EU: Rights Abuses at Home Drive Mediterranean Crisis

Migrants Detail Horrors That Caused Them to Flee

• What the European Union Should Do
  Sustain search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean

  Increase safe, legal channels for migrants and asylum seekers to enter the EU

  Ensure more equitable distribution of asylum seekers among EU members
  Tweet the recommendations

• 
  Enlarge

  A rescue operation by the Irish Navy ship Le Eithne, participating in the Frontex mission Triton, on June 6, 2015.
  © 2015 AP Photo/Irish Defence Forces

(Brussels) – Human rights abuses in their home countries are the driving force behind the surge in boat migration in the Mediterranean to reach Europe, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.EU leaders should put human rights at the heart of its response. EU leaders will meet on June 25 and 26, 2015, to discuss European Commission proposals toward a “European Migration Agenda.”

 “The Mediterranean Migration Crisis: Why People Flee, What the EU Should Do,” documents the human rights abuses driving people to make the dangerous sea crossing and the shortcomings of EU migration and asylum policies. The report is based on over 150 interviews in May with recently-arrived migrants and asylum seekers in Italy – Lampedusa, Catania, and Milan – and Greece – the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros, and Kos. The conclusions are also based on extensive Human Rights Watch research in Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan, andSomalia – the home countries of many of those arriving by sea. 

“The majority of those crossing the Mediterranean are taking terrible risks because they have to, not because they want to,” said Judith Sunderland, senior Western Europe researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Saving lives and increasing safe pathways into Europe should be the EU’s priorities, while ensuring that all cooperation with countries of origin and transit countries respects international human rights standards.”

source. http://www.hrw.org/news

Arrest of Rwanda Intelligence Chief

• 
  
  
  

There has been significant progress in ensuring justice for the victims of the genocide in Rwanda. But thousands of victims and their relatives are still waiting for justice for crimes committed by members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front since 1994.

Daniel Bekele, Africa director

(London) – Human Rights Watch is monitoring the case of Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, head of theRwandan intelligence services, who was arrested in London on June 20, 2015, on a European arrest warrant following a request issued by a Spanish judge.

In the event that Karenzi Karake is extradited to Spain, where a Spanish court has indicted him and 39 other senior Rwandan officials for serious crimes committed in violation of international law, the Spanish authorities should ensure that due process is followed and that he receives a fair trial.

“There has been significant progress in ensuring justice for the victims of the genocide in Rwanda,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But thousands of victims and their relatives are still waiting for justice for crimes committed by members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front since 1994.”

Karenzi Karake has been a key senior military and intelligence official in Rwanda for the last 20 years. Victims and witnesses of human rights violations have often cited his name in connection with serious crimes going back to the 1990s. In the Spanish indictment he is accused, among other things, of involvement in the 1997 murder of three Spanish aid workers.

In the years following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, members of the Rwandan Patriotic Army killed thousands of civilians, particularly in the context of a counterinsurgency operation in the northwest of Rwanda, as well as in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rwandan troops killed hundreds of civilians in the Congolese town ofKisangani in June 2000 when Rwandan and Ugandan troops clashed there. Karenzi Karake was a commander of the Rwandan troops.

The investigation into Karenzi Karake and other Rwandan officials in Spain was made possible because some of the victims are Spanish and in application of the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the courts of a country to investigate and prosecute particularly grave crimes even if they are committed abroad and by foreigners.

Human Rights Watch has reviewed the 2008 Spanish indictment, which it believes has some merit, and calls for the investigations into the crimes cited therein to continue to be pursued.
xource; http://www.hrw.org/news