Fishing by dodgy fleets hurts economies, jobs in developing countries: Report

by Mikael Angelo S. Francisco on 26 April 2024



A recent report gauged the economic damage done by fishing fleets with shady track records in five vulnerable countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Peru, the Philippines, and Senegal.
It found that these fleets’ activities could be costing the five countries 0.26% of their combined GDP, leaving some 30,000 people jobless and pushing around 142,000 deeper into poverty.

“The report emphasizes that the uncontrolled growth in global fishing has led to overfishing, stressing fish stocks and impacting communities and the oceans’ well-being,” one of the authors told Mongabay.

Companies implicated in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing can have a serious impact on the economies, job opportunities and overall welfare of the developing countries in whose waters they operate, according to a recent report from London-based global affairs think tank the Overseas Development Institute.

The report, released Feb. 16, used consolidated fisheries and satellite data to gauge the economic damage done by fishing fleets with shady track records in five vulnerable countries: Ecuador, Ghana, Peru, the Philippines, and Senegal. It found that these companies’ fishing activities could be costing the five countries 0.26% of their combined GDP, leaving 30,174 people jobless and pushing 142,192 individuals deeper into poverty than they otherwise would be.

“In this report, we wanted to make a business case for sustainable fishing to show that it is in developing countries’ economic interests to have robust sustainable fishing policies,” Miren Gutierrez, study author and a professor of communication at the University of Deusto in Spain, told Mongabay. “This is crucial because the health of the oceans and the sustainability of fish stocks are directly linked to the activities of real companies and the people behind them.”

Senegalese sailors regard Chinese crew on a fishing vessel in Dakar in 2016. Image © Liu Yuyang / Greenpeace.
Analyzing economic impacts

The authors chose the focus countries based on their vulnerability to overfishing and IUU fishing, their geographic diversity, the diversity of their fishing sectors, and the “significant presence” of foreign vessels in their waters.

To start with, Gutierrez’s team obtained satellite tracking data on both foreign and domestic vessels operating within the five countries’ exclusive economic zones (EEZs) — the band of ocean stretching 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers) from the shore — from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022. After looking into the vessels’ owners and operators, the team identified 19 companies previously implicated in fishing crimes and other serious violations like bribery or illegally transferring catches between vessels. These companies owned or operated a total of 657 vessels in the five EEZs.

“Understanding the ownership patterns of vessels operating or visiting a country’s EEZ is very relevant to establishing an accountability framework in which high-risk ships and companies could be effectively inspected or targeted by patrolling exercises,” Dyhia Belhabib, environmental scientist and principal fisheries investigator for the NGO Ecotrust Canada, who was not part of the study, told Mongabay.

Then, after consulting in-country stakeholders and investigative journalists to learn about unsustainable fishing practices in the five countries, the authors analyzed the satellite vessel-tracking data via a deep-learning algorithm to identify the fleets’ fishing maneuvers. They spotted, for example, vessels operating close to no-take zones, or foreign-owned vessels competing heavily with domestic ones in the same location.

Next, using fishery, economic and jobs data, the authors were able to calculate the effect of fishing by the questionable companies on the GDP, employment and poverty in each country.

“The report emphasizes that the uncontrolled growth in global fishing has led to overfishing, stressing fish stocks and impacting communities and the oceans’ well-being,” Gutierrez said.

Daniel Ocampo, senior campaign manager for ocean conservation NGO Oceana Philippines, said he believes the report, which was funded by the Ocean Innovation Challenge of the U.N. Development Programme, requires the attention of the five countries. The Philippines, where he works, suffers an estimated 0.02% loss of its GDP, the endangerment of more than 17,000 jobs, and the impoverishment of nearly 24,000 people due to the fishing activities of companies with a track record of wrongdoing, the report calculated.

“The identified job losses translate to a lot of economic losses [for the Philippines], not just in terms of our GDP or the country’s income, but also the people involved who are actually losing the opportunities that they have for our waters,” Ocampo, who was not involved in the report, told Mongabay.


Focus on distant-water fishing

Experts estimate that one of every five fish in the world’s seafood supply comes from IUU fishing. Many researchers have looked into this shadowy and generally unsustainable fishing across the globe, but the report authors observed a particular lack of information about so-called distant-water fishing (DWF) companies with a history of IUU practices and the economic toll they take on developing countries. Such companies operate far outside their home nations’ EEZs, and studies show they exhibit little transparency, present special challenges to monitoring and regulation, and tend to be associated with detrimental fishing practices such as IUU fishing.

DWF fleets often use cutting-edge technology, giving them a competitive edge. In Ecuador, for example, some foreign DWF longliners (fishing vessels that set long main fishing lines with numerous baited hooks attached to them) are better equipped to fish nonstop and reach remote areas than their domestic counterparts. There, fishing activities of companies with a history of misconduct may account for 0.08% of the country’s GDP, jeopardize nearly 5,000 jobs and send more than 14,000 people further below the poverty line, the report found.

One way foreign companies are able to operate in other countries’ waters is by registering their fishing vessels in that country and flying its flag, a practice called “domestication” that carries a “high likelihood of offense occurrence,” at least in West Africa, according to a 2022 paper by Belhabib and a colleague. The ODI report noted that 192 vessels in the domestic fleets of Ghana, Senegal, Ecuador and the Philippines were “connected to Chinese interests.”

“To know that some countries are actually registering their vessels here [in the Philippines] so they can catch our resources and earn from it; that speaks to how serious the issue is,” Ocampo said.

Moreover, around one-fifth of the foreign vessels operating in the five countries’ EEZs were flying flags of convenience, a practice whereby vessels register in foreign countries known for having loose maritime safety, labor or environmental standards. Since the flag state has responsibility for enforcing applicable laws and restrictions, this can enable illegal fishing by DWF fleets.

Gutierrez described “pervasive abuse” by DWF vessels via such practices as shark finning, underreporting catches, and incidentally catching threatened marine species via the irresponsible use of fish-aggregating devices (FADs).A local fisher cleans his net near Bangonon Island, central Philippines. Image by Keith Anthony Fabro for Mongabay.
Transparency, legislation and international cooperation

The report authors acknowledged some limitations in their study: There weren’t enough data to establish representative sample sizes for each fleet, making any broad generalizations of fleet behavior potentially unreliable. Pandemic-related mobility restrictions and trade disruptions likely affected how many DWF vessels were operating in the five countries’ waters from 2021 to 2022. And the authors may not have captured all of the companies’ illicit maritime activities in their analysis, so their estimates of economic impacts were “conservative.”

