Month: September 2019

Prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong announced plans Saturday to contest local elections and warned that any attempt to disqualify him will only spur more support for monthslong pro-democracy protests.

His announcement came ahead of a major rally later Saturday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Umbrella protests, where he first shot to fame as a youth leader. During the Umbrella Movement, protesters occupied key thoroughfares in the city for 79 days to demand for free elections for the city’s leaders but failed to win any concession.

Wong, 22, said he will run in district council elections in November and that the vote is crucial to send a message to Beijing that the people are more determined than ever to win the battle for more rights.

“Five years ago, we claimed that we will be back and now we are back with even stronger determination,” he told a news conference. “The battle ahead is the battle for our home and our homeland.”

Risk of being disqualified

Wong, who has been arrested and jailed repeatedly, said he is aware that he could be disqualified. Members of the Demosisto party that he co-founded in 2016 have in the past been disqualified from serving and running for office because they advocated self-determination.

He said the political censorship by Beijing showed an erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” framework when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1996.

“If they disqualify me, it will just generate more and more momentum … they will pay the price,” he said.

Lennon Walls

On Saturday, protesters were rebuilding Lennon Walls of anti-government graffiti as they marked the Umbrella anniversary.

Some Lennon Walls were torn down by pro-Beijing activists last weekend. The large mosaics of Post-it notes calling for democracy have cropped up in underpasses, outside shopping centers, at bus stops and universities.

“Lennon Walls carry the spirit of civil disobedience from the Umbrella movement,” said pro-democracy protester Kelvin Law, 24. “I am not sure when this protest will end. Either we win or we lose. But as long as we are united and fight, generation after generation, we can achieve democracy.”

Apart from Saturday’s rally in the city center, protesters are also planning global “anti-totalitarianism” rallies Sunday in Hong Kong and more than 60 cities worldwide to denounce what they called “Chinese tyranny.”

Fears for Tuesday

But the biggest worry for the government is Tuesday. Protesters plan a major march downtown, sparking fears of a bloody showdown that could embarrass China’s ruling Communist Party as it marks its 70th year in power with grand festivities in Beijing. Pro-Beijing groups have also vowed to come out, adding to the tension.

Police have banned the march but protesters have in the past turned up anyway. Hong Kong’s government has toned down National Day celebrations, canceling an annual firework display and moving a reception indoor.

Separately, U.S. Rep. James McGovern and Sen. Marco Rubio, who are spearheading efforts to push through a law to support Hong Kong’s democracy, said in a joint statement there was an “accelerated erosion” of Hong Kong’s human rights and freedom since the 2014 Umbrella Movement.

They urged Carrie Lam’s government to make universal suffrage a priority and acquiesce to demands for an independent inquiry on alleged police brutality against protesters.

“We continue to stand with the people of Hong Kong … we also stand committed to swiftly passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in the U.S. Congress,” they said.

China has slammed the bill, which proposes economic sanctions and penalties on Chinese and Hong Kong officials found to have suppressed democracy in the city as interference in its affairs.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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VOA White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — After more than two years of political and legal strife, U.S. President Donald Trump appears to be prevailing in revamping immigration policy and building portions of a wall to limit migration across the southern U.S. border.

Trump views boosting border security as a “promise kept” to the American people, one he will tout to voters in his re-election bid next year.

“[W]e’re doing it. We get it done,” the president said this past week. “The [border] wall is being built.”

Senate Deals Wall Setback, but Trump May Still Win on Border video player.

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Migrant apprehensions down

The administration reports nearly 100 kilometers of new border wall construction since 2017 and aims to extend barriers by more than 600 kilometers by the end of next year. Meanwhile, apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border fell from 144,255 in May to 64,006 in August, a 56% decline.

While migrants continue to arrive at the border, far fewer have been held on U.S. soil since the administration reached an accord with Mexico under which asylum-seekers are returned to Mexico to await their immigration court hearings. Separate pacts with Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, designed to deter U.S.-bound migration, establish them as asylum destinations where claimants must seek protection before pursuing a case in the United States.

