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Israel exploited loophole to take 1,000 DNA samples from African refugees
The news was comfirmed by Commander Eran Kamin of the Investigations Division, who reported on the issue to a Knesset committee on Tuesday. The issue was first revealed in an article in Haaretz, which said that police officials had earlier had their request for collecting refugees’ DNA samples rejected by Knesset Committees. To bypass this rejection, the police opened criminal cases against the African migrants – they had technically entered the country illegally, which the police then classified as a ‘security-related’ crime.”We are aware that those entering Israel have had unpleasant experiences, to say the least, but still, we’re aware of the fact that they broke the law. The law defines them as infiltrators,” Kamin said, according to Haaretz.In 2012, Israeli police collected more than 600 samples. However, they have not solved any reported crimes as a result of this DNA collection practice, Haaretz said.Police officials claim they are not creating a refugee database, and that the personal data they receive from migrants are placed in a general pool. African immigrants are nevertheless reportedly angered by the procedure, which they have slammed as discriminatory.Human rights activists in Israel strongly oppose the practice: “The criminal process is meant to reach the truth and punish offenders who have been legally convicted. But in terms of asylum-seekers, police are making a different use entirely of the criminal proceeding,” said attorney Asaf Weitzen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers. He added that police were “creating a new law and suiting it to a regime in which there is no longer a need for courts, legislators or public opinion.”Alva Kolan of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said this is “a cynical use of the Prevention of Infiltration Law, and squarely contradicts the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which explicitly states that infiltration, in itself, cannot be considered a criminal offense.” The DNA collection is another facet of the Israeli government’s crackdown on immigrants coming from such African nations as Libya, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. After being dubbed “infiltrators” and a threat to state security, they are encouraged to return to their native countries. Many of those unwilling to return home face indefinite jail terms.Israel has regularly been accused of deporting Sudanese migrants back to their homeland, where visiting or living in Israel is a crime. In February, Israel reportedly forced at least 1,000 Sudanese to return home.Israel described the deportations as “voluntary leave,” which the UN Refugee agency dismissed as unlikely. “Deporting Sudanese to Sudan would be the gravest violation possible of the refugee convention that Israel has signed – a crime never before committed,” the UN representative to Israel Michael Bavli said. In August 2012, a report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism revealed that Israel deported Sudanese asylum seekers by issuing documents with intentionally incorrect nationalities. Having no repatriation agreement with Sudan, Israel gave more than 100 Sudanese nationals passports or birth certificates labeling them citizens of South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in 2011, the report stated. … Read More
Maher: RNC guests Perry, Palin and Nugent are ‘The Axis of A-holes’
The news that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) was joining other Republican stalwarts at this weekend’s National Rifle Association (NRA) convention struck Real Time host Bill Maher as a perfect fit on Friday. “Ted Nugent is speaking, he’s speaking, Sarah Palin is speaking,” Maher…
McConnell responds to Obama’s drink joke with Clint Eastwood joke
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to a crack President Obama made about him at the White House Corredspondents’ Dinner with a reference to Clint Eastwood’s empty chair bit at the Republican National Convention.Obama had joked that people complain that he doesn’t reach across the aisle enough. ”‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask,” Obama said. “Really? Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?”McConnell responded during an appearance before the Southeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Post reports, saying: “I’m shocked. He’s obviously not seeing my soft side.”His campaign Twitter account also tweeted a picture of McConnell drinking with an empty chair, also looping in Clint Eastwood:[embedtweet id="328939838835392513"] ;Continue Reading… … Read More
Defense Secretary Hagel: Syria used chemical weapons
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the claim Thursday while speaking in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, adding that the American intelligence community has determined “with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin.” Sarin is a colorless, odorless liquid which is used as a chemical weapon. The gas is an extremely potent nerve agent and has a lethal dose of 0.5 milligrams for an adult. Even at very low concentrations, sarin can be fatal. Death may follow just one minute after direct ingestion of a lethal dose. Atropine and pralidoxime may be used as antidotes, but must be administered immediately. Sarin, which is estimated to be over 500 times more toxic than cyanide, is classified as a weapon of mass destruction under UN Resolution 687. Production and stockpiling of sarin was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. Hagel insisted that the use of chemical weapons by any army would violate international guidelines for armed conflicts, and said confirmation of these reports would be a “game changer ” in terms of America’s role in the Syrian civil war.”It violates every convention of warfare,” said Hagel, the Associated Press reports.The White House informed Congress about the use of chemical weapons during a Thursday briefing, continues the AP. White House legislative director Miguel Rodriguez sent a letter to Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan) explaining