“There is always uncertainty when it comes to analyzing fishing vessel behavior,” said Belhabib, an expert in illegal fishing whose study areas include Ghana and Senegal.

The report presents 15 recommendations to improve fisheries management and strengthen sustainable fishing in the five countries. These include stricter laws against keeping unintentionally caught species and shark finning in Peru, restricting trawling in Senegal and Ghana, putting a stop to saiko (trading unwanted catch for farm produce) in Ghana, and reducing FAD use in Ecuador. For Gutierrez, the top priority should be improving knowledge and transparency to “enable more informed decision-making and better enforcement of fishing regulations.”

The authors also recommend the countries work with their neighbors and international groups to better implement existing fishing laws — a crucial piece of the puzzle, since in developing countries, catching illegal fishers tends to be easier said than done.

As recently as last October, a Ghanaian fisheries observer disappeared from his assigned fishing vessel, with what appeared to be his headless body turning up on a beach weeks later. The vessel, the Marine 707, is Ghana-flagged with South Korean and Ghanaian ownership.

“Whoever did it, got away with it, again,” Belhabib said. “This impunity is very concerning.”

Banner image: A member of the Ghanaian maritime police observes a vessel suspected of fishing illegally prior to boarding it as part of a U.S.-Ghana combined maritime law enforcement operation in 2014. Image courtesy of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet/Jeff Atherton via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0 Deed).

Citations:

Agnew, D. J., Pearce, J., Pramod, G., Peatman, T., Watson, R., Beddington, J. R., & Pitcher, T. J. (2009). Estimating the worldwide extent of illegal fishing. PLOS ONE, 4(2), e4570. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0004570

Belhabib, D., & Le Billon, P. (2022). Adjacency and vessel domestication as enablers of fish crimes. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9. doi:10.3389/fmars.2022.936174

MISANTHROPIC GOP FAMILY VALUES 

'I hated that dog': Kristi Noem recalls gunning down family's 'worthless' pup

Travis Gettys
April 26, 2024

Kristi Noem / Gage Skidmore

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a frontrunner to be named as Donald Trump's running mate, admitted to killing her family dog for misbehavior.

The Republican governor wrote in her forthcoming memoir, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, that the female dog Cricket had an "aggressive personality" and proved herself "untrainable," according to excerpts from the book published by The Guardian.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, adding that the 14-month-old wirehair pointer was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

The governor said she included the story in her political memoir to demonstrate her willingness to take on “difficult, messy and ugly” tasks, and she described an attempt to teach Cricket to hunt with other dogs, but instead the pup ruined the trip by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life."

Noem unsuccessfully attempted to bring Cricket under control using an electronic collar, but she said the dog escaped her truck as she stopped to talk to a local family on the way home and attacked that family's chickens.

"[Cricket] grabbed one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another," she wrote, comparing the dog to “a trained assassin."

“[She] whipped around to bite me," Noem wrote, adding that Cricket was "the picture of pure joy" throughout the incident.

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

Noem said she retrieved her gun and led Cricket to a gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

She then recounts how she killed one of her family's goats, a “nasty and mean" male that had not been castrated, by dragging him to the gravel pit, and afterward she realized a nearby construction crew had watched her slaughter both animals before her children were dropped off by a school bus.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem wrote, describing her daughter's reaction. “'Hey, where’s Cricket?'”

“I guess if I were a better politician," she added, "I wouldn’t tell the story here.”

 

Cheap Russian drones overwhelm US-made Abrams tanks, taken out of action

Ukraine has taken the US-made Abrams main battle tank out of action as they have proven to be too vulnerable to swarms of Russian drone attacks. / bne IntelliNews

By bne IntelliNews April 26, 2024

Ukrainian forces are withdrawing US-provided Abrams M1A1 main battle tanks from the front lines after at least five have been destroyed by cheap Russian drones, according to the AP.

A loud cheer went up amongst Ukraine’s support when the US announced in January 2023 it would deliver a battalion of Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The hope was that 31 US made tanks, which are far superior to the Russian T-72 tank that is in wide use by Russia’s forces, would be a game changer.

The Abrams has better front armour and a more powerful gun that can penetrate the Russian tanks armour. By October 2023, all 31 tanks had been successfully delivered, as confirmed by officials.

However, the evolving dynamics of warfare, particularly the proliferation of Russian surveillance and hunter-killer drones, have dramatically altered the operational landscape. It turned out that the Abrams were more vulnerable to Russian attacks than previously believed.

The Russian forces avoided head-to-head clashes between tanks that they were likely to lose and instead adopted a new tactic: attacking the Abrams with swarms of drones that targeted tanks weak points: typically the point where the turret meets the body, the rear covering of the engine and the top of the tank where the armour is thinnest.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) played on these weaknesses in the early days of the war, using US-supplied Javelin missiles that swoop upwards before reaching their target before dropping down on the roof of the Russian tanks. As Soviet designers had chosen to store all the tank’s rounds in the turret, these would then explode and cause the Russian tanks to “pop their tops” killing everyone inside.

When hit by a US-made Javelin missile, shells stored in the turret of Russian tanks tend to explode causing the tank to "pop its top." 

According to the US officials speaking to AP, the Russian drones have been very effective and led to the loss of five Abrams tanks on the battlefield, prompting a reassessment of their deployment.

One senior military official, speaking anonymously, said another problem was the Russian forces usually had plenty of warning when an Abrams tank was on the way thanks to extensive drone surveillance. "There isn't open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection."

While Ukraine led in the use and development of drones in the first year of the war, Russia has been pouring money into its military industrial complex and has now overtaken Ukraine in terms of both the quantity and quality of drones that it is producing, as well as all its munition supplies in general.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on TV on April 25 that the heavy state investment into the military industrial complex and conversion of civilian production to military has resulted in Russia producing more arms than it needs, with the surplus heading to warehouses rather than the front line. Pistorius suggested that Russia is preparing for a long war or could be thinking about expanding the conflict to include other countries.

“Now you can be naïve and say he (President Vladimir Putin) is doing it just out of caution,” Pistorius stressed. “As a sceptical person, I would say in this case that he’s doing it because he has [other] plans…”

This investment is also altering the balance of power for tanks. Earlier this year, the Russian defence ministry announced that it had inducted over 1,500 new main battle tanks in 2023 to support its war campaign, whereas Forbes reported in December that Ukraine is down to 350, most of which are the Soviet warhorse, a modified T-72 tank.

