June, 20 2018, 12:00am EDT
Welcoming Refugees and Asylum-Seekers: Every Person Can Make A Difference This World Refugee Day
WASHINGTON
This World Refugee Day, Amnesty International USA is calling on all people living in the United States to welcome refugees and asylum-seekers into their communities. While some elected leaders would have us believe that those seeking safety do not deserve to be welcomed here in the United States, we know this to be false. Every day, we see the tremendous popular support that exists for welcoming refugees and asylum seekers in towns, cities, and public squares around the country. On this World Refugee Day, Amnesty International USA urges individuals to take action to welcome those in search of safety into their communities.
"Refugees are ordinary human beings who have been forced to flee their homes under the most extraordinary circumstances. They all deserve to have their human rights respected, protected, and fulfilled," said Ryan Mace Grassroots Advocacy & Refugee Specialist for Amnesty International. "Refugees bring so much to their communities, wherever they are. They have innumerable skills, ideas, hopes, and dreams. Here in the U.S., we should be welcoming them into our communities with open arms and inviting them to our table, not building taller walls and implementing draconian policies meant to keep refugees and asylum seekers out."
The Conflicts We Cannot Ignore
There are over 65 million people displaced around the world, and over 22.5 million are refugees who were forced to flee their homes due to violence, persecution, and war. At a time when approximately 1.2 million refugees are in need of resettlement globally, here in the United States, the Administration set the lowest refugee admissions goal in the history of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program - only 45,000 refugees can be resettled here in the U.S. this fiscal year. To make matters worse, the U.S. has not even resettled 15,000 refugees, far below where they should be at this point. At this rate, we will not even reach half of the already drastically lowered goal.
South of the US border, there is an ignored refugee crisis. Tens of thousands of people - including families - are forced to leave their homes to seek protection in the United States due to persecution and targeted violence. They come to the U.S. seeking safety, but instead of finding protection, they are more and more frequently pushed back at the border or thrown into detention, such as Alejandra, a transgender asylum seeker detained on World Refugee Day. She has been in detention since asking for asylum late last fall.
Perhaps most cruelly, families are forcibly separated, children torn form parents' arms. Amnesty International recently conducted a two-and-a-half-week research mission along the U.S. southern border and found that since 2017, the Department of Homeland Security is increasingly forcibly separating children from their parents or guardians when these families request asylum. One of the parents interviewed by Amnesty International was a grandmother who fled with her granddaughter to prevent her from being forced to become a "girlfriend" of a gang member in Honduras. Other parents fled to save themselves and their children from being killed by police in Brazil, where extrajudicial executions at the hands of police officials are frequent. One such case is Val, who presented herself along with her seven-year-old son at the El Paso Port of Entry asking for help after drug traffickers threatened her and her family when she insisted they stop dealing drugs in front of her home. However, when she asked for asylum in the U.S., she was told "you don't have any rights here, you don't have rights to your son" as her son was forcibly removed from her and she was placed in detention. Her son was terrified, believing that Border Control agents would kill his mother.
"We must offer protection and safety to those who have done nothing other than seek safety for themselves and their loved ones," said Ryan Mace, "instead of punishing asylum-seeking parents and their children, denying them access to protection, and criminalizing people who have lost absolutely everything, we must think of the best interests of those requesting asylum at our border. It is unconscionable that we are separating children from their families. It also violates international law."
Those seeking safety in our world also include Rohingya refugees that have fled ethnic cleansing and other horrific violence in Myanmar that rises to the levels of crimes against humanity under international law. After fleeing killing, burning, rape, and physical violence, the Rohingya now find themselves in makeshift shelters made of earth, bamboo, and plastic built on hillsides that leave them highly vulnerable to landslides and floods as the cyclone and monsoon season comes upon them.
The US and international community also continue to largely ignore, or severely underfund, some of the world's largest humanitarian crises currently taking place. In Africa, the Lake Chad Basin grapples with an insurgency by the armed group known as Boko Haram, the impacts of climate change and political crises that force people to flee. As the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, and Cameroon face another year of protracted crises involving decades of conflict and government, judicial, and security institutions that are either ineffective or totally non-existent, civilians bear the brunt of violence and armed conflict, fleeing their homes into precarious futures, not knowing when, if ever they would be able to see their homes again and eager to find brighter futures, education opportunities, livelihoods, comprehensive health services and reliable food security. We must not forget these other millions of people displaced and facing grave insecurity.
Taking Action
Refugees and millions of others forced from their homes should know that in the U.S., we are eager to welcome them to the United States or ensure they receive critical humanitarian assistance they need. Amnesty International and its supporters are working to welcome refugees in the U.S. through community sponsorship and other meaningful actions that collectively have impact, like writing letters to elected officials, hosting discussions, and incorporating refugee stories into local gatherings and events. Amnesty International has partnered with resettlement agencies across the country to support community sponsorship, where our members can sponsor a refugee or a refugee family resettled in their community. In the spirit of building a longer table instead of a taller wall, Amnesty International's 'Longer Table Initiative', which launches today, encourages all individuals and communities to take meaningful actions to support refugees, both today and every day.
