World

BARCELONA — More than 11,200 migrants have died trying to reach Spain in the past five years, equating to a daily average of six people, Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras said on Monday.

In a report, the organisation — which alerts the authorities to migrant boats in trouble at sea and helps families searching for loved ones — said 11,286 people had died between January 2018 and November 30, 2022.

The deaths mainly occurred as they tried to reach Spain by sea but also included those who died trying to get into its two North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.

More than two-thirds — or 7,692 people — died en route from the African coast to the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, which is an extremely dangerous route because of its strong currents with migrants packed into ramshackle boats which are far from seaworthy.

At its shortest, the route from the Moroccan coast is around 100 kilometres, but migrants often come from as far as Mauritania which is more than 1,000 kilometres as the crow flies.

Crossings there began surging in late 2019 after increased patrols in the Mediterranean dramatically reduced migrant numbers.

"This report provides an analysis over time which lets us see the shift towards increasingly dangerous migration routes," Helena Maleno, head of Caminando Fronteras, said on presenting the report in Barcelona.

The second most dangerous route is between Algeria and Spain where 1,526 people died over the same period.

Others died while trying to cross into Ceuta and Melilla, which have Europe's only land border with Africa, making them a magnet for migrants desperate to escape grinding poverty and hunger.

Figures show 47 people died at those borders over the past five years, the NGO said.

In June, dozens died trying to cross into Melilla, with Morocco counting 23 but Amnesty International and independent experts giving a figure of 37 in the worst recorded toll in years.

40 per cent of deaths in 2021 

The worst year for migrant deaths was 2021, when 4,639 people lost their lives — representing more than 40 per cent of the overall toll over the five-year period.

Although the figures for this year do not include December, the number of deaths in 2022 is considerably lower, standing at 2,154.

Among the victims, who either drowned, died en route or went missing at sea, were 1,272 women and 377 children.

Most of the bodies are never recovered, with the dead swallowed up by the ocean, and the NGO denounced the lack of international help for families desperately looking for missing loved ones.

Spain is one of the main gateways for migrants to reach Europe and so far this year, some 30,000 have managed to reach its territory.

The vast majority is by sea, with 27,789 arrivals so far this year, the latest interior ministry figures show, a significant drop from a year earlier when arrivals stood at 37,241.

BEIJING — China's nursing homes are fighting an uphill battle to keep their elderly residents safe as a wave of COVID-19 infections sweeps the country following a relaxation of the government's zero-tolerance virus policy.

Facilities are locking themselves off from the outside world with staff sleeping on site, while struggling to get their hands on drugs.

Authorities have warned of rapidly growing caseloads, and industry ministry official Zhou Jian said on Wednesday that the country was "making all-out efforts to ramp up the production of key medicines".

Experts fear the country is ill-equipped to manage the "exit wave" of infections as it presses ahead with reopening, with millions of vulnerable elderly people still not fully vaccinated.

And eldercare facilities have now been left to fend for themselves as society reopens, the manager of one privately run Beijing home said.

"We are fully sealed off," the manager, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.

Only food and supplies are allowed in, no one is allowed to enter or leave.

He said the home had ordered medical supplies "at a high price", but they had not arrived yet after a week, with the city's logistics network battered by infections among delivery workers.

He warned it would be impossible to keep the virus out forever.

"Couriers and delivery personnel are almost all COVID positive," he said. "Even if you disinfect or throw away all the outer packaging, plus the plastic packaging, you can't spray disinfectant on all the food that comes in."

Many Chinese eldercare facilities have already been locked down for weeks following local government directives, with Yuecheng Senior Home in Beijing saying last week it had already been sealed off for nearly 60 days.

In Shanghai, the Xiangfu Nursing Home said this week it would continue "closed management", forcing all employees to sleep on site and giving staff nucleic acid tests every day.

"As society optimises prevention and control policies, our home should in particular maintain high vigilance," the home said in its statement.

