Refugees caught up in Paris clean-up drive

Refugees caught up in Paris clean-up drive
French anti-riot police force CRS officers stand by as migrants wait to board buses during the evacuation of a makeshift camp at Porte de la Chapelle, in the north of Paris, in 2017. (AFP/File)
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Updated 29 March 2024
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Refugees caught up in Paris clean-up drive

Refugees caught up in Paris clean-up drive
  • Ali, who has a job as a cleaner at Disneyland Paris earning $1,500 a month, had been caught up in the French government’s policy of sending migrants from Paris to regional towns
  • Some charities welcomed the idea in principle, but worried about the implementation

VIRTY-SUR-SEINE, France: “The police arrived at 7am and said to us ‘get in the bus’,” Ali, a refugee from war-torn Sudan, remembers of the morning that police raided the squat he was living in last April in northern Paris along with 500 other migrants.
Despite having a job and refugee status, he was ordered on to the vehicle.
“We didn’t have any choice,” he explained.
Along with others scooped up at the disaffected office building, he was told he was being sent by bus to Toulouse — a nearly 700-kilometer (435-mile) trip of seven or eight hours to the southwest.
“They (the police) went from room to room to tell us to get out, then they took our identity documents and said ‘get in the bus’,” he added in an interview with AFP. “It was impossible to get out of it. They were saying we had to hurry up.”
Ali, who has a job as a cleaner at Disneyland Paris earning 1,400 euros ($1,500) a month, had been caught up in the French government’s policy of sending migrants from the capital to regional towns.
It was announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in September 2022 during a speech in which he criticized the idea of concentrating refugees and migrants in low-income and troubled neighborhoods of Paris as “absurd.”
Rather than adding strain to the stretched social services of these areas, he argued that asylum seekers and refugees could help reverse declining populations and labor shortages in other areas of the country.
Some charities welcomed the idea in principle, but worried about the implementation.
It caused immediate fury among anti-immigration politicians, and many charities now suspect Macron and his ministers of wanting to clean up Paris ahead of the Olympic Games this July and August — which the government denies.
Ali’s experience demonstrates the difficulties of relocating people.
He didn’t know Toulouse and, once he arrived there, he was taken to an asylum seekers’ center where he was told he couldn’t stay for longer than four days.
Because he had already obtained refugee status, he was also informed that he shouldn’t be there “along with 17 other refugees” who had been transported from Paris, he remembers.
“I explained that I didn’t know where to go and that I didn’t know anyone. They told me ‘it’s not our problem’,” he explained from his new home, an office building in Vitry-sur-Seine in southeast Paris occupied by 400 migrants.
Soon after arriving in the southwest, he bought a return ticket to Paris and managed to save his job at Disneyland.
Abdallah Kader, a 51-year-old from Chad in northern Africa, was another person evacuated from the Ali’s squat on the Ile-Saint-Denis, an area of Paris that will host the Olympic village during the Games.
Also with refugee status, he was sent to Bordeaux in southwest France, but decided to return to the capital soon after.
“I know people here. We help each other. I find work,” he said in Vitry-sur-Seine where he sleeps in a small former office with another refugee.
Abdallah was once employed as a security guard at one of the many building sites around Paris linked to the Olympic Games which kick off on July 26.
Several charities are convinced that the migrant transfers are linked to a desire among French authorities to banish rough-sleeping, tents and squats from the capital before the eyes of the world fall on its famed cobbled streets.
In February, an umbrella group of 80 French NGOs denounced what it called the “social cleansing” of Paris ahead of the Olympics with efforts to remove migrants, the homeless and sex workers.
“Clearly ahead of the Olympics, there are transfers, a social clean up to prepare the city for the arrival of tourists,” Jhila Prentis, a volunteer at United Migrants, a charity that works in Vitry-sur-Seine.
The group wants the state to run more checks before sending people to provincial France “so that it meets their needs and that they agree to leave,” she added, explaining that often “they have a life here.”
France logged 167,000 requests for asylum last year and Macron is under constant pressure from right-wing political opponents and public opinion to reduce immigration.
Housing Minister Guillaume Kasbarian told parliament on Tuesday that 200,000 homeless people slept each night in shelters provided by the French state, with 100,000 of these places in the capital region.
“Given the saturation in the Paris region, not everyone can find a place,” he added. “That’s why, without any link to the Olympic Games, the government put in place a dispersal policy from March 2023,” he explained.


Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in Finland, will meet defense industry

Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in Finland, will meet defense industry
Updated 6 sec ago
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Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in Finland, will meet defense industry

Ukraine’s Zelensky arrives in Finland, will meet defense industry
The two presidents will discuss Finland’s support for Ukraine
Finland’s finance, defense and foreign ministers will participate in Wednesday’s meeting

HELSINKI: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in Helsinki ahead of an official visit to Finland on Wednesday, the office of Finnish President Alexander Stubb said on Tuesday.
The two presidents will discuss Finland’s support for Ukraine, including steps to end Russia’s war, and meet with defense industry companies, it added.
The announcement comes as US President Donald Trump started a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to secure a ceasefire in Russia’s war with Ukraine and move toward a more permanent end to the three-year conflict.
Finland’s finance, defense and foreign ministers will participate in Wednesday’s presidential palace meeting, and Zelensky will also meet with Prime Minister Petteri Orpo and parliament speaker Jussi Halla-aho, Finland said.
During his second visit to Finland since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky is accompanied by his wife Olena Zelenska who will visit local schools with Stubb’s wife Suzanne Innes-Stubb, the Finnish statement said.