Through 'I Welcome' resolutions, communities can make a personal commitment to support refugees in rebuilding their lives in safety. Twenty-five resolutions and mayoral proclamations have already passed in cities like Miami and New York that have committed to protecting their immigrant pasts and ensuring their diverse futures.
This statement is available at: https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/welcoming-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-every-person-can-make-a-difference-this-world-refugee-day/
Follow Amnesty International USA on Twitter.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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'An Affront to the World': Shell Posts Billions in Profits as Planet Burns
"The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal," one campaigner said.
May 02, 2024
Oil major Shell announced $7.7 billion in profits during the first quarter of 2024 on Thursday, as well as a $3.5 billion share buyback program.
The news comes as every month covered by the period was the hottest of its kind on record. The three-month period also saw the second-largest wildfire in Texas history, extreme heat in West Africa and the Sahel, and the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef's fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. Scientists have clearly linked global heating, and the weather disasters it exacerbates, to the climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"As extreme weather accelerates and the cost-of-living crisis rumbles on, Shell's latest billion-pound profits are an affront to the world," Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. "The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal."
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich."
Shell's profits for the first three months of 2024 were around 20% lower than for the same time in 2023, CNBC reported. However, the company brought in $1.2 billion more than analysts had predicted. The world's largest oil firms, including Shell, saw record profits in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed.
"Shell has beaten expectations by a reasonable margin, despite the impact of lower gas prices during the first quarter," Stuart Lamont, an investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said in a statement shared by CNBC.
Global Witness pointed out that Shell's earnings to date amounted to over $58,000 a minute, more than the average U.K. nurse makes in a year.
"Shell continuing to rake in huge sums of money shows us that huge polluter profits were not a one-off but are the twisted reality of an energy system that benefits climate-wrecking companies to the cost of everyone else," Global Witness fossil fuel campaigner Alexander Kirk said in a statement.
Shell announced its profits one day after the U.S. Senate held a hearing on how large oil and gas companies, including Shell, have continued to deceive the public about the dangers of their products, moving from outright climate denial into making commitments they don't intend to keep or touting false solutions like carbon capture and storage that they then fail to develop. Shell, according to the testimony of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), spent only 11% of its capital on low-carbon technologies between 2009 and 2023.
The hearing sparked calls for accountability from the fossil fuel industry—such as mechanisms to make climate polluters pay for the transition to renewable energy—and the news of Shell's profits generated more.
In the U.K., Labor Shadow Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband proposed increasing the tax on energy company profits. Shell paid the U.K. government around $1.4 billion in taxes in 2023, of which around $300 million went to the Energy Profits Levy, according toThe Guardian. Also last year, it paid its shareholders $23 billion, nine times more than it invested in its "Renewables and Energy Solutions" program.
"These results show yet again why it is so damning [that Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak refuses to bring in a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants," Miliband said. "These are companies that have made record profits at the expense of working people. Labor says tax these companies fairly so we can invest in clean homegrown energy that will end the cost of living crisis and make Britain energy independent."
Greenpeace U.K. called Shell's latest profits "shameless."
"Their reckless hunt for profits needs to end," the environmental advocacy group wrote on social media. "When will world leaders find their backbone and make polluters pay?"
When one commenter suggested governments held back out of desire to keep collecting Big Oil's taxes, Greenpeace fired back, "What taxes?" and noted that Shell avoided paying U.K. taxes for years.
"At the end of the day we want clean, cheap renewable energy not to face the worst impacts of climate change," Greenpeace continued. "Solutions exist, we just need the political and industrial will to get them in place."
Global Witness and Global Justice Now also took the opportunity to call for an energy transition.
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich," Kirk said. "This spiral won't stop until we make the urgent switch to a fairer renewable energy system that puts both people and planet first."
McIntosh concluded: "We urgently need to bring a fair and organised end to the fossil fuel era, and that means companies like Shell must stop trying to extract new oil and gas, and start paying what they owe for the loss and damage they've caused. Profit announcements like this for a corporate dinosaur like Shell need to become a thing of the past."
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"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes," said one campaigner.
May 02, 2024
The straightforward demand consistently made by human rights experts, a top European Union official, and college students across the U.S. and in a growing number of countries formed the basis for a Global Day of Action on Thursday, with 250 groups organizing direct actions to call on governments around the world to "Stop Sending Arms" to Israel.
Groups including Amnesty International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the Center for Jewish Nonviolence helped organize actions in at least 12 countries, "with a strategic emphasis on countries with significant arms exports" and an "aim to resonate globally."
