Albertans give UCP failing grade for handling of pandemic: poll

Jason Herring CALGARY HERALD 31/5/2021

Albertans’ satisfaction with the province’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has reached a new low, a recent poll suggests.

© Gavin Young/Postmedia The downtown Calgary skyline is hidden by fog as a commuter crosses the Centre Street bridge on Wednesday, May 26, 2021.

Seventy-eight per cent of Albertans say they do not believe the province has handled the pandemic well, according to the survey by Leger conducted for Postmedia, which polled 1,118 Albertans online between May 21 and 24.


Pollster Ian Large said this is likely to be the nadir of the pandemic for Premier Jason Kenney’s government, as polling took place immediately before the province announced its aggressive reopening plan last week , with the potential for nearly all COVID-19 restrictions to be lifted by the end of June.

“We’ve seen all through the pandemic that there’s been very poor scores for the Alberta government and the premier’s handling of it, almost out of the gate,” said Large, executive vice-president at Leger.

“But this is, in my opinion, as low as it’s going to get . . . During this week, certainly from where I’m sitting, there feels like a lot more optimism.”

Broad disapproval of the United Conservatives’ pandemic approach persists in all regions of Alberta, but Calgarians were more favourable than those in Edmonton or rural regions. UNITED CALGARY PARTY

The wide-reaching frustration with the province’s pandemic approach comes from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Large said.

Kenney has faced criticism over his handling of COVID-19 from those who believe the government isn’t taking strong enough action to mitigate virus spread, as well as those who think the province’s actions have been too strict.

“It’s only a smaller group in the middle that says it’s just about right, in kind of a Goldilocks zone,” Large said.

© Provided by Calgary Herald

One-quarter of respondents said they believe the province should lift all COVID-19 restrictions now, with support for removing restrictions highest among Albertans under 45 and those living outside of Calgary and Edmonton.

Albertans responded most favourably to the province’s handling of the vaccine rollout, though only about a third of respondents said it was good or very good.

Large said the frame of reference matters when evaluating Alberta’s vaccine campaign. In the context of Canadian provinces, Alberta trails only Quebec and Manitoba in per-capita doses administered, but some pessimism might come from higher rates in the U.S.

“Despite the fact the vaccine rollout is among the best if not the best in the country, people might look to what’s happening in the United States and say, why do they have significantly more people vaccinated than in Canada, and much looser health restrictions?” Large said.

“In Canada, we’re doing really well. But compared to some other countries — the United Kingdom, the U.S. — we’re not doing so well.”

Albertans gave the worst marks to the government for listening to the views of all Albertans during the pandemic — the issue at the core of a UCP caucus revolt earlier this month that saw two dissidents expelled from the party.

Only 17 per cent of respondents believe the Alberta government is doing a good job listening to views of those across the province.

“It’s easy to see why Albertans think they’re not being listened to, because there’s these very vocal anti-lockdown people,” Large said, referencing scofflaw churches and a large rodeo in central Alberta . “They’re the ones that are taking up all the oxygen.”

The Leger poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

jherring@postmedia.com

Twitter: @jason

Nestle, under fire over unhealthy products, working on new strategy

ZURICH (Reuters) - Nestle said on Monday it was working on updating its nutrition and health strategy after the Financial Times reported an internal document at the food giant described a large portion of its food and drinks as unhealthy.

© Reuters/Denis Balibouse FILE PHOTO: Logo is pictured on the Nestle research center in Lausanne

The newspaper said it had seen an internal presentation circulated among top executives early this year stating that more than 60% of Nestle's mainstream food and drinks portfolio could not be considered healthy under a "recognised definition of health".

The paper said this assessment applied to about half of Nestle's overall portfolio because categories like medical nutrition, pet food, coffee and infant formula were excluded from the analysis.

Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Jon Cox said that including these categories would significantly reduce the proportion of products potentially considered unhealthy.

"Given the group’s confectionery, ice cream, and pizza businesses, the real figure for the group based on 2021 estimates would be 28%, which is hardly a surprise," he said in a note. He said the report could point to changes in the product portfolio, notably an exit from mainstream confectionary.

Nestle said in a statement it was working on a "company-wide project" to update its nutrition and health strategy and was looking at its entire portfolio to make sure its products helped meet people's nutritional needs.

It said it had reduced sugars and sodium in its products by about 14-15% in the past seven years and would continue to make its products healthier.

Nestle shares were 0.2% higher at 0951 GMT, broadly in line with the European food sector.

(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Mark Potter)

PREIMER IS BEGGING USA FOR VACCINES
Manitoba officials didn't heed warnings about a 3rd COVID-19 wave. Now hospitals are overwhelmed

DESPITE CANADA HAVING VACCINES

JUST ANOTHER TORY BLAMING TRUDEAU

FOR HIS INEPTITUDE

Bartley Kives  CBC

© Mikaela Mackenzie/Winnipeg Free Press/The Canadian Press As of Sunday, Manitoba has transferred 35 COVID-19 patients from intensive care wards — such as this one at Winnipeg's Health Sciences Centre — to hospitals in Ontario and Saskatchewan…

Across Canada, most provinces are relaxing pandemic restrictions or planning on reopening their economies later this spring or in the early summer — but Manitoba is a stark exception.

For the past two weeks, the province that once appeared as if it would be spared a third wave of the pandemic has posted the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate of any Canadian province or U.S. state. This has forced Premier Brian Pallister's Progressive Conservative government to increase restrictions while most jurisdictions are removing them.

Manitoba's daily average of 26 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 citizens is more than triple the Canadian average and nearly double that of Washington state, the jurisdiction with the second-worst infection rate.

Even as Manitoba's daily case counts have started to recede, Pallister and his public health officials had little choice but to extend public health restrictions.

"We are in a tough situation and our need is to protect each other and to safeguard our health care system for all of us," Pallister said on May 27.

Epidemiologists, infectious disease experts and intensive care unit (ICU) physicians in Manitoba say the Pallister government has only itself to blame.

"They dithered with half-measures, ignoring the science and evidence all around them, and eroded public trust while squandering a month-long cushion at the start of the third wave," Souradet Shaw, a social epidemiologist at the University of Manitoba, said in a series of tweets on May 20 after Manitoba Shared Health began to transfer ICU patients out of province.