Visits to hospital fever clinics surged in the days following China’s lifting of restrictions last week, though the World Health Organisation said the virus was already spreading widely in the country as “the control measures in themselves were not stopping the disease”.

The toll of the abrupt shift away from zero-COVID is still unfolding, with multiple funeral homes in the capital telling AFP they experienced a recent surge in demand.

Health authorities have reported no deaths from COVID-19 in the past week, but have admitted that official figures no longer capture the full picture of domestic infections now that mass testing requirements have been dropped.

“We’ve had hundreds of patients, with a number of patients coming from nursing homes and in their 90s,” though there appeared to be few severe cases, one nurse at a Beijing hospital, who asked to remain anonymous, told AFP.

The nurse, who had recently caught COVID himself and returned to work after just three days, said more than half of his colleagues had been infected over the past few days.

“We can only force ourselves to work to keep the hospital running,” he said. “Those who have no fever and only mild symptoms are returning to work.”

JOHANNESBURG — Voting to elect a new leader of South Africa’s ruling party started late Sunday, with the race tightening between President Cyril Ramaphosa and his former health minister Zweli Mkhize amid warnings against “divisive” vote buying.

Ramaphosa, 70, is expected to be confirmed in the role that opens the way to being head of state, despite a damaging cash-heist scandal and vociferous internal opposition.

But the race looked closer than previously expected Sunday, with reports of party delegates from several provinces shifting support to Mkhize, who Ramaphosa replaced at the peak of the pandemic for alleged malfeasance involving COVID funds.

More than 4,000 delegates began casting their ballots to appoint seven top leadership roles, including party president, deputy president, chair and secretary general, at a conference near Johannesburg.

Rifts in the African National Congress (ANC), which was shaped by Nelson Mandela to spearhead the struggle to end apartheid, are deepening, and support is declining after nearly three decades in power.

The five-day conference has further exposed those divisions with allegations of vote-buying, and horse-trading ahead of the vote.

The practice “can be divisive” said party spokesman Pule Mabe, adding “there is a commitment on our part to deal with the notion of vote buying”.

The election, originally scheduled to take place on Friday, is closely watched. The winner of the ANC presidency will be expected to ascend to the national presidency in 2024 polls.

Results are now expected early Monday morning, a senior party elections official said.

Ramaphosa had been tipped to win the vote comfortably, but “it’s up in the air right now,” independent political analyst Pearl Mncube told AFP.

He first emerged as the ANC leader in a tightly-fought 2017 race after his then boss Jacob Zuma became mired in corruption allegations, vowing to be a graft-buster.

But his clean-hands image has been dented by damning accusations he concealed a huge foreign currency cash burglary at his farm in 2020, rather than report it to the authorities.

He won a reprieve ahead of the conference when the ANC used its majority in parliament to block a possible impeachment inquiry.

Second term? 

His sole rival Mkhize hails from the same province as Zuma, the southeastern KwaZulu-Natal, which has the largest number of party delegates.

As health minister, the 66-year-old medical doctor was lauded for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

But his tenure ended abruptly when he resigned amid allegations his son and associates benefited from a 150 million rand ($10.4 million) contract for a COVID awareness campaign. He vehemently denies any wrongdoing.

The image of the 110-year-old ANC has been fractured, and stained by corruption, cronyism and a lacklustre economic record.

An organisational report presented at the conference showed that party membership has dropped by a third over the past five years.

Some of those divisions played out in the open at the conference that opened on Friday, with Ramaphosa heckled by some delegates before his opening address.

Much of the disturbance came from supporters of Ramaphosa’s political rival and corruption-tainted former president Zuma.

Chants, shouting and celebratory dances also marked the process to confirm all nominations in the early morning, with senior party officials repeatedly calling for order.

Some delegates rolled their hands as a sign for “change” while others made the number two with their fingers in support of a second term for Ramaphosa.

