MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Japan to buy semiconductor materials giant for $6.3 billion

• Dan Primack, author of Axios Pro Rata

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios

Japan Investment Corp., a government-backed group, has agreed to buy Tokyo-listed chipmaking materials provider JSR for $6.3 billion.

Why it matters: This is part of a global trend of governments seeking to safeguard their semiconductor supply chains.

By the numbers: Japan Investment Corp. will offer around $30.40 per JSR share via a tender, representing a 35% premium to Friday's closing price.

• JSR has around a 30% global market share share for photoresists, light-sensitive polymers that are used as coatings on semiconductor substrates.

More, per Bloomberg: "Those compounds are needed to make semiconductors used in supercomputers, AI-harnessing data centers and missile control systems, not to mention gadgets including iPhones. Government control over the materials critical to powerful chips would grant Japan greater leverage in a world increasingly divided by an escalating US-China technological rift."

India slams Obama's criticism on protecting Muslims as 'hypocritical'

During Modi's recent state visit to the United States, Obama mentioned that the matter of safeguarding the rights of the Muslim minority in India, would be worth discussing during Modi's meeting with President Joe Biden.

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

India has been criticised over adopting laws and policies that systematically discriminate Muslims / Photo: AP.

India's finance minister has derided comments by former US President Barack Obama that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government should protect the rights of minority Muslims, accusing Obama of being hypocritical.

During Modi's state visit to the United States last week, Obama told CNN that the issue of the "protection of the Muslim minority in a majority-Hindu India" would be worth raising in Modi's meeting with the US President Joe Biden.

Obama said that without such protection there was "a strong possibility that India at some point starts pulling apart".

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she was shocked that Obama has made such remarks when Modi was visiting the United States aiming to deepen relations.

"He was commenting on Indian Muslims...having bombed Muslim-majority countries from Syria to Yemen...during his presidency," Sitharaman told a press conference on Sunday.

"Why would anyone listen to any allegations from such people?"

The US State Department has raised concerns over treatment of Muslims other religious minorities in India under Modi's Hindu-nationalist party. The Indian government says it treats all citizens equally.

Biden said he discussed human rights and other democratic values with Modi during their talks in the White House.

Modi, at a press conference with Biden last week, denied any discrimination against minorities under his government.

SEE

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

As space tourism takes off, scientists warn of health risks
2023/06/26

Blue Origin’s New Shepard flies toward space carrying 90-year-old Star Trek actor William Shatner and three other civilians. 

Blue Origin/ZUMA Wire/dpa

A human body exposed to the rigours of outer space would not last long: you would fall unconscious after 10-15 seconds as the air was sucked out of your lungs, the lack of pressure would quickly cause your bodily fluids to heat up - so your blood would literally boil - although you would probably be dead first.

But keep your space suit on, stay inside the shuttle, and all should be ok? Not quite, as it turns out that even the best-protected space travellers are more likely to get sick than those who keep their feet on the ground, according to Canadian physicians and biologists.

In research funded by the Canadian Space Agency and published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, the Ottowa-based team found astronauts to be “more susceptible to infections while in space,” with rashes, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes and shingles among the ailments listed.

The Canadian research was published on June 22, as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic geared up for its first commercial flights into outer space with ticket prices set at $450,000 per seat.

“The expression of many genes related to immune functions rapidly decreases when astronauts reach space, while the opposite happens when they return to Earth after six months aboard the ISS,” said Dr Odette Laneuville, an associate professor at the Department of Biology of the University of Ottawa, who studied 14 astronauts who worked onboard the International Space Station for around 6 months between 2015 and 2019.

Other recent scientific papers have warned that space travel imposes multiple hazards on the human body and can cause widespread changes in the human brain.

The Ottowa team called for the crafting of "counter-measures" to prevent the weakening of immunity among astronauts, which "increases the risk of infectious diseases, limiting astronauts’ ability to perform their demanding missions in space," said Guy Trudel, a rehabilitation physician and researcher at The Ottawa Hospital.

© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

TALKING POINT
Titan sub tragedy: ethics of extreme tourism in the spotlight
Booming demand needs to be balanced by greater awareness, oversight and regulation

THE WEEK STAFF
26 JUN 2023

The Himalayas attracts a large number of amateur mountaineers
Ran Wenjuan/China News Service via Getty Images

The Titan sub tragedy, which claimed the lives of five people last week, has prompted an outpouring of grief but also renewed questions about the risks of so-called “extreme tourism”.

It has shone a spotlight on the safety procedures of private companies offering such experiences and on the people and organisations who should ultimately be responsible for search and rescue if the unthinkable happens.

