More than a year after he was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi remains at the top of a list of the most serious threats to press freedom.
The list — released each month by the One Free Press Coalition, which was created by a dozen news organizations, including TIME, with the goal of defending journalists under attack — identifies ten of the most severe cases of threats to press freedom around the world.
Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post who had criticized Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. He was among the four journalists and one news organization named The Guardians as the TIME 2018 Person of the Year, recognized for his work in the face of serious threats to journalistic freedom.
Khashoggi’s death has remained a controversial topic in the thirteen months since he was killed. Despite findings from the CIA concluding that bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing and a United Nations special report that found “credible evidence” calling for a deeper investigation into bin Salman’s role in the assassination, President Donald Trump has been criticized for his muted response over the murder and continuing to maintain ties with Saudi Arabia.
Bin Salman said he takes “full responsibility” for Khashoggi’s murder, but denied ordering the killing in an interview with 60 Minutes in September.
Other journalists on the list who have come under threat include an imprisoned reporter in Egypt who has been tortured and a detained Uzbek blogger.
Read about all 10 journalist on the November list here:
1. Jamal Khashoggi (Saudi Arabia): No resolution in violent killing inside Saudi consulate
The one-year anniversary of Khashoggi’s killing has passed without officials opening independent criminal investigation opened into his death, despite findings from U.S. intelligence officials and the United Nations pointing to bin Salman’s involvement. Although the Saudi prince has claimed responsibility for the murder, calling it a “mistake,” he has denied having a direct role.
2. Daphne Caruana Galizia (Malta): No resolution two years after reporter was murdered in Malta
More than two years have passed since the investigative reporter Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car-bomb explosion in Malta. Though three men have been taken into detention in relation to her murder, no one has been brought to justice. Trial dates have not been announced, either.
3. Esraa Abdel Fattah (Egypt): Imprisoned and tortured over allegations of spreading false news
The Egyptian journalist Esraa Abdel Fattah was arrested on Oct. 13 and was one of at least seven journalists detained amid anti-government protests in Egypt. Abdel Fattah has said through lawyers that she would start a hunger strike to protest being abused while detained, saying she was tortured while in custody, including being beaten, hung from her handcuffs and choked while being asked to give up her cellphone password.
4. Azory Gwanda (Tanzania): Authorities withholding information about journalist missing for two years
Nov. 21 will mark two years since the freelance journalist Azory Gwanda disappeared. He had previously been investigating mysterious killings in Tanzania. Though a Tanzanian government official said in July that Gwanda had “disappeared and died,” they later backtracked on the statement.
A correspondent for Mexico City newspaper La Jornada, Miroslava Breach Velducea was killed in March 2017 for her reporting on ties between politicians and organized crime. The trial in her murder case is ongoing, though the next court date has not been set.
6. Shujaat Bukhari (India): Suspects still at large in editor’s killing
Shujaat Bukhari, founder and editor of the newspaper Rising Kashmir, was fatally shot along with two police officers in June 2018. While police have identified four suspects, one of whom was later killed, officials have given few other updates in the case.
The Uzbek blogger Nafosat Olloshukurova has been detained in a psychiatric center for at least a month, following 10 days detention on charges of petty hooliganism and taking part in unauthorized assemblies. Prior to her arrest, Olloshukurova was covering writer Mahmud Rajabov’s efforts to have a criminal case against him dropped. Her family says they have not been able to contact her since late September.
Mahmoud Hussein, a journalist who was working with Al Jazeera, was arrested in Dec. 2016 on charges of spreading false news and inciting actions against state institutions. Though his detention was initially said to be for 15 days, it has been repeatedly extended every 45 days. The arrest and detention is tied to a 2016 documentary about conscription in Egypt, which the government says uses fake footage.
9. Agba Jalingo (Nigeria): Nigerian publisher faces life sentence if found guilty in upcoming trial
Nigerian publisher Agba Jalingo was arrested on Aug. 22 and later charged with disturbance of public peace and treason for writings and social media posts about Cross River State Gov. Benedict Ayade. If found guilty of treason, Jalingo could face a life sentence in prison.