New US materiel

The failure of the Abrams to make a difference is a costly miscalculation. The export cost of an Abrams tank can be around $10mn, while Col. Markus Reisner, an Austrian military trainer who follows the weapons being used in Ukraine, told the Euromaidan Press that the Russian suicide drones being used to destroy them can be as cheap as $500 each (a ratio of 20,000:1).

And money is increasingly an issue. US funding for Ukraine began to dry up last summer, and the US ran out of money for Ukraine completely in January. After four months of dithering, Congress finally voted through a $61bn aid package on April 20 that will allow military supplies to resume.

However, while the list of weapons to be sent to Ukraine includes Bradley APC and more Javelins, notably there is no mention of any more tanks.

The Abrams had previously been seen as “one of the world’s mightiest” battle tanks, according to Col. Reisner commenting on the effectiveness of the Russian drones. “Welcome to the 21st century — it’s unbelievable, actually,” he said of the changing nature of warfare.

The Abrams tanks have been temporarily removed from the front lines, with plans underway for the US and Ukraine to have a rethink and collaborate on adapting tactics to the evolving threat environment, according to US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Adm. Christopher Grady.

"When you think about the way the fight has evolved, massed armour in an environment where unmanned aerial systems are ubiquitous can be at risk," Grady said, as cited by Euromaidan Press.

The US had previously provided training to Ukrainian forces on tank operation and combined arms warfare tactics at the Grafenwoehr Army base in Germany in spring 2023. However, officials noted that since then, Ukrainian forces have not fully utilised the Abrams tanks or implemented combined arms warfare strategies effectively.

Likewise, Germany sent about five squadrons of its equally powerful Leopard main battle tanks that have been equally disappointing. At least 11 of the 21 sent have been destroyed or damaged and taken out of action, Forbes reported in December. The majority of the Leopard 2A6 tanks sent to Ukraine by Germany are no longer functioning, a senior politician for the German Greens said in January.

A leopard tank on its way to Ukraine

The discussion around the status of US weapons in Ukraine comes ahead of the April 26 Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting, marking the coalition's two-year anniversary. It is unclear what is wrong with all the tanks, but they are notoriously difficult to maintain on the battlefield and need constant attention from mechanics and a support crew.

Now it’s the Russians turn to cheer, as fears of the US supplying game changing armament to Ukraine are fading. In an apparent mockery of US military aid to Ukraine, bakeries in Moscow have started selling chocolate cakes in the form of destroyed Abrams tanks for RUB759 ($8), Sputnik posted on its X channel.

And tanks are not the only powerful US-made weapon to have fallen off the docket for delivery to Ukraine. Ukraine is also running very low on ammunition for the Patriot air defence system that has prevented Russia from bombing Ukraine’s cities and power infrastructure for most of the last year.

Russia launched an intense barrage in January designed to run down Ukraine’s stocks of these missiles, before further intensifying the barrage in March when it appeared the tactic was working. In the last month Ukraine lost 7 GW of power generation and the country’s two biggest power plants – Trypilska that serves Kyiv and the Dnipro Hydropower plant – have been destroyed and won’t be repaired this year. Ukrainians are facing a cold and dark winter this year as a result.

Germany has sent Ukraine two more Patriot batteries and promised one more, but Patriots are also missing from the US list of new materiel on its way to Ukraine.

Berlin is leading the effort to scrounge up more Patriot missiles for Ukraine, but all the other European countries that have them (Spain, France, Poland, Romania, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Greece) have refused to part with the system, afraid of undermining their own security.

The exception was Greece which promised to give one battery to Ukraine on April 24. However, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis changed his mind and announced the very next day that Athens would not send Patriots to Ukraine after all.

Amidst these developments, the US is poised to announce a new $6bn weapons contract for Ukraine, which will include Patriot air defence systems, artillery, drones, counter-drone weapons, and air-to-air missiles, potentially finalising the deal as soon as April 26, according to officials.

Misinformation could cause Floridians to harm, not help, monarch butterflies, a scientist says

WUSF | By Kayla Kissel
Published April 26, 2024 


Jordan Adams
/
IPhoneThese butterflies were found at Ormond Beach, Florida. The ones infected by the parasite can be spotted by their smaller size, crippled wings, and dull colors.


A research scientist from the University of Georgia wrote an open letter to Floridians, warning them about a life-threatening parasite spreading among monarch butterflies.

But the urgent letter says residents themselves may be inadvertently contributing to the spread of this debilitating condition.

According to Project Monarch Health, the parasite, known as ophryocystis elektroscirrha, can cause deformations, small size, impaired mating, and decreased flight endurance in monarchs.

Andy Davis is the scientist and author of the letter.

He’s studied monarchs for over 25 years and said that because of misinformation and emotions, Floridians are speeding up the spread.

“Unfortunately, Florida is in a situation where that problem is extreme right now, where people have gone out of their way to do things to sort of try to help the monarchs, which is really not helping at all,” Davis said. “It's sort of interfering with our ability to even conserve this butterfly, because people are going forward with actions based on their feelings, not based on what the actual research shows.”

Davis said that misinformation led people to confuse Mexico’s dip in monarch numbers with Florida.

According to a study of breeding in North American monarch butterflies, population figures in Florida had consistently been increasing.

Davis was a part of that study and said that because there were plenty of resources for butterflies, there was never any need for Floridians to step in and plant milkweed.

Monarchs seasonally migrate between Florida and Mexico, but the planting of non-native milkweed lured them to stay in Florida.

While the parasite is naturally occurring, when monarch’s choose not to migrate, it leads to problems.

“The way this parasite works is that the infected monarchs drop infectious spores of the parasite onto their milkweed,” Davis said. “The spores then get transmitted to the caterpillars, which then start the cycle again. And so with monarchs being present year-round in Florida, and the milkweed being present year-round, the spores are just building up everywhere.”

READ MORE: A community garden in Immokalee offers culinary links to home

Monarch Health
/
University Of GeorgiaMonarch butterflies infected with the parasite, known as Ophryocystis elektroscirrha, have spores found on the outside of infected monarchs. These tiny spores cover a butterfly’s entire body.



Davis added that almost every single monarch butterfly in Florida is likely infected, but that it’s the ones we don’t see that are really in danger.

“The ones that you see flying around are the lucky few that survived to that stage,” Davis said. “What you don't see are the dozens of deformed monarchs that are now crawling around on the ground, dying a slow death, because they never did get their wings. Now they can't fly, now they can't feed and they just sort of starve to death in your bushes.”

Jordan Adams
/
IPhoneThe monarch butterfly infected with the parasite has crinkled and wilted wings as opposed to the full normal wings a healthy monarch has.

