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EU Declares War On People Smugglers, Commissioner Says

EU Declares War On People Smugglers, Commissioner Says

dpa, (TNS)

WARSAW — Europe has “declared a war” on smugglers transporting immigrants across the Mediterranean, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Thursday, adding that the boats of human traffickers should be seized and destroyed.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, will draw up an action plan by the end of May, which will include fighting people smuggling, Avramopoulous said.

Avramopoulos met with the director of the EU border-protection service, Frontex, in the Polish capital and referred to Frontex’s Mediterranean border-control missions Triton and Poseidon, which can also carry out rescues when they encounter people in distress at sea.

“No human should be left to drown at sea, and no country should be left alone to bear responsibility for the whole of Europe,” the commissioner said on the European Day for Border Guards.

“Some member states have received heavy pressure of migratory flows; others have not,” he said. “We have to share that pressure.”

Avramopoulos’ visit to Warsaw came after EU foreign and defense ministers agreed Monday to establish a naval mission to crack down on migrant-smuggling networks in the Mediterranean. The mission will need a UN Security Council mandate to meet its target launch date in June.

The European Union is trying to curb the loss of life at sea as an unprecedented number of immigrants are trying this year to reach the bloc’s southern shores by paying smugglers to place them on rickety, overcrowded vessels.

This week’s decision followed what the UN refugee agency described as “the deadliest incident in the Mediterranean…ever recorded” when an April 18 shipwreck claimed the lives of an estimated 800 people.

Photo: Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa/U.S. 6th Fleet via Flickr

Smugglers Defy Conflict-Diamonds Ban In Central African Republic

Smugglers Defy Conflict-Diamonds Ban In Central African Republic

By Ilya Gridneff, Bloomberg News (TNS)

Diamond smuggler Akani Natacha Glawdys tilts a tiny gem in her palm and smiles as a sparkle ripples through the rough yellow rock.

“See?” she asks excitedly in a room at the Relais des Chasses hotel in the Central African Republic capital, Bangui. “A bit cloudy, so not the best, but still good.” If it were clearer, the stone could fetch as much as $2,000 from local traders who export to buyers in Europe, she explained. The gem’s opacity means it will only fetch $700.

Gladwys, 34, is part of a trafficking network that unashamedly flouts a diamond-trading ban imposed on her country by the Kimberley Process, a global gem-verification group formed to halt the outflow of precious stones from conflict zones. It’s a sign of the complete chaos in Central African Republic, the only country among 22 diamond producers to be covered by a ban.

The embargo was imposed in May 2013, two months after an alliance of mainly Muslim militias known as Seleka overthrew President Francois Bozize, a Christian. The takeover was marked by the widespread killing of civilians and other crimes, Human Rights Watch says. The United Nations says more than 2.5 million people need urgent humanitarian assistance.

The Kimberley Process banned the trade in Central African Republic gems because, the group said, there was no way to determine whether conflict diamonds had been eliminated from the country’s shipments. The Kimberley Process represents 81 countries, including the U.S., the European Union, Russia, China, and South Africa.

Even before the ban, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds left Central African Republic via the black market. High taxes on diamonds — 12 percent compared with 3.25 percent in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo — led to about 30 percent of output being smuggled to Cameroon or Sudan’s Darfur region, according to the International Peace Information Service, or IPIS, an Antwerp, Belgium-based research group.

The illegal diamond trade continues to flourish, according to a UN panel of experts on Central African Republic. Since the ban was introduced, at least 140,000 carats of diamonds valued at $24 million have been smuggled out of the country, said Aurelien Llorca, coordinator of the UN panel.

Illicit diamond revenue is used to buy arms, pay soldiers, and enrich rebel leaders of the main militia groupings: Seleka and a mostly Christian force, Kasper Agger, a Central African Republic analyst with the Washington-based conflict-resolution group Enough Project, said in an email.

Diamonds in Central African Republic, which ranked as the world’s 1tenth-biggest producer by value in 2012, have funded successive military regimes since the country gained independence from France in 1960. Rulers have treated the industry as a “cash cow,” imposing high taxes on exports and demanding a share of production to help sustain political support, according to IPIS.

Under the rule of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who seized power in January 1966 before proclaiming himself emperor with a diamond-encrusted crown a decade later, production plunged by more than half to about 290,000 carats, according to IPIS.

The diamond and gold industry in Central African Republic relies on as many as 100,000 informal, or artisanal, miners. At least 600,000 people — about 13 percent of the country’s population — depend at least partly on the industry for their income, according to the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based advocacy group.

The country’s diamond trading has traditionally been run by Muslims, who have used their shared religion and Arabic language to create networks in neighboring countries such as Sudan and Chad, Thierry Vircoulon, Central African Republic project director for ICG, said in Nairobi, Kenya.

Bozize’s October 2008 purge of the industry, in which diamonds, cash, and equipment were confiscated, pushed many disgruntled Muslim traders and diggers to join rebel ranks, he said. That ultimately led to the government’s downfall five years later when Seleka fighters seized Bangui.

“Significant quantities” of cheap Chinese-made grenades and Chinese, Sudanese, and European arms and ammunition have poured into Central African Republic since the war began, according to a December report by Brussels-based Conflict Armament Research.

The Kimberley Process in June issued a statement urging diamond-trading countries to “exercise enhanced vigilance” and “ensure that diamonds produced in Central African Republic are seized and are not allowed to circulate in legitimate trade.”

