ROME/BRUSSELS: Italy’s populist government said on Friday it would cut funds for the EU unless other states take in boat migrants stranded in an Italian port, earning a rebuke from Brussels for making unacceptable “threats.”
Diplomatic sources told Reuters a meeting of EU state envoys in Brussels found no agreement on how to deal with the 150 mostly Eritrean migrants on board the Diciotti, an Italian coast guard ship docked in Catania since Monday.
More than 650,000 people have reached Italian shores since 2014 and Rome has begun to take a rigidly anti-immigration line, saying it will not let any more rescue ships dock unless other EU states agree to take the people in.
“There has not been a deal on Diciotti,” one diplomat said after the Brussels talks.
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who heads the anti-immigrant League party, has said they will not be allowed ashore until other EU states agree to take them in — prompting a criminal investigation into whether the migrants are being held against their will.
Salvini’s government ally, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, who leads the 5-Star Movement, has said his party will not approve next year’s European Union funding if there is no action soon.
“The soft line does not work, the hard line will be to withhold funds if they don’t listen to us,” Di Maio said.
Rejecting the Italian threats as unacceptable, the EU’s executive European Commission said a solution to the Diciotti case was its “main priority.”
“Unconstructive comments, let alone threats ... will not get us any closer to a solution,” spokesman Alexander Winterstein told a news conference on Friday.
The issue of how to handle migrants has bitterly split the EU, although arrivals are down dramatically from their 2015 peak of more than a million.
Southern EU states like Italy and Greece feel overrun and the bloc’s eastern members refuse to host any of the new arrivals.
The easterners, who face cuts in EU development aid over their refusal to help on migration, did not attend the Brussels meeting on Friday. Malta, Italy, Spain, Greece, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, France, Ireland and the Netherlands were present.
CURTAILING ARRIVALS
In Italy, a campaign promise to further curtail arrivals helped propel the 5-Star and the League into office last June.
Deals were reached in June and July to distribute people from ships that carried rescued migrants to Italy and Malta.
But Salvini this week said countries were failing to keep their promises.
Opposition politicians who visited the Diciotti this week condemned Salvini and Di Maio.
“The worst thing is that (the migrants) are being held hostage as a way of blackmailing Europe,” said Laura Boldrini, a lawmaker for the left-wing Free and Equal party.
The migrants appeared to have started a hunger strike on Friday, Davide Faraone, a lawmaker in the opposition Democratic Party, said on Twitter.
Another opposition lawmaker, Riccardo Magi, said most on board could qualify for asylum.
Magi petitioned the Catania prosecutor to open a criminal investigation into whether the migrants were being held against their will. Agrigento’s chief prosecutor has opened a probe against “unknown” persons for holding them.
On Friday, Salvini remained defiant in the face of the investigation and said it was his job to protect the country.
“If someone is thinking about arresting me, they’re mistaken, because the Italian people are asking for order, rules, respect and controlled immigration,” he said.
Italy clashes with EU over migrants stranded on rescue boat
Italy clashes with EU over migrants stranded on rescue boat
- Italian coast guard vessel Diciotti has been docked in the port of Catania, Sicily for days
- Many of the 150 migrants stranded aboard the ship for a ninth day began a hunger strike out of frustration
DR Congo offers bounty for arrest of M23 leaders
- The M23, which, according to UN experts, is backed by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, resumed its fight against the government in Kinshasa in 2021 and has since seized swaths of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda
KINSHASA: Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo are offering a $5-million reward for help in arresting leaders of the M23 group that recently captured two major northern towns, the Justice Ministry announced.
“A reward of $5 million is offered to any person who helps arrest the convicts Corneille Nangaa, Bertrand Bisimwa and Sultani Makenga,” the ministry said in a statement.
Nangaa, a leader in the River Congo Alliance, or AFC, a military-political coalition to which the M23 belongs, is a former president of the DRC’s electoral commission.
Bisimwa and Makenga are, respectively, the president and military chief of the M23.
Tried in absentia in Kinshasa, all three men were convicted and sentenced to death in August 2024.
DRC authorities are also offering a bounty of $4 million for any information leading to the arrest of the three men’s “accomplices on the run” and “other sought individuals,” the statement said.
The M23, which, according to UN experts, is backed by some 4,000 Rwandan soldiers, resumed its fight against the government in Kinshasa in 2021 and has since seized swaths of territory in North Kivu, which borders Rwanda.
A lightning offensive in recent weeks has captured the provincial capital, Goma, and Bukavu, the main cities in the neighboring province of South Kivu.
The DRC’s mineral-rich east has been ravaged for three decades by conflict and atrocities.
According to the Financial Times, the US is in exploratory talks with the DRC over a deal that would give Washington access to critical minerals in the country.
Congo approached the US last month, proposing a deal that would offer exploration rights to the US in exchange for support for the government of President Felix Tshisekedi, the newspaper reported, citing public documents.
Security sources said on Friday at least 35 people were killed when pro-government militia attacked a village in the restive eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,
The attack happened at about 3 a.m. on Thursday in the village of Tambi, in the Masisi area of North Kivu province controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.
A security source said that at least 35 people were killed in the attack, while local sources and an eyewitness put the death toll at more than 40.
A community leader and a medical source said villagers had recently returned to the area after having fled fighting between the M23 and the Congolese army and local militia.
“The militia went to attack Tambi where residents had started to return ... they opened fire and civilians were killed,” said one community leader, who said 43 people died.
“They put some victims in a church and then shot them. Those who were in the fields were killed there.”
The community leader, a local health worker, and a local resident said another group of civilians sought refuge in a house and died when the militia set it on fire.
“We counted 47 bodies in the morning,” the resident said, adding that they were buried in a communal grave.