10. Martin Inoua Doulguet (Chad): Chadian newspaper leaders face fines and unequal punishment
The director of the newspaper Salam Info, Martin Inoua Doulguet has been arrested and faces charges of conspiracy and defamation brought from a Chad government health official. Doulguet is awaiting a date to appeal his three-year sentence, which began in September.
Perched on the ochre scrub of Argentina’s sunbaked Puna Jujeña plateau, the $400 million Cauchari power station is the world’s highest-altitude solar farm at 13,000 ft (about 4,000 meters) above sea level. In Kenya’s volcano-strewn Rift Valley, a newly green-lit, super-efficient electrical substation will soon funnel clean power from the nearby Olkaria Geothermal Plant about 50 miles (80 km) to downtown Nairobi. Some 14 miles off blustery northeastern Scotland, Moray East is set to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm, helping to heat and light up to a million homes.
Three distinct renewable energy projects utilizing cutting edge technology in far-flung corners of the globe sharing one uniting characteristic: Chinese finance. Over the past five years, Chinese bankrolling of green energy projects overseas has soared as the world’s number two economy and number one polluter rebrands itself as an environmental champion.
Not only is China today the world’s largest producer of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles, but it has also been the top investor in clean energy for nine out of the last ten years, according to the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. Since 2014, Chinese equity investment has supported a total of 12,622 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar projects in South and Southeast Asia alone, according to new research by Greenpeace. That’s the equivalent of 21 standard coal plants or enough to power New York City. The shift from simply exporting to bankrolling green tech—driven by both a drying up of domestic subsidies in China and new incentives to invest abroad—is a boon since “it means China really cares about the future profitability of each project,” says Greenpeace campaigner Liu Junyan.
Beijing’s refocus from fossil fuels to renewable energy is a net positive for a myriad of reasons: protecting scarce resources, cutting carbon emissions that spur global warming, and boosting energy security by reducing reliance on costly fuel imports. While only a hatful of nations boast significant oil and gas reserves, nearly all have the potential to develop clean energy themselves, whether via solar, wind, tidal, geothermal or hydroelectric plants, mitigating geopolitical tensions by making the world less dependent on restive regions like the Middle East.
Chinese export of renewable energy technology around the globe is set to boost Beijing’s clout as the influence of major oil exporters like Russia and Saudi Arabia wanes. China has by far the most renewable energy patents with the U.S., Japan and Europe lagging behind. “No country has put itself in a better position to become the world’s renewable energy superpower than China,” says a recent report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation, chaired by former Iceland President Olafur Grimsson.
The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords under President Donald Trump provided China an opening to seize. America’s abandonment of global leadership on the issue was thrown into sharper focus by Trump’s empty chair during a climate change discussion at August’s G7 meeting in France. “The U.S. administration is not particularly interested in renewables at home let alone overseas,” says Simon Nicholas, an analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Now, China has firmly established its leading position in renewable energy output, as well as in related technologies such as electric vehicles, transmission lines and battery storage, and Beijing is managing to weaponize green technology in a way that strategic rivals like the U.S. may struggle to counter.
For many Chinese investors, a combination of rising domestic competition and rolling back of subsidies at home has widened their gaze. In solar firm Sungrow’s six-story, steel-and-glass headquarters in China’s eastern province of Anhui, CEO Cao Renxian explains how “struggles with the U.S. trade war” forced him to relocate production to India in order to dodge the 25% tariffs the Trump Administration slapped on imported made-in-China panels last year.
After overcoming the significant cultural, legal and linguistic barriers to secure a foothold abroad, Cao now has designs on growing his foreign portfolio. Sungrow currently has stakes in two solar farms of a combined 90 MW in Vietnam, and is constructing a new 60 MW solar farm to soak up the cerulean skies 100 miles north of Melbourne, Australia. Cao explains his global efforts as something of a rapturous calling “to boost environmental protection for our nation and the whole world,” while adding that his firm now sees annual revenues of 10 billion RMB ($1.4 billion).