While extreme exploration – from Everest to the Antarctic – has long been the preserve of professionals, “in recent decades, travelers with deep pockets and little expertise have joined these explorers or even ventured further, paying to visit the bottom of the ocean or the edge of space, touching the literal bounds of Earth”, The New York Times reported. But as the Titan submersible tragedy made evident, “there are no clear safeguards in place when something goes wrong”.

Technology ‘pushing limits of safety’

There is a trend towards authentic experiences, said Scott Smith, associate professor of hospitality and tourism management at the University of South Carolina, on The Conversation. “More and more, people want to experience something unique and not in a preprogrammed or controlled setting.”

Improvements in tech have enabled companies and tourists to “push the limits of safety”, but “the consequences of failure can be high”.

With little-to-no oversight of the sector it is hard to gauge the number of extreme tourism deaths per year, said Smith, “but when these sad events do occur, they typically receive a lot of attention from the press”.

Despite this, “one of the odd things about extreme tourism is that risk seems to attract rather than deter customers”, said the Financial Times. The paper listed a series of tourism-related fatalities over the past decade – a period that saw an uptick in the number of people wishing to sign up.
Uncharted territory

As modern adventure tourism “ventures into uncharted territory ethically as well as geographically” it “raises many questions”, said The Seattle Times. “Should there be more regulation? If so, who should set and enforce the rules? Are rescue operations even possible in some places extreme tourists are going?”

In the case of both deep-sea exploration and space tourism there is little oversight or guidance on training requirements and even less regulation. In international waters or the upper edge of the Earth’s atmosphere there is the added question of jurisdiction, while extreme trips also pose a significant challenge from an insurance perspective.

With the total cost of the Titan search and rescue operation expected to reach as high as $100 million, “it is unclear whether taxpayers in the countries involved, ultimately, will be required to pay it”, said The New York Times.

There is also a growing debate around whether domestic – often volunteer – search and rescue teams should be expected to risk their own lives to come to the aid of private companies charging huge amounts per person.

Meanwhile, the Titan disaster has “sparked conversations among explorers and wealthy travelers alike about who exactly should be embarking on this type of danger-filled travel”, said The New York Times.

One suggestion is that extreme tourism experiences should come with “buyer beware” warnings, said Smith.

Another, reported by Axios, is that new technology such as the metaverse, where a virtual reality headset would allow you to tour any place on Earth, “might offer an alternative to the real risks of adventure for some customers”.

Pro-government militias in east Myanmar join the resistance to military rule


Villagers and resistance fighters gather and bury what they say are victims of an air strike by planes of the military government, outside the town of Pasuang in Myanmar's eastern state of Kayah, June 25, 2023

ROGER MCKENZIE

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 2023

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/

UNITS of an ethnic militia in eastern Myanmar that is nominally part of the military have switched sides to ally themselves with the country’s pro-democracy movement, its members said today.

The militia is said to have been responsible for carrying out attacks on army outposts and a police station in recent weeks.

The two Border Guard Forces units in Kayah state are believed to be the first military-affiliated militia units to change sides since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

The takeover was met with peaceful nationwide protests, but following lethal crackdowns by security forces many local armed resistance groups have loosely organised into what is called the People’s Defence Force.

They have allied themselves with major ethnic guerilla groups in border regions that have carried out armed struggle for decades, seeking greater autonomy.

There are about two dozen border guard units nationwide with a total of 10,000 armed personnel. The units were formed in 2009 from what had been autonomous ethnic insurgent groups that agreed to a truce with a previous military government.

The National Unity Government, a shadow civilian administration opposed to the military, claims that about 13,000 soldiers and police officers have defected to its side since the army seized power.

The two border guard units that have rallied to the resistance forces comprise mostly members of the Karenni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front, an ethnic guerilla force formed in 1978 by breakaway members of the Karenni National Progressive Party.

A KPNLF member told reporters on Sunday that almost all of the troops in the two units, each with about 300 men, joined local resistance forces that recently destroyed four army outposts and a township police station in Mese in south-eastern Kayah.

The KPNLF member said some of his fellow guerilla fighters quietly collaborated with local armed resistance forces even before the militia units openly joined the fighting against the army in Mese in mid-June.

Khu Nyay Reh, a Karenni National Progressive Party central committee member, said the militia’s members could not tolerate the army killing their family members.

He said the military government responded to the defections by dropping bombs on one of the border guard bases and other locations.

He said about half of the township’s 6,800 people have fled into Thailand or are hiding in the jungle and nearby areas.

ATTACKING CIVILIANS (AGAIN)

Russian airstrikes on Syria's Idlib could amount to war crimes: human rights monitor

The New Arab Staff
26 June, 2023

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has called for action to stop military escalation in northwest Syria following a Russian strike which killed 13 people in Idlib province.

