A Somali refugee man peeps through a fence as he awaits his photo to be taken during a verification exercise on June 18, 2008 at the Ifo camp in Daadab 488 km north east of Nairobi. Dadaab, a cluster of three camps sprawling in a hostile area of northeastern Kenya, is home to around 200,000 refugees.The vast majority are Somalis who fled 17 years of civil unrest and poverty. This year alone, 40,000 have poured in, fleeing the crossfire of almost daily fighting between Ethiopian-backed government troops and Islamist insurgents. AFP

In a report card, where countries are graded from A to F and that formed the basis for the USCRI worst violators’ list, China, Malaysia and Thailand received an F grade following a study on forcibly returning refugees to their homes and physical protection of refugees.

 WASHINGTON (AFP) - China, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladesh have been identified as among the worst violators of refugees’ rights in a global survey released ahead of Friday’s World Refugees Day.
They joined Iraq, Kenya, Russia, Sudan and Europe as the 10 worst places for refugees last year, according to the World Refugee Survey 2008 released in Washington on Thursday.

The annual study, conducted by the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), a non-governmental group, also showed the total number of refugees growing to 14 million at the end of 2007, the largest it has been since 2001.
Driving the growth again were Iraqi refugees, with more than 550,000 fleeing their country. In all, more than two million refugees from the insurgency-wracked nation are awaiting an end to violence in their homeland.

The worst places for refugees list was based on violators turning refugees away to face further persecution, violence, and possibly death, or letting them enter a country and subjecting them to deprivation and stultifying limbo, USCRI said.
“We’ve tried to call attention to these countries because they have been particularly egregious in their treatment of refugees,” USCRI president Lavinia Limon said.

“Some of them have forced refugees back into dangerous situations, some of them have warehoused refugees in camps for decades, and some of them have done their best to make sure refugees never enter their territory. Some of them have done all of the above,” she said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has made refugee protection the theme of this year’s events marking World Refugee Day.
In a report card, where countries are graded from A to F and that formed the basis for the USCRI worst violators’ list, China, Malaysia and Thailand received an F grade following a study on forcibly returning refugees to their homes and physical protection of refugees.

Some of the North Korean refugees repatriated by China have reportedly been executed.
Malaysia forcibly sent refugees from Myanmar to Thailand, where “some of them were sold into slavery -- men to fishing boats and women to brothels,” said Merrill Smith, USCRI director of international planning and analysis.
Thailand also forced refugees to return to Myanmar and Laos, he said.
Malaysia and Thailand also got an F grade together with Bangladesh and China in a study on conditions in which refugees were detained and provided access to courts.

In the category where freedom of movement of refugees was gauged, Thailand and Bangladesh received the worst grade. “Thailand confined about 140,000 refugees in special refugee camps where they are not allowed to leave -- mostly those from Myanmar and Laos,” Smith said.
Malaysia, Bangladesh and Nepal also received the worst grade in a study on whether governments allowed refugees to earn a livelihood.

One of the reasons that India was listed as among the worst places for refugees was because of its “radically discriminatory treatment of refugees,” said Smith.

“They treat refugees depending on their nationality -- at the better end of the spectrum would be the Tibetan refugees, they are treated the best. Sri Lankans not so well but worst of all would be the Chin ethnic group from Myanmar,” he said.
Smith pointed out that treating refugees well did not mean that they would remain permanently in their host countries, citing Malaysia as an example.

He said that Malaysia in 2005 issued documents to refugees from neighboring Indonesia’s Aceh province allowing them to work and move about freely following the tsunami disaster that devastated the province.
Of the 32,000 Acehnese who received those documents, only 6,000 remained in Malaysia as of this year while the others returned home, Smith said.

“The interesting part about that is that treating refugees well does not cause them to stay,” he said.
Western nations were also criticized in the report, including the United States and the European Union which received grades of F and D, respectively, for their poor physical protection of refugees including the forced repatriation of some asylum-seekers.

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US still favors diplomacy to settle Iran nuclear issue

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The US ambassador to the UN said Friday said Washington favored diplomacy in the Iranian nuclear crisis for now despite reports of Israeli preparations for a possible air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“We’re in the phase of diplomacy, we want a diplomatic settlement of this issue,” Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters when asked to react to media reports that recent military exercises by the Jewish state were a possible practice for a strike against Iran.
“I saw the article in paper today,” Khalilzad said. “You know our view with regard to Iran, which is that it would be unacceptable for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.”

“Right now we are in the phase of diplomacy, that’s what we are pushing for, we want a diplomatic solution to this problem. The ball is frankly in Iran’s court,” he added.
The New York Times Friday quoted US officials as saying that a major military exercise carried out by Israel earlier this month seemed to be a practice for any potential strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

US President George W. Bush, who was not expected to respond publicly to the news report, said repeatedly on his just-completed trip to Europe that he prefers a diplomatic solution but has not ruled out using force.
At the State Department in Washington, spokesman Sean McCormack said that it was not yet at “the point that Iran and this regime have changed its behavior.”

