Day: June 20, 2023

The UK is “fully prepared” to offer any further aid required in search for Titanic tourist submersible, which disappeared on Sunday while undertaking an expedition to explore the famed shipwreck.

A rescue operation is underway in the Atlantic Ocean following the submersible’s disappearance.

Among the missing on board are Hamish Harding, a British billionaire explorer, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a renowned French diver.

The British media, citing a UK government spokesperson, confirmed that the UK Foreign Office is maintaining communications with Harding’s family as the ongoing rescue mission near the Canadian coastline progresses.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the thoughts of the government are with “those individuals who are currently in the submersible in the North Atlantic.”

“We wish them all the luck, and of course we hope that they will be swiftly found and returned to their loved ones,” he said.

When it went missing, the submersible had only 96 hours of additional oxygen supply available to them.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday received credentials from new envoys of Poland and Iraq.

At the presidential complex, Erdogan separately welcomed Poland’s Maciej Lang and Iraq’s Majid Abdulreda Hassan Al-Lachmawi.

Souvenir photos were taken after the new envoys presented their credentials.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban Tuesday called on Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to return detained Kosovo police officers.

‘We follow the events in Kosovo very closely and see what is being done to the Serbs. I respectfully ask you, President, dear Aleksandar (Vucic), to follow Hungary’s recommendation and return those three Albanians to Kosovo,’ said Orban at a joint press conference after a Hungary-Serbia Strategic Cooperation Council meeting in Serbia’s northern Palic town.

Vucic together with Prime Minister Ana Brnabic met with Orban and Hungarian President Katalin Novak.

Serbia detained three people identified as members of Kosovo police last Wednesday on grounds they were “planning an action in Serbia.”

Vucic said this is a job for the competent authorities and that they will take every request of Orban into consideration.

”Viktor (Orban) told me last night that there is a lot of pressure on Serbia and that they can’t wait to take measures against our country. Thank you for your concern, my dear friend, and I will consider your every advice or request with the utmost care and kindness,’ said Vucic.

According to Vucic, important projects were agreed upon at the meeting, which will not only make a long-term contribution to the growth and development of Serbia and of Hungary but will also ensure security for the citizens of both countries in the future.

‘Today we open another chapter in our cooperation and write a new historic page in relations between the two countries. Long live the friendship between Serbia and Hungary,’ said Vucic on social media.

According to the Serbian Interior Ministry the held individuals were equipped with automatic weapons in full combat gear with GPS devices, maps, and other equipment before they were detained by Serbian Police Special Anti-Terrorism Units.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti said on social media that police officers were kidnapped by Serbia, demanding the immediate release of the officers and urging international actors to condemn the operation.

Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said Serbian forces had entered Kosovo’s territory.

Kosovo police were arrested ‘deep in the territory of central Serbia,’ according to Petar Petkovic, the director of Serbia’s Office for Kosovo.

Tensions have risen in Kosovo following the election of ethnic Albanian mayors in four Serb-dominated districts in the north last month.

Ethnic Serbs have been protesting the election of the mayors since late May.

At least 30 KFOR soldiers were injured on May 29 in fighting with Serbs who were protesting and attempting to prevent the newly-elected mayor of Zvecan municipality from entering Town Hall to take the oath of office and begin official responsibilities.

The Kosovo Force, or KFOR, is a NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo

More than 53 civilians were also injured by shock bombs and tear gas, according to hospital sources.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Ukraine said Tuesday that more than 50,000 hectares (123,552 acres) of forested area was flooded following the destruction of the Kakhovka dam earlier this month.

‘Grease and oil stains weighing at least 150 tons are drifting along the Dnieper (River). They can reach the Mediterranean (Sea). More than 50.000 hectares of Ukrainian forests have been flooded and at least half of them (trees) will die. This is more than the area of forests in Iceland,’ the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, said on Telegram.

Yermak said the Kakhovka Reservoir is covered with dead fish, which he said amounts to approximately 95,000 tons of living biological resources.