But some Ramaphosa supporters are unbowed.

“We are saying Ramaphosa for a second term, he has done very well under very difficult circumstances in the first term,” said Elton Bantam, a delegate from the Eastern Cape province.

Suva, Fiji — Fiji’s opposition leader said on Thursday he will challenge the country’s election results, after an overnight “anomaly” abruptly halted a tally that showed him holding a very early lead.

Sitiveni Rabuka — a former prime minister and two-time coup leader nicknamed “Rambo”— told AFP his party had a right to “legal redress”, in his first public remarks on the incident.

“We will pursue every avenue available to us to make sure that the people are not denied their right of electing their government,” he said in an interview, saying he would first take his case to the country’s electoral commission.

“I have to be convinced that it is the correct result. Even with the participation of the courts,” he said as he flicked through a copy of the country’s constitution.

Rabuka, who called on his supporters to remain calm, is trying to replace Fiji’s leader of 16 years, Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.

The 68-year-old prime minister seized control in a 2006 putsch but legitimised his grip on power with election wins in 2014 and 2018.

After four coups in the past 35 years, the vote is being seen as a test of the Pacific nation’s fledgling democracy.

As the very first batch of votes was tallied on Wednesday, Rabuka held an early lead, raising his supporters’ hopes of victory and the first peaceful transfer of power in two decades.

Then, in a hastily arranged press conference in the early hours of Thursday, election supervisor Mohammed Saneem said vote counters had stopped publishing results after detecting an “anomaly”.

Four hours later, as dawn broke, provisional results were back online and Bainimarama was ahead and projected to win the election.

Saneem cited a “mismatch” between votes cast and the tallies published for some candidates — with a few relatively obscure figures polling well ahead of the major parties.

“To cure this, the Fijian Elections Office had to review the entire mechanism through which we were pushing out results,” he said.

The late-night irregularity dominated local news bulletins and was met with scepticism and anger on social media, but Saneem defended the integrity of the count.

“Everyone is too hungry for conspiracy theories,” he told reporters.

Rabuka said he wanted to know what took place, but urged composure and said the legal process should play out.

“In layman’s terms, at this point, it is a complaint. Later on... it will probably be asking for legal redress and for the court to adjudicate,” he said.

“Let us not be too carried away with what we assessed as an early victory yesterday,” he added, calling on Fijians to “remain calm, especially our supporters”.

Nervous wait 

Pacific analyst Tess Newton Cain said the glitch “may undermine confidence in the elections as a whole”.

“It will quite likely undermine confidence in the office of elections, and Saneem as supervisor” added Newton Cain, who is Project Lead at Griffith University’s Pacific Hub.

While final results are not expected until Sunday, partial results showed the election was still in the balance.

Bainimarama’s Fiji First Party held around 45 per cent of the vote, with more than half of the country’s 2071 polling stations counted.

Rabuka’s People’s Alliance and its coalition partner — the National Federation Party — had just under 42 per cent between them.

Another potential coalition party is polling just under the 5 per cent threshold to take a seat in parliament.

That fracturing of the opposition could once again deliver Bainimarama victory.

Asked whether he would accept the outcome, win or lose, Bainimarama said “of course” as he cast his ballot in the capital Suva on Wednesday with his granddaughter in tow.

The result of the election holds significance well beyond Fiji.

Rabuka has signalled that Fiji could loosen its ties with China if he is elected.

Fiji has grown closer to Beijing under Bainimarama, who used a “look north” policy to stabilise the economy after Australia and New Zealand hit the country with heavy trade sanctions in retaliation for his 2006 coup.

Fiji has a population of some 900,000 and is heavily reliant on its tourism industry, which was badly damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

BERLIN — Germany will tighten its gun laws and make it easier to expel extremists from the civil service after a far-right coup plot was uncovered last week, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday.

Twenty-five alleged plotters, including an ex-MP, former soldiers and aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss, were arrested last Wednesday in huge dawn raids across the country.