US officials “are hopeful that there are those reasonable officials within the Iranian government who will see that continuing on the course that they are on -- continuing their enrichment and reprocessing-related activities -- in the face of the demands of the international community,” McCormack said.

It was “not a good road for the Iranian government to go down, because they will continue to incur greater and greater costs as a result of actions by the international community,” he said.

A Pentagon official briefed on the exercise said a goal of the practice was to send a message that the Jewish state was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts failed to halt Tehran’s production of bomb-grade uranium.
But Iran warned its arch-enemy Israel Friday of a “strong blow” if it resorts to force.

“If enemies especially Israelis and their supporters in the United States would want to use a language of force, they should rest assured that they will receive a strong blow in the mouth,” senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said in his Friday prayers sermon.

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Tense calm on Gaza frontier as truce enters third day

AL-QARARA, (AFP) - As a truce between Israel and Hamas entered its third day Saturday Gaza farmers ventured into the war-scarred land along the frontier under the distant but watchful eyes of Israeli troops.
Mazen Muhanna began work at dawn clearing the bleached remains of dozens of olive trees destroyed in an Israeli incursion less than two weeks ago, hoping the Egyptian-mediated truce would bring an end to the fighting.

“My father planted these trees. They are older than me and I am 45, but they can destroy them in less than a minute,” he said.
Since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power over a year ago farmers along the border have been caught in the crossfire between rocket-launching Palestinian militants and Israeli troops stationed just over the horizon.

“They are both awful, but the Israelis are worse. The resistance just fires rockets, but the Israelis come with tanks and bulldozers,” he says, his hand sweeping across a dusty wasteland of mangled trees and meandering tank tracks.
Fadi, a 17-year-old farmer working the same land, says the farmers would prefer Palestinian militants stay away. “But if you say anything to them they will call you an agent (of Israel),” he says.

The farmers hope that an Egyptian brokered ceasefire which took effect Thursday morning will bring an end to the near daily clashes in Gaza, but though the calm has held for more than two days the border remains tense.
Siham Smeri, a farmer and mother of five, says the Israelis still fire warning shots when the farmers get too close to the fence. Her family owns land near the border that they haven’t farmed in more than two years.

“The first day of the truce we went to a hill near the border. An Arab Israeli soldier yelled out to us: ‘Get away from here or we will shoot you and break the truce’.” They haven’t been back since.
After months of almost daily Israeli strikes, the truce has brought a welcome calm in Gaza, which has been reeling under a tight embargo Israel imposed after Hamas seized power last June.

Gaza’s 1.5 million residents hope the ceasefire will lead to a lifting of a blockade that has devastated their economy and left 80 percent of them reliant on international food aid. The six-month Egyptian-mediated truce is the first since Hamas seized power, and follows months of fighting in which hundreds of Palestinians, mostly militants, have been killed.

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China releases 1,157 involved in Tibet unrest

BEIJING (AFP) - China has released a total of 1,157 people who were involved in riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa in March, the official Xinhua news agency reported Friday, quoting a senior Tibetan official.
They had been detained for minor offences connected with the unrest, Tibet vice chairman Palma Trily told a press conference in Lhasa.

The announcement came on the eve of a shortened one-day Tibetan leg of the Olympic torch relay.
Palma Trily also said courts in Tibet had Thursday and Friday handed down “punishments” to 12 people involved in the unrest, Xinhua reported.

Another 116 people were in custody awaiting trial, he said.
The brief report did not announce what sentences they received but the official said a total of 42 people had now been punished over the unrest.

Authorities in April jailed 30 people for between three years and life for arson, robbery, “gathering to assault state organs” and other crimes.
He said a total of 1,315 people had been arrested or turned themselves after the riots.
Amnesty International welcomed the news of the releases, which came a day after it urged China to reveal what happened to those detained.

“We are encouraged by the news of the release of 1,157 people and we look forward to receiving information about the trials of the 116 people in custody announced by the Tibetan authorities,” the group said in a statement.

Peaceful protests that began on March 10 in Lhasa to mark the anniversary of a 1959 uprising against China’s rule of Tibet escalated into widespread violence across the city on March 14 and spilled over into other parts of China inhabited by Tibetans.
Exiled Tibetan leaders say 203 people died in the subsequent government crackdown.

China has reported killing one Tibetan “insurgent” and says “rioters” were responsible for 21 deaths.
The Tibet issue was one of the major rallying cries for protesters who dogged the Olympic torch’s month-long global journey before it came to China for the home run ahead of the August Games.

Pro-Tibet activists as well as human rights and press freedom groups staged huge demonstrations in London, Paris and San Francisco, as well as smaller rallies in Australia, India and elsewhere.

The flame’s one-day stop in Tibet on Saturday is one of the most sensitive of the domestic route, which runs for thousands of miles over three months through every province and region of China.
China accuses Tibetans of targeting the Olympics following the crackdown in Lhasa, though the exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has repeatedly expressed his support for the Beijing Games.

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