The geostrategic corollaries are vast. These green investments chime with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a metaphorical repaving of the ancient Silk Road though a $1 trillion transcontinental trade-and-infrastructure network largely bankrolled by Beijing. It has the potential to be the world’s greatest building project since the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe in the aftermath of World War II. The BRI will extend China’s presence across the globe while reorienting nations away from the U.S.-and-Eurocentricism of the last half century.
Since the BRI was enshrined in the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitution in 2017, the nation’s biggest banks are obliged to offer preferential loans towards its projects. There are also tens of billions of dollars set aside in dedicated cash pools like the Silk Road Fund. The Import-Export Bank of China, for one, loaned enough money to fund 85% of the Cauchari solar farm in Argentina at just 3% annual interest over 15 years, according to Reuters. (That compares favorably to the more typical 4.5%-7% interest bank loans for such projects.) The proviso is that three quarters of materials used on the project are sourced from Chinese firms such as Huawei.
Apart from the obvious headache of having allies and partners in hock to Beijing, national security concerns loom large. The Trump Administration has accused Huawei—the world’s biggest supplier of telecoms equipment as well as solar inverters, which turn the energy produced by solar panels into a grid-ready electrical current—of installing illicit “backdoors” in equipment that could be used to spy on or cripple users’ networks, and has threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with nations that embed it. (Huawei vehemently denies this, and hard evidence is scant.)
Suspicions regarding Chinese firms persist, however, with the E.U. in March even branding Beijing a “systemic rival.” Last year, Germany blocked a deal in which China’s state-owned State Grid, the world’s largest utility company, would have purchased a $1.2 billion stake in Germany’s national high-voltage energy network, on apparent “national security” grounds.
However, since State Grid’s cutting-edge high-voltage transmission lines, which are far more efficient than existing technology for long-distance transmission, are seen as vital for linking remote and underutilized renewable energy plants into the national grid, many nations believe the benefits outweigh any risk.
Few have embraced Chinese renewable technology and investment as warmly as Brazil, where State Grid is the largest power generation and distribution company. Another Chinese behemoth, China Three Gorges (CTG), the world’s largest hydropower provider with operations across 47 countries, controlling 14 out of a total of 48 hydro-plants in Brazil, amounting to 8% of the nation’s total hydropower capacity, as well as 11 wind farms. CTG Brazil CEO Li Yinsheng tells TIME that Brazil is attractive for investment because it has the resources, demand and necessary regulatory framework. “And by combining [Chinese and Brazilian] equities we are in a unique position to be more competitive in the market,” he says.
It’s not all blue skies ahead for China. The country still generates 70% of its power from coal, and will continue to consume about half the world’s coal until 2023, according to the International Energy Agency. It also approved 141 million tons of new annual coal mining capacity in the first half of this year; in the whole of 2018, Beijing approved just 25 million tons of new coal mining capacity.
The vast majority of the more than $244 billion that China has spent on energy projects worldwide since 2000 have been on fossil fuels, according to data from the Global Development Policy Center, a policy-oriented research body affiliated with Boston University. Despite Xi telling journalists at April’s second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing that he embraces “open, clean and green development,” China has financed more than 300 foreign coal plants from Egypt to the Philippines.
According to Nicholas, the analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Beijing’s vociferous championing of renewables is “partly an attempt to position itself globally regarding climate issues, but also to distract from the fact that it’s also heavily pushing coal-fired technology to developing countries.” For as long as the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy relies on the prosperity of the Chinese people, green intentions will always be sacrificed on the altar of economic expediency, both at home and abroad.
(DAKAR, Senegal) — The United Nations botched its investigation into accusations of sexual abuse in Central African Republic, letting down victims, according to a draft report.
The report, written in 2017 but not yet made public, was leaked to The New Humanitarian and seen by The Associated Press.
A senior U.N. official disputed the findings in the draft report, which the U.N. said were not included in the final report.
An Associated Press investigative series in 2017 uncovered roughly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers around the world over a 12-year period.
The roughly 11,000 peacekeepers in Central African Republic had the most sexual misconduct allegations – 52- of any U.N. peacekeeping mission in 2016.
“The leaked review … gives a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at how the U.N. system investigates claims of sexual abuse and exploitation by its own peacekeepers – and shows why it often fails the victims it is supposed to serve,” according to the New Humanitarian.
