UNHCR has sent 61 trucks into Tigray, carrying 2,400 tons of much-needed relief, including medicine, shelter materials, blankets and household items, and a tanker carrying 20,000 litres of fuel.
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Venezuelan migrants stand near the Paso del Norte International Bridge, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico October 21, 2022.
© 2022 Jose Luis Gonzalez/REUTERS
President Donald Trump left office nearly two years ago, but you might not notice that if you were seeking asylum at the United States southwest border. Despite promises to reverse abusive Trump programs that eviscerated the asylum process, the administration of President Joe Biden has continued to use and even expanded many of the same policies, violating US and international human rights law.
On Wednesday, the administration said in court it would appeal a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump-origin Title 42 summary border expulsions violated US federal law due to the “irreparable harm” they cause to asylum seekers. The expulsion policy is slated to end by December 21.
Media reports indicate Biden is considering reviving yet another of Trump’s anti-asylum policies if forced to end the expulsions – the so called “transit ban” barring most people from applying for asylum, a right under US and international law, if they have not already done so in one of the countries they passed through on their way to the US border.
Axios and CBS are reporting the Biden administration is also considering increasing prosecutions of migrants who cross between ports of entry (checkpoints where Customs and Border Protection agents screen travelers), using the same inherently racist law that led to Trump’s family separation policy. Our research shows those prosecutions and imprisonments are both financially costly and ineffective in deterring migration.
Biden’s reliance on deterrence-based border policies has also proven deadly. Under Biden’s watch, and in combination with Texas’ abusive Operation Lone Star, which is partially federally funded, the number of people who have died crossing the US southwest border jumped to more than 550 known deaths in fiscal year 2021 (covering October 2020 to September 2021) from around 300 deaths per fiscal year under the Trump administration. Known border deaths surpassed 800 in fiscal year 2022, a new record.
Continuing to rely on policies that criminalize migrants and block asylum seekers is likely to lead to more loss of life. Immigration deterrence policies fail to stop people from migrating to seek safety, return to their homes in the United States, reunite with family members, or improve their quality of life, but rather compel them to cross in ever more remote and dangerous areas of the border.
The Biden administration should instead respect the right to seek asylum, create safe pathways for migration, and work to create a humane, rights-respecting border that puts human life and rights over politics.
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Ilya Yashin waves to supporters in a Moscow courtroom during a hearing on abusive charges against him of spreading “false information” about Russian forces. Moscow, Russia, November 29, 2022.
© AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
(New York) – A Moscow court on December 9, 2022, sentenced a Russian opposition politician to eight and a half years in prison with an additional four-year ban on use of the internet, in continued efforts to dismantle and decapitate Russia’s peaceful political opposition and silence any criticism of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine, Human Rights Watch said today.
Ilya Yashin, who has long been a vocal critic of the Kremlin, was charged with violating Russia’s draconian war censorship laws. Yashin should be immediately and unconditionally freed, and the criminal case against him quashed.
“Ilya Yashin spoke out about some of Russian forces’ atrocities in Ukraine in full knowledge of the personal risks,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “That should never be grounds for legal action, yet the Kremlin relentlessly continues to persecute high-profile pro-democracy figures and opponents of Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
The prosecution brought charges of disseminating “false information” about Russian armed forces “motivated by political hatred” against Yashin for speaking out via social media about the atrocities that Russian forces committed in Bucha, the city outside of Kyiv formerly occupied by Russian troops, and sought a nine-year prison sentence with an additional four-year ban on use of the internet.
In his statement to the court, Yashin said that the authorities isolated him from society and kept him in prison to silence him, and that he would not stop telling the truth, even from behind bars.
Yashin was detained in late June 2022 on bogus charges of not complying with police orders and sentenced to 15 days in detention. But instead of releasing him after he finished his sentence in July, the authorities indicted him under the “false information” charges. He has remained in detention ever since.
Yashin was a close friend of the murdered Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and an ally of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been in detention since April, also on charges of “false information” for criticizing Russia’s war in Ukraine and two other equally unfounded charges.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian authorities have arrested, fined, or detained thousands for peaceful anti-war protests and anti-war speech, and filed over 100 criminal cases on charges of dissemination of “false information” about or “discreditation” of Russian armed forces in the context of the war.
In July, Alexey Gorinov, a municipal council member in Moscow, whom Yashin called his “comrade,” became the first person to be sentenced to prison time on “false information” charges for publicly talking about the war in Ukraine and civilian casualties there. His original seven-year prison sentence was reduced by only one month on appeal in September.
“The verdict against Yashin is a travesty of justice and an act of cowardice, directed by a Kremlin that feels threatened by vocal and visible critics like him,” Denber said. “That is no excuse to deprive him of his liberty and rights. They should immediately and unconditionally free Yashin, Kara-Murza, Gorinov, and others persecuted on these spurious charges and drop all charges against them.”
UK government calls for continued support to ‘strengthen Education Cannot Wait’s role in ensuring continuity of education for all in the face of increasing extreme weather events and emergencies’.