Page 6 - aruba-today-20230712

A6 WORLD NEWS
Wednesday 12 July 2023
Under pressure, Tunisia takes back hundreds of migrants trapped

in a border zone with Libya

By BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA sleeping in a courtyard.
Associated Press Temperatures in the area
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — At climbed above 40 degrees
least 500 migrants from sub- Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) on
Saharan Africa have been Tuesday. A spokesperson
transferred back to Tunisia for the International Orga-
after being pushed into a nization for Migration said
dangerous no-man’s-land 158 migrants were trans-
on the Libyan border and ferred to a shelter in the
trapped for a week there town of Tataouine and
without access to basic ne- another 353 people trans-
cessities, aid agencies said ferred to public structures
Tuesday. in Medenine. The IOM said
The group was driven out Tunisian authorities have
earlier this month amid a not provided information
spike in anti-migrant and about next steps for the mi-
racism-fueled tensions grants.
linked to a killing in the Tuni- Under pressure from hu-
sian port city of Sfax, a hub manitarian agencies, Tuni-
for traffickers organizing sian President Kais Saied on
risky and sometimes deadly Sunday ordered the Tuni-
boat journeys across the sian Red Crescent to bring
Mediterranean Sea to Italy. aid to the migrants. Saied
One such boat sank Sun- A migrant holds a placard reading “All muslims are brothers” during a gathering in Sfax, Tunisia’s stoked racist incidents ear-
day off the Tunisian coast. eastern coast, Friday, July 7, 2023. lier this year by railing at
Coast guard officers re- Associated Press Black Africans who transit
trieved one body, rescued sia’s increasingly authoritar- to the border area be- der fired shots into the air to through Tunisia toward Eu-
11 people and declared 10 ian government $1 billion to tween the Mediterranean keep the civilians at bay. rope.
others as missing, the Sfax help its slumping economy Sea and the Tunisian-Lib- The name of the man, who On Monday, Saied denied

prosecutor’s office said. and to beef up border ser- yan land border near Ben said he entered Tunisia le- mistreatment of migrants
The fate of hundreds of vices to stop migrant boats Guerdane. gally in 2019 and works on by Tunisian authorities, and
migrants pushed into the from crossing to Europe. Speaking to The Associat- a golf course, is being with- lashed out at migrant traf-
Tunisia-Libya border region A 29-year-old man from ed Press last week, he ac- held for safety reasons. fickers he said were seek-
drew concern from interna- Ivory Coast said that uni- cused the Tunisian National On Tuesday, he said that ing to “destabilize Tunisia.”
tional humanitarian groups. formed men had taken Guard of beating them he and 100 others have He called for coordinated
It also raised questions migrants from their homes “like animals, like slaves,” now been transferred efforts to “to tackle the ori-
about Tunisia’s migration in Sfax in the middle of and assaulting women in away from the border to gins, sources and causes of
policies, weeks after the Eu- the night in early July and the group. He claimed that the inland Tunisian town of the problem” in addition to
ropean Union offered Tuni- brought some 600 people Libyan security at the bor- Medenine, where they are security measures. q

U.N. debates deep sea mining as countries and

companies now allowed to seek provisional licenses

By DÁNICA COTO sea is debating whether applying for provisional deep sea that are used in lion square kilometers) be-
Associated Press to open the Earth’s watery mining licenses. electric car batteries and tween Hawaii and Mexico.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) depths to countries and The International Seabed other green technology It is occurring at depths
— A U.N. agency tasked companies that as of Mon- Authority, based in Ja- comes as more than a doz- ranging from 13,000 to
with regulating the deep day were allowed to start maica, launched a two- en countries call for a ban 19,000 feet (4,000 to 6,000
week conference on the or moratorium given envi- meters).
issue Monday, a day after ronmental concerns. On Monday, Canada an-
it missed a deadline to ap- Scientists have said that nounced that it supported
prove a set of rules and minerals in the deep sea a moratorium because
regulations to govern deep take millions of years to there is no regulatory
sea mining in international form, and that mining could framework in place nor a
waters. unleash noise, light and suf- deep understanding of the
“We have a lot of work focating dust storms. How- environmental impacts of
ahead of us,” said Juan ever, companies have ar- deep sea mining.
José González, the author- gued that deep sea mining “It is critical that the inter-
ity’s council president. is cheaper and has less of national community rec-
The authority has issued an impact than land min- ognize its collective re-
more than 30 exploration ing. sponsibility to safeguard
licenses but no provisional Most of the current ex- the health and integrity of
licenses so far. ploration is focused in the our shared global ocean
Coral on Moore Reef is visible in Gunggandji Sea Country off The debate on whether to Clarion-Clipperton Fracture for future generations,”
coast of Queensland in eastern Australia on Nov. 13, 2022. allow companies to extract Zone, which covers 1.7 mil- the government said in a
Associated Press precious metals from the lion square miles (4.5 mil- statement.q