In the letter, Davis said people need to set their feelings aside and end their love affair with monarch butterflies.

“One thing that would help, at least in your backyard, is to remove your milkweed, i.e. all of it, the native, the non-native milkweed that people have,” Davis said. “Because if you have milkweed in your backyard in Florida you are now creating a hotspot of infection.”

However, not all scientists agree with Davis. Studies have shown that a loss of milkweed is one reason for the butterflies' decline.
Copyright 2024 WUSF 89.7. To see more, visit WUSF 89.7.

DESANTISLAND
Over 100 people evicted from senior care facility due to bankruptcy

Financial troubles at Unisen Senior Living in Florida date back years, and some of the residents being kicked out invested hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jim Powell, 94, and his wife Mona, 91, received an eviction notice after paying a $100,000 entrance fee four months ago to move into Unisen Senior Living.

By: Scripps News Tampa

Apr 26, 2024

More than 100 senior citizens in Tampa, Florida, are scrambling to find new homes after their senior living facility declared bankruptcy.

Scripps News Tampa has uncovered financial troubles at the facility date back years, and some of the residents being kicked out invested hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I’m pretty upset about it”

“This is the letter from the lawyers,” said Jim Powell, showing us a bankruptcy notice he received in the mail earlier this month.

Bankruptcy form

Powell, who is 94, and his wife Mona, who is 91, received their first-ever eviction notice. They paid a $100,000 entrance fee four months ago to move into Unisen Senior Living, less than a mile from the University of South Florida campus.

The Powells are among dozens of senior citizens who are now being forced to find a new home.

“We came home from dinner that night and there was an envelope in our door. We just sat down and looked at each other. I can’t believe this. How could it happen so quickly?” Mona Powell said.


She said many of her belongings haven’t been unpacked since the couple moved from the home where they lived for more than 50 years.

All the elderly residents of the 491-unit complex will have to vacate in the coming months because Unisen declared bankruptcy.

A 2022 IRS Form 990 filed by the nonprofit indicates financial problems date back years, with annual losses that year of more than $13 million. The bankruptcy filing says the company’s debts are between $100 million and $500 million.

“I would say I'm pretty upset about it,” Mona Powell said. “I know it’s stressful for anybody.”

Two senior care bankruptcies at the site since 2016

“They were told they were being evicted. The building was closing. Go find someplace else,” said Laura Vitale-DeRosa.

Her father, James Vitale, has lived at the facility since 2016.


WFTS

“The only friends really that he has left are the ones living here, and now they’re all gonna be dispersed,” Vitale-DeRosa said.

Vitale paid a $75,000 entrance fee when he moved into what was then University Village. That company went bankrupt after a state investigation showed financial mismanagement by the former owner.

Vitale paid $82,500 in 2021 as a deposit for a new assisted living apartment, but it was never completed.

Since the announcement, Laura and her dad have been trying to find him a new home.

“Most of these places on this list are two times at least what we were paying here,” she said.

And in Tampa, most of the places on the list Vitale was given are full.


“The others are Dunedin, Palm Harbor, two in Lakeland and one in Bradenton,” Vitale-DeRosa said.

Many of those facilities are an hour’s drive from Unisen Senior Living.

13 residents loaned the company big bucks

Realtor Lynnette Ramsey is helping a former client, whose home she sold two years ago.

Lynnette Ramsey photo


“She doesn’t have any family here. Her older brother lives in Atlanta. So my family has become her family over the years,” Ramsey said.

So far, Ramsey’s had no luck finding a new place for her friend and her dog.

“Three hours, four hours yesterday calling around. Can we put a fence up? Can she bring her dog? What's included in the monthly costs? They were like no, no, and not a lot,” she said.


Thirteen of the residents are among Unisen’s 20 largest creditors, each loaning the company between $292,000 and $675,000.

Bankruptcy filing

Unisen’s executive director declined an interview but said in a statement, “This decision was not made without a vigorous attempt at keeping the community viable for our residents. Ultimately, it was with their best interests at heart that we made the choice to pursue bankruptcy.”

The Powells found another nearby apartment, where they’ll move next month. They hope this time it will be their last move.

“It's just a rotten thing to do to people. They knew it. They can’t say they didn’t know it. They've been cooking this up for months and months,” Mona Powell said.

Others, some in their 90s, don’t yet know where they’re going.

“When something like this is handed to you, it just kind of turns your world upside down,” Ramsey said.


Residents we talked to say they will each get $25,000 moving allowances to help them relocate.


This story was originally published by Adam Walser at Scripps News Tampa.

WATERSPOUTS

Rare sight of five funnel clouds captured on camera

2 hours ago
Barra Best,BBC News NI weather presenter
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David De CourcyThe funnel clouds were captured by wildlife photographer David De Courcy over Wicklow Harbour on Friday morning

A rare sighting of five funnel clouds forming over County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland has been captured on camera.

They were spotted by wildlife photographer David De Courcy over Wicklow Harbour on Friday morning.

Funnel clouds are cone-shaped formations that appear to dangle from a larger cloud above.

They are typically associated with cumulonimbus thunderclouds, according to the Met Office.
'Completely on the fly'

Although more used to capturing an array of wildlife, photographer David De Courcy told BBC News NI he could not pass up an opportunity to capture the five funnel clouds.

"It was completely on the fly," Mr De Courcy said.

"I saw the lovely sunrise and thought, I'll take a photo.

"I had an idea that they were some sort of vortex. They are a cool weather phenomenon."

Funnel clouds become tornados when they touch the ground and water spouts when they make contact with a body of water.

When they touch the ground, funnel clouds are classed as tornadoes.

They form when the atmosphere is unstable.

Although delighted with his photo, Mr De Courcy is not planning on making the switch from wildlife to weather photography.

"Photographing the weather is more hit and miss," he explained.

"Birds and wildlife are more my thing."

Funnel cloud spotted in Cornwall

Focus on Rwanda’s safety is a distraction from the dangerous conditions for asylum seekers in the UK

The Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge has been the site of a legionella outbreak and other unsafe living conditions. Ajit Wick/Shutterstock

THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 26, 2024 

Five months ago, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. The court found the African country was “unsafe” under international law on refugee protection.

The UK government, rather than changing the plan, has just passed a new law to declare that Rwanda is safe. This is not just a farcical legal workaround, it is deeply ironic given the unsafe conditions for asylum seekers in the UK. And, it is dangerous for the wider legal and political system when the government forces through legislation to overturn legal decisions that it does not like, making us all less safe.

