Myanmar team to verify 400 Rohingya for repatriation from Bangladesh

Most of the refugees live in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in Bangladesh’s southeast. (Supplied)
Most of the refugees live in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in Bangladesh’s southeast. (Supplied)
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Updated 16 March 2023
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Myanmar team to verify 400 Rohingya for repatriation from Bangladesh

Most of the refugees live in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in Bangladesh’s southeast. (Supplied)
  • Bangladesh hosting, providing humanitarian support to 1.2 million Rohingya
  • 1,100 refugees selected for pilot repatriation project mediated by China

DHAKA: A team from Myanmar is verifying Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps this week, with authorities expecting that 400 of them will be cleared to return to their homeland in a pilot repatriation project.

Bangladesh is hosting and providing humanitarian support to 1.2 million Rohingya Muslims, most of whom fled violence and persecution in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.

Most of the refugees live in squalid camps in Cox’s Bazar district, a coastal region in the country’s southeast, which with the influx of Rohingya has become the world’s largest refugee settlement.

Their return to Myanmar has been on the UN agenda for years, but a UN-backed repatriation process has not taken off until now.

The arrival of the delegation of Myanmar immigration officials and the start of the pilot project were mediated by China. The 400-plus people who are being verified are part of more than 1,100 listed as a potential first batch of returnees. The documents of the rest have already been cleared by Myanmar authorities remotely.

“The team of Myanmar officials started verification of more than 400 Rohingyas at Cox’s Bazar refugee camps on Wednesday,” Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mizanur Rahman told Arab News after the first day of verifying potential returnees.

“The members of the Myanmar team started talking with each of the individuals from Wednesday. The Myanmar team will work here for the next five to six days.”

The next stage of the repatriation process will depend on the findings of the team visiting Bangladesh.

“We are still unsure when the actual repatriation will begin,” Rahman said.

Bangladesh has been pressing for the repatriation of Rohingya for years as it has been hosting the refugees despite not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

Supporting the Rohingya costs the Bangladeshi government an estimated $1.2 billion a year.

The sum is huge given the challenges the developing country battered by the coronavirus pandemic is already facing and as international aid for the Rohingya has been dropping since 2020.

Last month, the UN World Food Program decided to cut food rations for the Rohingya as its pleas for donations had not been met.

Hosting 1.2 million Rohingya has lately also become a security concern as cases of murder and reports of criminal organizations using refugees as drug traffickers have also been on the rise since last year.


Mexican church roof collapses, killing 5; rescuers search for survivors

Mexican church roof collapses, killing 5; rescuers search for survivors
Updated 6 sec ago
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Mexican church roof collapses, killing 5; rescuers search for survivors

Mexican church roof collapses, killing 5; rescuers search for survivors

MEXICO CITY: A church roof in northern Mexico collapsed during Sunday mass killing at least five people and injuring several others, local authorities and media said, with rescuers digging through the rubble searching for any survivors.
Footage on social media showed the moment the church roof caved in, puffs of gray smoke billowing into the air, followed by the toppling of yellow brick outer walls.
The civil protection body for Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas, published photos of the mangled remains of the church in Ciudad Madero and said its workers were looking for survivors.
Mexico’s Reforma newspaper said five people were killed in the accident, including a child, citing Adrian Oseguera, mayor of Ciudad Madero, a city on the Gulf coast near the port of Tampico.
Bishop Jose Armando Alvarez from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tampico said the church roof crumbled as worshipers were receiving communion and asked others to pray for the survivors.
“In this moment the necessary work is being carried out to pull out the people who are still under the rumble,” Bishop Armando said in a recorded message shared on social media.