While many of Trump’s migration and border security initiatives face a myriad of legal challenges, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month temporarily greenlighted the administration’s policy of denying asylum to non-Mexicans who had not sought protection in a third country they transited.

“The president’s doing a lot of good things right now in the immigration space,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting director Ken Cuccinelli said at a Washington news event Thursday. “There’s no one big thing. It really makes more sense to look at it as a lot of little things that together form the administration’s forward-marching policies.”

Critics see calculated brutality

Opponents see a dogged and brutal campaign waged for domestic political purposes.

“Since taking office, the president has systematically worked to politicize the U.S. immigration system and polarize Americans on this issue,” the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, recently said. “I believe the president is engaged in a calculated attempt to aggravate regional migration dynamics for domestic political gain at the expense of our national security.”

Trump pulled out a surprising victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, in part by promising to stem the tide of migration and to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border.

Gallup polling since the start of his administration has found public approval of Trump’s handling of immigration hovering between 38% and 42%, with disapproval ranging from 57% to 61%. The net-negative ratings point to policies that are far more popular with the president’s supporters than the nation as a whole.

“I think the core Trump supporter has to be happy with what the president has delivered on immigration,” Washington-based Republican strategist John Feehery said. “He [Trump] is not going to get everything he wanted. He’s not going to get all the wall built, he’s not going to cut off all illegal immigration. But people know that he’s trying hard to keep faith with his campaign promises.”

Feehery added, “On the other side, the Democrats are not happy with what the president has delivered and they think that he is still a racist.”

Pentagon Defers 127 Building Projects to Fund Border Wall

The Pentagon is shifting $3.6 billion from 127 military construction projects to build a section of Trump’s promised US-Mexico border wall

Mexico not paying for the wall

One glaring 2016 campaign promise Trump has not kept is getting Mexico to pay for border wall construction. Faced with Mexico’s flat refusal, and Congress’ denial of substantial wall funding, Trump in February declared a national emergency at the border in order to redirect billions of dollars from the Pentagon to wall construction.

The Senate twice has voted to rescind the emergency declaration, but it fell short of veto-proof majorities each time.

Potential pitfalls could loom for Trump’s message that he is getting results on immigration and border security. For instance, the recent drop in migrant apprehensions came during the hottest months of the year, when migrant arrivals at the border typically wane. At present, it is too soon to know whether they will pick up again as temperatures moderate.

“[W]e still need to see what happens with the southwest border apprehension numbers,” said Bipartisan Policy Center senior analyst Cristobal Ramon. “If the number of people who are arriving spike up in this coming fiscal year, it’s going to be a question of whether or not he [Trump] can actually legitimately say he’s winning [on immigration].”

Fewer migrants held on U.S. soil may alleviate sharp criticism the administration has faced over overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and child separations at detention facilities. Already, however, immigrant rights groups and some U.S. lawmakers are accusing the White House of placing asylum-seekers at the mercy of gangs and cartels by forcing them to stay in Mexico.

Human rights groups, meanwhile, decry the administration’s asylum pacts with Central American countries with staggeringly high murder and poverty rates — the very nations from which a large proportion of migrants have departed.

Even so, conventional wisdom holds that concern for the fate of migrants is more likely to animate Democratic voters and some moderate Republicans than Trump’s core supporters.

“What the numbers show is that when the president stands up for working class Americans with better trade deals and stronger borders, that he appeals to Americans who are trying to find work,” Feehery said. “Moderate Republicans are never going to like this president, and probably are never going to vote for him.”

“Presidents have lots of opportunities to broaden their base [of supporters], Trump hasn’t really even tried,” University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato said. “They [Trump’s re-election team] are depending on that intense base, not just to turn out, but to bring 10 friends [to the polls].”

With the 2020 presidential contest looming and an impeachment inquiry underway in the House of Representatives, the man some see as Trump’s “immigration czar” has signaled an awareness that the president’s time in office may end before he implements all he desires on border security and immigration.

