Facebook lambasted over ransom video of traffickers abusing migrants

Reuters

By Emma Batha

25 August 2017

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - People smugglers are using Facebook to broadcast the abuse and torture of migrants in order to extort ransom money from their families, the U.N. migration agency said on Friday.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) lambasted the tech giant for failing to police the platform and help crack down on traffickers.

One video hosted on the site since June shows Libyan gangmasters threatening emaciated and abused migrants - mostly Somalis and Ethiopians - huddled in a concrete room.

IOM said the traffickers had sent clips to the captives’ families via the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp - a Facebook channel - along with threats that their loved ones would be killed unless ransoms of up to $10,000 were paid.

One young Somali man is seen lying face down with a concrete block on his back. “I was asked for $8,000,” he says, according to the IOM. “They broke my teeth. They broke my hand. I have been here 11 months. They put this stone on me for the last three days. It’s really painful.”

British newspaper The Times, which ran the story on its front page on Friday, also quoted a young Ethiopian who had been held for 15 months. “They beat me with iron bars,” he said.

“They ordered me to pay $8,300 and my family cannot afford to pay that amount.”

Hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean from North Africa to Europe since 2014, and thousands have died trying.

Facebook, which has also been criticized for failing to stop traffickers using the platform to advertise their services, said posts by smuggling groups would be removed if reported.

“We encourage people to keep using our reporting tools to flag this kind of behavior so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, who work with law enforcement agencies around the world,” a spokesperson said.

But Facebook said it had not removed the June video as it had been posted by a Somali journalist and was important for raising awareness of the problem.

However, IOM spokesman Leonard Doyle accused Facebook of “arrant nonsense”, adding that the smugglers had used the journalist to publicize their demands.

He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation it was totally inappropriate for Facebook to host a video showing the faces of vulnerable people being abused.

”Don’t let Facebook off the hook here,“ he said. ”It’s an absolutely nonsensical argument that it’s up to the public to notify Facebook of stuff that’s happening on Facebook.

“They should invest heavily in policing their platforms to stop vulnerable migrants being exploited, extorted and murdered.”

Doyle said the IOM had tried without success to talk to Facebook about targeting smugglers.

"They should stop smugglers telling people there's an El Dorado waiting for them in Europe when it's a lie," he added.

"It's not good enough to say, 'we are a technology platform, it's got nothing to do with us'."

Doyle said the IOM had tried to find the people in the video, but they had disappeared.

Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asia-storm-idUSKCN1B60SA

Facebook removes posts made by people smugglers aiming to lure migrants

Social media content painting a positive picture of risky Mediterranean sea crossings is removed after Guardian highlights nature of material

The Guardian

By Karen McVeigh

25 August 2017

Facebook has removed several posts made by people smugglers openly advertising to attract migrants seeking passage to Europe.

Written in Arabic, many of the posts were accompanied by videos and testimonials of what the smugglers claim are successful trips across the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece, and from Egypt to Italy. All were written in recent months, a time of year when many people attempt the journey.

People smugglers make about $35bn (£27bn) a year worldwide and the industry is the main driver of migrant deaths at sea, according to the head of the International Organisation for Migration. The number of migrants who have died crossing the Mediterranean has so far reached 2,400 this year.

A spokesman for Facebook said: “People smuggling is illegal and any posts that coordinate this activity are not allowed on Facebook. We have removed all of the content that the Guardian shared with us for violating our community standards. We encourage people to use our reporting tools to flag this kind of behaviour so it can be reviewed and swiftly removed by our global team of experts, and escalated to law enforcement where required.”

Facebook posts by smugglers attempt to paint a rosy picture of the service. They are often accompanied with images of large boats in calm seas or posts about “successful” trips. In one entry, a smuggler describes himself as a noble “hero”, enabling people to access a better life in Europe. Another, in response to a query on the risks involved, says: “Some are worried about safety and security. You have to understand, it’s in our interest to get you to your destination securely so that others will come.”

The sea crossing is one of the fastest-growing black markets in the world, sparking fierce competition between smugglers whose business rests on their reputation, said Paolo Campana, a criminologist at the University of Cambridge.

