U.S. urges Turkey to step up fight against $150 billion illicit human trafficking industry

July 8, 2016 by administrator

Syrian refugee girls walk past past a public toilet as they go to kindergarten at a refugee camp in Osmaniye, Turkey, May 17, 2016 – REUTERS photo

The United States Department of State has released its 2016 report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP),

According to this year’s TIP report, Turkey stood out as a destination and transit country, rather than a source country, for sex trafficking and forced labor where most victims were from Central and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Syria and Morocco. It noted, however, that Turkish women and transgender persons were also vulnerable to trafficking, the latter also suffering from alleged discrimination by state authorities.

“We want to bring to the public’s attention the full nature and scope of the $150 billion illicit human trafficking industry,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in his statement published as part of the report, underlining there was “nothing inevitable about trafficking in human beings.”

The report underlined that displaced persons from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran were particularly vulnerable to trafficking in Turkey, especially as most of them lack legal access to the job market.

“Traffickers increasingly use psychological coercion, threats and debt bondage to compel victims into sex trafficking,” reports both from Turkey’s government and Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) noted, highlighting the importance of issuing work permits to refugees and asylum-seekers while acknowledging a January regulation which established a work permit regime for Syrians under the temporary protection regime.

“An increasing number of Syrian refugee children engage in street begging and also work in restaurants, textile factories, markets, mechanic or blacksmith shops and agriculture, at times acting as the breadwinners for their families; some are vulnerable to forced labor,” the report said, adding Syrian women and girls were vulnerable to sex trafficking, also those run by extremist groups.

“Some Syrian girls have been reportedly sold into marriages with Turkish men, in which they are highly vulnerable to domestic servitude or sex trafficking,” it stated.

According to the report, women who were forcefully married to extremist fighters were later compelled to join the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

Turkish Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports

February 2, 2016 by administrator

Kosovo PM Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian ‘mafia-like’ crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys,

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as the boss of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the runup to the 1998-99 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade. Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are also accused of taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a number of Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.

Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case – in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus – is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000. It comes at a crucial period for Kosovo, which on Sunday held its first elections since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Thaçi claimed victory in the election and has been seeking to form a coalition with opposition parties.

Dick Marty, the human rights investigator behind the inquiry, will present his report to European diplomats from all 47 member states at a meeting in Paris on Thursday. His report suggests Thaçi’s links with organised crime date back more than a decade, when those loyal to his Drenica group came to dominate the KLA, and seized control of “most of the illicit criminal enterprises” in which Kosovans were involved south of the border, in Albania.

During the Kosovo conflict Slobodan Miloševic’s troops responded to attacks by the KLA by orchestrating a horrific campaign against ethnic Albanians in the territory. As many as 10,000 are estimated to have died at the hands of Serbian troops.

While deploring Serb atrocities, Marty said the international community chose to ignore suspected war crimes by the KLA, “placing a premium instead on achieving some degree of short-term stability”. He concludes that during the Kosovo war and for almost a year after, Thaçi and four other members of the Drenica group named in the report carried out “assassinations, detentions, beatings and interrogations”. This same hardline KLA faction has held considerable power in Kosovo’s government over the last decade, with the support of western powers keen to ensure stability in the fledgling state.

The report paints a picture in which ex-KLA commanders have played a crucial role in the region’s criminal activity. It says: “In confidential reports spanning more than a decade, agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics.”

Marty says: “Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as ‘key players’ in intelligence reports on Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime. I have examined these diverse, voluminous reports with consternation and a sense of moral outrage.”

His inquiry was commissioned after the former chief prosecutor for war crimes at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, said she had been prevented from investigating senior KLA officials. Her most shocking claim, which she said required further investigation, was that the KLA smuggled captive Serbs across the border into Albania, where their organs were harvested.

The report, which states that it is not a criminal investigation and unable to pronounce judgments of guilt or innocence, gives some credence to Del Ponte’s claims.

It finds the KLA did hold mostly Serb captives in a secret network of six detention facilities in northern Albania, and that Thaçi’s Drenica group “bear the greatest responsibility” for prisons and the fate of those held in them.

They include a “handful” of prisoners said to have been transferred to a makeshift prison just north of Tirana, where they were killed for their kidneys.

The report states: “As and when the transplant surgeons were confirmed to be in position and ready to operate, the captives were brought out of the ‘safe house’ individually, summarily executed by a KLA gunman, and their corpses transported swiftly to the operating clinic.”

The same Kosovan and foreign individuals involved in the macabre killings are linked to the Medicus case, the report finds.

Marty is critical of the western powers which have provided a supervisory role in Kosovo’s emergence as a state, for failing to hold senior figures, including Thaçi, to account. His report criticises “faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA”.

It concludes: “The signs of collusion between the criminal class and the highest political and institutional office holders are too numerous and too serious to be ignored.

“It is a fundamental right of Kosovo’s citizens to know the truth, the whole truth, and also an indispensable condition for reconciliation between the communities and the country’s prosperous future.”

If as expected the report is formally adopted by the committee this week, the findings will go before the parliamentary assembly next year.

The Kosovo government tonight dismissed the allegations, claiming they were the produce of “despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility”.

“Today, the Guardian published an article that referred to a report from a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Dick Marty, which follows up on past reports published over the last 12 years aiming at maligning the war record of the Kosovo Liberation Army and its leaders,” it said in a statement.