“Time is our opponent here,” Cuccinelli said. “We know that we have to, you know, get things done by the latter part of 2020. You can’t assume anything going forward. We have a work window that we have to operate within.”

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A surge in brutal attacks by armed groups in northwest Nigeria is sending thousands of refugees fleeing to Niger, the United Nations refugee agency says.

More than 40,000 Nigerians have fled to Niger over the last 10 months, creating a new humanitarian emergency along the two countries’ border, the UNHCR reports. It added that on Sept. 11 alone, more than 2,500 civilians targeted by armed groups in Nigeria fled for their lives.

The agency says it has received frequent reports of kidnappings, torture, extortion, murder, sexual violence, and destruction of houses and property.

UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch tells VOA the armed groups responsible for the violence are not linked to the Islamic mlitant group Boko Haram.

“[Refugees] tell us, these groups are really well organized and well armed, and they kind of operate at will,” Baloch said. “They go from house to house, villages to villages, killing people, destroying property and then getting away with these horrible acts.”  

While the identity of the armed groups is unknown, Baloch says they include bandits and other criminal elements. He says some attackers have taken people hostage, holding them for ransom.

Media reports suggest ethnic conflict between Fulani traditional herders and Hausa farmers plays a role in the violence. 

The conflict has caused the deaths of more than 4,000 people since 2011, and Nigerian security experts report the Fulani-Hausa conflict is expected to claim more lives this year than Boko Haram aggression.

Aid is being rushed to the Niger border and emergency staff is responding to the humanitarian needs, Baloch says, adding that the UNHCR is working with local authorities to relocate refugees from the border to safer places inland.

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The Trump administration is reportedly considering delisting Chinese companies from American stock exchanges as a way to limit U.S. investment in China.

The move, first reported by Bloomberg News, would further escalate the ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Delisting the companies is part of a broader administration plan to limit U.S. investment in China, according to the report, which cited a U.S. government official.

Administration officials are also exploring how the U.S. could place limits on the Chinese firms that are included in U.S. stock indexes, the report said.

The mechanisms for how to execute delisting the companies has yet to be determined and any plan that is developed must be approved by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The report surfaced as trade talks between the U.S. and China are set to resume in Washington October 10.

Both countries have already imposed billions of dollars of tariffs on each other’s goods.

There was no immediate comment from the White House.
 

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U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter again Friday to lash out at the media and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee as a formal impeachment inquiry moved forward in Congress over allegations Trump solicited Ukraine’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential rival of Trump’s in the 2020 presidential election. 

Trump’s main target was Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California, who presided over Thursday’s questioning of the acting director of national intelligence about the handling of a whistleblower complaint.   

At the center of the complaint is a July 25, 2019, phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which the whistleblower alleges: 

— Trump pressured Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, who was at one time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. 

— Trump suggested multiple times that Zelenskiy meet with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Attorney General William Barr about the investigation. 

— White House officials secured all records of the phone call in a separate electronic system used to store classified and sensitive information, a move denounced by Democrats as a cover-up. 

Normally, such an “urgent” complaint would have been forwarded to congressional intelligence committees within two weeks. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, missed a Sept. 2 deadline, defying congressional demands for the document and a subpoena for his testimony.

Congress finally received the whistleblower complaint on Sept. 25. The next day, Maguire appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in a public hearing. He testified that he took the complaint to White House lawyers, then Justice Department lawyers, who advised it was not urgent enough to send to Congress. Maguire refused to acknowledge whether he spoke to Trump about the whistleblower’s complaint.

Protected by law 

Federal law protects government workers from retribution if they report wrongdoing by government officials. Such whistleblowers are granted anonymity for their protection. 

Video has surfaced of Trump attacking the whistleblower’s sources. Speaking at a closed-door event at the U.S. Mission to the U.N on Thursday, Trump described the sources as “close to a spy,” suggesting it was an act of treason, punishable by death. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she was concerned about Trump’s remarks, promising that the impeachment committees would ensure there was no retaliation for people who came forward with information. She did not set out a timeline for the impeachment process, although she told MSNBC “it doesn’t have to drag on.” 

