailly’s trial.

In 2014, IS rampaged through the Yazidi heartland in northern Iraq. In many cases, it forced young women into sex slavery. Many in the Yazidi community, which numbers more than half-a-million, were displaced.

In 2016, a U.N. commission declared the IS treatment of the Yazidis inside Syria as a genocide.

“We can only hope that [this case] will serve as a milestone for further cases to follow,” Zemfira Dlovani, a lawyer and member of Germany’s Central Council of Yazidis, told The Associated Press, noting that thousands of Yazidi women were enslaved and mistreated by the Islamic State group. “This should be the beginning, not the end.”

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
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A far-right former TV pundit with multiple hate-speech convictions officially entered the race for France’s presidency on Tuesday and warned his supporters that they will likely be called racists for backing his anti-immigration and anti-Islam views that have already shaken up the election campaign.  

The launch of Eric Zemmour’s run for the presidency made official a candidacy that had been gathering steam for months before it then stumbled of late — notably after the 63-year-old raised a middle finger at a woman who did likewise to him over the weekend.  

That flash of temper — which Zemmour later acknowledged on Twitter was “very inelegant” — cast fresh doubt on the temperament and electability of the author and former journalist who has polled in low double digits since September despite having no hands-on political experience. Zemmour has drawn comparisons in France to former U.S. President Donald Trump because of his rabble-rousing populism and ambitions of making the jump from the small screen to national leadership.

Name-dropping Joan of Arc, Napoléon Bonaparte, Gen. Charles de Gaulle and others who shaped France’s history, Zemmour announced his candidacy in a pre-recorded video, reading from notes and speaking into a large microphone. The pose evoked imagery of radio addresses that De Gaulle famously delivered during World War II as he urged France to rally to his call against Nazi Germany.

But the message Zemmour delivered was far from that of the wartime leader who later served as president from 1959-1969. Along with images of people on filthy streets and in ramshackle shantytowns, he drove home his view of France as a country mortally threatened by immigration and “in the process of disappearing.”  

“You feel that you are no longer in the country that you knew,” Zemmour said. “Your feel like foreigners in your own country. You are exiles, from the inside.”

The people that Zemmour was shown meeting in the video and the campaign supporters and crowds filmed at his rallies were nearly all white. And the vast majority of people shown doing jobs in the video — a mathematics teacher, a nuclear worker, cooks, suited business leaders, a butcher, a cattle farmer and others — were nearly all white men.

People of color, in contrast, were shown lining up for food handouts, pushing into a crowded train, milling around in a litter-strewn tent city and on a street corner and, in a scene at the start, seemingly taking part in a street deal. Other images showed Paris streets filled with Muslims kneeling down in prayer. Images of women protesting, some with breasts bared, were cut with violent scenes of people attacking police.

“It is no longer time to reform France but to save it,” Zemmour said. “That is why I have decided to stand in the presidential election.”  

He warned supporters to brace for a bruising campaign.

“They will tell you that you are racist,” he said. “They will say the worst things about me.”  

Zemmour joins a crowded spectrum of candidates, from far left to far right. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to seek a second term but hasn’t yet declared his candidacy.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Latvia Tuesday for talks with the country’s leaders and a NATO ministerial meeting as the alliance expresses concern about Russia’s military buildup along the border with Ukraine.

Blinken’s schedule in Riga includes sessions with Latvian President Egils Levits, Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins and Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics. He is also due to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of the ministerial talks later in the day.

Levits told reporters after his own talks with Stoltenberg on Monday that Russia’s military presence represents direct pressure on Ukraine, and that NATO “will remain in solidarity with Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg called on Russia to reduce tensions in the region, saying the military buildup is “unprovoked and unexplained.”

“Any future Russian aggression against Ukraine would come at a high price and have serious political and economic consequences for Russia,” Stoltenberg said.

A main focus of work at the NATO ministerial meeting is updating what the group calls its Strategic Concept, which was last changed a decade ago.

Stoltenberg said it is important to revisit the strategic document given the changed nature of the threats NATO faces, what he called a “more dangerous world.”

“We see the behavior of Russia, we see cyber, we see terrorist threats, we see proliferation of nuclear weapons,” Stoltenberg said. “And we see the security consequences of China which is now becoming more and more a global power.”

The talks in Riga also come as NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland deal with a border crisis with neighboring Belarus.

The European Union accuses Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of enticing thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, to travel to Belarus and try to cross into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to destabilize the European Union. The EU says Lukashenko is retaliating for sanctions it imposed against his government.

Blinken is scheduled to travel Wednesday to Sweden to meet with fellow ministers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and to discuss bilateral ties with Swedish officials.
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Last week’s 10% drop in the value of the Turkish currency plunged it to historic lows, threatening an economic crisis. The Turkish lira has dropped 45 percent this year, prompting concerns that economic turmoil could further raise tensions over the presence of millions of refugees. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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Thousands of migrants continue to wait in Belarus to enter the European Union through Poland, a crisis in the central European country that has sharply divided its society between those who want to assist migrants and those who refuse to open their borders. Elizabeth Cherneff narrates this report from Ricardo Marquina in Warsaw.

Camera: Ricardo Marquina
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Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday upheld lower court rulings in the bitter custody battle surrounding a 6-year-old boy who survived a cable car crash in Italy, saying he should be returned to his relatives there within two weeks. 

Eitan Biran has been the focus of a legal battle between his paternal relatives in Italy and his maternal family in Israel since surviving the May 23 cable car crash, which killed 14 people, including his parents and younger brother.

Eitan and his parents were living in Italy at the time of the accident. After his release from a Turin hospital following weeks of treatment, Italian juvenile court officials ruled the child would live with a paternal aunt, Aya Biran, near Pavia, in northern Italy. 

His maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, then spirited him away without the knowledge of the relatives in Italy, taking him across the border into Switzerland by car and then flying him to Israel on a private jet. Peleg has said he acted in the child’s best interest. 

The Peleg family said it would continue to fight “in every legal way” to return the child to Israel. It was not immediately clear what legal options were available following the Supreme Court ruling. 

Earlier this month, an Italian judge issued an arrest warrant for Gabriel Abutbul Alon, who is accused of having driven the car on September 11 that spirited Eitan from his home near Pavia to Switzerland. Alon was arrested in Cyprus last week. 

Peleg was also named in the arrest warrant. 

The boy’s family in Italy said they were happy with the Supreme Court decision, calling it “just and awaited.”

“We can only be happy with the end of this case, which represents a victory for the law and justice,” they said in a statement. Eitan is expected to arrive December 12 in Italy, “where he is awaited with joy.” 

 
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