A plume of smoke rises from a building targeted by Russian airstrikes in the Idlib governorate, Syria [Getty]


Deadly Russian airstrikes that targeted civilian areas in northwest Syria over the weekend could amount to war crimes, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has said in a statement.

At least 13 people, including nine civilians, were killed in a series of Russian airstrikes in rebel-held Idlib province in northwestern Syria. It was one of the bloodiest days in the region in months and happened despite a ceasefire being in place.

Sources close to the Syrian regime said the airstrikes were in response to rebel drone strikes which targeted regime-held areas in recent days.

However, the Euro-Med monitor said that the Russian attack did not respect the principles of international humanitarian law, saying no military necessity can justify the heavy loss of civilian life, even if a military unit was the target of the airstrike.

It said the attack was disproportionate and did not distinguish between civilians and alleged militants.

Euro-Med added that the latest airstrikes were part of a major military escalation in the region which it has been monitoring for a week and has led to the deaths of several civilians, including women and children.

"The Russian and Syrian [regime] forces continue to target civilians without fear of accountability, because the international community has not shown a firm response to confront the horrific human rights violations throughout the 12 years of ongoing conflict in Syria," said Anas Jerjawi, the CEO of Euro-Med.

"The double standards in international reactions to the violations of Russian forces in Syria and their similar violations in Ukraine have shown that humanity can be fragmented for decision-makers in Western countries, and that political interests and national and ethnic backgrounds may govern reactions to human tragedies," he added, according to the statement.

Jerjawi said a flare up in fighting will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria and add pressure on NGOs already suffering from severe funding shortages where around 1.8 million people are internally displaced.

Swathes of northwestern Syria, in particular the Idlib and Aleppo governorates, were heavily hit in the 6 February earthquake which struck southeastern Turkey, burying thousands under the rubble and destroying entire towns and villages.

The catastrophe added onto an already miserable situation in the region, where millions of people live in makeshift IDP camps and where infrastructure including hospitals and schools has deliberately been targeted in previous Russian and regime strikes.

Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict in 2015 to back the Assad regime and has since provided it with critical military, intelligence and financial support, enabling it to regain control of most of the country.

Nine dead, dozens injured after Russian warplanes attack near Syrian market

By Eyad Kourdi and Hafsa Khalil, CNN
Sun June 25, 2023

People inspect a damaged truck at the fruit and vegetable market following a reported airstrike in Idlib, Syria, June 25, 2023.Yahya Nemah/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
CNN —

Nine people have been killed and dozens injured after Russian fighter jets bombed a city in Syria’s rebel-controlled northwestern Idlib province, according to the local White Helmets emergency response group.

A fruit and vegetable market was impacted in the Sunday attack on the city of Jisr al-Shughur. One eyewitness told CNN that the “missile had so much pressure and the sharpness hit the crowded market.”

Smoke rises as a result of an air strike by Russian warplanes hit close to a fruit and vegetable market.

Anas Alkharboutli/picture alliance/

Getty Images

“Thirty minutes after the strike, I went to the location,” 26-year-old Ahmad Rahhal, a local journalist, said. “I saw wagons of tomato on the ground and blood on the floor.”

The White Helmets said this was the second day of airstrikes in the area, coming ahead of the Muslim festival, Eid al-Adha, in the Muslim-majority country. The past four days have also seen artillery fire, the civil defense added.

Sunday’s strike in Jisr al-Shughur stands as the most fatal in northwestern Syria so far in 2023.

People stand next to damaged trucks at the market in Idlib following the Russian airstrike.

Yahya Nemah/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Russian military flights over the country have shown marked aggression in the past few months.

In April, Russian pilots attempted to “dogfight” US jets over Syria, the US said. In military aviation, dogfighting is engaging in aerial combat, often at relatively close ranges.

Earlier this month, the US deployed F-22 fighter jets to the Middle East over concerns about “unsafe and unprofessional behavior” by Russian aircraft.

Airstrike Hits Busy Market in Opposition-Held Northwestern Syria, Kills at Least 9

June 25, 2023 
Associated Press

A plume of smoke rises from a building following a reported Russian air strike on Syria's northwestern rebel-held Idlib province, June 25, 2023.

JISR AL-SHUGHUR, SYRIA —

An airstrike early Sunday over a busy vegetable market in northwestern Syria killed at least nine people, activists and local first responders said.

Activists and Britain-based opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Russia, a top ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, launched the strike over the strategic opposition-held town of Jisr al-Shughur near the Turkish border.

The strike comes a day after Moscow's top mercenary group briefly revolted against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Opposition-held northwestern Syria's civil defense organization known as the White Helmets said over 30 people were wounded, and expected the death toll to increase.