Trump maintained he had a “perfect conversation” with his Ukrainian counterpart and was just trying to get his government to investigate corruption. The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy, which shows Trump raising the issue of investigating the Bidens. The call took place while U.S. military aid to Ukraine was suspended by Trump. 

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Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives began the formal process of impeaching U.S. President Donald Trump this week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the first step in the impeachment process Tuesday, following reports that a whistleblower filed a complaint alleging Trump sought foreign interference into the 2020 election.

What triggered House Democrats to begin a formal impeachment inquiry?

Investigations into Trump’s administration and his campaign’s actions during the 2016 presidential election were already underway in six House committees at the beginning of this week. Many House Democrats already backed impeachment, but until this week opposition leaders had resisted calls for launching the impeachment inquiry. They believed such an inquiry had no chance of passing the Republican-led Senate and could end up hurting Democrats in the 2020 election.

The new whistleblower report appears to have dramatically shifted the politics of the issue.

Several additional House Democrats came forward in support of an impeachment inquiry. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday the House would embark on the first step of the impeachment process to determine if Trump had committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the U.S. Constitution lays out as the standard for removing a president from office.

What do we know about the whistleblower?

The whistleblower remains anonymous under laws protecting government workers who expose wrongdoing. But he or she is a U.S. government employee who had knowledge of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and spoke to other U.S. officials who shared similar concerns over the legality of the president’s actions.  Although the whistleblower did not have direct knowledge of the Zelenskiy phone call, an independent investigator for the U.S. government found the allegations were credible.

The New York Times has reported the whistleblower is a CIA employee who has spent some time working in the White House during the Trump administration.
 
The complaint alleges a number of offenses on the part of Trump and U.S. officials. The most serious of the allegations is that Trump implied congressionally-approved U.S. aid to Ukraine was contingent upon Zelenskiy’s government providing information on the son of 2020 presidential election rival, Joe Biden. The complaint also alleges White House officials were aware of the gravity of Trump’s actions and covered up records of the phone call.

How was the whistleblower complaint handled by the government?

Democrats are pledging to investigate both the allegations in the complaint as well as how the Trump administration handled it.

Under the whistleblower process, the complaint was summarized in a letter that was addressed to senior lawmakers in the House and Senate committees, which oversee the intelligence community. That August 12 letter was sent to the inspector general at the CIA, which worked to try to substantiate some of the allegations. But instead of sending the letter on to the lawmakers in Congress after two weeks, as required by law, Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, instead held it from lawmakers while he consulted with the White House and the Department of Justice about the allegations.

Democratic lawmakers argue Trump administration officials tried to keep the allegations from reaching Congress, violating the procedure for dealing with such issues.

Maguire told members of Congress Thursday he had acted lawfully in initially blocking the release of the complaint due to concerns about executive privilege, a legal right of the U.S. presidency to keep some conversations and documents private.

What do we know about the Trump-Zelenskiy phone call?

The White House released a summary of Trump’s phone call with Zelenskiy Wednesday. In a memo reconstructed from the work of White House note takers, Trump asks Zelenskiy to investigate business dealings of former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter.

Trump also reminds the Ukrainian president that “the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.” Trump ordered a freeze on $400 million of congressionally-approved aid to Ukraine just a few days before that phone call. Trump said this week the order was part of an effort to combat corruption.

Congressional Democrats say the memo is clear evidence of the president proposing a so-called “quid pro quo,” an exchange of one favor for another. But the president’s allies on Capitol Hill said the memo completely exonerated him.

What will happen next in the U.S. Congress?

The House committees investigating the president’s actions will begin building a case that could lead to the drafting of articles of impeachment.

Articles are formal charges against the president that are voted on by the entire U.S. House of Representatives.

Impeachment is a two-step process. If the House votes on and passes the articles, the president is considered impeached and the case moves to the U.S. Senate for a process that is similar to a court trial. If a two-thirds super majority of the U.S. Senate votes to convict, the president is removed from office.