AI ‘reshaping’ organized crime, warns Europol

AI ‘reshaping’ organized crime, warns Europol
Updated 11 min 3 sec ago
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AI ‘reshaping’ organized crime, warns Europol

AI ‘reshaping’ organized crime, warns Europol
  • Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle described the report as a “wake-up call” for law enforcement
  • “We will not let organized crime dictate the rules of the game,” she said

THE HAGUE: Artificial intelligence is turbocharging organized crime, from creating child sexual abuse images to money laundering via cryptocurrency, Europol warned Tuesday, with advances like quantum computing only poised to make things worse.
Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle described the report as a “wake-up call” for law enforcement, telling top officers from around Europe that “the future of European security is in our hands.”
“This is a fight of the rule of law, for our communities, for our businesses, and for the future of our children. We will not let organized crime dictate the rules of the game,” she said.
In its report laying out the threats posed by organized crime, the European police organization said criminals had seized on the opportunities offered by AI as a “catalyst” to accelerate their activities.
“Rapid technological advancements — especially in artificial intelligence (AI) — are reshaping how crime is organized, executed, and concealed,” Europol said in a detailed 80-page “threat assessment” report.
“These shifts are making organized crime more dangerous, posing an unprecedented challenge to security across the EU and its member states,” the police added.
The use of AI and other technologies are helping criminals across the whole of their portfolio — from drug and human trafficking, to cybercrime and identity theft.
Generative AI enables criminal gangs to hit their targets more globally across multiple languages and even generate child sexual abuse images, the police report warned.
“Explicit pictures of adults can be manipulated to make the individual look younger or applications can ‘nudify’ non-explicit images,” the report said.
“The very qualities that make AI revolutionary — accessibility, versatility, and sophistication — have made it an attractive tool for criminals,” noted Europol.
Technology is also making it harder for authorities to recover ill-gotten gains.
Confiscation of proceeds from crime has stagnated at around two percent, the police said, with the challenge “further exacerbated by the increasing criminal exploitation of digital assets.”
Criminal groups are using cryptocurrency to launder money and move funds around, making it hard to track and eventually confiscate.
“The criminal exploitation of cryptocurrency as a payment method now has moved beyond the scope of cybercrime, and is encountered increasingly in more traditional crime areas such as drug trafficking or migrant smuggling.”
As technology improves, the boost to criminal activity is only likely to increase, according to Europol, noting the rapid developments in quantum computing, the metaverse, 6G, unmanned systems and brain-computer interfaces.
“The high levels of anonymity, speed, and sophistication currently demonstrated by criminal networks will only likely increase over the coming years,” cautioned the report.
Quantum computing in particular will enable criminals to crack current encryption technology with ease.
Finally, the police raised the dystopian prospect of criminal gangs run entirely by AI.
“The emergence of fully autonomous AI could pave the way for entirely AI-controlled criminal networks, marking a new era in organized crime,” said the report.


Trump administration reinstating 24,500 fired workers after court order

Trump administration reinstating 24,500 fired workers after court order
Updated 31 min 54 sec ago
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Trump administration reinstating 24,500 fired workers after court order

Trump administration reinstating 24,500 fired workers after court order
  • The mass firings, part of President Donald Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce, were widely reported
  • The court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration in court filings has for the first time acknowledged that it fired nearly 25,000 recently hired workers, and said agencies were working to bring all of them back after a judge ruled that their terminations were likely illegal.
The filings made in Baltimore, Maryland, federal court late Monday include statements from officials at 18 agencies, all of whom said the reinstated probationary workers were being placed on administrative leave at least temporarily.
The mass firings, part of President Donald Trump’s broader purge of the federal workforce, were widely reported, but the court filings are the first full accounting of the terminations by the administration.
Most of the agencies said they had fired a few hundred workers. The Treasury Department terminated about 7,600 people, the Department of Agriculture about 5,700 and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to the filings.
US District Judge James Bredar on March 13 said the mass firings of probationary workers that began last month violated regulations governing the mass layoffs of federal employees, and ordered them to be reinstated pending further litigation.
Probationary workers typically have less than one year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees.
Bredar’s ruling came in a lawsuit by 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C., who said the mass firings would trigger a spike in unemployment claims and greater demand for social services provided by states.
The office of Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, which is spearheading the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The Trump administration has appealed Bredar’s decision and on Monday asked a Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court to pause the ruling pending the outcome of the case.
Hours before Bredar issued his ruling, a federal judge in San Francisco had ordered that probationary workers be reinstated at six agencies, including five also covered by Bredar’s order and the US Department of Defense. The administration has also appealed that decision.
In the filings late Monday, agency officials said they had either reinstated all of the fired employees or were working to do so, but warned that bringing back large numbers of workers had imposed significant burdens and caused confusion and turmoil.
The officials also noted that an appeals court ruling reversing Bredar’s order would allow agencies to again fire the workers, subjecting them to multiple changes in their employment status in a matter of weeks.
“The tremendous uncertainty associated with this confusion and these administrative burdens impede supervisors from appropriately managing their workforce,” Mark Green, deputy assistant secretary at the US Department of the Interior, wrote in one of the filings. “Work schedules and assignments are effectively being tied to hearing and briefing schedules set by the courts.”
Bredar has scheduled a hearing for March 26 on whether to keep his ruling in place pending the outcome of the lawsuit, which could take months or longer to resolve.


