Families wait for word of Rohingya said to have been abandoned at sea by India

Families wait for word of Rohingya said to have been abandoned at sea by India
UN, families and lawyers of more than 40 Rohingya refugees in India allege that they have been forced off an Indian navy ship this month near the shores of Myanmar with only life jackets (AP/File)
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Updated 20 May 2025
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Families wait for word of Rohingya said to have been abandoned at sea by India

Families wait for word of Rohingya said to have been abandoned at sea by India
  • “We are helping them as human beings and we will let them go where they want if it is safe,” a spokesman for the group said
  • The mostly Muslim Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar for decades

NEW DELHI: It has been more than a week since Akbar, a Rohingya refugee in India, has heard his niece’s voice, the longest they have not spoken to each other.

She is among more than 40 Rohingya alleged by the United Nations, family and lawyers to have been forced off an Indian navy ship this month near the shores of war-torn Myanmar with only a life jacket.

“I got her out of the lion’s mouth when we escaped Myanmar almost eight years ago. And now this has happened,” Akbar, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, said of his niece, who is around 20 years old.

Myanmar’s Ba Htoo forces — opposition fighters battling the junta that took power in a 2021 coup — say the group landed on May 9 on a beach in Launglon Township near southern Dawei city, a region that regularly witnesses gunbattles and air strikes.

“We are helping them as human beings and we will let them go where they want if it is safe,” a spokesman for the group said.

The mostly Muslim Rohingya have been persecuted in Myanmar for decades, with many fleeing a 2017 military crackdown. More than a million escaped to Bangladesh, but others fled to India.

There are around 22,500 Rohingya in India registered with the United Nations refugee agency, according to the advocacy group Refugees International.

Two other Rohingya refugees told AFP their relatives were part of the group that was detained by Indian authorities.

Tom Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, has called the repatriation an “unconscionable” act.

Andrews said he was “deeply concerned by what appears to be a blatant disregard for the lives and safety of those who require international protection.”

New Delhi has not commented on the reports.

Family members say the group was summoned by authorities in New Delhi on May 6, allegedly to collect biometric data.

They were moved to a detention center and then to an airport outside the Indian capital.

From there they were flown to India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands, an archipelago that lies a few hundred kilometers southwest of Myanmar.

Two days after being detained, the refugees called family members back in Delhi saying they had been dropped off in the seas off Myanmar.

The Ba Htoo spokesman said one member of the group was a cancer patient, adding that the “rest of them just feel tired from the long trip.”

AFP could not independently verify the claims.

Dilwar Hussain, a New Delhi-based lawyer representing refugees from the community, said they were “concerned about the safety and well-being of these refugees.”

A petition filed in India’s Supreme Court by two refugees whose family members are among the 43 people allegedly deported said it was carried out illegally.

India is not a signatory to the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, which prohibits returning individuals to countries where they face harm.

However, New Delhi rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves, who has challenged the group’s detention and deportation, said India’s “constitutional laws cover protection” of the personal liberty and right to life of non-citizens.

This case is not the first to be reported.

Indian media reported this month that more than 100 Rohingya were “pushed back” across the northeastern border into Bangladesh.

India’s Hindu nationalist government has often described undocumented immigrants as “Muslim infiltrators,” accusing them of posing a security threat.

Yap Lay Sheng, from the campaign group Fortify Rights, said the deportation of the Rohingya group was a “targeted attack against anyone perceived to be Muslim outsiders.”

Ramon, another relative of one of the deported group, said his brother told him he had been verbally abused.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Ramon said the group was “accused of being involved” in the April 22 attack targeting tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, in which gunmen killed 26 men. The attack sparked a four-day conflict between India and Pakistan.

“My brother asked me to leave India to avoid being in a situation like his,” said Ramon, who has been in India for more than a decade.

Their mother has been inconsolable since receiving news of her son’s deportation. Ramon struggles with sleepless nights over his brother’s safety.

“They should have deported all of us and thrown us into the sea,” he said. “We would have been at peace knowing we are together.”