"We're hearing that the critically wounded have been dying after reaching the hospital," Ahmad Yaziji of the White Helmets told The Associated Press. "It was a targeted attack in the main vegetable market where farmers from around northern Syria gather."

Farmers rushed the wounded to the hospital in bloodied vegetable trucks, while activists shared urgent calls for blood donations.

Neither Syria nor Russia commented on the airstrike, though Damascus says strikes in the northwest province target armed insurgent groups. The Syrian pro-government newspaper Al-Watan, citing an unidentified security source, said that the airstrike targeted militants and a weapons depot.

Northwestern Syria is mostly held by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al Sham, as well as Turkish-backed forces.

Russian airstrikes kill at least 11 people in rebel-held Syria

The explosions, including one allegedly at a food market, are said to be in retaliation for deadly drone attacks last week attributed to rebels
By AFP

25 June 2023, 

A truck drives as a plume of smoke rises from a building during a reported Russian airstrike on Syria's northwestern rebel-held Idlib province, on June 25, 2023.

 (Abdulaziz KETAZ / AFP)

Russian airstrikes on Sunday on Syria’s northwest killed at least 11 people including seven civilians, in retaliation for deadly drone attacks blamed on rebel forces, a war monitor said.

“Six civilians were killed in Jisr al-Shughur and three rebel fighters were killed nearby by Russian airstrikes,” Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

Ahmed Yezidi of the civil defense in Jisr al-Shughur, a city in rebel-held Idlib province, said the strikes killed nine people, without specifying whether fighters were included in the toll.

A fruit and vegetable market in the city was hit by the Russian strike, said the Observatory and an AFP correspondent at the scene.

Yezidi called it “a direct attack on the popular market, which is a basic source of income for farmers” in the area.

One civilian and one rebel fighter were also killed in a strike on the outskirts of Idlib city, said Abdel Rahman, whose Britain-based monitor has a wide network of sources inside war-torn Syria.

A plume of smoke rises from a building following a reported Russian air strike on Syria’s northwestern rebel-held Idlib province, on June 25, 2023. (Abdulaziz KETAZ / AFP)

At least 30 civilians were wounded in Sunday’s strikes, he said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.

Russian forces, which back the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, were responding to rebel drone strikes over the past week that killed four civilians including two children, according to Abdel Rahman.

Damascus, with Russian and Iranian support, has clawed back much of the ground lost in the early stages of Syria’s conflict, which erupted in 2011 when the government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests.

The last pocket of armed opposition to the regime includes large swathes of Idlib province and parts of the neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, headed by ex-members of Syria’s former Al-Qaeda franchise, is the dominant group in the area but other rebel groups are also active, with varying degrees of Turkish backing.

More than half a million people were killed in Syria’s civil war, which has forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

The U.S.-backed Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria are adamant about holding trials for hundreds of foreign Islamic State group militants in their custody. VOA’s Zana Omer has the story from Qamishli, Syria, narrated by Sirwan Kajjo.

In Morocco, families of missing migrants near Canary Islands demand the truth

Basma El Atti
Rabat
26 June, 2023

Over the weekend, families of missing migrants gathered nearly every day in front of the town hall, switching between chanting to crying, from begging authorities for help to cursing the government and nation.


Over thirty people are still missing, the bodies of a man and a child have been recovered. [Getty]

On 10 June, a group of fifty-one people left their hometown Laataouia in Morocco and boarded a boat from the coast of Agadir city to the Canary Islands, and had gone missing. Today, hope is rapidly fading among their relatives after fifteen days of no contact.

"My son threatened that he would kill himself if I didn’t let him go. I wanted him to live that's why I allowed him to take the boat, " Khadija, mother of one of the missing migrants, told The New Arab on Saturday.

After spending twenty-five years in Laataouia, a small city near Marrakech, Khadija's son decided to invest the US$4,000 he accumulated over the years for a seat in a boat heading to Europe.

Two days ahead of departure, Khadija's son bid his mother and hometown farewell, carrying with him only a plastic bag stuffed with some clothes and his mother's freshly baked cookies.

"He said there's no prospect of life or future here. But now I just want him alive," Khadija told TNA as she fought through her tears to speak.

Other mothers joined Khadija in weeping, all their children shared the same boat and dreams

Over 30 feared dead as dinghy bound for Canary Islands sinks

The New Arab Staff & Agencies

For Aicha, the shock was immense. Her son went on a short vacation with his friends to Agadir after receiving the good news of passing the baccalaureate exams. On 9 June, he called his brother announcing that he was taking a boat to the Canary Islands.

"I tried to convince him to go back. He said he sees no future in Morocco and better to attempt his chance now being young," Khalid, the brother of the missing migrant, said to TNA.

