MS Risk Blog

EU’s Juncker Announces Refugee Quota Plan

European Union (EU) Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced last week plans, which he says will offer a “swift, determined and comprehensive” response to Europe’s migrant crisis.

Speaking to the European Parliament, Mr Juncker set out the plans in a “state of the union” annual address, in which he outlined the priorities of the European Commission.  Under the proposals:

• EU member states to accept their share of an additional 120,000 refugees, building upon proposed quotas to relocate 40,000 refugees, which were set out in May (however governments then only actually agreed to take 32,000)
• A permanent relocation system aimed to “deal with crisis situations more swiftly in the future”
• Commission to propose list of “safe countries” to which migrants would generally have to return
• Efforts aimed at strengthening the EU’s commons asylum system
• A review of the Dublin System, which states that people must claim asylum in the state where they first enter the EU
• Better management of external borders and better legal channels for migration

Under the new plans, 60% of those currently in Italy, Greece and Hungary would be relocated to German, France and Spain.  The numbers allocated to each country would depend on GDP, population, unemployment rate and asylum applications that have already been processed.  Countries that refuse to take in migrants could face financial penalties.

While Spain has already indicated that it will accept a quota of almost 15,000 additional migrants set by the EU, Mr Juncker’s proposals have been criticized by both Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has stated that the compulsory quotas were “not a good solution,” while his Slovakian counterparty has called them “irrational.”  Poland and Romania have also opposed the idea, however Poland has agreed to take in more migrants.  France has already welcomed the first of 1,000 migrants that it has pledged to take from Germany and it has committed to receive 24,000 migrants over two years.  Waving EU rules, Germany has welcomed Syrian migrants, and has indicated that it expects to deal with 800,000 asylum seekers this year alone, warning however that not all will quality as refugees and some will be sent back.  Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that Germany needed to learn from its mistakes in labelling incomers in the post-war period as “Gastarbeiter” or “guest workers,” with the implication that they were not permanent residents, adding that many of the refugees it expects in future “will become new citizens of our country.”

In a separate development, Australia has announced plans to take in 12,000 Syrian refugees.

The mass migration has seen those seeking an end to persecution, conflict and hardship travel from Turkey across the sea to Greece, through Macedonia and Serbia, then to Hungary, where from there they aim to reach Austria, Germany and Sweden.  This mass migration however has forced some countries to close their borders in a bid to keep migrants out or force them to travel through other countries to reach their final destinations.  On 9 September, Denmark suspended all rail links with Germany and closed a section of motorway after migrants cross the border and began walking north, apparently trying to reach Sweden.  Meanwhile in southern Hungary, migrants on the border with Serbia broke through police lines at the Roszke camp, which forced authorities to close the M5 highway.

The next steps for EU leaders will include:

14 September – Special meeting of EU interior ministers on refugees crisis, with Mr Juncker’s proposals on the agenda

15 – 16 October – EU leaders’ summit, with refugee crisis high on the agenda.  The European Parliament will then decide on any new asylum measures with EU governments

Early 2016 – EU proposals for better management of legal migration to EU are due.

Chinese National Likely Kidnapped by Islamic State

On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry announced Friday that a Chinese national, who was reported as being held hostage by the Islamic State (IS) group, appears to be one of its missing citizens. Earlier this week, IS, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria, published two photographs of men whom they called “prisoners” in its English-language magazine Dabiq. In the magazine, the militant group indicated that one of the hostages was from Norway while the other was a Chinese man identified as Fan Jingui. It shows Fan, who has been identified as a 50-year-old “freelance consultant” from Beijing, against a black background wearing a yellow top. He provides a telegram number for anyone who wishes to pay his ransom. It remains unclear where he is being held and the magazine did not give a ransom amount.

Speaking on Friday to reporters at a regular press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei disclosed that “after initial verification of the relevant media reports of the two hostages, one of them matches the characteristics of a Chinese citizen who has gone missing overseas.” Hong has disclosed that China had launched an emergency response mechanism and reiterated that the Chinese government is firmly opposed to violence against innocent civilians.

In the past, Chinese citizens have been held hostage overseas before, including in Africa and in Pakistan. According to Pakistani officials, a Chinese tourist kidnapped in Pakistan by the Taliban more than a year ago was freed in August, as a result of an intelligence operation.