that “because the president takes this issue so seriously, we have an obligation to fully investigate any and all evidence of chemical weapons use within Syria.”"Thus far, we believe that the Assad regime maintains custody of these weapons, and has demonstrated a willingness to escalate its horrific use of violence against the Syrian people,” Foreign Policy quotes from the letter.Moments after news of the letter were first reported, Sen. McCain walked out of a briefing in Washington with Secretary of State John Kerry and told reporters, “We just received a letter from the president in response to our question about whether Assad had used chemical weapons.”Kerry, reports the AP, said the Syrian regime launched two chemical weapons attacks during that Thursday morning meeting, which Foreign Policy says was attended by reportedly all US senators, as well as representatives for the office of the director of national intelligence and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.Speaking to CNN shortly later, Sen. McCain said he’s not surprised by the latest intelligence report and has long assumed that Assad’s regime was engaged in chemical warfare. Of specific concern to him, however, was what could happen if the alleged warheads end up in the arsenals of others.“I think they have control over them at the moment,” he said of the weapons, “but some of them are in heavily contested areas and could easily fall into the hands of jihadist extremists.”“We need to have operational capability to secure these weapons,” added McCain.US President Barack Obama said previously that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” that could trigger US reaction if crossed. On Thursday Rodriguez wrote on behalf of the administration that “physiological samples” has led the White House to reassess the claims that Assad has used chemical warfare. Christiane Amanpour, the chief international correspondent for CNN, said that sources have told her that physicians working with the Free Syrian Army obtained blood samples from chemical warfare victims and provided them to US intelligence along with soil samples collected from the earth.Britain, France, Qatar and the Israel Defense Forces have also said in recent days that Israeli intelligence has led them to believe Assad has used chemical weapons.Intelligence assessments on Syrian chemical weapons are “not enough,” Reuters quotes the White House, adding that “credit and corroborated facts” are needed.Even one day earlier, Sec. Hagel himself had doubts about the rumored use of chemical weapons. Speaking in Cairo, Egypt on Wednesday, Hagel said that Israeli claims of Assad employing chemical warfare were “suspicious” and that “we have to be very careful here before we draw any conclusions based on real intelligence.”“The use of chemical weapons in an environment like Syria is very difficult to confirm,” a senior US Defense official told the Los Angeles Times in response while speaking on condition of anonymity. “Given the stakes involved, low-confidence assessments by foreign governments cannot be the basis for US action.” … Read More
Alberto Gonzales tells CNN: ‘We can never be safe in a society like ours’
The man who convinced President George W. Bush to reinterpret the Geneva Convention’s prohibitions on torture on Sunday declared that “we can never be safe in a society like ours” and terrorists will always want to attack America because they are “unhappy about U.S. foreign…
Putin sends 2 intl children’s rights bills to Duma for ratification
In late 2012, Putin instructed the government to begin ratifying the legislation in 2013. “The purpose of the bill… is an expression of the consent of the Russian Federation to be bound by the provisions of the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse,” lawmakers said earlier during the ratification process.The convention, adopted by the Council of Europe in 2007, introduced a universal international framework for combating child abuse. The document recommends to its members a range of national measures aimed at protecting children. Russia signed the convention in Strasbourg in October 2012.Once the document comes into force in Russia, the country will be bound by international standards for “preventing and combating” the exploitation and sexual abuse of children, “including acts which are committed abroad.” This includes fighting child pornography and prostitution, particularly on the Internet, and other forms of sexual abuse “destructive to children’s health and psycho-social development.”Signatories are also obliged to provide protection to abuse victims. To date, the convention has over 40 signatory countries – half of which have not yet ratified it.Another document sent by Putin for State Duma ratification is the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography to the UN Convention on the Rights of Children. This convention was adopted in 1989 to promote basic human rights for children worldwide; ratification obliges signatories to submit reports defining their government’s domestic implementation of the treaty.Russia, then part of the Soviet Union, became one of the first signatories to the treaty in January 1990, and ratified it in August that year.The only three UN members that have not ratified the convention are Somalia, South Sudan and the US. Though it signed the convention in 1995, the US has not ratified it since the document forbids life imprisonment for minors.Despite expressing support for the convention, the Clinton administration did not submit it to the US Senate for review and approval, nor have any subsequent administrations.Russian-US relations have soured recently due to, among other issues, numerous scandals surrounding allegations of abuse of Russian-born children adopted by US parents.Moscow recently enacted the ‘Dima Yakovlev Law,’ which banned US citizens from adopting Russian children. The legislation was named after a Russian boy who died after his adoptive American father left him locked in a car during an extremely hot day. Russian lawmakers insist that the law is justified by the inadequate US response to the death of 19 Russian children adopted by US citizens. … Read More
