Knife crime looms larger than virus in Greek refugee camp

Riot police use tear gas against protesting refugees and migrants during a demonstration on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece. (AP Photo)
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Updated 11 June 2020
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Knife crime looms larger than virus in Greek refugee camp

  • Whereas COVID-19 has yet to surface officially at the vastly overcrowded camp of Moria, five people have been murdered in knifings
  • Tension between Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras and Tajik are a frequent source of violence

LESBOS ISLAND, Greece: Inside Greece’s largest asylum-seeker camp on the island of Lesbos, the coronavirus is an oft-heard threat that has kept migrant facilities around the country under lockdown since March.
But knife crime is the real killer.
Whereas COVID-19 has yet to surface officially at the vastly overcrowded camp of Moria, five people have been murdered in knifings since the start of the year, including a woman and a young boy. Ten others have been injured.
Two of the attacks were carried out in the central square of the port capital of Mytilene.
“The situation gets worse every day,” says Muhammad, a Syrian stuck at Moria with his pregnant wife and their little girl for the past seven months.
“We fear for our children. Every day there is unrest, and every night they fight with knives,” he told AFP.
Tension between Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras and Tajik are a frequent source of violence, says Nazifa, a teacher from that country.
“Yesterday, people came to our tent asking if we are Hazara or Tajik. We are neither, so both sides now consider us foes,” she said.
Originally imposed on March 18, the lockdown in island camps has been extended three times, most recently to June 21.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) this week criticized the lockdown extension as “discriminatory” and “counter-productive.”
“The extension of movement restrictions imposed on asylum seekers who are living in the Greek reception centers will further reduce their already limited access to basic services and medical care,” the group’s field coordinator on Lesbos, Marco Sandrone, said in a statement.
“In the current phase of the COVID-19 epidemic, it is absolutely not justified from a public health point of view,” he said.
“This population doesn’t represent a risk. They are at risk,” Sandrone said, noting that people were trapped in overcrowded camps with limited access to water and sanitation, and where social distancing measures were “just impossible” to apply.
The Greek government had planned to relocate to the mainland over 2,300 asylum seekers from island camps — including many elderly and ailing persons — but the operation has been delayed by the pandemic.
The UN refugee agency had also urged last month that the exceptional measures be lifted “as soon as possible.”
Ibrahim, a former mechanic from Kabul, says the restrictions are preventing him from obtaining food for his family.
“We can no longer go to town and we have to buy supplies at the camp store,” he said.
“We tried to go once, but the police turned us back.”
He agrees that the biggest concern in Moria is public safety.
“There are 100 police for 20,000 residents,” he said.
The migration ministry has said that small groups of camp residents are allowed out at regular intervals to obtain supplies, under police supervision.
Fardeen, a 17-year-old Afghan, has been stranded at the camp for nine months.
He says that other residents, who were allowed into Mytilene for medical appointments, saw no Greeks wearing masks on the street.
“(The locals) don’t seem to care much about the virus. Are these measures only for migrants? Am I different?” he asks.
“Today the police turned us away from the beach. Swimming is one of the few things that helps us forget about living in Moria,” he said.
Dozens of Africans last month marched out of a hotel near the Peloponnese town of Kranidi to protest against a total lockdown imposed in April after over 150 people at the facility tested COVID-19 positive.
Authorities extended the Kranidi hotel lockdown to June 14 after three more cases were discovered in May.
More than 31,000 asylum seekers live in the five camps on the Aegean islands, with a total capacity of 6,095 people.
Nearly 17,000 live in Moria.
The migration ministry has recently stepped up asylum procedures, sorting through more than 6,000 requests in May.
Hundreds of refugees who have secured asylum have been queueing daily at the port of Mytilene, and over 500 have boarded ferries to Piraeus since last week, local news website StoNisi said.


Pakistan locks down capital ahead of a planned rally by Imran Khan supporters

Updated 3 sec ago
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Pakistan locks down capital ahead of a planned rally by Imran Khan supporters

  • Interior Ministry is considering a suspension of mobile phone services in parts of Pakistan in the coming days
  • Pakistan has banned gatherings of five or more people in Islamabad for two months to deter Khan’s supporters
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is sealing off its capital, Islamabad, ahead of a planned rally by supporters of imprisoned former premier Imran Khan.
It’s the second time in as many months that authorities have imposed such measures to thwart tens of thousands of people from gathering in the city to demand Khan’s release.
The latest lockdown coincides with the visit of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who arrives in Islamabad on Monday.
Local media reported that the Interior Ministry is considering a suspension of mobile phone services in parts of Pakistan in the coming days. On Friday, the National Highways and Motorway Police announced that key routes would close for maintenance.
It advised people to avoid unnecessary travel and said the decision was taken following intelligence reports that “angry protesters” are planning to create a law and order situation and damage public and private property on Sunday, the day of the planned rally.
“There are reports that protesters are coming with sticks and slingshots,” the statement added.
Multicolored shipping containers, a familiar sight to people living and working in Islamabad, reappeared on key roads Saturday to throttle traffic.
Pakistan has already banned gatherings of five or more people in Islamabad for two months to deter Khan’s supporters and activists from his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI.
Khan has been in prison for more than a year in connection and has over 150 criminal cases against him. But he remains popular and the PTI says the cases are politically motivated.
A three-day shutdown was imposed in Islamabad for a security summit last month.

Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

Updated 30 min 29 sec ago
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Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

  • Doctors sent Rohitash Kumar, 25, to mortuary instead of conducting postmortem after he fell ill
  • Kumar was rushed to hospital on Friday for treatment but was confirmed dead later

JAIPUR: An Indian man awoke on a funeral pyre moments before it was to be set on fire after a doctor skipped a postmortem, medical officials said Saturday.
Rohitash Kumar, 25, who had speaking and hearing difficulties, had fallen sick and was taken to a hospital in Jhunjhunu in the western state of Rajasthan on Thursday.
Indian media reported he had had an epileptic seizure, and a doctor declared him dead on arrival at the hospital.
But instead of the required postmortem to ascertain the cause of death, doctors sent him to the mortuary, and then to be burned according to Hindu rites.
D. Singh, chief medical officer of the hospital, told AFP that a doctor had “prepared the postmortem report without actually doing the postmortem, and the body was then sent for cremation.”
Singh said that “shortly before the pyre was to be lit, Rohitash’s body started movements,” adding that “he was alive and was breathing.”
Kumar was rushed to hospital for a second time, but was confirmed dead on Friday during treatment.
Authorities have suspended the services of three doctors and the police have launched an investigation.


NATO chief discusses ‘global security’ with Trump

Updated 39 min 8 sec ago
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NATO chief discusses ‘global security’ with Trump

  • NATO allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security

Brussels: NATO chief Mark Rutte held talks with US President-elect Donald Trump in Florida on the “global security issues facing the alliance,” a spokeswoman said Saturday.
The meeting took place on Friday in Palm Beach, NATO’s Farah Dakhlallah said in a statement.
In his first term Trump aggressively pushed Europe to step up defense spending and questioned the fairness of the NATO transatlantic alliance.
The former Dutch prime minister had said he wanted to meet Trump two days after Trump was elected on November 5, and discuss the threat of increasingly warming ties between North Korea and Russia.
Trump’s thumping victory to return to the US presidency has set nerves jangling in Europe that he could pull the plug on vital Washington military aid for Ukraine.
NATO allies say keeping Kyiv in the fight against Moscow is key to both European and American security.
“What we see more and more is that North Korea, Iran, China and of course Russia are working together, working together against Ukraine,” Rutte said recently at a European leaders’ meeting in Budapest.
“At the same time, Russia has to pay for this, and one of the things they are doing is delivering technology to North Korea,” which he warned was threatening to the “mainland of the US (and) continental Europe.”
“I look forward to sitting down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively,” Rutte said.


Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

Updated 51 min 14 sec ago
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Indian man awakes on funeral pyre

JAIPUR, India: An Indian man awoke on a funeral pyre moments before it was to be set on fire after a doctor skipped a postmortem, medical officials said Saturday.
Rohitash Kumar, 25, who had speaking and hearing difficulties, had fallen sick and was taken to a hospital in Jhunjhunu in the western state of Rajasthan on Thursday.
Indian media reported he had had an epileptic seizure, and a doctor declared him dead on arrival at the hospital.
But instead of the required postmortem to ascertain the cause of death, doctors sent him to the mortuary, and then to be burned according to Hindu rites.
D. Singh, chief medical officer of the hospital, told AFP that a doctor had “prepared the postmortem report without actually doing the postmortem, and the body was then sent for cremation.”
Singh said that “shortly before the pyre was to be lit, Rohitash’s body started movements,” adding that “he was alive and was breathing.”
Kumar was rushed to hospital for a second time, but was confirmed dead on Friday during treatment.
Authorities have suspended the services of three doctors and the police have launched an investigation.


Fighting between armed sectarian groups in restive northwestern Pakistan kills at least 33 people

Updated 23 November 2024
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Fighting between armed sectarian groups in restive northwestern Pakistan kills at least 33 people

  • Senior police officer said Saturday armed men torched shops, houses and government property overnight
  • Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram

PESHAWAR: Fighting between armed Sunni and Shiite groups in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 33 people and injured 25 others, a senior police officer from the region said Saturday.
The overnight violence was the latest to rock Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and comes days after a deadly gun ambush killed 42 people.
Shiite Muslims make up about 15 percent of the 240 million people in Sunni-majority Pakistan, which has a history of sectarian animosity between the communities.
Although the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram.
The senior police officer said armed men in Bagan and Bacha Kot torched shops, houses and government property.
Intense gunfire was ongoing between the Alizai and Bagan tribes in the Lower Kurram area.
“Educational institutions in Kurram are closed due to the severe tension. Both sides are targeting each other with heavy and automatic weapons,” said the officer, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Videos shared with The Associated Press showed a market engulfed by fire and orange flames piercing the night sky. Gunfire can also be heard.
The location of Thursday’s attack was also targeted by armed men, who marched on the area.
Survivors of the gun ambush said assailants emerged from a vehicle and sprayed buses and cars with bullets. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack and police have not identified a motive.
Dozens of people from the district’s Sunni and Shiite communities have been killed since July, when a land dispute erupted in Kurram that later turned into general sectarian violence.