'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Washington, DC – Asylum seekers sent to Mexico by the administration of former US president Donald Trump have suffered violence and extortion by Mexican police, immigration agents, and criminal groups, Human Rights Watch on 5 March 2021 said.
– Marcela Loaiza was just 21 years old when a man approached her at her workplace in Pereira City, Colombia with promises of fame and money. The well-dressed, mysterious Colombian said he could give her an opportunity for a better life. Loaiza was also working at a supermarket to support herself and her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
Credit: Unsplash /Melanie Wasser.“He said he want to help me to become an international dancer, that he would take me to another country to sing,” Loaiza told IPS News from her Las Vegas home.
Obock, Djibouti (IOM)* – At least 20 people have drowned after smugglers threw dozens of migrants overboard early 3 March 2021 morning during their journey from Djibouti to Yemen, the third such incident on the Gulf of Aden in six months.
Fishing boats such as this one abandoned outside Obock, Djibouti, are used to smuggle tens of thousands of migrants annually across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen where they continue their journey to Gulf countries in search of work. Photo: IOM/2018
Survivors receiving medical treatment at the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Migrant Response Centre in Obock said at least 200 migrants, including children, were crowded aboard the vessel when it departed. Thirty minutes into the journey the smugglers forced roughly 80 people into the sea. Five bodies were recovered on 3 March.
Nairobi/Paris, 4 March 2021 (UNEP)* – An estimated 931 million tonnes of food, or 17% of total food available to consumers in 2019, went into the waste bins of households, retailers, restaurants and other food services, according to new UN research conducted to support global efforts to halve food waste by 2030.
The weight roughly equals that of 23 million fully loaded 40-tonne trucks — bumper-to-bumper, enough to circle the Earth 7 times.
(UN News)* — Institutional suspicion and fear of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim has escalated to epidemic proportions, the Human Rights Council heard on Thursday [4 March 2021]. Addressing the Council in Geneva, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, independent rights expert Ahmed Shaheed, said that “numerous” States, regional and international bodies were to blame.
(UN News)* — The United Nations top human rights official, on 4 March 2021, said that the military in Myanmar must halt their “vicious crackdown” on peaceful protestors, amid reports that at least 54 people have been killed since the 1 February coup, 38 of them on Wednesday [3 March 2021] alone.