The failed investigation into the allegations in the Central African Republic cost the U.N. more than $480,000.
Inadequate storage ruined DNA samples that had been collected to connect victims to their alleged perpetrators, according to the report.
“Most were already rotten. It is therefore hardly surprising that positive results could not (be) obtained,” the report said of the DNA samples. Many of the samples were taken from March to May 2016, and then they were stored in Bangui for months and were not delivered to the Nairobi office for the investigation until April 2017.
The report noted the importance of the role of DNA evidence in linking a possible perpetrator to a victim. “It was noted that none of the DNA samples collected was deemed usable by labs retained for that purpose,” said the report.
The lack of action on the investigation left victims feeling abandoned and without any recourse for the sexual exploitation they say they experienced at the hands of the Burundi and Gabonese troops, according to the New Humanitarian who spoke with victims.
But Ben Swanson, the director of the U.N. investigations division in the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the U.N.’s internal watchdog known as OIOS, said OIOS “did all of the DNA swabbing in Dekoa, when and where it was relevant, and we also followed up with missions to Gabon and Burundi to swab soldiers identified as fathers.”
In December 2016, the U.N. announced that OIOS had completed an internal investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against Burundian and Gabonese peacekeepers deployed in Dekoa in Kemo prefecture, Central African Republic.
OIOS interviewed 139 people, investigated their accounts and identified 16 possible perpetrators from Gabon and 25 from Burundi through photos and corroborating evidence, the U.N. said. Of the 139 victims, 25 were minors who asserted that they were sexually assaulted and eight paternity claims were filed, the U.N. said.
“We took swabs from around 20 victims and their children,” Swanson said, and the laboratory used to do the DNA testing was unable to extract any DNA samples from two or three of the swabs which may have been the result of operator error, poor storage techniques or the laboratory.
“Because the victims were adamant as to the identity of the fathers and we didn’t want to miss any evidential opportunities we repeated the entire exercise,” Swanson said.
“I can tell you that the lab was able to say ‘with a high degree of confidence’ that the soldiers identified were not the fathers of the children they were alleged to be,” he said.
The U.N. relies on the country contributing peacekeepers to deal with allegations of misconduct and to determine possible punishments. According to the report, Burundi investigators who went to conduct interviews in 2016 did not have the necessary skills and experience. The interviews seemed to look to discredit witnesses, it said, and interpreters also lacked the needed skills.
The U.N. has vowed to end impunity for sexual misconduct and to work with countries supplying peacekeepers to do more to combat the abuses.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has taken strides to improve the world body’s response to sexual abuse and exploitation, appointing the U.N.’s first-ever victims’ rights advocate, banning alcohol and fraternization for troops, convening high-level meetings on sexual abuse and exploitation and establishing a trust fund for victims.
The U.N. received 259 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse last year, according to The New Humanitarian, a major increase from the two previous years.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korea confirmed Friday it conducted its third test-firing of a new “super-large” multiple rocket launcher that it says expands its ability to destroy enemy targets in surprise attacks, as it continues to expand its military capabilities while pressuring Washington over a standstill in nuclear negotiations.
Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency described the tests a day after the South Korean and Japanese militaries said they detected two projectiles launched from an area near the North Korean capital traveling more than 200 miles cross-country before landing in waters off the North’s eastern coast.
Experts say the North could continue to ramp up weapons demonstrations ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un for the U.S. to offer mutually acceptable terms to salvage a fragile diplomacy strained by disagreements over exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament steps.
Thursday’s launches followed statements of displeasure by top North Korean officials over the slow pace of nuclear negotiations with the United States and demands that the administration of President Donald Trump ease crippling sanctions and pressure on their country.
KCNA said Kim expressed satisfaction over what North Korea described as a successful test of its new rocket artillery system, but it wasn’t clear whether the leader observed the launches on site. The North previously tested the system in August and September. The latest test verified the “perfection” of the system’s continuous firing ability that allegedly allows it to “totally destroy” enemy targets with “super power,” the agency said.