"Instead of developing a clearly articulated and evidence-based strategy to tackle predictable surges, they impugned critics; misled the public through distortions, obscuring data, and accountability, and blamed everyone but themselves."
Hospitals in crisis

The ongoing crisis in Manitoba hospitals, which have been struggling for weeks to treat record volumes of COVID-19 patients, is the main reason behind the continuing restrictions.

On Sunday, a record 106 Manitoban COVID-19 patients were receiving intensive care. This includes 32 ICU patients transferred to hospitals in Ontario and Saskatchewan because there is no capacity in Winnipeg and Brandon hospitals to handle the patients.

A total of 35 ICU patients have been transferred out of province as of Sunday. Three have been returned, while another prospective transfer — 31-year-old Krystal Mousseau of Ebb and Flow First Nation — died on May 25 after an attempt to move her from Brandon to Ottawa.

The hospital crisis has also led to the deaths of non-COVID patients, mainly because thousands of surgeries have been cancelled to free up hospital staff to work on COVID-19 wards.

Six cardiac patients have died waiting for heart surgeries that could not be performed because nurses and other health-care staff were not available, Winnipeg ICU physician Dr. Eric Jacobsohn said on May 25.

Other non-COVID patients are suffering while the health-care system struggles to provide basic care, he said.

Concerns raised weeks ago

Jacobsohn and Shaw are among dozens of doctors, infectious disease experts and epidemiologists who warned the provincial health-care system was in danger in early April, when COVID-19 case counts began rising exponentially in Manitoba.

Provincial officials dismissed those concerns, even as hospitalizations during Ontario's third wave rose to the point where Toronto intensive care wards were struggling to treat record numbers of COVID-19 patients.

Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy provincial public health officer, promised Manitoba would enact restrictions in time to prevent his province from suffering a similar fate.

"Ontario, when you look at how the case numbers went up, likely waited much too long," Atwal said during an April 16 news briefing. "We're not going to go down that road, I could assure you that."

Manitoba: Daily new COVID-19 cases

Pallister went further later that month, lashing out at ICU physicians' calls for a lockdown. "It's coming all too often from people who wouldn't be affected adversely by a shutdown," he said.

"There are a lot of other people out in the province who don't have a guaranteed paycheque, who are struggling to make ends meet, who have to work for a living, and they don't want to go back to depending on a government program."
2nd-wave strategy returns

It took a month for the official rhetoric to change in Manitoba. By the Victoria Day long weekend, hospitals were transferring ICU patients out of province and the premier was asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for critical-care nurses, respiratory therapists and contact tracers.

After the second wave of the pandemic, when Manitoba's slow imposition of pandemic restrictions led to the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in Canada, there was an expectation the province would be more proactive if cases counts ever rose again.

Back in March, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin suggested Manitoba had learned its lesson about imposing a series of incremental restrictions instead of enacting a lockdown.

"We quickly saw that the incremental approach and really trying to trying to limit the impact of those restrictions just didn't work when we started seeing more and more transmission," Roussin said, pledging more decisive action next time. "I think that's something we'd have to consider earlier on."

Instead, Manitoba officials opted to once again employ a strategy similar the one they utilized with little success during the second wave. And Pallister, who had hinted earlier at some form of reopening strategy akin to those of other provinces, acknowledged Manitoba's third wave is now destined to linger well into the summer.

"We're not in a position to reopen," Pallister said.

Active COVID-19 cases by province & territory

Italy judge hands Riva brothers prison terms over Ilva pollution

By Crispian Balmer 

Reuters/CIRO DE LUCA FILE PHOTO:

 Steam comes out of the chimneys of the Ilva steel plant in Taranto

ROME (Reuters) - An Italian court on Monday sentenced the former owners of the Ilva steelworks, Fabio and Nicola Riva, to 22 and 20 years in jail respectively for allowing it to spew out deadly pollution.

Once the largest steel producer in Europe, the factory emitted a lethal cocktail of carcinogenic dioxins and mineral particles for more than half a century, that medics say caused a surge in cancer in the adjacent city of Taranto.

Wrapping up a trial that lasted five years, a Taranto court also handed prison terms to other ex-managers at Ilva, as well as the former head of the Puglia region, Nichi Vendola, who received a 3-1/2 year sentence.

All the defendants have the automatic right to two appeals before a sentence becomes definitive.

The Riva brothers, who have previously denied any wrongdoing, made no immediate comment. Vendola issued a statement denying any wrongdoing and saying he would appeal.

"It is like living in an upside-down world, where those who have worked for the good of Taranto are condemned without a shred of evidence," he said.

Ilva took root in Puglia, the heel of Italy's boot, in the 1960s as part of a government drive to industrialize the impoverished south.

At its peak, it produced more than 10 million tonnes of steel a year, but magistrates intervened in 2012 and said it had to be cleaned up or shut down, alleging the Riva family had allowed an environmental disaster to unfold.

A 2016 report by the regional health authority highlighted Ilva's impact on Taranto.

It showed lung cancer death rates were some 30% higher than normal in districts near the plant, while deaths from respiratory illnesses were as much as 50% above average. Ilva workers were 41% more likely to develop stomach cancer and 72% more likely to get pleural cancer.

The government took control in 2015 to safeguard some 16,000 jobs and reached a deal to sell the plant to ArcelorMittal in 2018. However, this is being renegotiated, with the state likely to become the main shareholder as environmental concerns remain.

The court on Monday said the plant must be confiscated, however this will only be executed once the appeals process is exhausted.

(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Alexander Smith)

AP Staffers Demanded To Know Why Emily Wilder Was Fired After A Conservative "Smear Campaign" Over Her Pro-Palestinian Activism

"Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her."

Tasneem Nashrulla BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on May 24, 2021

Angel Mendoza Emily Wilder

More than 100 Associated Press employees have criticized the way the news organization fired a young journalist last week after a conservative "smear campaign" over her pro-Palestinian activism in college.

In the open letter published Monday, AP staffers from across the world demanded more clarity from the company about why Emily Wilder, 22, was fired as a news associate in Phoenix only three weeks into her job.

"Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her," the staffers said in the letter. "We need to know that the AP would stand behind and provide resources to journalists who are the subject of smear campaigns and online harassment."
Twitter: @kat__stafford

In a viral Twitter thread last week, the Stanford College Republicans branded Wilder, who is Jewish, as an "anti-Israel agitator" by highlighting her old social media posts critical of Israel and her participation in pro-Palestinian groups and rallies during her time at Stanford.

Their tweets were amplified by several conservative news outlets as well as Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton, who raised questions about AP's objectivity in covering Israel and Palestinian territories.

The AP fired Wilder on Wednesday despite an editor initially assuring her that she would not face any recrimination for her old social media posts, she said.

According to Wilder's termination letter, which she shared with BuzzFeed News, her old posts prompted the company to review her social media activity. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the AP said that she was fired for violating the company's social media policy "during her time at AP," but they did not specify the offending posts either to her or to the staff.

The staffers said AP's lack of communication after Wilder's firing "gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn’t be next, sacrificed without explanation."

The employees noted that interest groups involved in targeting Wilder were "celebrating their victory and turning their sights on more AP journalists."

"Once we decide to play this game on the terms of those acting in bad faith, we can’t win," the letter said.

Responding to the letter Monday, AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said, "The Associated Press looks forward to continuing the conversation with staff about AP’s social media policy."

Easton appeared to refute some aspects of the letter, saying that the company's news leadership sent a note about Wilder's termination to its global news staff on Saturday and that AP "did not choose to name Emily Wilder publicly, as the letter states."

Easton also noted that AP's social media policy is negotiated with the News Media Guild which represents its US news staffers.

"Our News Values and Principles, including our social media guidelines, exist to ensure that the comments of one person cannot jeopardize our journalism or the journalists who are covering the story," Easton said.

Wilder did not respond to a request for comment about the letter.

In their letter, AP staffers said the episode also prompted the public to question the credibility of AP's reporting on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and did a disservice to their "courageous journalists in Gaza — who have already greatly suffered this month — and in Israel."


The Israeli military bombed the Gaza building housing AP's bureau and other international media organizations, without providing evidence that Hamas — the Palestinian militant group — operated there. Israeli officials gave the journalists just minutes to evacuate before destroying the building.

After her firing, Wilder and several journalists noted the disproportionate backlash against peers who publicly hold pro-Palestinian views and questioned the decision to fire employees based on newsrooms' vague social media policies governing objectivity.

"The lack of clarity on the violations of the social media policy has made AP journalists afraid to engage on social media — often critical to our jobs — in any capacity," AP staffers wrote in the letter.

They asked the AP to offer clarity about the disciplinary process used for Wilder and to specify which of her social media posts led to her termination.

Employees also demanded a commitment from AP to support any staffers "targeted by harassment campaigns" and a forum where AP journalists could discuss the best social media practices for its journalists.

"It’s important that the AP and its employees can articulate where the lines are drawn," the letter said.

In College, She Was A Pro-Palestinian Activist. The AP Just Fired Her After A Conservative "Witch Hunt."

Emily Wilder spoke with BuzzFeed News after she was fired by the Associated Press when conservatives shared her old social media posts and noted her pro-Palestinian college activism.

Tasneem NashrullaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on May 22, 2021

A 22-year-old Stanford graduate was fired by the Associated Press on Wednesday, after what she described as a "witch hunt" by conservatives who resurfaced her old social media posts critical of Israel, as well as her pro-Palestinian activism in college.

"It really felt like I got hung out to dry," said Emily Wilder, who was fired only three weeks after joining the AP as a news associate in Phoenix. The role was not a reporting position and did not involve covering international news.

A spokesperson for AP told BuzzFeed News that Wilder was dismissed for violating the company's social media policy "during her time at AP."

"We have this policy so the comments of one person cannot create dangerous conditions for our journalists covering the story," the spokesperson said.

However, Wilder told BuzzFeed News that her editors at AP refused to tell her which of her tweets or posts had violated the news agency's policies. The AP spokesperson also did not specify the offending posts.

Several journalists on Friday criticized the AP's decision to fire Wilder, noting the disproportionate backlash against peers who publicly hold pro-Palestinian views. Others were critical of firing journalists for their old college or high school tweets.



Twitter: @GlennKesslerWP


Wilder, who is Jewish, said AP's decision to fire her felt like a "convenient cover story for sacrificing me as collateral" after conservative outlets and lawmakers branded her as anti-Israel and slammed the news organization for hiring her.

Wilder, who first spoke with SF Gate on Thursday, said the "harassment campaign" against her began when the Stanford College Republicans on Monday wrote a Twitter thread branding her as an "anti-Israel agitator" and highlighting her pro-Palestinian posts and activism during her time at Stanford.

In one post shared by the group, Wilder called Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire GOP mega-donor and close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a "naked mole rat." She also referred to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro as "a little turd" in a 2019 op-ed for the Stanford Daily.

The Twitter thread brought up her affiliations with Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as her participation in a 2017 "Return the Birthright” rally in New York.

Wilder said the Stanford College Republicans had "antagonized" her and her friends in the past over her activism in college, including a time she hosted a 2019 speech by Jewish cartoonist Eli Valley, an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"They were holding on those screenshots for three years, I guess," Wilder said. "They're known for these kind of cheap tactics and for their sole politics really being to disrupt other people's lives."

After the tweets went viral, Wilder said she was shaken and concerned, especially after receiving a barrage of online harassment.

"Any woman in journalism understands how violent and vile those messages can become very quickly," she said.

However, she said an AP editor assured her in a phone call on Tuesday night that the organization was most concerned about the harassment she was facing and was going to take steps to address that.

Wilder said the editor told her that she would not face repercussions for her old posts and activism she was involved with in college before becoming a journalist.

During that call, she said, the editor also suggested that she should remove "Black Lives Matter" from her Twitter bio, which she did at the time.

The next day, however, things "really escalated" after her old posts were amplified by several conservative news outlets, including Fox News, and by Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton.

In one article, the Washington Free Beacon wrote that Wilder's hire "could fuel concerns about the AP's objectivity amid revelations that the news outlet shared an office building with Hamas military intelligence in Gaza."

The AP has said Israel's army had not provided any evidence so far to support its decision to bomb the building that housed the AP's Gaza bureau and other international media organizations.