At least 18 killed in airstrike on market in northern Mali, separatist group says

At least 18 killed in airstrike on market in northern Mali, separatist group says
Updated 18 March 2025
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At least 18 killed in airstrike on market in northern Mali, separatist group says

At least 18 killed in airstrike on market in northern Mali, separatist group says
  • The army said it had mounted an attack targeting armed militants.
  • Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups

BAMAKO: At least 18 people have been killed in an airstrike in northern Mali, a separatist group said. The army said it had mounted an attack targeting armed militants.
The Collective for the Defense of the Rights of the Azawad People, which is part of a Tuareg separatist coalition, said Monday the Malian army bombed a market 50 km (30 miles) north of Lerneb, in the Timbuktu region.
Seven people were also injured in the strike on Sunday, the group said in a statement, denouncing a “barbaric act from another age” and a “flagrant human rights violation.”
Mali’s army said Monday in a statement on X it carried out air strikes on a “refuge” in the same area cited by the separatist group, killing 11 “terrorists.”
Mali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for more than a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group.
Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russian mercenary units for security assistance instead.
Since seizing power in 2021, Col. Assimi Goita has struggled to curb violence in central and northern Mali, while the army has been accused of targeting civilians.
Last month, the Front for the Liberation of Azawad, the coalition of Tuareg separatist groups, accused the Malian army and Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group of “coldly executing” at least 24 people in northern Mali.
Last year, the rights group Human Rights Watch said in a report the army and Russian mercenaries killed at least 32 civilians, including seven in a drone strike, kidnapped four others, and burned at least 100 homes in towns and villages in central and northern Mali between May and December.


Australia slams reported targeting of citizen by Hong Kong

Australia slams reported targeting of citizen by Hong Kong
Updated 18 March 2025
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Australia slams reported targeting of citizen by Hong Kong

Australia slams reported targeting of citizen by Hong Kong
  • The letters offered a reward of $128,000 to anyone who could provide information about him
  • “The Australian government will not tolerate surveillance, harassment or intimidation against individuals or family members here in Australia,” said a spokesperson

SYDNEY: Australia voiced unease on Tuesday over anonymous letters reportedly offering hefty rewards for information on a Hong Kong activist now living in Melbourne.
Australian citizen Kevin Yam, a lawyer and longtime Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, was targeted in letters that carried his photo and alleged national security offenses.
The letters, first reported in The Guardian newspaper, offered a reward of HK$1 million ($128,000) to anyone who could provide information about him and the allegations or “take him to Hong Kong or Australia Metropolitan Police.”
They were sent to homes next to two Melbourne locations cited in the notices as being linked to Yam, the paper said.
“The Australian government will not tolerate surveillance, harassment or intimidation against individuals or family members here in Australia — this undermines our national sovereignty and the security and safety of Australians,” said a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
“We are raising our concerns directly with Chinese and Hong Kong authorities.”
In a message on social media, Yam said he would continue to live his “everyday life.”
“I will not voluntarily return to Hong Kong before it is free,” he said.
“I will not kill myself.”
Beijing expressed “strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition” to what it called “Australia’s blatant interference” in Hong Kong’s law.
“Hong Kong affairs are purely a Chinese internal affair and brook no interference from any outside powers,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular briefing, when asked about the case concerning Yam.
“China urges Australia to earnestly respect China’s sovereignty... and create favorable conditions and atmosphere for the sustainable development of China-Australia relations,” she added.
The letters were not signed but asked for information to be sent to a Hong Kong police email address used for tip-offs on wanted people.
The Hong Kong government said it does not issue anonymous letters.
Recipients should “remain cautious to verify the authenticity” of any such letters and seek help from local police if needed, a government spokesman told AFP.
Hong Kong law enforcement will pursue overseas suspects in accordance with the law and “take every measure” to stop them from continuing to endanger national security, the spokesman added.
Yam reportedly returned to Australia in 2022 after two decades in Hong Kong.
In 2023, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee called on eight overseas activists including Yam to turn themselves in for violating the national security law.
At the time, he backed a police decision to offer HK$1 million for information leading to their arrests, and warned the activists to surrender or “spend their days in fear.”
All eight fled Hong Kong after Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on the financial hub in 2020 to quell dissent after huge, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests in 2019 were quashed.