Earlier this month, the North test-fired an underwater-launched ballistic missile for the first time in three years. The North has also tested new short-range ballistic missile and rocket artillery systems in recent months in what experts saw as an effort to use the standstill in talks to advance its military capabilities while increasing its bargaining power.
Negotiations have faltered after the collapse of a February summit between Kim and Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the U.S. rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for piecemeal progress toward partially surrendering its nuclear capabilities.
The North responded with intensified testing activity while Kim said he would “wait with patience until the end of the year for the United States to come up with a courageous decision.”
Washington and Pyongyang resumed working-level discussion in Sweden earlier this month, but the meeting broke down amid acrimony with the North Koreans calling the talks “sickening” and accusing the Americans of maintaining an “old stance and attitude.”
(CANBERRA, Australia) — Conservationists fear hundreds of koalas have perished in wildfires that have razed prime habitat on Australia’s east coast.
Port Macquarie Koala Hospital President Sue Ashton said she hoped wildlife carers would be allowed to begin their search of the fire zone for survivors on Thursday. The fire was started by a lightning strike on Friday in a forest in New South Wales state, 300 kilometers (190 miles) north of Sydney, and has since burnt 2,000 hectares (4,900 acres).
Two-thirds of that area was koala habitat, Ashton said.
“If we look at a 50% survival rate, that’s around about 350 koalas and that’s absolutely devastating,” Ashton said of the death toll. “We’re hoping it’s not as bad as that, but because of the intensity of the fire and the way koalas behave during fire, we’re not holding out too much hope,” she added.
Koalas climb high into trees during wildfires and survive if the fire front passes quickly below them.
The koala colony was particularly heathy and genetically diverse, Ashton said. Koalas prefer coastal forests, which are being cleared for suburban expansion. Increasingly isolated koala colonies have become inbred and diseased.
Australia’s wildfire season has made a particularly early and devastating start in the southern hemisphere spring due to above-average temperatures and below-average rainfall that has left much of the east coast in drought.
“America, where they didn’t let me in,” writes 11-year-old Jose from Honduras in Spanish next to a picture of mountains and trees on a canvas in blue, green and brown colors. He also drew a river — the Rio Grande that separates him from Brownsville, Texas, where his family hopes to claim asylum. “La tierra prometida,” he writes. “The promised land.”
Jose is one of at least 1,450 migrants who are living in a tent encampment on the streets of Matamoros, a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, as a result of the Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. Dozens of children in Matamoros drew their experiences as part of a form of art therapy, photos of which were provided exclusively to TIME by Dr. Belinda Arriaga, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco who specializes in child trauma and Latino mental health. She traveled to Matamoros Oct. 19-25 as part of a group of volunteers who provided aid and psychological care to migrant children and their families.
The six drawings depict family members separated by the Rio Grande, children inside cages and images of America. In one photo, a drawing by 9-year-old Genesis depicts crocodiles in a river near a vehicle she labelled “Policía.” Her family, in tears, are standing in Mexico, while her tía, or aunt, cries for them in the U.S. “Quiero irme de aquí porque no puedo ser felíz y no puedo dormir,” she has written on the drawing. “I want to leave from here because I can’t be happy and I can’t sleep.”
In order to protect the identity of the children, TIME has covered some identifying information in the drawings.
“Their drawings become their voice,” Arriaga adds. “When they started handing me one-by-one their pieces, it was really jolting to see what they were drawing… the drawings help us understand the trauma that this country is infliction on them.”
Courtesy of Belinda ArriagaJose, 11, draws the United States and the Rio Grande River. He writes, “America, where they didn’t let me in,” and “The promised land.”
Arriaga has traveled from San Francisco to Brownsville and McAllen, Texas, six times to work with children released from family detention since the height of family separation under the Administration’s Zero-Tolerance policy. Arriaga provided similar drawings to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) this summer made by children who depicted themselves in cages after being released from a Customs and Border Protection family detention center in the McAllen region.