“Because there is no regulation, the trust problem becomes more acute,” he said. “To trust the wrong smuggler can have fatal consequences.”

Campana is examining social media posts and court records of prosecutions to analyse the networks behind smuggling operations and understand how migrants choose between them. “It is easy to enter the market, so it is competitive,” he said. “You have to advertise your services and you have to be perceived as a competent smuggler.

“What is on Facebook is just the surface. There are closed groups, which we do not have access to. If you see what is in the public domain, then there will be even more behind closed doors,” he said.

A researcher on his team, who analysed Facebook posts mainly from smugglers offering crossings to Syrians via the eastern Mediterranean route (to the Greek islands via Turkey), found evidence of smugglers offering an insurance scheme. If the initial boat was apprehended by Turkish coastguards, a second, third or fourth trip would be free. The prices varied from $450 for a small dinghy, to $1,500 for a “safe private yacht for families”.

Campana said he didn’t know how many crossings are negotiated on the internet, but said social media was just “one aspect” of the booming illegal trade. “In the last five years there have been 2 million illegal border crossings into the EU, including Britain. More than 95% of the journeys involved a sea crossing. And you can’t do a sea crossing without the involvement of one or more smugglers.”

Between 2014 and 2015, illegal border crossings along the eastern Mediterranean route, from Turkey to Italy and Greece, increased more than 17-fold, from about 50,000 to 885,000, although they have since dropped. On the central Mediterranean route, widely considered the most dangerous into Europe, the number of crossings has soared from more than 60,000 in 2011, to 181,000 in 2016.

Campana said the EU focus on policing and naval operations in the Mediterranean was counter-productive, but the issue was a “huge moral dilemma” for authorities.

“Naval operations are very noble; however, they have the unintended consequence of assisting the smugglers by taking the refugees off their hands very close to the Libyan coast – making the ‘product’ more attractive and, ultimately, increasing the number of journeys,” Campana said.

“This is a market driven by exponential demand, and it is that demand which should be targeted. Land-based policies such as refugee resettlement schemes are politically difficult, but might ultimately prove more fruitful in stemming the smuggling tide,” he said.

Joel Millman, a spokesman for IOM, said the organisation had come across Facebook posts from smugglers trying to use their name as an endorsement. “We have had some luck with Facebook, who have shut [posts] down on the basis they are fraudulent. But, unfortunately, they pop up again.”


Source: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/aug/25/facebook-removes-posts-made-by-people-smugglers-aiming-to-lure-migrants

'Mistake' to bring rescued boat migrants to Italy: Tajani

Business Standard

25 August  2017

Catania (Italy), Aug 25 (IANS/AKI) Italy was wrong to allow all migrants saved in the Mediterranean to enter the country, Antonio Tajani, President of the European Parliament, told journalists on Friday.

"We should recall that Italy chose to be allowed to bring here all those who are rescued. And obviously, it's a mistake," Tajani said during a visit to the Sicilian port city of Catania.

"That has happened. We need to change the agreement," said Tajani, who belongs to the centre-right European People's Party containing over 70 national parties from 40 countries.

Tajani was one of the founders of billionaire media magnate and Italian ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservative Forza Italia party and is a former EU transport and industry commissioner.

Immigration is one of the thorniest issues facing politicians in Italy, where over 614,000 foreigners have arrived in the past three years, mostly sub-Saharan Africans who landed by boat from Libya.

Italy accuses other European Union countries of failing to share the burden of housing, maintaining and employing the migrants and wants to stem the influx.

It recently introduced a controversial code of conduct for charities rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean - which several have refused to sign - amid allegations that the NGOs are abetting illegal immigration.

--IANS/AKI mr/


Source:  http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/mistake-to-bring-rescued-boat-migrants-to-italy-tajani-117082501094_1.html

Libyan Coast Guard prepared for the fight against illegal immigration

The Libya Observer

24 August 2017

The Libyan Navy official spokesperson, Brigadier General Ayoub Qasim, stated that they are prepared to tackle the issue of illegal immigration and the new tactics being used by human traffickers.