The appeal came after an operation in May, highlighted in an October report by the UN panel, in which Belgian federal authorities seized rough diamonds worth $1.7 million. They said the stones probably originated in Central African Republic and were smuggled from that country via the Democratic Republic of Congo and then Dubai.

In its report, the UN said that the seized diamonds had been sent to Kardiam, the Antwerp branch of Bangui-based Bureau d’Achat de Diamante en Centrafrique, or Badica. The UN also alleged that Badica had funded Seleka, the rebel group that carried out the 2013 coup. The Dubai Diamond Exchange said in July the diamonds came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a valid certificate.

Kimberley Process Chairman Bernardo Campos didn’t respond to two emailed requests for comment and no one answered emails sent via its website.

Abbas Abdulkarim, a Badica administrative director, denied smuggling diamonds or supporting Seleka rebels. He blamed competitors that he didn’t identify for the accusations.

“The UN experts didn’t speak to us,” he said in English learned from growing up in Canada. “The diamond field here is pretty rough. There are four main companies fighting, so it’s in their interest to say we are financing Seleka, smuggling.”

Revenue has fallen as much as 90 percent since the ban was introduced, he said, opening a white envelope filled with hundreds of tiny yellow and green diamonds.

“This is one month we’ve collected,” he said. “It’s probably about $50,000 worth. But we can’t just keep collecting them, we need to sell at some point.”

Glawdys said diggers who strike it lucky sell their diamonds in the closest town or trading center to intermediaries, who in turn sell the precious stones to buyers in Bangui. The smugglers then use an international network of dealers in countries including Nigeria, France, and Cameroon who supply them to jewelry manufacturers around the world.

“The diggers are very happy with people like me,” she said. “They bring the stones to me and I give them the money.”

Photo: Jose More via Chicago Tribune/TNS

Migrant Smuggling On High Seas Bring New Players Into An Old Game

Migrant Smuggling On High Seas Bring New Players Into An Old Game

By Alfonso Chardy, El Nuevo Herald

MIAMI — After spotting a disabled pleasure boat with five people aboard drifting 21 miles east of Miami, a Good Samaritan contacted the U.S. Coast Guard.

The five men aboard did have mechanical trouble that mid-April morning, but they did not want any assistance from the Coast Guard.

Turns out, they were not legally supposed to be headed toward U.S. shores. One, the captain, was an alleged Cuban American smuggler and the other four were undocumented migrants from Jamaica and Haiti. Two of the four previously had been deported and were trying to re-enter the United States illegally.

Though Coast Guard interdictions of traffickers are common on the high seas, the case of the drifting boat provides new details of a operation where suspected Cuban boat smugglers now are bringing non-Cuban migrants to South Florida.

Until recently, Cuban smugglers generally focused on bringing passengers from Cuba, but that practice appears to have stopped after the U.S. Coast Guard stepped up patrolling the Florida Straits.

The case also suggests that the Bahamas has become a major staging area for illegal boat trips to South Florida and a significant number of the undocumented immigrants boarding those boats previously have been deported.

Over the last two years, an increasing number of boats have been interdicted or spotted in waters between the Bahamas and South Florida bringing undocumented immigrants of various nationalities, including Brazilians, Dominicans, Ecuadorans, Haitians and Jamaicans.

Despite having been deported previously, many return because they have families, businesses or properties in the United States, especially South Florida.

Details of the recent case were unveiled in a criminal complaint filed in Miami federal court by a special agent of Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Coast Guard personnel detained the five men and brought them to their Miami Beach base. Three — Orestes NuNez, Ronald Young and Sabouy Williamson — face federal charges: Nunez with bringing and harboring aliens, and Young and Williamson accused of illegal re-entry after deportation. They pleaded not guilty. Trial is tentatively scheduled for June.

Young and Williamson, both Jamaicans, were ordered detained pending trial, while Nunez, a Cuban-American, was released on bond. Two Haitians, Daniel Guerrier and Petit Fahadae, were not charged. It was not known whether they will serve as government witnesses or whether they will be deported.

After Coast Guard personnel boarded the drifting vessel, Nunez identified himself as the captain and claimed the boat had left Bimini — 58 miles east of Miami — 10 days earlier en route to Cat Cay and Freeport for a day of fishing. The boat broke down four miles out of Bimini and began to drift, he said.

But Coast Guard personnel quickly dismissed the captain’s claims, given the vessel’s location and the absence of fishing gear.

The criminal complaint also noted that Nunez had on him $1,800, a handheld GPS device and three grams of marijuana. Young also carried $5,680, plus several cellphones.

When Coast Guard personnel ran the names through federal databases, they discovered that Young and Williamson previously had been deported — Williamson on Feb, 8, 2013, for having a felony conviction for marijuana possession. Young was expelled Jan. 31, 2013, for having a felony conviction for a prior illegal re-entry into the country, the criminal complaint said.

Investigators learned that Guerrier had agreed to pay Nunez $4,500 for the boat ride.

Williamson told interrogators a friend in the Bahamas paid $9,000 to a person named Sonya for his smuggling trip.

An associate, the complaint said, instructed Williamson to show up at a specific location in Bimini where he met Nunez. There, Williamson boarded Nunez’s boat and met Young. Williamson then overheard Nunez saying that he intended to travel to Key Largo where his home is located.

When the group saw the Coast Guard approach their disabled boat, Nunez instructed everyone not to say anything about the smuggling fees.

Multitrack via Flickr