The Supreme Court found that sending people to Rwanda risks violating international treaties prohibiting refoulement (returning people to places of persecution). UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, provided the court with evidence of Rwanda’s poor human rights record and defective asylum decision making.

The British embassy in Kigali gave similar feedback in 2020, recommending the UK government should not pursue the Rwanda plan. When, in 2013, Israel entered into a similar deal, thousands of people were then expelled from Rwanda without being allowed to claim asylum.

Written by academics, edited by journalists, backed by evidence.Get newsletter

The UK government knows Rwanda isn’t safe for many people. The Home Office grants refugee status to half of Rwandan asylum applicants each year, with most of those refused then granted protection at appeal.

But focusing solely on the safety of Rwanda misses three key points.

First, that the UK has been forcibly sending asylum seekers to other countries for decades, including to arguably unsafe ones. Second, that asylum seekers – including tens of thousands who cannot be sent to Rwanda due to logistical capacity – are unsafe themselves in the UK. And third, that the new law unilaterally declaring Rwanda “safe” raises dangers for the UK’s own political and legal system.
Asylum seeker removal

European countries have been sending asylum seekers to other member states since 1997. Under the Dublin regulation (which the UK left with Brexit), countries may send people back to the first EU country they arrived in. These countries are not necessarily safe.

Asylum seekers I interviewed for my PhD research described violent police officers and abusive border officers, of being prevented from lodging asylum claims, and being denied accommodation and support in multiple European countries. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles, a network of NGOs working on refugee protection, and the UNHCR have raised similar concerns.

In 2008, several EU countries suspended Dublin transfers to Greece because of its poor treatment of asylum seekers. This included worrying police conduct and detention conditions, and the forcible return of people to inhumane and degrading treatment – raising serious questions about safety.
Safety in the UK

The 1951 UN refugee convention stipulates that people must not be punished for breaking immigration rules in the course of seeking safety. And yet, the UK’s illegal migration act 2023 subjects people who arrive in the UK irregularly to criminal records and lengthy prison sentences, and – shockingly – strips them of their right to have their refugee claims considered.

But people have little choice but to arrive irregularly. The UK has only a handful of legal routes available. It officially resettles barely 700 refugees a year, forcing thousands of people to risk their lives to reach safety.

If people reach the UK, they enter a massive “perma-backlog” of undecided asylum claims and are forced into dangerous accommodation. Each year, the UK incarcerates thousands of asylum seekers in prison-like immigration detention centres. Unlike the rest of Europe, this incarceration has no time limit.

The other asylum accommodation sites are hardly better. The controversial Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset has been found to be overcrowded and traumatising, had deadly legionella bacteria in the water supply, and was the site of a man’s death last December.

The Manston short-term holding facility in Kent was described as “really dangerous” by the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, who found severe overcrowding and outbreaks of rare, contagious diseases. Temporary accommodation site Napier Barracks was found to be so problematic that in 2021 the High Court found the Home Office guilty of employing unlawful practices in holding asylum seekers there.
Conditions at the Manston immigration short-term holding facility in Kent were deemed ‘unacceptable’ by the borders watchdog. Gareth Fuller/PA images

In just the few months it’s been open, there have been countless acts of self-harm, including suicide attempts, at the Wethersfield airbase in Essex. Last December, the former borders watchdog raised concerns that the Home Office was not keeping Wethersfield “service users safe” and warned of immediate risk of criminality, arson and violence.

Since then, reports have emerged of unexploded ordnance, radiological contamination, inadequate storage of hazardous substances and contamination from poisonous gases.

Asylum accommodation hotels are also attracting far-right demonstrations and anti-immigrant violence. Tragically, but unsurprisingly, rising numbers of asylum seekers are dying in Home Office accommodation.

Even if they are granted permission to stay, asylum seekers are plunged into destitution at unprecedented rates. In England, 12,630 households faced homelessness after eviction from asylum accommodation in the two years to the end of September 2023.

Read more: 'When you get status the struggle doesn’t end': what it's like to be a new refugee in the UK

A political distraction

The Rwanda plan is an expensive and unworkable political distraction from the UK’s failings on asylum policy. Even if flights do eventually take off, they will barely touch the massive, government-made backlog of 55,000 people who cannot have their claims processed and risk being left in indefinite limbo in unsafe accommodation.

The UK government’s current approaches to immigration are not reducing numbers. They are simply wasting vast sums of money, making an international mockery of our legal system, and – as tragically occurred on April 23 – costing people their lives.

The UK’s asylum system does not need flights to Rwanda, it needs safe and legal routes so that people do not have to risk their lives to seek protection. And once they arrive, they need better conditions and decision making so that they can get on with their lives in safety.

Author

Melanie Griffiths
Associate Professor, University of Birmingham

UK

RMT Union leader Mick Lynch destroys Rwanda bill as he turns attention to oligarchs and billionaires

'We’ve got to raise our eyes a bit from just blaming the poor for the problems in our society'

Hannah Davenport 

Today

Left Foot Forward 

Mick Lynch destroyed the government’s Rwanda bill in under a minute during an interview as he made the case for an alternative, humane way of running society.

Proving once again his skills as an orator, the leader of the RMT union laid into the Tories cruel immigration policy. He described the plan to fly refugees seeking asylum in Britain off to Rwanda as “horrible”, “outrageous” and, as his mother would have said, “a sin”.

When it comes to holding the powerful to account, something trade unions play a crucial role in doing, Lynch didn’t hold back in highlighting where public attention should be focused over the problems this country faces.

Speaking to Politics JOE about the Rwanda bill, Lynch said: “I dont think it should ever be happening in a democratic country where we take people who are desperate to improve their lives for whatever reason, escaping war, escaping poverty, escaping climate change, who want to make their lives better.”

He went on: “I’m not a wishy washy liberal. There will always be an immigration policy in most countries, but we’ve got to get a humane one. It’s also useless. It’s probably the biggest waste of money this government could think of. It won’t even solve the problem on their terms. It will not solve the problems of the dinghies and people desperately trying to come to this country.”

Looking at the bigger picture, Lynch said it was a responsibility of the Western world to act on eradicating global poverty and in bringing global peace, so people are able to make lives for themselves wherever they live.

“We’ve got to raise our eyes a bit from just blaming the poor for the problems in our society,” said the union boss.

“Our problems in this country are not arriving on a beach in Kent from France. They’re arriving because of the oligarchs and the billionaires that run our society.

“We’ve got to look at that and think of ourselves as humanitarians and people that want to solve the problems of the world, not export them to places like Rwanda.”