Only two U.S. presidents have been impeached by the U.S. House – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. The U.S. Senate has never voted to remove a president from office.

How soon can we expect a vote on impeachment?

Pelosi has cautioned that there should be a careful gathering of facts so that lawmakers do not rush to judgement. But many House Democrats want to see the vote on articles of impeachment before the end of the year. The 2020 presidential election gets fully underway with the Iowa caucuses in February. Many Democrats believe it would be politically risky to have an impeachment vote occurring at the same time.

As of Friday, 225 House Democrats and one independent member of the U.S. House of Representatives support impeachment or an impeachment inquiry. Until articles of impeachment are drafted, it is unknown how many members would vote in support of impeaching Trump.

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Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

US plans refugee reductions

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is proposing to resettle fewer refugees in the coming year than at any point in the country’s history.

Along with two other significant changes announced on Thursday, the White House is intent on reshaping what was once the most robust resettlement program in the world. 

That’s only one part of how Washington is restructuring how the US extends  or does not  humanitarian relief. With a new asylum agreement inked this week with Honduras, people traveling through Central American to seek asylum in the U.S. will be forced to return to the Northern Triangle countries and apply there.

VOA Immigration Report Ramon Taylor tracks all the policy changes here.

Soldiers charged in California human smuggling case

The U.S. military this week formally charged 13 Marines linked to an alleged human smuggling ring. They are accused of receiving money in exchange for transporting migrants who recently crossed the border without authorization. 

From the Feds

— Eighteen people face federal charges in a drug smuggling scheme that also involved creating fake IDs to employ workers smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico. 

— Syrians living in the United States under Temporary Protected Status have from Sept. 23 to Nov. 22, 2019, to re-register for TPS. 

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This article originated in VOA’s Persian service. VOA Persian’s Katherine Ahn contributed. 
  
The Trump administration has provided few additional details of a newly announced entry ban on Iran’s senior officials and their family members, leaving unanswered questions about whom it will affect. 
  
President Donald Trump declared the entry ban on Wednesday via a proclamation ordering U.S. authorities to “restrict and suspend” the ability of “senior government officials of Iran and their immediate family members” to enter the U.S. as immigrants or nonimmigrants. It was his latest move in what he has called a “maximum pressure” campaign to pressure Iran to end perceived malign behaviors. 
  
In a Thursday statement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered one new detail about the proclamation, saying it was targeted at “designated” senior Iranian officials. That refers to officials who have been placed by the U.S. government on its list of Specially Designated Nationals, whose assets under U.S. jurisdiction are blocked and whom Americans are generally prohibited from dealing with.   

‘No more’
  
“For years, Iranian regime elites have shouted, ‘Death to America.’ Meanwhile, their relatives have come here to live and to work. No more,” Pompeo said in remarks to reporters in New York. 
  
In a separate media appearance in New York, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook responded to a question about who is on the list of banned Iranian officials by noting that Tehran makes regular personnel changes among its government ministers and military leaders, including those of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated by the U.S. as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in April.     

“We will always be updating and renewing this list to ensure that the senior regime officials and their family members are not able to travel to the United States,” Hook said. 
 
But neither Hook nor Pompeo elaborated on which Iranian officials and their family members would be denied entry and who would be granted exemptions allowed by Trump’s proclamation. 
  
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) research director David Adesnik told VOA Persian there were several unanswered questions about the entry ban, including “who exactly is considered a ‘senior’ official, and does ‘immediate family’ only mean siblings, parents and children.” 
 
In a Thursday news conference on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani criticized the U.S. entry ban but also appeared to dismiss it as irrelevant. 
  
“Iranian officials have no desire to travel to America. We only come here for U.N. events and should not be banned by America [for doing so],” Rouhani said. The Trump administration granted Rouhani and his delegation visas to attend the U.N. event, under its obligations as host of the world body, while also tightly restricting their movements within New York. 
  
The entry ban is likely to have a bigger impact on senior Iranian officials’ children who are among what the State Department has said are “thousands” of Iranian students studying in the U.S. each year. 