Wilder said that on Wednesday afternoon the same AP editor who had assured her that she would not face consequences for her old posts and activism called to tell her she was being terminated immediately.

According to Wilder, the editor told her that since their last conversation "new things came to light," prompting a review of her social media.

Wilder's termination letter, which she shared with BuzzFeed News, reads, "As discussed, over the last few days some of your social media posts made prior to joining AP surfaced. Those posts prompted a review of your social media activity since you began with the AP, May 3, 2021. In that review, it was found that some tweets violated AP’s News Values and Principles."

The letter recalled that during her first week at the AP, an editor had a meeting with her and "specifically spoke to you about the social media expectations of AP journalists."

"It’s paramount that journalists working for The Associated Press cover the news impartially, do not have any conflicts that could be perceived as leading to bias in reporting and on social media refrain from sharing opinions or engaging in any activity that could compromise AP’s reputation for objectivity," the letter said.

Wilder said that when she asked what posts violated the AP's policies, she did not get an answer from either her editor or the letter.

She said she did not believe any of her social media posts were egregious enough for her to be singled out and fired and that the AP should have given her a warning instead of firing her immediately.

Amid the recent surge of violence in the region, leading to more than 200 Palestinians being killed in Israeli airstrikes, Wilder said she retweeted articles about the AP building being bombed by the Israeli military and about the death toll in Gaza.

She also wrote a tweet questioning the language media outlets used while writing about Israel and Palestinian territories and how one side always gets "policed and censored."

Twitter: @vv1lder

Wilder said social media policies surrounding objectivity were "so imprecise, vague, and nebulous" that they were "haphazardly and selectively enforced and almost universally and disproportionally used against journalists of color and journalists who expressed dissent towards the state of Israel."

Wilder said that while she was heartened by the support she was getting from others, she hoped that people would recognize Palestinian journalists and journalists of color have long experienced this kind of blowback for expressing their views even when "it's totally irrelevant to your beat or your job."
Twitter: @vv1lder

In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, Wilder said her firing is "heartbreaking as a young journalist so hungry to learn from the fearless investigative reporting of AP journalists."

"It's terrifying as a young woman who was hung out to dry when I needed support from my institution most. And it's enraging as a Jewish person — who grew up in a Jewish community, attended Orthodox schooling and devoted my college years to studying Palestine and Israel — that I could be defamed as antisemitic and thrown under the bus in the process," she wrote.

"While the last few days have been overwhelming, I will not be intimidated into silence," Wilder added. "I will be back soon.

“THE GRAVE YARD DOESN’T  LIE”

The Texas Winter Storm And Power Outages Killed Hundreds More People Than The State Says

A BuzzFeed News analysis shows the catastrophic failure of Texas’s power grid in February killed hundreds of medically vulnerable people.

Peter AldhousBuzzFeed News Reporter

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter

Zahra HirjiBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 26, 2021, 

The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times what the state has acknowledged so far. A BuzzFeed News data analysis reveals the hidden scale of a catastrophe that trapped millions of people in freezing darkness, cut off access to running water, and overwhelmed emergency services for days.

The state’s tally currently stands at 151 deaths. But by looking at how many more people died during and immediately after the storm than would have been expected — an established method that has been used to count the full toll of other disasters — we estimate that 700 people were killed by the storm during the week with the worst power outages. This astonishing toll exposes the full consequence of officials’ neglect in preventing the power grid’s collapse despite repeated warnings of its vulnerability to cold weather, as well as the state’s failure to reckon with the magnitude of the crisis that followed.

Many of the uncounted victims of the storm and power outages were already medically vulnerable — with chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and kidney problems. But without the intense cold and stress they experienced during the crisis, many of these people could still be alive today.

This was the case for 80-year-old Julius Gonzales, his family believes. As dawn broke on February 15, he made his way to one of his regular dialysis appointments, only to find that the clinic had lost power and was closed. So the retired maintenance worker turned his Dodge Ram around and headed back to the mobile home he’d shared with his wife, Mary, in the small town of Arcola, Texas, for nearly 20 years.

So began the last 24 hours of his life

In its count of deaths caused by the winter storm, the Texas Department of State Health Services is relying heavily on records submitted from officials in individual counties. Most are confirmed deaths from hypothermia. But the official count also includes accidents on the ice and carbon monoxide poisoning. So far, relatively few of these deaths are people with existing medical problems that were exacerbated by the storm and power outages.

Although government agencies have traditionally accounted for the impact of disasters using narrow counts like the one being run by Texas officials, there is a growing recognition that this method may vastly underestimate the true toll.

The problem came into stark relief in the weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, when news organizations, including BuzzFeed News, provided evidence that many more people had died as the island struggled with the collapse of its power grid than the official count of 64 killed by the storm.

Eventually, Puerto Rico’s governor commissioned a comprehensive analysis from researchers at George Washington University in Washington, DC, which estimated that 2,975 more people than expected died between September 2017 and February 2018, as large parts of the island went without power for months. This is now accepted by the authorities in Puerto Rico as the official toll from Hurricane Maria and the subsequent power outages.

The Texas Department of State Health Services did not respond to requests for comment on our findings on the death toll from the winter storm or whether they would investigate further.

According to the experts consulted by BuzzFeed News, “excess deaths” analyses like the GWU report on Hurricane Maria and our accounting for the Texas winter storm provide the best way to measure the full impact of major disasters.

Ariel Karlinsky, an economist and statistician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is compiling the World Mortality Dataset to aid similar studies of the deaths caused by disasters and diseases, put it this way: “The graveyard doesn’t lie.”


Thomas Shea / AFP via Getty Image
Power lines in Texas City, Texas, Feb. 19

In the winter storm’s aftermath, the governor, elected politicians, and the public demanded answers about how Texas’s grid could fail so spectacularly and who was to blame.

The Texas legislature grilled leaders at ERCOT, a nonprofit overseeing the state’s grid, and the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates ERCOT, about why more wasn’t done to prepare for power supply problems and warn the public about what could happen. Since then, ERCOT fired its CEO and at least seven of its board members have resigned. Additionally, the state’s three commissioners at the PUC all resigned.

Now all eyes are on the state legislature, which is debating a sprawling bill that would empower state regulators to require power providers, including some natural gas operators, to protect their equipment against cold weather or face financial penalties. The bill passed the Senate, and an updated version just passed the House. The chambers have a week to resolve their differences and send the proposal to the governor’s office to get signed into law.