Qasim said in a press statement that the decline in the flow of illegal immigration is due to the presence of the Libyan Coast Guard and Navy forces in areas where migratory boats pass.

Qasim added that curbing the work of foreign NGOs has had a positive role in reducing the smuggling of migrants as well as the movement of people in prominent smuggling areas.

Source: https://www.libyaobserver.ly/inbrief/libyan-coast-guard-prepared-fight-against-illegal-immigration

EU’s failure over illegal migrants fuels crisis

The Australian

By Bruno Waterfield - The Times

24 August 2017

Europe’s failure to send home rejected asylum-seekers is worsening the migrant crisis, senior figures in Brussels believe.

An economic migrant who survives the journey across the Mediterranean has a 73 per cent chance of remaining in the EU even if served with an order to leave, official statistics show.

Less than a third of those told to leave are removed, creating an incentive for economic migrants to join refugees striving to reach Europe.

The latest figures for migrant arrivals show a surge from Africa and Asian countries with historically lower rates of recognition of refugee status than states such as Syria and Eritrea, suggesting that many people may be moving for economic reasons.

One EU diplomat working on migration said: “The inability of EU governments to enforce deportations is the biggest pull factor. If people know that as illegal immigrants they have a 70 per cent-plus chance of being able to stay, even if ordered to leave, then it is hardly surprising people get into the boats.”

David Wood, former director-general of immigration enforcement at the UK Home Office, said: “(In) reality . . . the vast majority stay here, regardless of the merits of their application.”

The concerns come as part of a series of reports by The Times on mass migration and its effect on countries and people along migrant routes, from Nigeria to Libya, into Italy and across Europe.

There were about 2.6 million asylum applications in 2015-16 with an average success rate of 57 per cent. That left governments with one million people to return, a report by the European Commission said.

The commission registers a “rate of effective return” to non-EU countries of 36.4 per cent. When returns to the western Balkans are disregarded, the figure drops to 27 per cent.

The profile of those arriving in Europe is also changing. The largest group to arrive last year was Syrian and more than 98 per cent of them were given asylum. In the first half of this year the largest group came from Nigeria, with 14,120 arrivals. In the previous year, the last for which figures are available, 21.7 per cent of Nigerians were given asylum. Guinea, Ivory Coast and Bangladesh were the next largest sources of arrivals this year, with Syria fifth.

In a letter to governments in March, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said: “Only a third of those who should be returned are effectively returned. This is . . . not sustainable.”

The commission is considering sanctions on states that obstruct the return of failed asylum seekers, including denying visas to their citizens.

Additional reporting: Catherine Philp and Richard Ford


Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/eus-failure-over-illegal-migrants-fuels-crisis/news-story/0907204643be2020c9ac6ab2dbb9e329

Immigrants use WhatsApp to ask Spanish coastguard to rescue them after Morocco crossing

MIGRANTS making the illegal journey from Morocco to Spain are using messaging service WhatsApp to demand they are rescued and taken ashore.

Sunday Express

By Matt Drake

24 August 2017

Recent clampdowns on routes to Europe from Libya have led to an increase on the western Mediterranean passage which could overtake Greece as the busiest crossing after Libya-Italy.

Head of Tarifa’s Maritime Rescue Jose Maraver said that migrants use smartphones to tell the coastguard their exact location.

Mr Maraver said: “The ones who have data on their phones sometimes send us their exact location using WhatsApp. This is the best and most efficient way to find and rescue them.

“I believe people in Spain are starting to have negative feelings towards these immigrants. It’s becoming a problem. Those responsible for the Barcelona attack were Moroccan.”

Gangs crack down on anyone trying to make the trip on their own from Libya to Greece, but the gangs in Morocco are less organised meaning more migrants cross on their own.

According to the UN, 8,200 migrants have already made the nine-mile crossing this year, which is a huge rise from the 2,500 who made the trip during the same period last year.

Many cross on little more than toy boats which can be bought from a beach shop.

The immigrants call the Spanish coast guard on WhatsApp when they are too exhausted to paddle.

Chris Borowski from the border control agency Frontex said: “Most of the people who come through Spain are economic migrants.”