Khalid's brother was seventeen. His family has no idea how he managed to afford a place in the boat and what was the payment agreement. Several other minors have joined the boat hoping to make it out of Laataouia, a cornered city with no universities and few job opportunities.

Over the weekend, families of missing migrants gathered daily in front of the town hall in protest, where they switch between chanting to crying, from begging authorities for help to cursing the government and nation.

Security forces watch the protests silently disperse with the sunset. Local reports said the city's police arrested a ring of "illegal migration" smugglers, who authorities claim were behind the tragedy last Wednesday. The city's police, however, have not confirmed the arrest yet.

Morocco thwarted over 350,000 migration attempts in 5 years

The New Arab Staff

A murky rescue operation, an investigation opened

The case of the Laataouia migrants occurred on Wednesday 21 June. The Spanish NGO Walking Borders announced that up to 39 people have died after a dinghy sunk near Spain's Canary Islands.

With 59 people on board, the boat reportedly pleaded for help for twelve hours. A Spanish maritime rescue service told the Reuters news agency that 24 people had been rescued by Moroccan-led rescue efforts carried out about 141km (88 miles) to the southeast of Gran Canaria island.

Over thirty people are still missing, the bodies of a man and a child have been recovered.

The dead child was reportedly the only child in the boat. Seven women were also among the migrants. No information is available about their situation.

At the time of the publication, families of migrants said the official Moroccan authority has not contacted them yet.

"Sometimes random WhatsApp numbers contact us saying they have seen one of the boys in a police station or a restaurant in the Canary Island. But nothing official," Mohamed, a father of an 18-year-old migrant, told TNA. "Now we just want the truth. Where are our children?"

Mohamed said the families created a WhatsApp group to share information, identify scammers and comfort each other.

Spain's public ombudsman has begun an investigation into why a Spanish maritime rescue service refrained from saving the boat despite being in close proximity.

The service said that while the boat had been located in a search-and-rescue operation shared between Spain and Morocco, it was decided that Morocco would run the rescue as the craft was 88 miles from the Canary island and just 40 miles from Laayoune, the capital of Western Sahara.

Contacted by TNA, Moroccan Marine did not answer any questions on the reported rescue operation

IRGC Arrests Three Kurdish Environmental Activists

JUNE 26, 2023

IRGC forces intercepted their vehicle and informed them that traveling to the Kosalan Mountains was prohibited, it said, adding that the trio was arrested without the presentation of a court order

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces have arrested three Kurdish environment activists after they tried to extinguish a fire in Kosalan Mountains, according to a group that monitors the human rights situation in Iran’s western Kurdish region.

The France-based Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported on June 26 that Mohsen Dadgar, Saeed Dadgar and Yaser Saberi were taken into custody two days earlier.

IRGC forces intercepted their vehicle and informed them that traveling to the Kosalan Mountains was prohibited, it said, adding that the trio was arrested without the presentation of a court order.

Reports indicate that the three were transferred to Shahramfar Camp, which serves as the IRGC intelligence detention center in the city of Sanandaj.

The protected area of Kosalan spans between Sarvabad, Marivan and Kamiyaran.

The area has been hit by fires caused by ongoing clashes between IRGC forces and fighters of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK).

During these confrontations, which claimed the lives of at least two IRGC members, the force extensively shelled the Kosalan Mountains.

Environmental activists in Iranian Kurdistan have raised concerns about the significant destruction inflicted by the IRGC on pastures and forests in the protected areas of Shaho and Kosalan.

The destruction has been carried out to construct barracks and roads and to prevent opposition groups from hiding in the vegetation.

Greece boat tragedy exposes Pakistan's migration problem


Pakistani citizens accounted for the largest number of victims in the recent migrant boat disaster. DW spoke with victims' families about why so many are choosing to risk their lives for an uncertain future in Europe.

Haroon Janjua in Islamabad

DW
June 26,2023

Officials said around 350 Pakistani migrants were aboard the capsized boat. Here, survivors are seen at a holding station in Greece

Image: Angelos Tzortzinis/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

On the evening of June 14, Muhammad Gulfam was at home in a rural mountain village in northern Pakistan when he received a call from his cousin about a migrant boat that had capsized that day off the coast of Greece.

His younger brother, Aakash Gulzar, had been on board. Jobless, and without many prospects in cash-strapped Pakistan, 21-year-old Gulzar had made up his mind that he would pay smugglers to embark on a monthslong journey across thousands of miles through arduous land and sea routes to Italy.

The journey was not cheap, and Gulzar's family had cobbled together €7,000 ($7,640) to pay a trafficking agent to smuggle him to Europe, where they hoped he would find a better life.

Late one afternoon in March, Gulzar hugged his mother and brothers goodbye and set off.