(Image credit: Politics JOE / YouTube screenshot)

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

UK’s Rwanda bill is doomed for political failure

MIREIA FARO SARRATS and TAREK MEGERISI 

26th April 2024
SOCIAL EUROPE

European governments should remember that not only does such a policy not work to deter migration—it will politically damage any party that adopts it.
Diversity advantage: the colourful Lisbon neighbourhood of Mouraria is enlivened by a range of retail entrepreneurs, including from south Asia (Mauro Rodrigues / shutterstock.com).

When the British government first advanced its bill to send migrants offshore to Rwanda back in April 2022, the then home secretary, Priti Patel, promised it would ‘change the way we collectively tackle illegal migration’. Two years later and with the bill finally passed into law, the policy is a floundering disaster: it is unlikely to deter illicit migration, damages the global standing of the United Kingdom by violating international law and endangers refugees’ lives, all at huge financial cost.

Nevertheless, Patel was disturbingly prescient. Germany’s own conservative party, the Chirstian Democratic Union, is now advancing its own Rwanda scheme, Italy is flirting over a similar enterprise with Albania and the European Commission is trumpeting comparable schemes across north Africa in the build-up to the European Parliament election.

The idea has undeniably caught on, yet the Rwanda bill has not stopped regular or irregular migration. The most recent year-on-year statistics show net migration to the UK at a record high. On top of this, irregular migration rose by 17 per cent a year after the Rwanda bill was first unveiled as the ultimate deterrent for small-boat crossings of the English Channel


Extreme version

The Rwanda bill is, after all, just an extreme version of the failing externalisation policies which already dominate European migration policy. Externalisation policies aim to push border management on to a third country, thereby stopping and processing migrants before they cross into Europe. Over the past decade, Europeans have desperately and enthusiastically engaged in such deals with almost every southern neighbourhood country. It has cost Europeans tens of billions of euro, severely undermined their positioning as advocates of human rights, warped relationships with Europe’s southern neighbourhood and damaged other foreign-policy goals.

Ultimately, it has not even stopped migrants arriving, but only caused more hardship and deaths en route. In Italy, for example, which has a policy of externalisation, the number of migrants who arrive irregularly has nearly returned to 2016 levels.

Not only has externalisation proven to be an unsuccessful way to regain control over migration, maximise migration’s benefits or mitigate its negatives, but a Rwanda scheme has already failed in Israel.

Nevertheless, the British government has pursued the bill despite the UK Supreme Court unanimously declaring it unlawful, given the scheme’s propensity for refoulement—defying the legal principle that any asylum-seeker should not be returned to somewhere they’re at risk of harm. Instead, the British government put itself above the law, issuing a new bill to forcibly designate Rwanda a safe country while providing ministers powers to disregard inconvenient sections of international human-rights conventions. Given the UK’s founding role in the European Convention on Human Rights and a history of advocating for international norms, multilateralism and the rule of law, the bill has done more to tarnish the UK’s reputation than help the government ‘take back control‘ over migration.
‘Looking tough’

Given the Rwanda bill seems doomed to fail, it is worth asking why the idea is so popular among other European governments. European politicians across the spectrum seem to believe they must ‘look tough’ on migration to win votes and stave off the far right. This means adopting the right-wing framing of migration as a security threat and only challenging the finer points of how right-wing migration policies are implemented.

But recent polling for the European Council on Foreign Relations reveals European politicians are trapping themselves in a migration hysteria of their own creation. Of the major crises Europeans feel most strongly about, migration polls beneath all others of the past decade. Those who are moved by immigration are mostly concerned about controlling arrivals, with data also intimating that populations become less concerned over immigration once they become more familiar with those migrating. The crisis Europeans feel most strongly about, by a significant margin, is in fact the economy—a crisis that migration can help alleviate.

The electoral significance of migration is therefore not as voters’ main priority but as an indicator of the right wing’s success in making migration a symbol of the European Union’s failures. Moreover, there is such tribalism among the right over migration that right-wing constituencies remain suspicious of any mainstream candidate who tries adopting their rhetoric. This suggests that echoing the right on migration does not even win right-wing votes.

Given these facts, it’s no real surprise that, despite making the Rwanda bill a headline policy, the UK’s Conservative Party is polling at an all-time low, along with perceptions of how it is handling migration, all while pushing voters over to the far-right Reform party. After all, the bill is profligately expensive, costing £290 million before a single person has even been deported. In the context of widespread government cuts and a cost-of-living crisis, such a policy seems tone-deaf. And stoking anti-migration anxieties while resorting to increasingly desperate measures to pass the bill amid record-high immigration does not exactly demonstrate control.

For other European parties mimicking the migration policies of Britain’s Conservatives, these political dynamics will almost certainly remain. Such policies will still lose votes, even in the unlikely scenario the UK government is able to make a Rwanda scheme stop illicit migration.

Mainstream European politicians’ approach to migration on the campaign trail and in the halls of power is clearly backfiring. After decades of intensifying externalisation, third states are controlling migration flows while the far right is controlling migration discourse.
Breaking from dogma

This election year must be the year mainstream European politicians break from the far-right migration dogma that led to the Rwanda bill. Recent history shows that another election cycle of mainstream parties hyper-fixating on migration over other voter priorities, while competing over ever more extreme policies, will only aggravate fears of migrants, economic profligacy and an image of failure—dynamics that will make a bad situation worse and deliver further returns to the far right.

In their campaigns, rather than trying to co-opt a discourse describing migration as a threat, mainstream candidates should challenge this discourse, highlight its decade-long failings and relate the topic to specific voter concerns. They should make solving migration about improving processing and integration and boosting the economy, rather than brutalising migrants and refugees.

After all, it’s the cost and optics of thousands of destitute asylum-seekers awaiting processing, unable to work or join communities, that shape the image of failure. In many ways, such policies are doing the far right’s job for them. In the UK’s case, where 94 per cent of asylum-seekers are also employment-seekers, an alternative policy of fast-tracking to employment could have netted the UK £211 million annually and bolstered an economy in recession. This kind of discourse and policy shift then sets up the platform to build the medium- to long-term collective approach needed to sustainably control migration.

If mainstream European politicians learn from the mistakes of the Rwanda bill, then perhaps Patel will be proved right in the way she least expected: the Rwanda bill will change how we collectively tackle migration, but by becoming the symbol of just how badly Europe’s externalisation policies are failing, on every metric possible.

This was first published by the European Council on Foreign Relations



Mireia Faro Sarrats
Mireia Faro Sarrats is the communications officer at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, she played the same role at the European Institute of the Mediterranean. She has a masters in human rights, democracy and globalisation from the Open University of Catalunya.