Protest events including rallies, "die-ins," and the projection of messages and images on government buildings were organized in countries including the United States—the top supplier of arms to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)—Canada, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Slovakia.
"The Global Day of Action must serve as a wake-up call to states that continue to supply arms to all parties to the conflict in Gaza that they are at risk of being complicit in war crimes and other violations of international law," said Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns at Amnesty International.
The groups and their supporters amplified the global campaign on social media using the hashtags #StopSendingArms and #CeasefireNOW.
The day of action comes a day after dozens of universities in the United Kingdom were warned by a legal group that they could be criminally liable for investing in weapons manufacturers that provide arms to Israel, and days after Amnesty International filed a report with the U.S. government detailing specific attacks on Palestinian civilians by the IDF in which Israel used weapons provided by the United States.
Dozens of U.S. and international lawyers, including some from President Joe Biden's own administration, have warned the White House that Israel's actions in Gaza—which have killed at least 34,596 Palestinians since October, the majority of whom have been women and children—violate international law.
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) in the U.S. noted that calls for divestment from Israel have spread across U.S. college campuses in recent weeks, despite violent crackdowns by police forces.
"While students have been calling on their universities to divest from Israel, FCNL is urging our government to stop military aid," said the group. "It's clear there's a growing demand to end U.S. complicity in the war in Gaza."
Organizers in Australia displayed signs reading, "Every F-35 [fighter jet] contains some Australian parts and components."
"Around the world, people are demanding their governments end complicity in [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's war," said Heather McPherson, a member of the Canadian Parliament representing the New Democratic Party. "In Canada, the NDP calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to impose a two-way arms embargo. End the suffering!"
Organizers called on arms experts, journalists, academics, and legal professionals to join the Global Day of Action and call for a "comprehensive arms embargo" on Israel "to stop the transfer of weapons, parts, and ammunitions being used to fuel violations of international law in the occupied Gaza Strip."
Guevara Rosas said that "following the conclusion by the International Court of Justice that there is a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and in light of the obligation under international law of all states to prevent genocide, governments that continue to supply arms to Israel may find themselves in breach of the Genocide Convention."
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'Their Blood Is on Gene Block': UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid
Officers in military gear fired flash-bang munitions and used batons to clear a nonviolent encampment calling for an end to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza.
May 02, 2024
Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university's complicity in Israel's war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple "less lethal" munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA's leadership has declared unlawful.
Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment.
"They'd rather shoot kids than stop this genocide," said one observer.
Police fire multiple impact munitions at protestors. 4:38am pic.twitter.com/960I4iVMtt
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the university's student newspaper early Thursday that police officers "violently dragged" students from the Gaza solidarity encampment and that some demonstrators were "visibly injured."
"Their blood is on Gene Block and the UC administration's hands for a series of catastrophic decisions over the last two days," said Blair, referring to UCLA's chancellor. "It did not need to be this way."
Blair said UCLA professors inside the encampment "plan to be arrested alongside students who have done nothing but talk about a genocide taking place in Palestine."
Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, told the Los Angeles Times that "our job is to stand up for their First Amendment rights, their rights on their own campus."
Police arrest protestor 4:55am pic.twitter.com/udgS0Terc9
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
The police raid came 24 hours after Los Angeles officers and campus security stood by as a pro-Israel mob violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Dozens of students were reportedly taken to hospitals for treatment following the assault.
The Daily Bruin, whose student journalists were on the scene, reported Thursday that police "continued to detain protesters in the encampment as the clock struck 4:00 am, marking one week since the initial erection of the solidarity encampment by the UC Divest Coalition and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA."
"At 4:05 am, a slew of loud noises presumed to be flash bangs went off," the newspaper added. "Dozens of protesters exited the encampment by climbing through the bushes near Powell Library onto the Janss Steps lawn. Protesters chanted, 'Gene Block, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide' and, 'We are students' as smoke from the presumed flash bangs thickened above Dickson Plaza."
The police crackdown at UCLA is part of a broader wave of police repression on campuses nationwide as universities refuse to grant their student's calls for divestment from companies profiting off Israel's assault on Gaza. More than 1,000 student demonstrators have reportedly been arrested across the U.S. so far.
"It is no accident that this indefensible police crackdown comes in service of an indefensible war," The Intercept's Natasha Lennard wrote in a column Wednesday following the violent police raid at Columbia University in New York. "The very extremity of protest repression speaks to desperation on the part of institutions of the American establishment."
"Israel's decimation of Gaza has—at least for millions more people—given lie to the redemptive myths of the post-World War II political liberal order," Lennard added. "Young people, even the children of the elite, even children of Zionists, are standing with Palestine. Their peaceful acts of protest count as disruptive because they count as un-American—which should be a badge of honor amid a U.S.-backed genocide."
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