"We don't want it to be the final goodbye, we want to see him again and we hope he is one of the injured in the hospital," Gulfam told DW.

Naseem Begum, Gulzar's mother, said she had spoken to her son on the phone before he boarded the overloaded vessel.

"My son requested prayers on the phone call and said 'I will call you after reaching my destination,'" Begum told DW.

Pakistan's migration problem

Witness accounts described the vessel carrying Gulzar as a 30-meter (100-foot)-long fishing boat that was crammed with over 700 people. It had departed from Libya and sank 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) off the coast of Pylos, a small Greek coastal town on the Ionian Sea.

Gulzar is still missing and presumed dead. Begum has sent DNA samples to aid in identification of her son's remains, if they are found.

According to Pakistan's Interior Ministry, 350 of those on board were Pakistani citizens. They are among the thousands of people fleeing an economic crisis in the South Asian country that has left many people without hope.

According to data from Frontex, the European Union's border and coast guard agency, a record number of nearly 5,000 Pakistanis were detected on the "central Mediterranean route" into Europe in the first five months of 2023.

"We know that it is a combination of a lack of decent work and a general disillusionment about the future of the country which pushes young Pakistanis to use dangerous and illegal migration as a means to a better life. The victims on that boat must have been aware of the risks they were taking," said Imran Khan, country director for Pakistan at the United States Institute of Peace, a US federal agency.

The victims "could be alive today if there were better employment opportunities, economic security and political stability in Pakistan," he told DW.

In a village near Gulzar's home in northern Pakistan, a local district official, Sardar Mushtaq Ahmad, told DW that 24 young men from the area were reported missing after the boat accident. Relatives have provided DNA samples to aid in the identification of recovered bodies.

Among the missing is 31-year-old Sajid Yousaf, who was running a crockery shop in the local market but failed to make ends meet. Yousaf's two brothers already settled in Italy, one of them having taken the same route across the Mediterranean.

"We paid €7,100 to the smuggling agent to send Sajid to Italy where two of my sons are already living and earning well," Muhammad Yousaf, Sajid's father, told DW.

Osama Malik, a Pakistani immigration and refugee law expert, told DW that there are multiple push and pull factors that drive people to risk their lives for a chance to reach Europe.

Refugee tragedy: 'We hope the tragedy will spur some action'   01:14

"The rapid depreciation of the already weak Pakistani rupee against foreign currencies over the past 18 months has probably been a huge factor," he said, adding that political and economic uncertainty has led to "desperation" among young Pakistanis.

"Most young men, and now increasingly women, are willing to invest their savings, borrow money, and risk their lives just to get out of the country to what they perceive as greener pastures," Malik said.

How do traffickers in Pakistan operate?

Approximately 90% of Pakistanis who in recent years arrived in Italy have used a human smuggler, according to a 2022 survey by the Mixed Migration Centre, a Europe-based migrant research group.

Smugglers and middlemen work by canvassing poor towns and villages and promising youth a bright future in Europe in exchange for a lump sum of €6,000 to €10,000, which is paid to "bosses" living in European destination countries.

Gulzar and Yousaf's families told DW that they dealt with several local "trafficking agents" and paid a boss living in Italy for the journey.

One of these "agents" told DW under condition of anonymity that the market for smuggling has increased as Pakistan's economy has deteriorated, and foreign currency grows in value against the Pakistani rupee.

"Those wishing to flee Europe are aware of the hardship, life threatening risks and dangers but they neglect those risks and opt for the voyages," he said.

A grainy shot from the Greek Coast Guard of the overloaded fishing boat before it capsized

IOS/picture alliance

Pakistan cracks down on human trafficking

As the number of migrants continues to increase, Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has been tasked by the government with cracking down on smugglers and agents, particularly in the wake of the tragedy.

"We have arrested 27 human smugglers across the country and 70 cases have been registered against those smugglers," FIA spokesperson Abdul Ghafoor told DW.

Pakistan has signed on to international protocols to prevent human trafficking, and in 2018, passed the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act (PTPA), but this has failed to put a dent in international human trafficking organizations.

"While legislation has improved over the years, its implementation is abysmal and needs to be improved if Pakistan is to counter the trafficking of citizens," said immigration expert Malik.

He said that the few prosecutions have only netted small middlemen, while allegedly complicit government officials and trafficking bosses are left untouched.

"It is the foot soldiers of the human trafficking mafia who are occasionally arrested, but convictions are rare even in these cases. The human trafficking cartels are known to have very strong links with certain influential political families in central Punjab, and also have links with the military and bureaucracy," he said.

"The main solution to this problem is for Pakistan to improve its governance, adherence to rule of law, and lift the economy so that young people do not feel the need to take such risks to escape," he added.