But for many families who lost loved ones during the storm, none of these steps are enough. So far, the relatives of more than 60 people who died during the disaster have filed wrongful death lawsuits against ERCOT, the state’s primary grid operator, as well as specific power providers, according to the lawyers representing these cases. Dozens more families may follow suit.

The Dallas-based law firm Fears Nachawati, for example, is representing the families of about 80 people who died during the storm. “Some people just froze to death in their chair,” said lawyer Majed Nachawati.

“It’s astounding and it is disturbing, and our job is to make sure we hold the [power] generators, who we believe primarily responsible, accountable for the untimely deaths of these 80 deceased victims,” Nachawati said. “Those people being mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters.”

In response, ERCOT has argued in court filings that “it is entitled to sovereign immunity due to its organization and function as an arm of State government.” But whether or not this is true is still an open question.

When an unrelated case challenging ERCOT’s assertion that it is shielded from liability went before the Texas Supreme Court in March, the justices punted on making a decision.

For some families, the failure to account for the full toll of the storm and power outages could have serious financial consequences. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering assistance with funeral expenses for families who lacked insurance or other help with the costs. But the deadline to apply was May 20, and to qualify, applicants needed to confirm that the death had been directly or indirectly attributed to the disaster by state, local, or tribal medical officials.

As of May 17, FEMA had paid out in just two cases.

In response to questions from BuzzFeed News about what happens if any deaths are linked to the storm after the May 20 deadline, the agency responded by email: “In order for FEMA to process late registrations, applicants must submit a letter to FEMA that explains the extenuating circumstances that prevented them from applying for assistance in a timely manner.”

Producing a more accurate count of the deaths linked to the storm may help bring closure to some grieving Texan families. It is also vital so that the authorities responsible for the state’s infrastructure, emergency services, and disaster responses can learn what needs to be done to prevent a future tragedy of a similar magnitude.

“We need to know who’s most at risk,” said Casey, the environmental epidemiologist at Columbia University. “Right now we’re missing big chunks of data and a lot of people are getting missed out of this accounting.”


Michael Starghill Jr. for BuzzFeed News
Mary Gonzales at her home in Arcola, Texas, on May 22

In Arcola, Julius Gonzales’s sudden death has left his family with a host of financial problems. The trailer that he and his wife lived in was in his name, and Mary Gonzales wanted it transferred to hers. But for that to happen, she said, the bank told her that she’d have to pay off the mortgage in full right away. She decided that she couldn’t afford that, so she is surrendering the home. While she grieves, she is deciding which of a half-century’s worth of their possessions to keep when she moves into her son’s house next door.

Another source of stress was the medical examiner’s delay in issuing an official cause of death. Having worked in maintenance for the nearby city of Stafford for more than two decades, Julius had accrued a pension that was supporting them both after he retired. But without a final death certificate to show the city, his wife said she was not able to access that money.

Three months after Julius died — after his funeral was held, after he was cremated — his family finally received the certificate on May 18.

While having it solves some problems, it still doesn’t answer Mary’s biggest question: Could her husband’s death have been prevented?

“When you’re middle-class and — not poor, but you don’t know a lot — you just stay in the dark,” Mary said. “Nobody hears about you.” ●

EXERPT THE ARTICLE IS VERY LONG AND THOROUGH

READ IT HERE Texas’s Winter Storm Killed Hundreds More Than Reported (buzzfeednews.com)

The World Has Changed, But The Hospitality Industry Hasn’t. That’s Bad For Workers.

Tenuous employment. Dangerous working conditions. The pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws with how the hospitality industry operates.

Clarissa-Jan Lim BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 28, 2021,

Ting Shen for BuzzFeed News

Keisha Banks

For two decades, Keisha Banks had worked on and off in the hospitality industry — until last year, when she was unceremoniously let go from her job as an event server at the Chateau Marmont via a mass email sent in March 2020 to employees of the iconic Hollywood hotel.

Banks, 41, had an inkling that things were going downhill in the industry as soon as hotel guests started “dropping off like flies” in early March, canceling their reservations for events and rooms. She told BuzzFeed News she was taken aback because the notice was “vague and impersonal.”

“When you work at Chateau, one of the things they say is, ‘We're all like family here,’” Banks said. “And then to get this really blunt, ‘You’re cut off’ email was bad.”

It was the first in a streak of unfortunate events that has upended her life and the lives of many others like her.

As tourism collapsed and businesses closed down in the early weeks of the pandemic, millions of people became unemployed, facing down a world of uncertainty. No industry dodged the effects of the pandemic, but almost none was clobbered as hard as leisure and hospitality, which saw its unemployment rate peak in April 2020 at a staggering 39%.

Now, as the US emerges from the pandemic, with 50% of adults fully vaccinated as of the end of May, workers are returning to industries decimated by COVID-19. Many businesses are reopening and travel numbers are rebounding, and there were notable hospitality job gains in April 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But employment in the industry is still down by 2.8 million, or 16.8%, since February last year. Some businesses, especially those in hospitality, have reportedly struggled to find workers as they reopen. As a result, some business owners have concluded that unemployment benefits are too robust, rather than that their businesses are not paying people enough. In recent weeks, some two dozen Republican governors have ended the extra $300 per week in federal unemployment benefits in their states so as to force people back to work.

But for many workers, the pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws with how the hospitality industry operates. In many cases, they are being asked to go back to jobs with weak employment and safety protections, and for pay that still does not reflect the value of their work or the economic destruction that the pandemic wrought on their lives. After 15 months of tumult, not everyone is ready or willing to return to a job that underpays, offers no paid sick leave, and treats them as expendable.

For Banks, who has long looked to hospitality work to bolster her income, she’s hesitant to return to an industry that has not done right by her. And she no longer feels like she can rely on this line of work the way she used to.

“It would mean going back to a broken system,” she said. “Why should rich people get to choose their careers and the rest of us be forced to get just the less fulfilling jobs that are left over?”


Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News

The rear area of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

Banks was one of the hundreds of employees whom the Chateau Marmont fired in March last year as hotels’ occupancy rates plummeted. Kurt Petersen, copresident of Unite Here Local 11, a labor union that represents hospitality workers in Southern California, said the Chateau neither offered its employees severance nor extended their health benefits beyond a few weeks.

In the months after Banks was laid off, Los Angeles slowly but surely grew into a COVID hot spot. Some of the city’s highest case rates were recorded in neighborhoods where residents are more likely to live in cramped spaces and hold low-paying “essential” jobs with little to no workplace protections.

Meanwhile, as thousands of essential workers got sick and those in hospitality were forced to choose between unemployment and risking their health, the lifestyles of the rich and fabulous sauntered on. Despite stay-at-home orders and a statewide mask mandate, celebrities and influencers threw ragers, brazenly flouted safety guidelines, and challenged public criticism by lamenting, as Kris Jenner did, that “all we can do is live our lives the best way we know how.” California lawmakers, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, attended birthday dinners and traveled with lobbyists to Hawaii, disregarding the very restrictions they had ordered.

As Banks watched politicians and celebrities gallivant around town, it struck her that the only people who were out were the ones who could afford to get sick. “They can’t possibly put themselves into the shoes of other people,” Banks said.

Banks took safety precautions as seriously as she could, limiting trips to the grocery store, passing up invites to socialize, and staying home. She was furloughed twice from her second job as a recruiter and then laid off in July. She waited for cases to go down and for her job at the Chateau to materialize again, all while watching the rich and powerful in her city, her state, and her country behave as if COVID-19 weren’t killing 4,000 people in the US a day at its peak.

“They can’t possibly put themselves into the shoes of other people.”

But the longer she waited, the worse it got. Restaurants were closing, many unlikely to return. Hotels were not operating at full capacity. No one was hiring. Her credit card debt piled up.

“You're just kind of waiting around for nothing,” she said. “I was sinking money into rent. At some point, I thought, If I don't make a decision now, then I'll have no money to live off of.”

Banks stayed in LA for a few more months until she could no longer justify pouring what little savings she had into rent and bills. In December, she moved back into her parents’ home in Stafford, Virginia, with $2,500 to her name. By the end of that month, after being served with a lawsuit from Wells Fargo for falling behind on her payments, she filed for bankruptcy.

Banks, who lived paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic, has not worked since August. After moving back in with her parents, she decided it was not worth contracting the virus and potentially exposing them for a job that paid $10 an hour. Even though she will be fully inoculated against COVID-19 by mid-June, she isn’t eager to jump back into the workforce.

“It hasn't even been a full year that I've taken off work, but I personally feel like a failure, I guess,” Banks said. “Society makes you feel like you have to be working all the time, you have to be producing all the time, you have to be doing all these things. But in my mind, I'm thinking, Well, this is my year off to relax. Then for the rest of my life, I'm going to be working.”

Elyse Butler for BuzzFeed News

May Chang

The pandemic placed hospitality workers in a losing position. Those who were able to keep working were forced into a situation that endangered their health and safety, or that of their family.

May Chang, 52, had to weigh this risk last summer, when her former employer, Ala Moana Hotel in Honolulu, asked if she would be ready to go back to work soon. It was six months after she was laid off from her job as a housekeeper at the luxury resort. Although she desperately needed work, Chang, who lived with her husband, two daughters, and a baby grandson, had to consider her family’s safety.

She and her husband sat down and discussed if they could afford to scrape by for a few more months without her income. There were bills to pay. Her brother in the Philippines relied on money she sent to get medical treatment for his epilepsy. Chang’s unemployment claims had not yet been approved. Her husband, a bank teller, was still going to work, but with reduced hours and pay. At 65, he had planned to retire soon but instead clung to his job because both he and Chang needed health insurance.

Her unemployment benefits finally started coming in after months of delay, but it was far less than what she had earned from her job. Going back to work would alleviate some of the pressure, but COVID cases were hitting record highs in Oahu that month when her employer contacted her. Chang was also anxious about protecting her husband, whose health issues would put him at a higher risk if he contracted the virus, and her grandson, who was only a few months old.

“I was so afraid to expose myself out there, especially [in a] hotel, you have all kinds of people there from other countries,” she said. So she told her employer that she wanted to go back to work and hoped that they would keep her in mind, but was not yet comfortable doing so.

The tourism industry represents nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s economy, researcher and economics professor Sumner LaCroix told Hawaii Public Radio; data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that more than 50% of the state’s hospitality workforce was cut in the early months of the pandemic.

The state has inched toward reopening since the vaccines arrived. State travel data show that Hawaii saw nearly twice the number of visitors in each of the last three months than it did in January or February. The state initially mandated that all visitors during the pandemic commit to a self-quarantine period. In mid-October last year, however, travelers could forgo the quarantine period if they could prove they tested negative for COVID prior to boarding. Though the pretravel testing program was touted as a step toward reopening tourism in the state, the policy received pushback from locals who were angered by tourists flouting COVID guidelines. In May, Hawaii rolled out a vaccination passport program, which allowed residents to travel freely within the state without testing or quarantining, but it doesn’t apply to out-of-state travelers yet.

Chang had been hoping for months that hotels’ occupancy rates would increase so she could go back to work. She and her coworkers were in discussions with hotel management and their local union on how to prioritize their safety when they return. After being fully vaccinated in April, Chang waited daily for Ala Moana to ask her to return to work; every morning, she got ready and prepared her uniform, just in case.

On May 25, she finally got the call and went back to work for the first time in more than a year. “I've been waiting for so long,” she said. “I'm so excited.”

Todd Williamson / Getty Images for Amazon

The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Ana Cortez worked at the hotel as a housekeeper until April 2020.

Like Chang, Ana Cortez sent money to El Salvador to help her 87-year-old mom get by. But it became even harder to do so after Cortez lost her job in April 2020 as a housekeeper at the Beverly Hilton, a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills known for hosting the Golden Globe Awards and other star-studded events.

After losing her job, Cortez, 63, got by on unemployment benefits; it was the first time in her four decades in the US that she had to apply for unemployment, she said. She has scrimped and saved where she could and relied on food banks for sustenance so that she had money for her mom, who has epilepsy.

“I'm going to do whatever I need to help take care of my mom,” Cortez told BuzzFeed News in Spanish.