The only migrants counted in the official arrival figures are those rescued or caught, which means there could be countless more.

This has increased concerns that potential terrorists are travelling into Europe undetected.

Spain is on high alert after the recent attacks in Barcelona in which 15 people were killed.

The suspects are alleged to have links to ISIS and are of Moroccan origin.

Captain Israel Diaz Aragon, 43, skipper of a local rescue boat told The Sun that the problem is getting worse.

He said: “Spaniards are now starting to put aside the fact that these people need help. They are worrying there could be terrorists among them.”

Most of the migrants crossing are from Morocco, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Gambia which largely do not have issues which give citizens the right to refugee status.

Migrants from Morocco are sent home within two or three days if caught because of an extradition treaty between Spain and Morocco.

But migrants from sub-Saharan countries enter lengthy legal attempts to stay and although many are told to leave Spain it is thought many remain.

Ivan Fernandez of the Red Cross said: “I don’t have official figures but my personal opinion is that most of them do stay here.”


Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/845171/Immigrants-are-using-WhatsApp-to-DEMAND-Spanish-rescue-them-as-they-cross-from-Morocco

Armed Sabrathans crack down on migrant smuggling says mayor

Libya Herald

By Gabriel Harrison

22 August 2017

Sabratha’s mayor Hassen Dhawadi has said that his town is fed up with the activities of people-smugglers launching migrants from neighbourhood beaches and is clamping down by mounting armed patrols.

In an interview of Sabratha FM Radio Dhawad said  an armed group had been deployed by the “Operations Room Fighting IS” under its commander Omar Abdul Jalil. The exercise to interdict the human-traffickers had been mounted, said the mayor, with the agreement of local tribes and was being coordinated by his municipality and local security forces. Another source, quoted by Reuters who first broke the story, said the unit was known as Brigade 48.

However, Libyan political analyst Mohamed Al-Muntasser is reported to have claimed that the new armed group calls itself the Sabratha branch of the National Guard. The Libyan National Guard is the name given to the force assembled by former Libya Dawn premier Khalifa Ghwell set up this February.

There are reports that the armed group, whatever its name, is seeking financial support from the Presidency Council (PC) in Tripoli. Reuters said it had been told that several hundred civilians, police and military patrolling the beaches to stop migrant boats leaving for Europe.

Migrants who are intercepted are apparently being taken to a camp outside the town. The mayor gave no numbers for those detained there, though there are said to be several hundred. Nor is it clear if the anti-smuggling group is also arresting people-traffickers.

What is clear that there was a sharp drop in migrant departures last month with the flow of arrivals in Italy halved over July 2016. The Italian authorities are reporting that so far this month the figure is even lower than last year.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), which interviewed migrants who arrived in Sicily on Saturday, the situation has changed in Sabratha. Some migrants said it was harder to leave and that people are stopping the boats before they depart. That being said, IOM Libya reported today that 102 migrants, 95 men and seven women, were rescued by the Libyan coastguard yesterday off the coast of Sabratha. So, it seems traffickers are still trying their luck in the area.

It appears however that human traffickers have generally been avoiding Sabratha since the crackdown and have instead been funnelling migrants through Khoms, some 120 kilometres east of Tripoli.

Mayor Dhawad’s decision to take on the people-smugglers is interesting. This March, as the town ran short of petrol and diesel, he said was giving up trying to control fuel smugglers and appealed to the PC for support to stop the racket.


Source: https://www.libyaherald.com/2017/08/22/armed-sabrathans-crack-down-on-migrant-smuggling-says-mayor/


Sabratha gets new police station

Libya Herald

23 August 2017

Sabratha mayor Hassen Dhawadi has opened his town’s new police station, a day after it emerged  that an officially-sanctioned armed group of citizens has been seeking to stop people smugglers operating from neighbourhood beaches.

Members of  this new armed group, known Brigade 48, paraded as part of the ceremony.

In the wake of the 2016 US airstrikes on IS positions in the town, the terrorists attacked and occupied a number of buildings in the centre, including the police station, which were damaged in the subsequent fighting.


Source: https://www.libyaherald.com/2017/08/23/sabratha-gets-new-police-station/