Tarek Megerisi
Tarek Megerisi is a senior policy fellow with the middle-east and north-Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, focused on European policy-making towards the Maghreb and Mediterranean regions, especially Libya.

Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupt Nancy Pelosi's speech at Oxford Union

Around 250 students also gathered outside the Union, calling for an end to the war in Gaza.

Friday 26 April 2024 

With eyes on US college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

Students say growing protests on US university campuses are part of a ‘fight against genocide’ in the Gaza Strip.

Student demonstrators gather in a tent camp on the campus of Columbia University in New York City on April 24 [Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo]

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Published On 26 Apr 2024

Global attention has turned to universities across the United States, where students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The growing protests have taken root on the campuses of some of the country’s top academic institutions, including Columbia and Harvard.

And over the past weeks, they have spurred heated debates around freedom of speech, Palestinian solidarity activism in the US, and the use of force to disperse student protesters, among other issues.

But the students at the heart of the movement say the reason they began their demonstrations – the pressing need to end Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza – risks being lost amid a cacophony of voices and distractions.

“Gaza is why we’re here. Gaza is why we’re doing this,” said Rue, a student at The New School in New York City who asked to only be identified by her first name due to a fear of reprisals.

“The New School encampment is happening because we want to make sure that we are doing what we can to end this genocide,” Rue told Al Jazeera.

KEEP READING
The Take: Inside the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University

Columbia, NYU, Yale on the boil over Israel’s war on Gaza: What’s going on?

Photos: Columbia University moves classes online after Gaza protest

List of demands

Encampments have popped up at universities and colleges across the US this month, as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpassed the 34,300 mark, amid reports that mass graves were uncovered in the coastal enclave.

The students issued a list of demands to their respective universities, including divesting from any companies that may be profiting from the Gaza war or providing the Israeli military with weapons and other support.

They have also urged an end to reprisals against students who have spoken out in support of Palestinians and for administrators to pledge not to send police or other law enforcement agencies onto the campuses to break up their protests.

Images of throngs of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers marching onto the Columbia University campus to disperse a Gaza protest encampment earlier this week galvanised students in other parts of the US to set up their own protest sites, too.

Hundreds of students have been arrested across the country since the encampments began.

A first-year PhD student at New York University (NYU), who spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity due to a fear of reprisals, said students are acting “on the ideals and the histories that [they’re] being taught”.

“As students who are being taught in class about colonialism, about Indigenous rights, about the effect of non-violent protest across history, it would be extremely hypocritical — or it would totally undermine the point of our education — if we didn’t act,” the 25-year-old said

“At the very least we can show that there was resistance” to what is happening in the Gaza Strip, the student added.

“The horrors in Gaza are really beyond imagining. These small acts of resistance, these are small sacrifices — [they] are nothing compared to what is happening on the ground in Palestine.”
‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza

Like other protesters across the US, many American students have said they felt an impetus to act given the US government’s long-standing support for Israel.

The US gives Israel $3.8bn in military assistance annually, and President Joe Biden has continued to provide staunch support to the country amid the Gaza war. On Wednesday, Biden signed into law a massive funding package that will provide an additional $17bn to Israel.

The Israeli military’s attacks on Palestinian students, teachers and academic institutions across Gaza during the war also have acted as a catalyst for the university protests, the students said.

Last week, a group of United Nations experts noted that 80 percent of schools in the Palestinian enclave have been damaged or destroyed since the war began in early October. Nearly 5,500 students have been killed, alongside 261 teachers and 95 university professors.

“It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’,” the experts said in a statement on April 18.

“These attacks are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society.”

Students protest on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, April 24 [Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP]

Etta, a senior at NYU who also asked to only be identified by her first name due to a fear of reprisals, told Al Jazeera that it was “appalling” to see her university fail to acknowledge the destruction of Palestinian academic institutions.

“As an institution that should have a function of education, of shaping minds, of academic freedom, they can’t even take the time to acknowledge, to mourn, to discuss the destruction of those institutions in Palestine,” Etta said.

“There’s a refusal to even acknowledge that this is going on when we’re all bearing witness [to it].”

‘Bigger than us’

As uncertainty swirls around the future of the US university encampments amid threats they will be dismantled, the students say they remain committed to continuing their protests — and to keeping the focus on what’s happening in Gaza.

“Palestine is the centre, liberation is the centre of this conversation,” said Etta.

That was echoed by Rue, the student at The New School.

“I feel like there’s a moral imperative that everyone does everything that they can to the best of their abilities to protest and fight against and end this genocide,” Rue told Al Jazeera.

“We’re a part of something that is bigger than us,” she added.

“We are part of a global movement right now and we’re really inspired and strengthened by the incredible solidarity [we’re] seeing across the United States, across different college campuses, across the world.

Protests on Boston-area campuses persist as college administrators try to manage them

April 26, 2024

WBUR Newsroom

Students at Northeastern stood up an encampment in protest of the war in Gaza on Thursday. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Tent encampments on college campuses in Greater Boston persist as some schools attempt to have more control over the protests.

Encampments have gone up on multiple university campuses in the area, including Emerson College, Tufts University, MIT, Harvard University and Northeastern University. In recent days, college students across the country took part in similar demonstrations opposing the war in Gaza and calling for their institutions to divest from Israel.

WBUR is a nonprofit news organization. Our coverage relies on your financial support. If you value articles like the one you're reading right now, give today.

Emerson College, situated in downtown Boston, announced Thursday afternoon that demonstrations are banned in the Boylston Place alleyway through the weekend. (Emerson officials noted that their policy allows the college to determine the "time, place and manner" of demonstrations.)

Early Thursday morning, police had arrested 108 protesters in the alley and forcibly dismantled their encampment. The alley near Boston Common is partially owned by the college, but is a public right-of-way; Boston police said the protesters were in violation of city ordinances.

Tents went up on Northeastern's quad Thursday afternoon. Campus and city police quickly surrounded the protesters, but did not dismantle the encampment at that time.

A spokesperson for Northeastern said in a statement to WBUR that students demonstrating on the green are in violation of the school's code of conduct.

"Students currently demonstrating on Centennial Quad do not have authorization and are in violation of the Code of Student Conduct. Those who are not affiliated with Northeastern are trespassing. The university will take action accordingly," the statement read.

According to reporting from Northeastern's student newspaper, The Huntington News, one person was arrested at the school's protest around 1 p.m.

The Huntington reported that Berklee College of Music students marched in Northeastern's campus and joined the encampment Thursday evening.