German court sentences Syrian doctor to life in prison for torture and war crimes in his homeland

German court sentences Syrian doctor to life in prison for torture and war crimes in his homeland
Updated 14 sec ago
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German court sentences Syrian doctor to life in prison for torture and war crimes in his homeland

German court sentences Syrian doctor to life in prison for torture and war crimes in his homeland
  • German news agency dpa reported that the 40-year-old Syrian, who was identified as Alaa M. in line with German privacy rules, was placed in preventive detention
BERLIN: A German court sentenced a Syrian doctor to life imprisonment for torture and war crimes in his Syrian homeland on Monday for killing two people and torturing nine in Syria between 2011 and 2012.
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court also established the particular gravity of the guilt, which in practice virtually rules out early release after 15 years — as is often the case in Germany when people are sentenced to life imprisonment. The 40-year-old Syrian, who was identified as Alaa M. in line with German privacy rules, was placed in preventive detention, German news agency dpa reported.
In his verdict, presiding judge Christoph Koller described the actions of the accused in the military hospital in the Syrian city of Homs in the early stages of the civil war that began in 2011. He said the doctor had sadistic tendencies and acted them out during the torture.
“Above all, the accused enjoyed harming people that seemed inferior and low-value to him,” Koller said, according to dpa.
During the trial, which lasted almost three and a half years, victims had described the most severe abuse, including beatings, kicks and the setting of wounds and body parts on fire, dpa reported.
Koller emphasized that without the willingness and courage of witnesses to share the details of their suffering the facts of the case could not have been clarified.
M. had lived in Germany for ten years and had worked as an orthopedic surgeon in several clinics, most recently in Bad Wildungen in northern Hesse. In summer 2020, he was arrested after some of his victims had recognized him from a TV documentary about Homs, dpa reported.
The doctor supposedly tortured prisoners who were considered part of the opposition to former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. The trial against him began in January 2022.
Alaa M. described himself as not guilty during the trial, alleging that he was the victim of a conspiracy, dpa wrote. The verdict is not yet final.

Spaniards turn water pistols on visitors in Barcelona and Mallorca to protest mass tourism

Spaniards turn water pistols on visitors in Barcelona and Mallorca to protest mass tourism
Updated 16 June 2025
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Spaniards turn water pistols on visitors in Barcelona and Mallorca to protest mass tourism

Spaniards turn water pistols on visitors in Barcelona and Mallorca to protest mass tourism
  • About a thousand Spaniards marched to demand a rethink of an economic model they believe is fueling a housing crunch and erasing the character of their city on Sunday
  • The marches were part of a coordinated effort by activists concerned with the ills of overtourism across southern Europe’s top destinations