Japan puts the brakes on lucrative used-car trade with Russia amid sanctions over Ukraine invasion

Japan puts the brakes on lucrative used-car trade with Russia amid sanctions over Ukraine invasion
Updated 2 min 59 sec ago
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Japan puts the brakes on lucrative used-car trade with Russia amid sanctions over Ukraine invasion

Japan puts the brakes on lucrative used-car trade with Russia amid sanctions over Ukraine invasion
  • Russia’s demand for second-hand cars from Japan jumped sharply after global automakers pulled back from operations following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine
  • Because it's cheaper to buy a new car than to maintain a used car in Japan, car owners are compelled to sell their old cars. The used cars are then exported

TOKYO: Japan’s move to bar most used-car sales to Russia slammed the brakes on a trade nearing $2 billion annually that had boomed in the shadow of sanctions over Ukraine elsewhere, according to trade data and market participants.

In early August, Japan’s government banned exports of all but subcompact cars to Russia, cutting off a lucrative backchannel in trade in used Toyotas, Hondas and Nissans for a network of brokers and smaller ports, especially Fushiki, an export hub on the Sea of Japan.
While wiping out Russia’s biggest source of used cars, the sanctions have driven down prices for second-hand cars in Japan and left brokers scrambling to send vehicles to other regions, especially right-hand drive markets in New Zealand, Southeast Asia and Africa.
Russia’s demand for second-hand cars from Japan jumped sharply after global automakers, including Toyota, pulled back from operations following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
By last year, with sanctions elsewhere tightening, Russia was buying more than a quarter of Japan’s used-car exports for an average price of almost $8,200. That was more than double the price in 2020, when Russia took about 15 percent of Japan’s used-car exports.
Those sales had been on track to top $1.9 billion for all of 2023 before Japan imposed its own tougher sanctions, trade data show.
More than half of the 303,000 used cars imported by Russia in the first eight months of the year came from Japan, according to figures from Russian analytical agency Autostat.
That compared to sales of 606,950 new cars of mainly Russian and Chinese brands over the same period, Autostat data showed.
Toyama-based SV Alliance, a two-year-old car export business, had been part of the wartime boom that sent an average of some 6,500 used-cars to Russia every month through July from Japan’s Fushiki. The port is about 800 km (500 miles) from Russia’s Vladivostok, within two day’s sailing for a cargo ship.
“Business is down about 70 percent and we’ve had to let a couple of people go because there isn’t enough work,” said Olesya Alekseeva, a logistics coordinator at SV Alliance.

Cheaper cars for recyclers
Japan has been a leading used-car exporter for decades. A system of mandatory inspections pushes the cost of maintaining used cars higher for customers in Japan. Financing costs for new car purchases, by contrast, are low.
The result: an export industry that has sent hundreds of thousands of cars on the road from Malaysia to Mongolia and Pakistan to Tanzania that were first purchased in Japan.
Takanori Kikuchi, a director for automotive trade policy at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said the government was “watching to see what kind of an impact” the new sanctions would have.
Japan had originally banned exporting luxury vehicles to Russia in April last year. It added a prohibition on the export of heavy trucks in June.
Under the new sanctions, dealers are still allowed to export smaller cars, such as the Toyota Yaris or the Honda Fit, to Russia.
Element Trading, a used-car dealer in Niigata prefecture that borders Toyama, has seen the share of Russia in its business slide from a peak of above 50 percent to below 20 percent, chief executive Wataru Nishiwaki said.
The number of used cars on offer surged more than 20 percent in August from a year earlier, while average vehicle selling prices posted a 7 percent drop, preliminary data from auto auction house USS showed.
The price decline was welcomed by some. Battery recycling firm 4R Energy has seen a “significant” tailwind from declining used-car prices, including the Nissan Leaf, said chief executive Yutaka Horie.
Lower prices give the joint venture between Nissan and trading house Sumitomo wider opportunity to secure supplies, he said.
 