When the Beverly Hilton called her back for a six-day stretch of employment in October, she went into work under a cloud of grief. Her brother, who went back to El Salvador to care for their mom, had contracted COVID and died. He was one of four of Cortez’s family members who had died of COVID following the deaths of her grandmother and two uncles in El Salvador.

In Los Angeles County, COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the Latino population. The virus has killed Latino residents at three times the rate of white residents, according to county data, and a recent University of Southern California study found that Latino immigrants between the ages of 20 and 54 are more than 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than non-Hispanic US-born residents.

Amid one of the worst outbreaks of the pandemic, LA County saw a 1,000% increase in the COVID death rate among Latinos from November 2020 to February 2021.

For all the financial difficulties and the personal grief of this past year, Cortez, who is currently back in El Salvador, said she’s thankful that she and her children, whom she lives with, did not contract COVID.

“Thank god, no,” she said. “Me and my sons”

Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News

Carlos Barrera

Carlos Barrera didn’t have much of a retirement plan beyond working until 70 and returning to Guatemala, his home country. He had been focused on paying bills and the rent, and making sure his and his wife’s medical needs were covered. Saving for retirement had to come after everything else.

Barrera, 62, also worked at the Chateau Marmont as a parking valet. He enjoyed the job, greeting guests, making small talk, and parking their extravagant luxury cars. He intended to do it the rest of his working life. But in March 2020, Barrera received a text message from his manager informing him that he was being laid off from the Chateau because of the pandemic.

He was stunned. After 40 years of being a reliable employee, he could not believe the hotel would treat him with such disrespect.

“I felt very bad,” Barrera said in Spanish. “I felt disappointed, sad that they never valued me there.”

Even with his job at the Chateau Marmont, Barrera was priced out of Los Angeles seven years ago. He and his wife had moved to Santa Clarita to live with their adult sons. He lived day to day, he said, and tried his best to provide for his family. Although his employer offered a 401(k) plan, Barrera never contributed to it; he was already struggling to get by on his weekly income.

When the hotel fired him, Barrera had little time to process what had happened before panic set in. March 30, 2020, was the last day that he had employer-provided healthcare; though he had applied for Medi-Cal, it would not kick in for months. He and his wife, who has diabetes, needed medication for their health issues.

Barrera was in a state of constant anxiety during that time, terrified of contracting COVID and passing it to his family. He was stressed about the cost of clinic appointments, medications, bills, car payments, and his share of rent.

Before the pandemic, Barrera said he had about $6,000 in savings, part of which he had hoped would go toward retirement. But his savings have been completely depleted in the past year, he said.


Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News
The valet zone at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles where Barrera worked as a parking valet. Barrera was fired by the hotel in March last year as a response to dropping hotel occupancy rates.


In December, after months of searching for work, Barrera landed a job as a pizza delivery driver, working 25 hours a week. He said his financial situation has remained “terrible.” His last paycheck, after taxes, netted him $500 for two weeks of work. Every dollar he earns goes toward his portion of the rent, which costs him $1,000 a month.

The last time Barrera checked in with a manager at the Chateau Marmont in May, he was told no positions were available. He hopes every day that the hotel will hire him again, especially once California reopens on June 15. He and his former coworkers have been publicly fighting to return to work under safe and dignified conditions.
Barrera was in a state of constant anxiety during that time, terrified of contracting COVID and passing it to his family. He was stressed about the cost of clinic appointments, medications, bills, car payments, and his share of rent.

Before the pandemic, Barrera said he had about $6,000 in savings, part of which he had hoped would go toward retirement. But his savings have been completely depleted in the past year, he said.

In December, after months of searching for work, Barrera landed a job as a pizza delivery driver, working 25 hours a week. He said his financial situation has remained “terrible.” His last paycheck, after taxes, netted him $500 for two weeks of work. Every dollar he earns goes toward his portion of the rent, which costs him $1,000 a month.

The last time Barrera checked in with a manager at the Chateau Marmont in May, he was told no positions were available. He hopes every day that the hotel will hire him again, especially once California reopens on June 15. He and his former coworkers have been publicly fighting to return to work under safe and dignified conditions.

Since the mass layoffs in March 2020, former Chateau workers have filed lawsuits alleging employment and racial discrimination, as well as sexual harassment. Banks, the event server, told BuzzFeed News that the work culture at the Chateau “favors white men specifically” and that men were more likely than women to be asked to do specific work that enabled them to earn overtime pay.

With help from Local 11, former workers including Barrera have asked the hotel’s clientele to avoid staying at the Chateau until it has “demonstrated a commitment to respecting its workers’ years of service by rehiring them in accordance with their legal rights and to ensuring that all workers — regardless of their race, sex, or background — feel treated with dignity and respect.” A number of high-profile Hollywood figures have supported the boycott, according to the union, including Jane Fonda and Alfonso Cuarón.

“They couldn’t see fit to pay the people that are feeding them a decent wage.”

The Chateau Marmont did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the accusations in the lawsuit, Banks’s allegations about its work culture, and the campaign organized by former employees.

Banks has wondered if she would take another hospitality job when she returns to Los Angeles, and what she would do if the Chateau offered her her job back. She has worked in hospitality since she was 18, either in between other jobs or for extra money when a salaried position didn’t pay enough.

But Banks has had a front-row seat to the ever-widening chasm between the wealthy and the low-income residents over the past year. She has seen rich people vacation, buy houses, and behave badly — often at the expense of service employees — while workers like her have lost everything. She recalled the sounds of people socializing in their multimillion-dollar mansions in the Hollywood Hills last year in the middle of the pandemic.

“We would go out for a walk at night sometimes and hear the clanking of dishes and people talking,” she said, “and you're like, Are they having a dinner party at their house?”

Most of the people who spoke with BuzzFeed News said they hoped that the hospitality industry will bounce back soon and that they will have their jobs again. But Banks said that after seeing how people have behaved over the past year, she’s not optimistic. Just because the country is headed out of the pandemic and into a new normal doesn’t mean Banks or the millions of others like her will be able to find a job that pays a living wage again — or any job at all.

Banks watched with disgust in February as Congress shot down a $15 federal minimum wage, calling it “super discouraging.”