This month, on her seventh trip to the Rio Grande Valley region, Arriaga was one of 24 members of the Bay Area Border Relief (BABR) organization who traveled to Matamoros. Many volunteers provided donations, food and therapy to more than a thousand people sleeping in tents or outside at a plaza near the port of entry. Arriaga worked with children who have been waiting in Mexico under the Department of Homeland Security’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — also known as “Remain in Mexico” — which requires asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their legal case for asylum progresses. Arriaga participated in group therapy sessions with the children, including sessions that allowed children to draw and express what they’re feeling and what message they wanted to share with the world. About 40 children and some parents participated, Arriaga says.
Dr. David Martinez, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the University of San Francisco, was also on the trip and provided one-on-one therapy to children there, an effort he called “psychological first-aid.” The children were clearly traumatized, he says, and his own experience and studies have shown him that it’ll take years before the effects of the trauma becomes obvious.
“I do see a lot of resilience, but there’s only so far that can go if things don’t change,” he says. “What happens in adolescence, especially early on in childhood, kind of defines your life. Being exposed to stress, trauma, adversity… it can lead to a lot of poor mental health outcomes or physical health outcomes.”
Arriaga says her encounter with the children in McAllen over the summer was ultimately hopeful. “There was fatigue and exhaustion, yes, but there was hope,” she says. “But with these children [in Matamoros], what we walked away with was a complete sense of desperation… they’re screaming for help.”
Courtesy of Belinda ArriagaIvone, 7, draws herself in a cage while her tía watches across the Rio Grande river next to an American flag.
Seven-year-old Ivone drew a picture of herself inside of a cage near the river. Her tía waits for her on the other side, standing next to an American flag. An unidentified 7-year-old drew a similar picture. “It’s an emotional trauma that is not easily going to be erased,” Arriaga says. “What they’re living with and what they’re enduring is something that is going to emotionally impact them for a long time.”
Many of the children are from Central America. TIME for Kids recently traveled to Honduras to interview children and families about their lives there. Many children who remain in Honduras have a family member who has migrated to the U.S. or know other children who have made the journey.
Young asylum-seekers in Matamoros like Jose, Genesis and Ivone sleep in tents that have been donated to them, and rely on food that volunteers from both sides of the border attempt to bring them on a daily basis, according to seven volunteers who have been on the ground who spoke to TIME. These volunteers say asylum-seekers go to the restroom in portable bathrooms volunteers have rented using donated money while sanitary napkins, clothes, diapers, other supplies and medical care are also provided by donation. Shower tents were recently built where the migrants use a bucket of water and a cup to bathe. Many also jump in the Rio Grande to wash themselves and their clothes. A team with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Matamoros has also documented cases of diarrhea, hypertension, diabetes, psychiatric conditions and asthma amongst the asylum-seekers. MSF has conducted at least 178 medical consultations over the course of three weeks this month, 58% of which were with children under 15 years old, according to the organization.
A spokesperson for the city of Matamoros did not immediately return a request for comment. Earlier in October, government official Enrique Maciel, a representative for the Matamoros Delegation of the Tamaulipas Institute for Migrants, a state-run agency, told reporters that the asylum-seekers are not the responsibility of the Mexican government, but that the city is committed to providing shelter for public health and safety purposes.
Courtesy of Belinda ArriagaAn unidentified 7-year-old child living at a tent encampment in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, draws herself in a cage.
At night, with no way to lock their tents, migrants are susceptible to robbery and other crimes against them, including rape and kidnapping. The U.S. government has issued a travel advisory for the state of Tamaulipas, urging Americans not to go there. There’s no law enforcement oversight, save for the military and Customs officials who guard the port of entry nearby. Volunteer lawyers from all parts of the country also frequent the area, looking for opportunities to represent families they believe should be excluded from MPP and helping them fill out asylum documents that the U.S. government provides in English.
“These people are prey to anybody who wants to come and take advantage of them,” says Lilli Rey, the founder of BABR. She and her daughter were also a part of the recent trip to Matamoros. “For the United States to treat these human beings like this — we should all be ashamed.”
Matamoros doesn’t have the infrastructure to house so many people in shelters, says Erin Thorn Vela, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project based in McAllen. “At the beginning what it looked like was an attorney going out on Saturday night and saying ‘look, gather around me, I can tell you how to fill out an asylum application,'” she tells TIME.