Some of the victims were unable to be identified because of their burns, he added.
Protesters on International Women’s Day demand equal rights, end to discrimination, sexual violence
- On the Asian side of Turkiye’s biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing
- In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific health care, equal pay and other issues
ISTANBUL: Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa and elsewhere to mark International Women’s Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence.
On the Asian side of Turkiye’s biggest city Istanbul, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women’s groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine.
The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women’s role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading “Family will not bind us to life” and “We will not be sacrificed to the family.”
Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women’s rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women.
Erdogan in 2021 withdrew Turkiye from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkiye’s We Will Stop Femicides Platform says 394 women were killed by men in 2024.
“There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further,” Yaz Gulgun, 52, said.
Women across Europe and Africa march against discrimination
In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific health care, equal pay and other issues in which they don’t get the same treatment as men.
In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women.
Opening the center on International Women’s Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe’s most restrictive abortion laws.
From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work.
In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisele Pélicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious.
Pélicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence.
In the Nigerian capital of Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson Stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood.
Many were dressed in purple — the traditional color of the women’s liberation movement.
In Russia, the women’s day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St. Petersburg.
Germany’s president warns of backlash against progress already made
In Berlin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made.
“Globally, we are seeing populist parties trying to create the impression that equality is something like a fixed idea of progressive forces,” he said. He gave an example of ” large tech companies that have long prided themselves on their modernity and are now, at the behest of a new American administration, setting up diversity programs and raving about a new ‘masculine energy’ in companies and society.”
UK govt cuts funding for Islamophobia reporting service
- Tell Mama, founded in 2012, provides ‘invaluable’ data, police sources tell The Guardian
- The organization, which received 10,700 reports of Islamophobia last year, faces closure
LONDON: The UK government is ending funding for Islamophobia reporting service Tell Mama, The Guardian reported on Saturday.
The project, founded in 2012, is now facing closure weeks after it reported a record number of anti-Muslim hate incidents across the country.
Since its launch, Tell Mama has been wholly funded by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The ministry told Tell Mama that no grant would be provided by the end of March, without providing alternative arrangements.
Data provided by the service to police under a 2015 sharing agreement has been “invaluable” for monitoring community cohesion and responding to threats, police sources told The Guardian.
Tell Mama received 10,700 reports of Islamophobia last year, with 9,600 being verified. Muslims were the most targeted group in hate attacks in the year ending March 2024, according to police figures. They made up 38 percent of victims nationwide.
Tell Mama’s founder Fiyaz Mughal said its resources were being cut while “the far right and populists across Europe are growing significantly. There are going to be more individuals targeted, we know that in the current environment, and where are they going to go?
“This is an injustice at a time where I have never seen anti-Muslim rhetoric become so mainstream.”
Tell Mama provides a crucial point of contact for vulnerable people who often feel unable to contact the police, Mughal said.
“I’m not aware of any other organisation that can do this work and even if a new agency tried, it would take them 10 to 15 years to reach where Tell Mama is,” he added.
On Feb. 28, the government announced a new working group on anti-Muslim hatred that will create a new definition of Islamophobia and “support a wider stream of work to tackle the unacceptable incidents of anti-Muslim hatred.”
But Mughal accused the government of “saying one thing and doing another,” adding: “Labour talks a lot about countering Islamophobia but they are cutting the only project doing anything on a national scale — supporting victims, working with numerous police forces and supporting prosecutions.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council said Tell Mama’s contributions “have allowed for the effective analysis of community tensions and informed actions to reduce such tensions.”
A spokesperson for the ministry responsible for the cut said: “Religious and racial hatred has absolutely no place in our society, and we will not tolerate Islamophobia in any form.
“This year we have made up to £1 million ($1.29 million) of funding available to Tell Mama to provide support for victims of Islamophobia, and we will set out our approach to future funding in due course.”
Polish PM says appeasement led to ‘more bombs’ from Russia in Ukraine
- “More bombs, more aggression, more victims,” Tusk wrote on X
WARSAW: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Saturday slammed deadly Russian overnight strikes on Ukraine as the result of “what happens when someone appeases barbarians.”
“More bombs, more aggression, more victims. Another tragic night in Ukraine,” Tusk wrote on X, formerly Twitter, following Russian attacks that killed at least 14 people in Ukraine’s east and northeast.
UK says Australia ‘considering’ joining group to protect Ukraine peace
- European countries have been rushing to boost support for Ukraine
- Several European states have said they would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine as a “security guarantee“
LONDON: The UK on Saturday said that Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was considering joining a group of countries prepared to protect an eventual ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Britain and France have been leading efforts to form the so-called “coalition of the willing,” with the United States’ long-term commitment to Europe’s security now in doubt under President Donald Trump.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “spoke to the Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese this morning,” the UK leader’s office said on Saturday.
“He welcomed Prime Minister Albanese’s commitment to consider contributing to a Coalition of the Willing for Ukraine and looked forward to the Chiefs of Defense meeting in Paris on Tuesday.”
European countries have been rushing to boost support for Ukraine as Trump pursues direct talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to end Moscow’s three-year-long invasion of Ukraine.
Several European states have said they would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine as a “security guarantee.”
Key details about the “coalition of the willing” have not been specified, but the grouping was mentioned by Starmer during a summit of European leaders in London last Sunday aimed at guaranteeing “lasting peace” in Ukraine.
British officials have held talks with around 20 countries interested in being part of the group, a UK official said on Thursday.
The official refused to name the nations but said they were “largely European and Commonwealth partners.”
Earlier this week, Albanese told journalists that Australia was “ready to assist” Ukraine.
“There’s discussion at the moment about potential peacekeeping,” he said. “From my government’s perspective, we’re open to consideration of any proposals going forward.”