Three categories
  
Trump’s proclamation said the entry ban would not apply to Iranians in three categories: lawful U.S. permanent residents; people already granted asylum and refugee status by the U.S. or deemed to be at risk of torture if deported; and people whose entry could benefit U.S. interests and law enforcement objectives. The document did not say anything about Iranians on student visas in the U.S. 
  
A VOA Persian request for comment about how the entry ban would affect such students went unanswered by late Thursday. 
  
In an October 2018 op-ed published by The Washington Times, FDD senior Iran analyst Tzvi Kahn identified several children of senior Iranian officials as being enrolled in U.S. universities. He said they included Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, the daughter of Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani; Eissa Hashemi, the son of Iranian Vice President for Women’s and Family Affairs Massumeh Ebteka; siblings Ehsan Nobakht and Niloofar Nobakht, whose uncle Mohammad Bagher is also an Iranian vice president; and Ali Fereydoun, whose father Hossein is President Rouhani’s brother and aide. 
  
Adesnik said children of senior Iranian officials were unlikely to be U.S. permanent residents if they have been in the U.S. only on short-term student visas. 
  
“They certainly could be facing a challenge now,” Adesnik said. “It’s possible that the U.S. would renew their visas. But there is a constant stream of young Iranians who want to come to the U.S. to get the best education, and they definitely are going to be affected.” 

Iranian Americans’ reactions
 
The U.S. entry ban also drew mixed reactions from the Iranian American community. 
 
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a nonprofit group frequently critical of the Trump administration in its escalating tensions with Tehran, lamented the move in a statement to VOA Persian. 
  
“If this action were aimed at securing the release of Americans detained in Iran, facilitating negotiations to prevent a military standoff or another legitimate goal, then we would applaud it. Unfortunately … this seems to be a symbolic doubling down of the failed maximum pressure policy which has only interfered with efforts to free Americans, made war more likely and undermined human rights defenders in Iran,” said NIAC President Jamal Abdi. 
  
The Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC), a nonprofit group that supports what it calls the Iranian people’s “struggle for democratic change” and a “non-nuclear government,” told VOA Persian that it welcomed the U.S. entry ban as “necessary but long overdue.” 
  
“This ban must not be limited only to the families of regime officials,” OIAC added. “All Tehran agents … operating under different disguises such as students, scholars and businesspeople must be exposed and expelled from the U.S.” 
  
U.S. network NBC News said some families of Americans detained in Iran had lobbied the Trump administration for years to deny visas to the children or relatives of senior Iranian officials as a way of pressuring those officials to release the detainees.   
  
In a message to VOA Persian, the family of Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran 12 years ago and whose relatives believe Iran detained him, said it was not directly involved in that lobbying campaign. 
  
“But we welcome any actions that continue to send a message to Iran that it must send our father and all Iran hostages home,” the Levinson family said. 

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Seven Catalan separatists arrested on suspicion of planning violent attacks have been charged with belonging to a “terrorist organisation” and remanded in custody, Spanish judicial authorities said on Thursday.

The seven were among nine people detained on Monday on accusations they were planning attacks with possible explosives. The other two were released.

A judge in Madrid ruled that there was evidence suggesting the seven were members of an organization intending to achieve Catalan independence “by any means including violence,” a court statement said.

No details of the accused were given.

The seven suspects have also been charged with making and possessing explosives.

The arrests come just weeks before the second anniversary of the banned Catalan independence referendum which triggered one of Spain’s biggest political crises.

Several hundred people demonstrated outside the Catalan parliament in Barcelona and then the city’s police headquarters shouting “freedom for political prisoners.”

The parliament earlier Thursday approved a resolution calling for the “withdrawal from Catalan territory of the civil guard police,” described as a “type of political police.”

A verdict is due next month in the trial of 12 separatist leaders for their roles in the attempted secession in 2017.

Sentencing the separatist leaders could provoke strong protests in Spain’s northeastern region.

Alleged violence in 2017 was a key focus of the trial, in which the separatist leaders defended the peaceful nature of their movement.  