“If after all of this ... they couldn't see fit to pay the people that are feeding them a decent wage,” Banks said. “They're just trying to make people desperate and force them back into work.” ●

Hong Kong's 'Grandma Wong' arrested for solo Tiananmen protest

Issued on: 31/05/2021 -

Activist Alexandra Wong, known as 'Grandma Wong', was a regular fixture at the huge democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 ISAAC LAWRENCE AFP/File

Hong Kong (AFP)

Hong Kong police have arrested an elderly democracy activist as she made a solo demonstration over China's deadly Tiananmen crackdown in a vivid illustration of the zero protest tolerance now wielded by authorities in the financial hub.

Alexandra Wong, 65, was detained on Sunday on suspicion of taking part in an unlawful assembly as walked towards Beijing's Liaison Office in Hong Kong.

Wong -- known locally as "Grandma Wong" -- was a regular fixture of the huge democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019.

She could often be seen waving a Union Jack flag, a symbol of her dissatisfaction with Beijing's rule since the city was handed to China by former colonial power Britain in 1997.



Protest is now all but outlawed in Hong Kong.

Authorities have used both the threat of the coronavirus and security concerns to ban demonstrations.

A vigil planned for this Friday -- the 32nd anniversary of Beijing's 1989 crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square -- has been denied permission for the second year in a row.

Authorities have cited the coronavirus, although Hong Kong is currently celebrating no local transmission cases of unknown origin for the last month.

Activists had also sought permission for a small Tiananmen-themed march on Sunday to the Liaison Office, which represents the central government in the city, but it was also denied permission.

Wong turned up anyway that afternoon holding as sign that read "32, June 4, Tiananmen's lament" and a yellow umbrella -- the latter a symbol of Hong Kong's democracy movement.

The South China Morning Post said the pensioner started chanting slogans in a park before heading towards the Liaison Office by herself, while being followed and filmed by police.

She was stopped twice.

"I'm only by myself, just an old lady here. Why stop me?" the Post quoted Wong as telling officers.

Soon afterwards she was arrested.

Police confirmed a 65-year-old woman surnamed Wong had been arrested for "knowingly participating in an unauthorised assembly and attempting to incite others to join an unauthorised assembly."

Hong Kong's democracy movement has been crushed by a broad crackdown on dissent over the last year, including the imposition of a sweeping security law that criminalises much dissent.

In the middle of the 2019 protests Wong disappeared for more than a year.

She resurfaced saying she had been detained by mainland authorities during a trip to Shenzhen, a neighbouring city where she lived at the time.

© 2021 AFP

Hong Kong prosecutors seek up to life in prison for 'subversive' activists

THE STRUGGLE FOR BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY IS A REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

Kalvin Ho, one of the 47 pro-democracy activists charged under the National Security Law for participating in an unofficial primary election last year, was denied bail in March Peter PARKS AFP


Hong Kong (AFP)

Dozens of leading Hong Kong democracy activists could face up to life in prison for organising an unofficial primary election, prosecutors confirmed Monday, in the most sweeping use yet of Beijing's strict new security law.

Police charged the 47 activists with "subversion" after they organised a non-binding vote last year to choose candidates for an ultimately postponed local election.

The defendants say they were simply taking part in opposition politics.

But authorities accused them of a "vicious plot" to subvert the government by seeking a majority in the city's partially-elected legislature.

On Monday the defendants appeared en masse for the first time in nearly three months at a hearing in which a judge granted a request by prosecutors to have the case upgraded to the city's High Court.

Offences heard in that court start at seven years imprisonment for those who are convicted. The maximum penalty under the new security law is life in prison.

 

Beijing has moved to quash dissent in the semi-autonomous city after huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

The security law criminalises anything authorities deem to be subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

Police and prosecutors have since applied the law broadly with the vast majority of those charged for political speech.

Under the new law -- which Beijing imposed directly on the city last June -- defendants may only be granted bail if they can persuade a court they no longer pose any kind of national security risk.

That clause has removed Hong Kong's common law tradition that maintains a presumption of bail for non-violent crimes.

Monday's proceedings were the first time the public was able to see most of the defendants since early March when the vast majority -- 36 -- were denied bail at a mammoth hearing.

That hearing dragged on for so many days that some of those in the dock collapsed from exhaustion.

Bail decisions published since that hearing have revealed that judges are deciding whether some of those in custody still pose a potential security risk.#photo1

Claudia Mo, a former lawmaker, was denied bail partly because of WhatsApp messages with foreign journalists in which she commented on news and political events.

Another former lawmaker Jeremy Tam saw his application turned down in part because the United States consulate invited him by email for a "catch up" -- even though the email went unanswered.

In both instances judges argued the fact that the two defendants remained influential meant denial of bail was needed.

China says the national security law is needed to restore stability.

Critics say it has eviscerated the freedoms Hong Kong was promised ahead of its handover and has rapidly begun to change city's vaunted, business reliable common law traditions.

Thousands of Rohingya protest against conditions on Bangladesh island



Issued on: 31/05/2021 

Bangladesh has moved thousands of Rohingya refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char in the Bay of Bengal despite concerns about the conditions - AFP/File

Dhaka (AFP)

Several thousand Rohingya staged "unruly" protests Monday against living conditions on a cyclone-prone island off Bangladesh where they were moved from vast camps on the mainland, police said.

Since December, Bangladesh has shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char from the Cox's Bazar region, where some 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions.

Most of them had fled a brutal military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 that UN investigators concluded was executed with "genocidal intent".

Monday's protest involved up to 4,000 people, police said, and coincided with an inspection visit by officials from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

"The Rohingya who are there became unruly the moment the UNHCR representatives landed (on the island) by helicopter today," local police chief Alamgir Hossain told AFP.

"They broke the glass on warehouses by throwing rocks. They came at the police... Their demand is they don't want to live here."

One Rohingya man confirmed to AFP that bricks were thrown and that police prevented them from entering a building where the UNHCR officials were present.

After the first transfer on December 4 to the flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, several Rohingya told AFP that they were beaten and intimidated into agreeing to be relocated.

The claims have been echoed by rights groups.

The Bangladesh government has rejected the allegations, saying the island was safe and its facilities far better than those in the Cox's Bazar camps.

The UN said it has not been involved in the process.

© 2021 AFP