Zelensky says nothing will weaken Kyiv’s resolve against Russia

Zelensky says nothing will weaken Kyiv’s resolve against Russia
Updated 02 October 2023
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Zelensky says nothing will weaken Kyiv’s resolve against Russia

Zelensky says nothing will weaken Kyiv’s resolve against Russia
  • No one could “shut down” Ukraine’s stability, endurance, strength and courage, Zelensky says

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech released on Sunday that nothing would weaken his country’s fight against Russia, a day after the US Congress passed a stopgap funding bill that omitted aid to Ukraine.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov said separately he had received reassurances about further military assistance in a telephone call with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
“Secretary Austin assured me,” he wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, using flags in place of country names, that US support to Ukraine “will continue” and that Ukrainian “warriors will continue to have a strong back-up on the battlefield.”
A Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson said Kyiv was working with its American partners to ensure a new budget decision would include funds for the country, and that US support was intact.
Zelensky, in a recorded speech marking the Defenders Day holiday, did not address the vote in Congress directly, but reiterated his determination to fight to victory.
No one could “shut down” Ukraine’s stability, endurance, strength and courage, he said, echoing a Ukrainian verb often used to refer to power outages caused by Russian attacks.
He added that Ukraine would only stop resisting and fighting on the day of victory. “As we draw closer to it every day, we say, ‘We will fight for as long as it takes.’“
US President Joe Biden said on Sunday that Republicans had pledged to provide Ukraine aid through a separate vote and US support could not be interrupted “under any circumstances.”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko also sought to reassure Ukrainians about future US support in comments on Facebook, stressing that previously approved funds would be unaffected.
“Support for Ukraine remains unwaveringly strong in the US administration, in both parties and chambers of the US Congress, and most importantly, among the American people,” he wrote.


Serbia’s president denies troop buildup near Kosovo, alleges ‘campaign of lies’ in wake of clashes

Serbia’s president denies troop buildup near Kosovo, alleges ‘campaign of lies’ in wake of clashes
Updated 02 October 2023
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Serbia’s president denies troop buildup near Kosovo, alleges ‘campaign of lies’ in wake of clashes

Serbia’s president denies troop buildup near Kosovo, alleges ‘campaign of lies’ in wake of clashes
  • Both the US and EU earlier Serbia to scale down its troop presence with its border with Kosovo to reduce tensions
  • Serbia has denied Kosovo’s allegations that it trained the group of some 30 men involved in an attack last week

BELGRADE: Serbia’s president on Sunday denied US and other reports of a military buildup along the border with Kosovo, complaining of a “campaign of lies” against his country in the wake of a shootout a week earlier that killed four people and fueled tensions in the volatile Balkan region.

Both the United States and the European Union expressed concern earlier this week about what they said was an increased military deployment by Serbia’s border with its former province, and they urged Belgrade to scale down its troop presence there.
Kosovo’s government said Saturday it was monitoring the movements of the Serbian military from “three different directions.” It urged Serbia to immediately pull back its troops and demilitarize the border area.
“A campaign of lies ... has been launched against our Serbia,” President Aleksandar Vucic responded in a video post on Instagram. “They have lied a lot about the presence of our military forces .... In fact, they are bothered that Serbia has what they describe as sophisticated weapons.”
Associated Press reporters traveling in the border region Sunday saw several Serbian army transport vehicles driving away toward central Serbia, a sign that the military might be scaling down its presence in the region following calls from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others.
Tensions have soared following the violence in northern Kosovo last Sunday involving heavily armed Serb gunmen and Kosovo police officers. The clash was one of the worst since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and prompted NATO to announce it would beef up a peacekeeping force stationed in the country.
Serbia has denied Kosovo’s allegations that it trained the group of some 30 men who opened fire on police officers, leaving one dead, and then barricaded themselves in an Orthodox Christian monastery in northern Kosovo. Three insurgents died in the hours-long shootout that ensued.
Kosovo has also said it was investigating possible Russian involvement in the violence. Serbia is Russia’s main ally in Europe, and there are fears in the West that Moscow could try to stir trouble in the Balkans to avert attention from the war in Ukraine.
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Friday that US officials were monitoring a large deployment of Serbian troops along the border with Kosovo, describing it as an “unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanized infantry units.”
Vucic has several times over the past months raised the combat readiness level of Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo. Serbia also has been reinforcing its troops with weapons and other equipment mainly purchased from Russia and China.
“We will continue to invest in the defense of our country but Serbia wants peace,” the president said Sunday. “Everything they said they made up and lied, and they knew they were making up and lying.”
Last weekend’s shootout near the village of Banjska followed months of tensions in Kosovo’s north, where ethnic Serbs are a majority of the population and have demanded self-rule. Dozens of soldiers from the NATO-led peacekeeping force known as KFOR were injured in May in a clash with ethnic Serbs protesting the Kosovo police presence in the area.
Fearing wider instability as the war rages in Ukraine, Washington and Brussels have sought to negotiate a normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, but the two sides have failed to implement a tentative agreement that was recently reached as part of an EU-mediated dialogue.