Wellbeing in humanitarian action: what food, sex and death can teach us about supporting meaningful lives


Written by  Oliver Lough, Sarah Phillips, Alexandra Spencer, Megan Daigle, Sara Hussain

26 June 2023

ODI | ODI: Think change

Hero image description: refugee woman creating mosaic

Image credit:UN Women/Christopher Herwig Image license:CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

What makes our lives liveable? We all have different answers to this – myriad aspects give our lives meaning and value. But what if our needs, desires, aspirations and agency were routinely overlooked, and instead our lives were reduced to mere survival? This is the case for countless people in situations of protracted crisis: the humanitarian aid system works to keep them alive in the most ‘efficient’ way possible, but it often fails to consider what kinds of lives it is saving.

The unintended but very real harms of humanitarian action

People affected by crises are not passive – they demonstrate adaptation and resistance in countless contexts. They endeavour to make life liveable beyond survival by maintaining hope for the future, developing a sense of place and belonging in displacement, or reconstructing the social relationships and connections that ascribe meaning and purpose to their actions. However, the decisions and assumptions aid actors make about who and what to prioritise, the mechanisms and techniques they use to administer and deliver assistance, and the nature of their relationships with affected people can often end up working against these efforts.

Wellbeing: a more comprehensive approach

The concept of wellbeing helps us think more clearly about how humanitarian aid might better enable people to live the kinds of lives they want to live. Wellbeing takes as its starting point the idea that humanitarian experience needs to be understood holistically. It’s an active process, where people’s efforts to lead good and flourishing lives involve the interplay of material, subjective and relational dimensions of life, played out in specific places, and over time.
The interplay of wellbeing and humanitarian action: food, sex and death

We’ve recently published a working paper exploring how struggles for wellbeing play out in humanitarian crises. To make things as tangible as possible, we zoomed in on three crucial aspects of the human experience – food, sex and death – to understand how people’s efforts to live good, meaningful lives can often clash with what humanitarian action considers important.

Food is a subjective experience – it tastes of something and inspires certain sensations or feelings – as well as a relational phenomenon – how people consume and share these calories helps give life shape and meaning. Liberian refugees have described how ‘nutritious’ food to them was food that tasted good and felt nourishing – it wasn’t just about ‘sustaining biological life’. Food also has cultural meaning, with certain dishes, ingredients or methods of cultivation linked to specific and significant places, memories or practices. These elements can be critical in enabling people to piece together a semblance of a normal life in protracted crisis settings. Yet with humanitarian organisations tending to envision effectiveness in terms of reach and cost per beneficiary, food tasting good or being culturally appropriate is not high on their list. Being given the same, tasteless food every single day is often experienced in stark terms by affected people, who may feel that this is evidence of the limited value humanitarians place on their lives, that they are being deliberately disciplined or dehumanised.

Similar issues come into play when it comes to growing and producing food. For example, Karen refugees in Thailand go to significant and often expensive lengths to grow herbs, crops, and other plants native to their pre-displacement home in Myanmar. But the relevance of gardening and food production for refugees is often ignored by humanitarian actors; the phenomenon may even be suppressed as a nuisance and potential safety hazard disrupting the orderly layout of a planned camp.

Questions of sex and intimacy in humanitarian settings tend largely to be framed within the language of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). This encompasses, for example, maternal, newborn and child health; preventing sexually transmitted infections, especially HIV; and mitigating the impact of gender-based violence with a focus on sexual violence. But reading between the lines of how most approaches to SRHR tend to handle sex, we can also see two problematic assumptions emerging: first, that sex in crisis settings is universally fraught with risks and harm; and second, that certain groups of people – namely, those who may be subject to safeguarding concerns, such as adolescents or people with disabilities – have no sexuality at all.

Focusing on sex as a problem to be solved or a risk to be avoided ultimately reflects a poor understanding of the central role it plays in people’s efforts to live meaningful lives and to pursue healthy, fulfilling relationships. A more wellbeing-centred approach would address harms, yes, but it would also place more emphasis on making space for people to explore and foster healthy sexualities – and not necessarily just heterosexual, monogamous sex. Part of this would involve thinking through in more depth how different aspects of humanitarian action might impact these dynamics – such as the role of privacy in shelter and settlement design, or how information and behaviour-change campaigns around child protection handle the thorny subject of adolescent sexuality.

Death is as much a part of life as living, and is crucial to its understanding. In a study of displaced Georgians, for example, rituals of death and mourning offered a powerful, if painful, opportunity to repair some of the ruptures brought about by crisis and displacement, and re-establish some sense of normal life. Stuck as they were in displacement camps, burying their dead according to the proper rites in the soil of the camp offered a symbolic way to reimagine the blank, sterile space they inhabited as at least partially contiguous to the meaningful place of the villages they had left behind.