“The allegations have been investigated several times by local and international judiciary, and in each case, it was concluded that such statements have were not based on facts and were construed to damage the image of Kosovo and the war of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

“It is clear that someone wants to place obstacles in the way of prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, after the general election, in which the people of Kosovo placed their clear and significant trust in him to deliver the development programme and governance of our country.

“Such despicable and bizarre actions by people with no moral credibility, serve the ends of only those specific circles that do not wish well to Kosovo and its people.”

• This article was amended on 15 December 2010. The original dated the Kosovo conflict to 1999 alone. This has been clarified.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/14/kosovo-prime-minister-llike-mafia-boss

ECtHR: Turkey violated European Convention on Human Rights

December 1, 2015 by administrator

Turkey, by blocking access to YouTube, has violated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) made such a decision Tuesday in Strasbourg, France.

“The ECtHR unanimously ruled that there was a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights,” reported TASS news agency of Russia.

The respective petition was filed with the ECtHR by a group of Turkish human rights activists, when Ankara had blocked Turkey residents’ access to YouTube, from May 5, 2008 to October 30, 2010.

Who is behind Syrian Observatory for Human Rights? Nimrod Kamer investigates for RT VIDEO

October 2, 2015 by administrator

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has been the prime source for MSM-aired news from the Syrian battlefield. But how much does one truly know about this UK-based organization and its director? Journalist and prankster Nimrod Kamer went to find out.

The organization has been one of the sources for the mainstream media to build their reports on Syria since the start of the civil war four years ago. The organization claims to have a wide network of contacts in the region who feed their information to the head office, where it is processed and later posted on the website, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Since the start of the Moscow anti-ISIS campaign Russia has started featuring in its reports as well – and it was quickly picked up by major Western media outlets. One of the latest wires from the Observatory that “Russian warplanes [killed] 30 civilians in Homs including women and children” quickly made it into major news sources.

“To the degree people choose to believe social media, they can be my guest. But quite contrary to what [US Secretary of State John Kerry] has said, it is a notoriously unreliable tool upon which to base judgments,” former CIA officer, Ray McGovern told RT.

‘I am not a media organization’ – Rami Abdel Rahman

RT decided to investigate who the man behind the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is and why the media outlet is so popular with MSM. Well-known journalist and prankster Nimrod Kamer took up the job.

The two-bedroom Coventry home of Syrian immigrant Rami Abdel Rahman has been the organization’s base and the source of information for major mainstream media on anything Syria-related from the past four years, including the death toll.

Nobody quite knows who Abdel Rahman has on the ground in Syria, but information just keeps flowing on and on, usually in a dramatic fashion and with little detail.

Kamer walked around the English city of Coventry, approaching people with questions on Abdel Rahman and how he could be located. No one seemed to have a clue they had the prime source of news from the Syrian frontline living right there in their quaint British neighborhood.

Kamer had no luck catching the director at home. Calling him on the phone, he found out Abdel Rahman went out to a shop. The journalist went about explaining that he had hoped to catch the organization’s director to quiz him on his “media organization” – but that term was met with hostility on the part of Abdel Rahman.

“I am not a media organization. I work from my home, my private home.”

The director of the Observatory seemed very distressed, talking about the dangers of meeting up for daytime interviews because “they are trying to kill me.” It was difficult to identify who “they” were, but Abdel Rahman clearly wasn’t in the mood. He asked Kamer to send him his name and details, which Abdel Rahman would then send to the police.

“When you run a media organization you should expect journalists to come and ask questions, especially if it’s such a shady and unsourced media organization… I had a great time.”

Human Rights Watch: Baku games to begin amid widespread repression

June 11, 2015 by administrator

The first European Games will open inAzerbaijan on June 12, 2015, in an atmosphere of government repression unprecedented in the post-Soviet era, Human Rights Watch said today.
The authorities have detained dozens of critics of the government and failed to allow several journalists from major European outlets to enter the country to cover the games. They have also barred the human rights organization Amnesty International from releasing a report in Baku, the capital.
“Government repression is making the European Games historic for all the wrong reasons,” said Rachel Denber, deputy Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The European Olympic Committee still has the chance to prevent the Games from being tarnished by the Azerbaijani government’s abuses, but time is running out.”
Azerbaijan is hosting the inaugural European Games, a multi-sport event for over 6,000 athletes from 50 European nations, in Baku from June 12 to 28. The European Olympic Committees (EOC), an association of 50 National Olympic Committees, owns and regulates the games. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, is also the president of the country’s National Olympic Committee, and has strong ties with the sports world.
In recent weeks Azerbaijani authorities denied or failed to provide required press accreditation and visas to at least three foreign journalists with European media outlets. A reporter with a leading European television station said he has yet to receive accreditation despite following all of the procedures. The authorities denied accreditation to Regis Gente, a journalist with Radio France Internationale who has been based in the South Caucasus reporting news stories on Azerbaijan since 2002. A third journalist denied accreditation works for a major European news media outlet.
Also on June 10, Azerbaijani border police at the airport in Baku refused entry to and deported Emma Hughes, an activist with the London-based group Platform who was accredited to cover the Games as editor of Red Pepper magazine. Hughes has advocated the release of government critics wrongly imprisoned by the Azerbaijani authorities, and her book criticizing the Azerbaijani government is scheduled for publication on June 12.
“Media freedom is a central pillar of the Olympic movement,” Denber said. “By denying visas to reporters covering the games, Azerbaijan and President Aliyev are rejecting one of the basic rules for hosting the event. The EOC and International Olympic Committee should demand a full explanation and reversal of these actions.”