He also said more than 150 official cases have been recorded of the bodies of dolphins from Ukrainian shores found on the shores of the Black Sea in Trkiye and Bulgaria.

‘It is possible that the current will bring roe deer, foxes and hares from the southern region of Ukraine to these countries. About 20,000 wild animals lived on the flooded territory,’ he said, adding that there should be ‘strict responsibility for ecocide’ for Russia.

Ukraine and Russia traded blame for carrying out strikes June 6 which led to the destruction of the walls of the Kakhovka dam, resulting in flooding of nearby areas.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Mominul Hamid, a 30-year-old Bangladeshi national, has defied many odds in his life.

He was trafficked first to France and then into the UK by his former in-laws and forced to work in their restaurant without any pay.

‘I was confined for around six months before I was rescued,’ Hamid, now a prominent community activist, told Anadolu.

Hamid’s ordeal and the injustices he faced have pushed him to pursue an education in the field of law.

Currently living in Newcastle, Hamid is studying law on a scholarship at Northumbria University and aims to become a barrister by next year.

‘My mum was a head teacher at a school back in Bangladesh, and she told me the one thing that can lift you up is education. These are the things which nobody can take away from you,’ he said.

Despite his successes, Hamid still faces a massive challenge in his life in the UK: his application for asylum has been pending for over five years now, a case that serves as an indictment of Britain’s complex and tedious asylum process.

As World Refugee Day is celebrated across the globe on June 20 and the UK marks Refugee Week through this week, the spotlight is firmly on the country’s policies on migration and asylum seekers.

It has recently come up with two proposals on the issue, the Illegal Migration Bill and the Rwanda Plan, which have both drawn fierce criticism from human rights organizations and refugee advocates, who argue that they violate international law and the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention.

The UK’s policies on tackling irregular migration have also been widely criticized for ‘scapegoating migrants,’ but the government remains adamant that they are the need of the hour.

‘All for my son’

By Hamid’s own admission, his story is ‘a bit strange.’

He married his wife, a British national, in Portugal in 2017 before she moved to the UK and gave birth to their son.

Hamid said his desire and desperation to see his son was what his former in-laws exploited.

They had him take an illegal route to France, handing him over to a gang of traffickers. After spending some time there, he was then smuggled into the UK, where his in-laws took away all his money and documents.

‘You may ask: ‘Why did you take this horrible journey?’ Because my son was born here, he is British and after he was born, I hadn’t seen him,’ said Hamid.

‘And I didn’t have any way to come and see him other than taking this journey, which was arranged by my ex-father-in-law.’

He was eventually rescued by police and supported by an anti-trafficking charity.

He applied to university in 2018 and got accepted on a scholarship, but was barred because of the Home Office’s ‘study ban’ on asylum seekers.

He challenged the decision and managed to get it overturned, but had lost his scholarship by that time.

However, Hamid’s legal woes did not end at that point, as the police stopped an investigation against his former in-laws.

‘That was an injustice in my point of view. It was so unjust that I felt that I should study law, and in the future, I will help people like me,’ he said.

Community activism

Apart from his education, Hamid is also an award-winning community activist involved in various social welfare campaigns with various organizations.

He has made it a point to work specifically on campaigns to raise awareness about how measures like the Illegal Migration Bill and Rwanda Plan would impact migrants and asylum seekers.

‘As a person with a lived experience … I think it’s really devastating,’ he said.

About his own asylum claim, he said more delays are likely because of the ‘huge backlog’ of cases.

‘Bearing in mind that I’ve got a British child here, you can see how the system is literally broken. It has to be resolved. A lot of people are waiting for nothing,’ said Hamid.

‘I have so many restrictions. I can’t work, I can’t do other stuff that any normal person can do. I would say that ending the backlog and talking to people like me to create new refugee-friendly legislation will be much better for this country going forward.’

Source: Anadolu Agency