Guatemalan President Will Face Trial on Corruption Charges

Judge Miguel Angel Galvez has ruled that former Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina will face trial on corruption charges, after being detained last Friday following the loss of his diplomatic immunity. He will remain in prison as the country heads into a runoff election to find his successor.

On Tuesday this week, Judge Galvez determined that there were “sufficient indications” that Perez Molina had been involved in a scam in which importers paid bribes to public officials in exchange for reduced tariffs. In a series of recorded conversations played during Tuesday’s hearing, former vice president, Roxana Baldetti was heard to implicate Perez Molina in the scam by referring to him as “number 1”, “chairman of the company,” and “owner of the estate.” Baldetti, who continues to maintain his innocence, was arrested last month on charges of illicit association, fraud and graft.  Perez Molina – a former general who was elected in 2011 on an anti-corruption platform – has also denied allegations of wrongdoing and until late last week had refused to resign, despite mounting pressure from within his own government. In a pre-recorded address to the nation Perez Molina said: “I will not resign and…I categorically reject any link (to the scandal).” But after a judge ordered his detention over the allegations levelled against him the 64 year old submitted his resignation, ostensible to “maintain the institution of the presidency and resolve on his own the legal proceedings levelled against him”. His decision was accepted in a unanimous vote by congress, who afterwards swore in Alejandro Maldonado to act as caretaker president until January next year.

The fraud in which Perez Molina has been implicated was first revealed in April by the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, otherwise known by the Spanish acronym CICIG. The investigation has led to the imprisonment of almost forty people and the birth of a vast grassroots movement, which has seen thousands of people take to the streets of Guatemala demanding the resignation of the President. Since its creation in December 2006 the CICIG has shone a light on endemic corruption in Guatemala. It has worked on nearly 200 cases and has helped bring charges against numerous criminal networks and around 200 politicians, police officials and military officers.

Three New Cases of Ebola Reported in Sierra Leone

Authorities in Sierra Leone reported Tuesday that three more patients have tested positive for Ebola in a village in the northern region of the country that is already under quarantine in the wake of the death of a 67-year-old woman.

According to the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), the new cases, which were diagnosed on Monday, bring the total in a recent outbreak in Sella Kafta in the district of Kambia to five. Speaking to reporters in the capital Freetown, NERC spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis disclosed that the three new cases were amongst the fifty “high risk persons” who have been identified as being close relatives of the food trader, who died on 28 August. He further disclosed that “the development remains a concern for us but since it has taken place within a quarantined home, it can be adequately monitored and further transmission can be contained.”

The latest outbreak brought to an abrupt end the optimism that was fuelled by the release of what had been the West African country’s last known Ebola patient from a hospital in the central city of Makeni in late August. In the wake of the latest Ebola death, Sella Kafta, a village of almost 1,000 people, was placed under a three-week quarantine lockdown.

Authorities Seize Over Two Metric Tons of Cocaine

Authorities in Colombia and Mexico have seized over two metric tons of cocaine disguised as printer toner. At Bogota’s El Dorado airport, police officers discovered the first batch of cocaine when a drug-sniffing Labrador detected traces of the narcotic concealed inside a shipment of forty eight boxes bound for an as yet unnamed company in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. After chemical analysis confirmed that the substance was in fact cocaine, Colombian police then notified their Mexican counterparts of the discovery, which led to the seizure of a second batch which had arrived at Mexico City Airport on a flight from Bogota some hours earlier.

“None of the operations resulted in arrests, but Colombian police and their Mexican counterparts have indications of the two caches’ owners: apparently the cargo would be received by member of the Sinaloa cartel and was sent by a drug trafficking networking rooted in Colombia’s Atlantic coast,” said the director of Colombian police, General Rodolfo Palomino in an official statement.

Referred to as “coca negra” or “black cocaine”, the practice of mixing cocaine base and/or cocaine hydrochloride with other substances in order to disguise its appearance and to make it undetectable to drug sniffing dogs has been used by Colombian drug smugglers since at least 1998. Once the substance has reached its destination, the drug is then extracted by passing it through a chemical solvent such as acetone.

According to the latest Colombia Coca Survey, which is produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in association with the Colombian Government, the cultivation and production of cocaine has increased exponentially over the previous year. In 2014, the net coca cultivation area alone had risen from 48,000 hectares to 69,000 hectares, an increase of 44 percent. This substantially increased production capacity and allowed Colombia to produce a staggering 442 metric tons of cocaine over the same period.