BARCELONA: Protesters used water pistols against unsuspecting tourists in Barcelona and on the Spanish island of Mallorca on Sunday as demonstrators marched to demand a rethink of an economic model they believe is fueling a housing crunch and erasing the character of their hometowns.
The marches were part of the first coordinated effort by activists concerned with the ills of overtourism across southern Europe’s top destinations. While several thousands rallied in Mallorca in the biggest gathering of the day, hundreds more gathered in other Spanish cities, as well as in Venice, Italy, and Portugal’s capital, Lisbon.
“The squirt guns are to bother the tourists a bit,” Andreu Martínez said in Barcelona with a chuckle after spritzing a couple seated at an outdoor café. “Barcelona has been handed to the tourists. This is a fight to give Barcelona back to its residents.”
Martínez, a 42-year-old administrative assistant, is one of a growing number of residents who are convinced that tourism has gone too far in the city of 1.7 million people. Barcelona hosted 15.5 million visitors last year eager to see Antoni Gaudí’s La Sagrada Familia basilica and the Las Ramblas promenade.
Martínez says his rent has risen over 30 percent as more apartments in his neighborhood are rented to tourists for short-term stays. He said there is a knock-on effect of traditional stores being replaced by businesses catering to tourists, like souvenir shops, burger joints and “bubble tea” spots.
“Our lives, as lifelong residents of Barcelona, are coming to an end,” he said. “We are being pushed out systematically.”
Around 5,000 people gathered in Palma, the capital of Mallorca, with some toting water guns as well and chanting “Everywhere you look, all you see are tourists.” The tourists who were targeted by water blasts laughed it off. The Balearic island is a favorite for British and German sun-seekers. It has seen housing costs skyrocket as homes are diverted to the short-term rental market.
Hundreds more marched in Granada, in southern Spain, and in the northern city of San Sebastián, as well as the island of Ibiza.
In Venice, a couple of dozen protesters unfurled a banner calling for a halt to new hotel beds in the lagoon city in front of two recently completed structures, one in the popular tourist destination’s historic center where activists say the last resident, an elderly woman, was kicked out last year.
‘That’s lovely’
Protesters in Barcelona blew whistles and held up homemade signs saying “One more tourist, one less resident.” They stuck stickers saying “Citizen Self-Defense,” in Catalan, and “Tourist Go Home,” in English, with a drawing of a water pistol on the doors of hotels and hostels.
There was tension when the march stopped in front of a large hostel, where a group emptied their water guns at two workers positioned in the entrance. They also set off firecrackers next to the hostel and opened a can of pink smoke. One worker spat at the protesters as he slammed the hostel’s doors.
American tourists Wanda and Bill Dorozenski were walking along Barcelona’s main luxury shopping boulevard where the protest started. They received a squirt or two, but she said it was actually refreshing given the 83 degree Fahrenheit (28.3 degrees Celsius) weather.
“That’s lovely, thank you sweetheart,” Wanda said to the squirter. “I am not going to complain. These people are feeling something to them that is very personal, and is perhaps destroying some areas (of the city).”
There were also many marchers with water pistols who didn’t fire at bystanders and instead solely used them to spray themselves to keep cool.
Crackdown on Airbnb
Cities across the world are struggling with how to cope with mass tourism and a boom in short-term rental platforms, like Airbnb, but perhaps nowhere has surging discontent been so evident as in Spain, where protesters in Barcelona first took to firing squirt guns at tourists during a protest last summer.
There has also been a confluence of the pro-housing and anti-tourism struggles in Spain, whose 48 million residents welcomed record 94 million international visitors in 2024. When thousands marched through the streets of Spain’s capital in April, some held homemade signs saying “Get Airbnb out of our neighborhoods.”
Spanish authorities are striving to show they hear the public outcry while not hurting an industry that contributes 12 percent of gross domestic product.
Last month, Spain’s government ordered Airbnb to remove almost 66,000 holiday rentals from the platform that it said had violated local rules.
Spain’s Consumer Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy told The Associated Press shortly after the crackdown on Airbnb that the tourism sector “cannot jeopardize the constitutional rights of the Spanish people,” which enshrines their right to housing and well-being. Carlos Cuerpo, the economy minister, said in a separate interview that the government is aware it must tackle the unwanted side effects of mass tourism.
The boldest move was made by Barcelona’s town hall, which stunned Airbnb and other services who help rent properties to tourists by announcing last year the elimination of all 10,000 short-term rental licenses in the city by 2028.
That sentiment was back in force on Sunday, where people held up signs saying “Your Airbnb was my home.”
‘Taking away housing’
The short-term rental industry, for its part, believes it is being treated unfairly.
“I think a lot of our politicians have found an easy scapegoat to blame for the inefficiencies of their policies in terms of housing and tourism over the last 10, 15, 20 years,” Airbnb’s general director for Spain and Portugal, Jaime Rodríguez de Santiago recently told the AP.
That argument either hasn’t trickled down to the ordinary residents of Barcelona, or isn’t resonating.
Txema Escorsa, a teacher in Barcelona, doesn’t just oppose Airbnb in his home city, he has ceased to use it even when traveling elsewhere, out of principle.
“In the end, you realize that this is taking away housing from people,” he said.


One dead, 36 injured after 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Peru

One dead, 36 injured after 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Peru
Updated 16 June 2025
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One dead, 36 injured after 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Peru

One dead, 36 injured after 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Peru
  • A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Peru on Sunday, leaving one person dead and 36 injured as the tremor triggered landslides, officials said

LIMA: A 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck Peru on Sunday, leaving one person dead and 36 injured as the tremor triggered landslides, officials said.
The quake hit shortly before noon and was centered around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Callao, a port city next to the capital Lima, the National Seismological Center said. The US Geological Survey put the magnitude at 5.6.
Peru said the tremor had not generated a tsunami warning.
A man died in Lima when a wall fell on the car he was driving, the National Police said.
In addition, the Emergency Operations Center reported 36 injuries in Lima.
President Dina Boluarte called for “calm” from citizens, noting that there was no tsunami warning for the South American country’s Pacific coastline.
The TV channel Latina showed footage of landslides in several areas of the capital city.
The quake also prompted a suspension of a major football game being played in Lima. The city’s subway service was also halted.
Peru is home to 34 million people and lies on the so-called Ring of Fire, a stretch of intense seismic and volcanic activity around the Pacific basin.
Peru averages at least 100 detectable earthquakes every year.
The last big one, in 2021 in the Amazon region, had a magnitude of 7.5, left 12 people injured and destroyed more than 70 homes.
A devastating quake in 1970 in the northern Ancash region of Peru killed around 67,000 people.