Prosecutors say they had amassed an arsenal of weapons and were planning to overthrow the state and install their own government.

A total of more than 50 people are being investigated for links to the plot, including current and former members of the police force, according to media reports.

Faeser said she wanted to tighten the law to “remove enemies of the constitution more quickly from the civil service in future”.

“This serves above all to protect the vast majority of employees in public administration who carry out their duties very well,” she said.

The government will also will “take legal measures in the area of tightening the weapons law”, such as increasing checks on people who own weapons, she said.

According to Die Welt newspaper, police seized 93 weapons belonging to members of the group, including 19 handguns and 25 rifles.

However, plans to tighten gun laws may be met with opposition from the liberal FDP, currently in government with Faeser’s Social Democrats and the Greens.

FDP Justice Minister Marco Buschmann this week told the RND broadcaster he was opposed to such a move since “even the strictest weapons laws don’t really help when people are obtaining weapons illegally”.

Faeser also said the Cabinet had agreed a new law to make funding streams more reliable for civil society organisations working to stamp out extremism.

Commenting on the plans on Twitter, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “anyone who wants to divide, who plans a violent coup, will have us to reckon with”.

Prosecutors say the alleged plotters belong to a movement known as the Reichsbuerger, which encompasses far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists and gun enthusiasts.

The Reichsbuerger generally believe in the continued existence of the pre-World War I German Reich, or empire, under a monarchy, and several groups have declared their own states.

The group busted last week had been making preparations to form more than 280 “homeland security companies” across the country, according to German media.

Those under investigation reportedly include a police officer working in the area of right-wing extremism in Lower Saxony and a former detective chief inspector in the Hanover police department.

Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of parliament for the far-right AfD Party and a Berlin judge, was among those arrested.

At least two other people who are or were active in the AfD at a regional level are also under investigation, according to Der Spiegel magazine.

JAKARTA — The United States, South Korea and Japan vowed on Tuesday to consider all options against North Korea, including counterstrikes, in the wake of an unprecedented blitz of missile tests by Pyongyang that has sent regional tensions spiralling.

The flurry of North Korean launches include last month’s test of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile and a missile that flew across the de facto maritime border and landed near South Korean waters for the first time since the Korean War.

US special representative for North Korea Sung Kim held talks with South Korean counterpart Kim Gunn and senior Japanese foreign ministry official Takehiro Funakoshi in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta, where they warned of Pyongyang’s threat to regional security.

“We will examine all options, including counterstrike capabilities,” said Funakoshi, of the Japanese foreign ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs bureau.

The talks, which follow meetings in Tokyo and Seoul this year, were held at the US embassy in Jakarta, where Sung Kim also serves as ambassador to Indonesia.

The envoys’ pledge comes after their nations slapped sanctions on North Korean officials and groups this month to punish Kim Jong-un’s regime for the wave of weapons tests.

Gunn said Pyongyang had become more aggressive in threatening nuclear action and that the three allies would harmonise sanctions despite Chinese and Russian vetoes of a US-led bid to tighten them at the UN earlier this year.

“North Korea is becoming more aggressive and blatant in its nuclear threat,” said the South’s envoy.

“North Korea’s further provocation will be met with a firm and united response from the international community.”

Washington, Seoul and Tokyo have bolstered their security cooperation on North Korea to new highs as a result of the heightened missile activity, according to Funakoshi.

“We urge North Korea to sincerely respond to our call for dialogue. Our commitment to denuclearisation will remain unwavering,” he said.

Seoul and Washington have spent months warning that Pyongyang is gearing up to conduct what would be the country’s seventh nuclear test.

After overseeing the launch of the Hwasong-17 “monster” missile in November, Kim declared he wanted North Korea to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force.

At a politburo meeting last month, Kim said 2023 would be a “historic year”, marking 75 years since the country’s founding, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.