Humanitarian action can play an important role in enabling or constraining how people are able to process the difficult experience of death and dying in a crisis setting. For Mozambican refugees in Malawi, the provision of resources by humanitarian organisations to enable an appropriate burial represented a ‘valuable service’ and was a significant advance in humanitarian programming, but this only occurred on an organisation-by-organisation basis and was not systematically part of programming. Instead, ‘the use of blankets for burial has frequently led to friction between refugees and assistance agencies’.

Beyond survival: wellbeing as ethical obligation in humanitarian action

In protracted crises in particular, humanitarian assistance that starts out with the goal of saving lives inevitably ends up sustaining and shaping them as well. While engaging with issues beyond survival might seem like a secondary priority or ‘out of scope’, failing to do so can result in programming that is ineffective, wasteful, harmful, and that misses out on valuable opportunities to have a positive impact on people’s lives.

We’re not arguing here for opening up a new area of expertise in humanitarian action – doing ‘wellbeing programming’ or opening up a ‘wellbeing sector’ is all too likely to replicate the same old problems. Rather, we believe that wellbeing offers value for humanitarian actors as a way to think and act more carefully, in ways that make good on the often-repeated but seldom realised promise to put people at the centre of humanitarian action. This means, for example, having open and potentially uncomfortable conversations with people about what the future holds, and enabling them to lead in defining and pursuing their preferred ways through it. It means extending conversations around localisation beyond questions of financing and risk to acknowledge and support types of assistance delivered through contextually grounded idioms and values. And it means moving beyond the humanitarian–development–peace nexus, beyond questions of financing and coordination to a basic operating principle, acknowledging that people’s needs in crises always exist on a continuum with their wider experiences, desires and aspirations.

Trump accuses Biden of 'environmental extremism' over electric cars

Former US president says the Democrat leader's 'maniacal push' for EVs will decimate the auto industry

BySusie Coen, 

US CORRESPONDENT

26 June 2023 •

Donald Trump was the keynote speaker at the Oakland County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner in Detroit on Sunday 

CREDIT: AL GOLDIS/AP PHOTO

Donald Trump has taken aim at electric cars and accused Joe Biden of carrying out “environmental extremism” to “decimate” the traditional auto industry.

Speaking to a crowd of 2,500 at a dinner in Michigan on Sunday, the former US president said the “maniacal push” for electric vehicles would take away jobs and empower China.

In his first visit to Michigan since he launched his 2024 presidential bid, Mr Trump, 77, warned the Democrats would “decimate” the state to a level “you can’t even imagine”.

He said the Democrat leader was a “catastrophe” for the state and that “his environmental extremism is heartless and disloyal and horrible for the American worker, and you’re starting to see it”.

The former US president was presented with a Man of the Decade award at the Lincoln Day Dinner CREDIT: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

During an hour-long speech at the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner in Detroit, Mr Trump criticised Mr Biden’s “ridiculous regulations”, which he said would “kill more than half of US auto jobs and decimate the suppliers that they decimated already, decimate the suppliers and it’s going to decimate your jobs, and it’s going to decimate more than anybody else, the state of Michigan”.

The Republican 2024 frontrunner, who was presented with a Man of the Decade award at the event, added: “The push for all electric cars, it’s killing the United States, it’s killing Michigan and it’s a total vote for China.”

Michigan is one of three states that flipped in 2020 to help Mr Biden win the election. The state had more than 175,000 car manufacturing jobs in 2021, according to the Mackinac Centre for Public Policy.

A busy Los Angeles freeway during the evening rush hour 

CREDIT: FREDERIC J BROWN/GETTY IMAGES

The US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that two thirds of new car sales could be electric by 2032 under a new proposal released by the White House this year.

Mr Trump also criticised Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan, for approving $700 million development incentives for a battery plant that is expected to create thousands of jobs.

He said: “The governor of your state is now giving away hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of billions of Michigan taxpayer dollars to Chinese companies and one in particular, Gotion, to build batteries in Michigan.

“That sounds good, but the money’s going to Chinese companies and then they’re gonna leave. They’re planning to take our money and then they say, ‘Bye bye, you stupid fools’.”

Joe Biden highlighted his investment in electric vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show last year 

CREDIT: KATIE McTIERNAN/GETTY IMAGES

Mr Biden has been pushing Americans to switch to electric cars as part of his “Green New Deal”. His promotion for the industry included holding a photo call in which he was filmed driving an electric truck at breakneck speed.

There are about 130,000 charging points for the three million electric vehicles on the road in the US. Electric cars account for 5.8 per cent of sales in the US, compared with 16.2 per cent of cars sold in Britain.