World entering new era as nuclear powers build up arsenals — SIPRI think tank

World entering new era as nuclear powers build up arsenals — SIPRI think tank
Updated 16 June 2025
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World entering new era as nuclear powers build up arsenals — SIPRI think tank

World entering new era as nuclear powers build up arsenals — SIPRI think tank
  • Nine nuclear states — US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel plan to increase their stockpiles
  • Of total global inventory of estimated 12,241 warheads in Jan. 2025, about 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use

STOCKHOLM: The world’s nuclear-armed states are beefing up their atomic arsenals and walking out of arms control pacts, creating a new era of threat that has brought an end to decades of reductions in stockpiles since the Cold War, a think tank said on Monday.
Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,241 warheads in January 2025, about 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its yearbook, an annual inventory of the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Around 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles, nearly all belonging to either the US or Russia.
SIPRI said global tensions had seen the nine nuclear states — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — plan to increase their stockpiles.
“The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end,” SIPRI said. “Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.”
SIPRI said Russia and the US, which together possess around 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, had kept the sizes of their respective useable warheads relatively stable in 2024. But both were implementing extensive modernization programs that could increase the size of their arsenals in the future.
The fastest-growing arsenal is China’s, with Beijing adding about 100 new warheads per year since 2023. China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as either Russia or the US by the turn of the decade.
According to the estimates, Russia and the US held around 5,459 and 5,177 nuclear warheads respectively, while China had around 600.
 


Police break up Nigeria protest as anger mounts over killings in southern state

Police break up Nigeria protest as anger mounts over killings in southern state
Updated 16 June 2025
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Police break up Nigeria protest as anger mounts over killings in southern state

Police break up Nigeria protest as anger mounts over killings in southern state
  • Gunmen attacked the village of Yelewata in Benue state, killiing over 100, according to Amnesty International
  • Pope Leo XIV condemned the killings, in comments during his Sunday prayer in Rome, calling it a “terrible massacre”

JOS, Nigeria: Police fired tear gas to disperse protesters in the central city of Makurdi on Sunday, as anger mounted over the killing of dozens of people by gunmen in a nearby town.
Gunmen attacked the village of Yelewata on Friday night in a region that has seen a surge in violence amid clashes between Muslim Fulani herders and mostly Christian farmers competing for land and resources.
Police fired tear gas to break up a protest by thousands of people, witnesses said, as demonstrators called on the state’s governor to act swiftly to halt the cycle of violence.
“The protesters were given specific time by the security to make their peaceful protest and disperse,” Tersoo Kula, spokesperson for Benue state’s governor, told AFP.
John Shiaondo, a local journalist, said he was covering the “peaceful protest” when the police moved in and started firing tear gas.
“Many people ran away for fear of injuries, and I also left the scene for my safety,” he told AFP.
Joseph Hir, who took part in the protest, said people were protesting the killings in Benue when the police intervened.
“We are not abusing anyone, we are also not tampering with anybody’s property, we are discharging our rights to peacefully protest the unabated killings of our people, and now the police are shooting tear gas at us,” he told AFP.

Benue state governor Hyacinth Alia told a news conference late Sunday that the death toll had reached 59 in Yelewata, though residents said the toll could exceed 100.
“We will move very quickly to set up a five-man panel... to enable us find out who the culprits are, to know who the sponsors are and to identify the victims and to see how justice will be applied,” Alia said.
Amnesty International put the death toll at more than 100.
The rights group called the attack “horrifying,” saying it “shows the security measures (the) government claims to be implementing in the state are not working.”
Pope Leo XIV also condemned the killings, in comments during his Sunday prayer in Rome, calling it a “terrible massacre” in which mostly displaced civilians were murdered with “extreme cruelty.”
He said “rural Christian communities” in Benue were victims of incessant violence.
Authorities typically blame such attacks on Fulani herders but the latter say they are targets of violence and land seizures too.
Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said in a statement Sunday night he had “directed the security agencies to act decisively and arrest perpetrators of these evil acts on all sides of the conflict and prosecute them.
“Political and community leaders in Benue State must act responsibly and avoid inflammatory utterances that could further increase tensions and killings,” he said.
Governor Alia said earlier that “tactical teams had begun arriving from the federal government and security reinforcements are being deployed in vulnerable areas.”
“The state’s joint operational units are also being reinforced, and the government will not let up its efforts to defend the lives and property of all residents,” he said.
Attacks in the region, part of what is known as the central belt of Nigeria, are often motivated by religious or ethnic differences.
Two weeks ago, gunmen killed 25 people in two attacks in Benue state.
More than 150 people were killed in massacres across Plateau and Benue states in April.