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An Iranian woman sentenced in the United States for violating sanctions against Tehran was released and has returned home, her lawyer told AFP Thursday, following her country’s unsuccessful attempt at a prisoner swap.

A judge in Minneapolis sentenced Negar Ghodskani to 27 months in prison Tuesday, but determined the time she had spent in custody in Australia and the United States was enough to fulfill her punishment.

Ghodskani “is now free in Iran with her family,” her lawyer Robert Richman said in an email.

Arrested in Australia

A legal resident of Australia, Ghodskani was arrested in Adelaide in 2017 after U.S. prosecutors said she sought U.S. digital communications technology by presenting herself as an employee of a Malaysian company.

U.S. prosecutors said she in fact was sending the technology to Iranian company Fanamoj, which works in public broadcasting.

After extradition to the United States, she confessed to participation in a conspiracy to illegally export technology to Iran in breach of sanctions, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

Pregnant at the time of her arrest, she gave birth while in Australian custody. Her son was sent to Iran to live with his father.

Prisoner swap offered

Her case was raised by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in April, who floated a potential prisoner swap for a British-Iranian mother being held in Tehran.

He suggested exchanging Ghodskani for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, in jail in Tehran for alleged sedition.

Both women have been separated from their young children while being detained.

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The United States is pressing other countries to join its proposed International Religious Freedom Alliance, in what diplomat Sam Brownback calls “the most significant” new human rights initiative in a generation.

“We’re going to call like-minded nations together and ask them to join this alliance and push on the issue of religious freedom and against religious persecution around the world,” Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said at a news briefing earlier this week. “We want to see the iron curtain on religious persecution come down.”

Brownback’s remarks came at a Monday press conference following the “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom,” a U.S.-sponsored event on the opening day of the annual U.N. General Assembly. At the event, President Donald Trump pledged an additional $25 million to counter a trend of increasing religious intolerance around the globe.

The president’s chief envoy for that mission is Brownback. Since early 2018, the former Republican governor from the Midwestern state of Kansas has headed the office that he helped establish as a U.S. senator. He was a key sponsor of the 1998 Religious Freedom Act, as Religion News Service has pointed out. 

Brownback spoke with VOA after the news conference about what his brief entails — “fighting for religious freedom all around the world for all faiths all the time,” as well as for “people of no faith.”

“We’ll stand up and we’ll do something,” Brownback said of the Trump administration, saying it employs tools ranging from private diplomacy to public designations and “sanctions against countries that persecute people for their faith.”

For instance, the State Department in July publicly designated four Burmese military officials as responsible for “gross human rights violations,” including the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people, the Muslim minority group in Myanmar.

Government restrictions on religion have “increased markedly around the world,” according to the Pew Research Center, which began tracking the issue in 2007. The Washington-based center reported this summer that “52 countries, including some in very populous countries such as China, Indonesia and Russia, impose either ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels of restrictions on religion, up from 40 in 2007.” It found increases in the number of states enacting restrictive laws and policies, as well as in religion-related hostilities and violence against individuals.

“Approximately 80% of the world’s population live in countries where religious liberty is threatened, restricted or even banned,” Trump said Monday, using a State Department figure extrapolated from Pew’s research.

Pew does not attempt to calculate the share of people around the world who are affected by such restrictions, a spokeswoman for the center told VOA.

Brownback told VOA that he sees religious freedom, enshrined in both the U.N. Charter and U.S. Constitution, as a harbinger of whether other rights are respected or not.

“When you’re willing to protect a person’s religious freedom, you generally are willing to protect the rest of their rights,” the diplomat said. “If you’re willing to persecute a person for their religious beliefs, you’re generally willing to persecute on a number of other rights.”

Brownback said the United Arab Emirates, while “certainly not perfect,” was a model of religious freedom. “They allow faiths to practice. They allow people to build” houses of worship. “And you have this robust, dynamic, growing economy and a lot of other things moving forward.”

He added that he’s “very hopeful” about Algeria and Sudan, African countries where “there are new governments coming in” to replace oppressive regimes.

