The News Review:
- Two college students fight for Obi’s freedom
- Bodies of peacekeepers arrive same day
- Liberia ‘not safe for refugees’
Two college students fight for Obi’s freedom
Christian Science Monitor – Dec 30, 2003
He fled to Senegal, and then boarded on a Senegalese ship that sailed to Chile, Panama, and then Philadelphia. It seemed like a cut-and-dry case. Sierra Leone went through almost a decade of savage civil war, and anyone living there was sure to be a victim of persecution. But as Ryan and Vinny found, living in a country in the throes of civil war is not enough to win asylum. The asylum seeker has to prove that he or she was specifically targeted for persecution. The 16 students enrolled in my seminar were taking a class in what is becoming a growing movement in higher education: service learning. Working in teams of two with our community partner, the Coalition for Immigrant’s Rights at the Community Level (CIRCLE), each team was assigned a detained asylum seeker from countries including Cameroon, Uganda, Haiti, and Nigeria.
Bodies of peacekeepers arrive same day
Daily Star – The Daily Star – Dec 30, 2003
The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in the chair. Bangladesh Army will accord a guard of honour to the peacekeepers on arrival in coffins in Dhaka tomorrow morning, army sources said. An army team from Sierra Leone, Benin’s strife-torn neighbouring country, identified the dead as part of formalities that stemmed from the largest casualties in a single accident in Bangladesh Army since independence. The officers were deployed to Sierra Leone and another strife-riven country, Liberia, on United Nations peacekeeping missions. Each family of the dead will get up to $50,000 in compensation from the UN in line with convention, the army sources said. Union des Transports Africains (UTA), operator of the aircraft, will also provide special compensation packages for the families of the peacekeepers. The 15 peacekeepers were among the 119 people killed in the crash that came after the plane botched its takeoff, clipping a building before tumbling nose down into the nearby Atlantic Ocean…
Bangladesh Army will accord a guard of honour to the peacekeepers on arrival in coffins in Dhaka tomorrow morning, army sources said. An army team from Sierra Leone, Benin’s strife-torn neighbouring country, identified the dead as part of formalities that stemmed from the largest casualties in a single accident in Bangladesh Army since independence. The officers were deployed to Sierra Leone and another strife-riven country, Liberia, on United Nations peacekeeping missions. Each family of the dead will get up to $50,000 in compensation from the UN in line with convention, the army sources said. Union des Transports Africains (UTA), operator of the aircraft, will also provide special compensation packages for the families of the peacekeepers. The 15 peacekeepers were among the 119 people killed in the crash that came after the plane botched its takeoff, clipping a building before tumbling nose down into the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Home Minister Altaf Hossain Choudhury, expressing shock at the death of the officers in a condolence message, described them as heroes and pride of the nation.
Liberia ‘not safe for refugees’
BBC News – Dec 30, 2003
A peace deal was signed in August to end 14 years of conflict but all but a few of the 7,000 UN peacekeepers are still based in the capital, Monrovia. The rest of the country remains unsafe, Mohamed Siryon told AFP news agency. Some 400,000 Liberians remain in camps in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast – all also subject to instability. Checkpoints removed”We cannot begin repatriating Liberian refugees in the sub-region when peacekeepers have not deployed throughout the country,” Mr Siryon, a UN humanitarian spokesman told AFP.