With reporting by WBUR's Katie Cole

Florida college students join national wave of pro-Palestinian rallies

By Divya Kumar

April 26, 2024
Students demonstrating in support of Palestinians in Gaza gather on the Plaza of the Americas at the University of Florida on Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Gainesville. Century Tower, a UF landmark, can be seen in the background. The protest was one of dozens around the nation this week that saw hundreds of students arrested. [ DIVYA KUMAR | Times ]


Students at some of Florida’s public universities have joined the wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations sweeping the nation this week, but their protests so far have been smaller, quieter and without the forceful police presence seen at many other campuses.

At the University of Florida, a protest that turned a portion of the Plaza of the Americas into a small, grassy “liberation zone” ended its second day late Thursday with no arrests, drawing about 100 students at its peak.

On Florida State University’s expansive Landis Green, students set up with posters and tents at 4 a.m. Thursday. By the afternoon, however, the tents came down while a group of about 30 student protesters remained.

Joelle Nuñez, president of the Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society group, said law enforcement told them to relocate. At one point during the protest, sprinklers went off on the group.

A rally is planned for Friday at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Mateo Herrera, president of UCF’s Young Democratic Socialist Association, said student activity in Florida is just beginning.

“We know the climate in Florida,” he said. “We know if we escalate more, we’ll face more repression than what is happening up north. …This experience shows how much universities care about their students and their priorities of who they get their money from.”

The Florida students, like their peers in other states, are demanding that their schools cut financial ties with corporations that support Israel and its war effort in Gaza, where more than 34,000 civilians have been killed and food is scarce, according to local health officials.

The UF protesters had several additional demands, including that the university sever partnerships with weapons, arms and artificial intelligence contractors involved in human rights violations and agree not to host speakers affiliated with the Israeli military or those who “spread misinformation about the history of Palestine.”

The students want to stop tuition dollars from indirectly financing the war, said Cameron Driggers, a UF freshman who called the protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza “the landmark social movement of our time.”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable doing nothing,” he said, noting that some of the protesters are Jewish students. “I want to be able to tell my kids and my family in the future that I tried to do my best to stop what I would call a genocide that’s happening right now in Palestine.”

Since last week, hundreds of protesters have been arrested at campuses including Columbia University in New York City, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Emerson College in Boston and Emory University in Atlanta. The University of Southern California canceled its graduation, and Columbia temporarily moved classes online.

The New York Times reported that more than 400 people have been arrested in campus protests since April 17, and it published a map showing more than 60 protest sites across the nation. Many of them involve encampments with students staking out patches of campus ground in tents.

The demonstrations are happening just days before the end of the spring semester, with commencement celebrations scheduled for early May.

Gov. Ron DeSantis sought to set the tone for Florida schools with a post Thursday on the social media platform X.

His post said college leaders in the Northeast had been “weak” in their response to protesters he described as “mobs” that “harass Jewish students and faculty.”

“If you try that at a Florida university, you are going to be expelled,” the governor wrote.

Florida’s demonstrations are happening on campuses with some of largest populations of Jewish students in the nation. In Hillel International’s 2020 list of the “Top 60 Jewish schools,” the University of Florida is No. 1 with about 6,500 Jewish undergrads and nearly 3,000 Jewish grad students.

UCF was No. 3 and FSU, along with Florida International University, were in the top 20.

Driggers said he believed student sentiment on Florida’s college campuses largely favored a ceasefire in the Middle East and support for Palestinians.

“But of course, we have to keep in mind that the consequences for our organizing is even more punished because you have people like Ron DeSantis, who have implemented various ways of cracking down,” he said. “We’ve heard elected leaders saying that we should be expelled and arrested just for exercising our freedom of speech, which I think is a little ironic. These people are typically your free speech absolutists, right?”

Through the day Thursday, the UF protesters sat on blankets, doing schoolwork and holding signs and flags. Campus police walked by telling them they couldn’t plant signs and flags into the ground. The group picked up the signs.
Police officers gather near the site of a pro-Palestinian protest on the University of Florida campus on Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Gainesville. Officers took steps to ensure the protesters did not establish an encampment on the campus green known as Plaza of the Americas. [ DIVYA KUMAR | Times ]

A sign initially tied to the ground by rope was refashioned so it would not be considered a structure. Photos of Palestinians who have died in Gaza lined the parameter.

Some passersby expressed disapproval. One called them members of Hamas, a protester said. Some took photos and nodded in support. Most didn’t engage with the group.

Two Jewish students who walked by as many protesters left said they were upset by the demonstration.

Max Kilman, an Israeli-American student, called the group a “loud minority” and was troubled by chants calling for an intifada, referring to the Palestinian uprising against Israel.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” he said. “While I recognize that this is not nearly as bad as what has happened at certain places like Columbia … I think it should be known that this does not represent the sentiment or the spirit (of UF).”

Isaac Pines said he felt the protests further divided students.

“I think there is a middle ground to it, but the way that they’re approaching it makes it seem like it’s such a polarizing issue,” he said. “If you were really trying to make progress here, you’d want to work with pro-Israel students on campus.”

In a statement, UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldan said, “The University of Florida will always protect speech and uphold the law. Peaceful protests are constitutionally protected.”

She said “camping, putting up structures, disrupting academic activity, or threatening others on university property is strictly prohibited” and that officials “clearly communicated this” to the students. She said anyone who breaks the law will receive “an immediate trespassing order from (campus police) and an interim suspension from Student Life.”

Some protesters expressed frustration that a few of the regulations seemed open to interpretation. Sleeping and anything deemed to be a structure were prohibited, but occupying spaces while awake was not.

Shortly after 8 p.m., campus police handed out notices of what was and wasn’t allowed.

In Tallahassee, Nuñez, the student protest leader at FSU, said the group was trying to avoid arrests but expected to be on campus as long as they could be. They planned to pack up late Thursday night and return Friday.

He said they wanted to place more emphasis on their message.

“I want people to focus not just on the repression, but why these students are out there in the first place,” Nuñez said. “This wouldn’t be happening if these institutions weren’t supporting Israel.”

Amy Farnum-Patronis, a spokesperson for FSU, said the group was not affiliated with the university and was asked to leave because of the school’s regulations against camping.

“No criminal activity or conduct has been observed, but law enforcement is on scene and actively monitoring the situation,” she said. “As an educational institution, Florida State University welcomes free inquiry, diverse thought and rigorous debate. However, these expressions must comply with university regulation and the law.”

Times Staff Writer Romy Ellenbogen contributed to this report. 

DIVYA KUMAR
Higher education reporter for The Tampa Bay Times in partnership with Open Campus.