Nigeria offers measures to offset rising costs as unions mull strike

Nigeria offers measures to offset rising costs as unions mull strike
Updated 02 October 2023
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Nigeria offers measures to offset rising costs as unions mull strike

Nigeria offers measures to offset rising costs as unions mull strike
  • The fuel subsidy had been in place for decades and kept petrol prices artificially low in what was seen by many Nigerians as a benefit from their government

ABUJA: Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government on Sunday proposed a temporary wage hike for federal workers and more cheap gas-powered public transport among other measures to offset the impact of his economic reforms and convince labor unions to call off a planned national strike.
Speaking in a broadcast to mark Nigeria’s 63rd independence day anniversary, Tinubu’s announcement came after he ended a longstanding fuel subsidy that cost the government billions of dollars a year to keep fuel cheap and also his liberalization of the naira currency.
Government officials say the reforms were needed to revive Africa’s largest economy and investors applauded them, but Nigerians are struggling with a tripling of fuel prices, a sharp naira devaluation and inflation now at 25 percent.
“There is no joy in seeing the people of this nation shoulder burdens that should have been shed years ago,” Tinubu said.
“I wish today’s difficulties did not exist. But we must endure if we are to reach the good side of our future.”
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) — the two major unions representing industries from aviation workers and nurses to teachers and bankers — had called an indefinite strike for October 3 because they say the government failed to address their concerns.
In his broadcast, Tinubu said the federal minimum wage for the lower-grade public employees would increase by 25,000 naira a month ($32) for the next six months.
Later Sunday, government officials and labor unions met for negotiations, and the government said the temporary wage increase would now apply to “all treasury-paid federal government workers for six months,” according a presidency statement.
The temporary wage hike was among other offers, it said.
“NLC and TUC will consider the offers by the Federal Government with a view to suspending the planned strike to allow for further consultations,” the statement said.
NLC chief Joe Ajaero told reporters the union would take the government offers to its membership for consultations.
“We’re hopeful that (membership) will have a look at them and give us a fresh mandate,” he said.
Tinubu said the government was also preparing to speed up the introduction of gas-powered buses for public transport, which would lower the costs of transport — one of the main complaints for Nigerians since the fuel subsidy removal.
Social security cash transfers to the poorest Nigerians would also be extended and investments made available for small businesses, he said.
Tinubu — a former Lagos governor elected in February in a highly contested ballot — has promised to bring in more investment and tackle the country’s complex security challenges, from jihadists to bandit militias carrying out mass kidnappings.
The Nigerian leader has also sought to shake up the country’s central bank, whose previous director critics say was responsible for unorthodox monetary policies that kept investors away.
The former central bank director has been replaced and arrested.
The fuel subsidy had been in place for decades and kept petrol prices artificially low in what was seen by many Nigerians as a benefit from their government.
But the measure cost the government billions annually because although Nigeria is a major oil producer, it imports most of its fuel because of a lack of functioning refineries.
The NLC and TUC went on strike in August over the same issues, with many businesses, government offices, markets, banks closed for a day in the capital Abuja. But the call to strike met with more mixed response from businesses in the economic capital Lagos.