The city of Matamoros has also attempted to create a shelter, the opening of which was cancelled. The cancellation followed criticism its location far from a port of entry would expose asylum seekers to exploitation and violence, according to Andrea Rudnik, a cofounder of Team Brownsville, an organization that has provided daily meals and other resources to migrants in Matamoros since July 2018. A local recreational center is being converted into a facility that could shelter up to 300 of those waiting for their asylum cases to be processed.
Courtesy of Belinda ArriagaA young girl holds up her drawing of the Matamoros tent encampment where she lives.
Customs and Border Protection tells TIME it has enrolled more than 55,000 people in MPP. Many stay near U.S. ports of entry throughout the border as a result of MPP, which was implemented in January 2019. The policy didn’t begin in Matamoros until July of this year, leading to nearly 1,450 people sleeping on the streets in that same month, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization based out of Syracuse University. Many of the volunteers say the number has grown significantly since July.
Many have been living at the encampment — which grew organically — since before the implementation of MPP as a result of the Administration’s metering policy, which required them to wait in Mexico and make an appointment with U.S. officials before being allowed to make an initial claim for asylum. Some migrants have drowned in the Rio Grande trying to cross the border after being told they would have to wait for months in Mexico. Organized crime in Matamoros further endangers the asylum-seekers, who the volunteers say are targeted for ransom, or offered jobs like prostitution by local gangs.
Courtesy of Belinda ArriagaAn 8-year-old girl writes “Yo le pido a Dios que llegamos a Carolina del Sur,” or “I ask God that we can get to South Carolina.” She is living in a tent encampment in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas.
“Mexico is providing humanitarian protections and even work-authorizations to these individuals during their stay,” DHS spokesperson Matthew Dyman tells TIME in a statement. “Mexico has stated it would authorize the entrance of those returned under MPP for humanitarian reasons, in compliance with its international obligations, while they await the adjudication of their asylum claims in the United States. Mexico has said it will provide aliens with legal status to work, offer jobs, healthcare and education to such individuals according to its principles.”
The agency called MPP an answer to the “security and humanitarian crisis on the southern border,” when the policy was announced in January. Since thousands of Central American migrant families have arrived at the border to claim asylum, U.S. immigration courts have faced a backlog in processing the cases.
The Administration’s MPP policy has faced legal challenges, the most recent of which is awaiting a decision from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The slow appeals process has led volunteers on the ground to work faster and harder, says Vela, the TCRP attorney. “That encampment has been growing since August,” Vela says. It’s easily three times as large as it was before MPP, and the amount of resources has not gotten a whole lot bigger.”
BABR traveled to Brownsville this month with a U-Haul and another truck-full of donations, including clothes, diapers and Beanie Babies and teddy bears for the children. They were not permitted to drive the rented vehicles across the border, so some members of the group found a parking lot near the port of entry on the U.S. side of the border, and began unloading the supplies onto small wagons that they walked across the border one-by-one until everything was dispersed at the encampment. Meanwhile another group of the volunteers began prepping dinner for more than 1,000 people, while Arriaga and Martinez did their work with the families.
It was heartbreaking, Arriaga says, to receive the drawings from the children.
“I try to instill how special they are, and that they’re beautiful and that they’re loved,” she says. “I told each and every one of them, there are so many in the United States that care about you.”
(BEIRUT) — The U.S. military says its first batch of mechanized armored vehicles have arrived in southeast Syria, where they are to take part in securing oil fields and fighting remnants of the Islamic State group.
U.S.-led Coalition spokesman Col. Myles Caggins said the first batch of Bradley armored infantry carriers have arrived Thursday in Deir el-Zour Province. The province is home to some of Syria’s largest oil fields. It is also where IS militants continue to wage an insurgency and where they lost their last territory in March.
Caggins said the mechanized forces — being deployed for the first time in Syria— provides infantry with maneuverability and firepower. He said the deployment is “de-conflicted” with other forces operating in the region.
U.S. troops have begun withdrawing from northern Syria to reposition in the Deir el-Zour region, he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the troop withdrawal from the north ahead of a Turkish military offensive there earlier this month. Turkey is pushing to have Kurdish fighters moved away from its borders.