The U.S. is supporting “better security at religious institutions, where we see a lot of them destroyed around the world, people killed at these houses of worship,” Brownback said at the press conference. He noted that he’s co-hosting a conference in Morocco next week on preserving religious heritage sites.

The Trump administration, which has strong support among evangelical Christians, has been criticized for favoring certain faith groups over others.

“President Trump was elected on the promise of a ‘complete and utter shutdown’ of Muslim immigration to the U.S.,” Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads the Interfaith Alliance, told USA Today. “Since then, his administration has worked tirelessly to redefine ‘religious freedom’ as a license to discriminate.”

The alliance promotes the separation of church and state.

The role of faith-based initiatives in U.S. foreign policy has risen during the last two decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to scholar Lee Marsden, noting a strong interest in curbing radical Islam after the al-Qaida terrorist attacks in September 2001.

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The Trump administration is proposing to accept a maximum of 18,000 refugees in the coming year, in what would be the lowest refugee ceiling in the country’s history, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

If the government follows through, 2020 will be the third year of significant cuts to refugee resettlement under President Donald Trump.

For now, however, the latest figure remains a proposal.

The final decision, in the form of a “presidential determination,” will be made in the coming weeks after the required consultations with Congress, a senior administration official told reporters in a phone briefing organized by the White House on Thursday.

In fiscal 2018, the first full year of the Trump administration, the ceiling was set at 45,000, and 22,491 refugees were admitted.

In fiscal 2019, the ceiling was 30,000. With only three full days remaining in the fiscal year, the U.S. is close to the limit, with 29,972 refugees admitted, according to State Department data.

Prior to Trump’s election, the refugee ceiling average was 60,000 to 70,000 every year.

The proposed ceiling is one of three fundamental changes to the resettlement program announced Thursday.

Trump also issued an executive order that will require state and local governments to “consent” to accept refugees for resettlement.

While not a widespread issue, the order would allow states like Tennessee, which unsuccessfully sued the federal government to stop resettlement, to potentially prevent willing nonprofit organizations in the state from accepting refugees.

Additionally, the U.S. State Department is creating new categories — a procedure used rarely to meet specific needs, usually for a specific region.

For fiscal 2020, however, the total will include up to 5,000 refugees persecuted on account of their religious beliefs; 4,000 spots for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. during its operations in the country; and up to 1,500 of what the White House called “legitimate refugees” from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Those specific allocations would allow for a maximum of 7,500 refugees who fall outside those categories.

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It’s been a bad year for dengue fever, a painful, debilitating virus that is surging in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other nations.  There is no cure for dengue, which is spread by mosquitos. However, scientists are enlisting a bacteria in the fight against dengue because they think will make it harder for mosquitos to spread the often deadly dengue virus. VOA’s Jim Randle has our story.
 

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In an earlier time, boxes on wheels raced on American streets.  Now, an energy drink company sponsors motorless, homemade car races around the world.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us on this bumpy ride through Jordan.

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Faith Aweko of Uganda describes herself as a “waste-preneur.”  She has come up with an innovative way to transform discarded plastic bags into backpacks for everyday use.  Halima Athumani reports from the town of Mpigi. 
 

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The international community must do more to tackle networks of global corruption that are fueling violence in South Sudan, according to activists. The call follows publication of a report detailing how corporations profited from the country’s civil war. The investigation by The Sentry organization, co-founded by actor George Clooney, shows the links between armed groups involved in the civil war, global oil giants, and British and American citizens. Henry Ridgwell has more.
 

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U.S. President Donald Trump has accused Democrats in Congress of failing to work for the American people. Speaking to reporters at the United Nations Wednesday, Trump said the impeachment inquiry against him was timed to take the attention away from the successful meetings he has had with foreign counterparts during the U.N. General Assembly. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke has more.
 

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Nine and a half million Afghans will head to presidential polls Saturday. Thirty percent of them will be women. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem is in Afghanistan talking to them about their hopes, fears, and complaints.

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