Algeria abandons 13,000 migrants in the Sahara

[oberliner]

Source: Associated Press via CBC

Algeria has abandoned more than 13,000 people in the Sahara Desert over the past 14 months, including pregnant women and children, expelling them without food or water and forcing them to walk, sometimes at gunpoint, under a blistering sun. Some never make it out alive.

The expelled migrants can be seen coming over the horizon by the hundreds, appearing at first as specks in the distance under temperatures of up to 48 C.

In Niger, where the majority head, the lucky ones limp across a desolate 15-kilometre no-man's-land to the border village of Assamaka. Others wander for days before a UN rescue squad can find them. Untold numbers perish; nearly all of the more than two dozen survivors interviewed by The Associated Press told of people in their groups who simply vanished into the Sahara.

"Women were lying dead, men..... Other people got missing in the desert because they didn't know the way," said Janet Kamara, who was pregnant at the time. "Everybody was just on their own."



Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/algeria-desert-walk-gunpoint-1.4720446

[Turbineguy]

1. Don't give trump any ideas.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Beat me to it. Miller is taking notes. . . . nt

[IronLionZion]

19. What's it going to take to get Miller fired?

Ivanka needs to get on it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. If tRump gets fired Miller goes. That's about it, I think. Ivanka seems useless at this point.

Not that she ever was much use.

And Kushner is trying to make peace in the Middle East by getting angry at the Palestinians. Yet more complete incompetency.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. MY EXACT SAME THOUGHT!

High Five!

[bdtrppr6]

2. Coming to a town near you!

[BadGimp]

4. This is Horrific!

[oberliner]

6. The world is a brutal place

Absolutely heartbreaking what is going on.

[PatSeg]

12. Yes

The senseless cruelty is worldwide. It is a human problem, not exclusive to any one country, race, or ideology. We belong to a species that destroys its own.

[maxsolomon]

7. I've seen the future, brother

It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul

-L. Cohen, The Future

[heaven05]

8. why

I looked and the only reason I found is the EU put pressure, whatever type, on the Algerian leader to crack down on immigrants. Let's see, EU white countries, Algerians, arab-berber and the victims dark brown people. Am I missing something here? The whole world is nothing but evil creating misery and pain for millions upon millions of innocent human beings caught up in war, corruption, rape, terror, bigotry, cultural, racial and religious animosity and hate. This is genocide. PITY THE CHILDREN

[oberliner]

9. The world's enduring dictators: Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Algeria (2011)

Most despotic acts: Bouteflika has battled militant Islamic movements throughout his time in office. After being in place 19 years - a length of time that precedes his ascension to power - Bouteflika recently lifted the state of emergency, enacted at the onset of a violent ten-year civil war, which had turned human rights into a secondary concern in Algeria. Regardless, Bouteflika has continued to aggressively squash protests against his rule inspired by uprisings in neighboring North African countries. While the emergency rule was in place, Bouteflika's regime was accused by the UN Human Rights Committee of "massacres, torture, rape and disappearances." The U.S. State Department reports that Bouteflika's regime has repeatedly failed to "account for persons who disappeared in the 1990s and to address the demands of victims' families." While food shortages and general discontent led to many of the smaller Tunisia-inspired protests that state security forces violently squashed, rampant corruption was among the protesters' chief complaints, a problem that could result in "an explosion (of protests) if the government's promise of change doesn't come fast enough," NPR writes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-worlds-enduring-dictators-abdelaziz-bouteflika-algeria/

Still in power seven years later and seeking another term.

[EX500rider]

23. Since his stroke in 2013 I think someone pulls his strings now.

6/21/18
"With no serious opposition apparent in the 2019 presidential elections the man who has held the job since the 1990s, Abdelaziz Bouteflika is apparently running again. Although confined to a wheelchair he can still appear at public events and on TV, but not frequently. Since he suffered a stroke in 2013 his close associates (family, friends and political allies) have managed to hold tight the reins of power with or without a lot of help from the elderly (now 81) and ailing president. Bouteflika will run for president again because he is still alive and his associates cannot agree on a replacement. Bouteflika has been president since 1999 using a rigged system that blocks opposition candidates and generally guarantees Bouteflika will get reelected. Bouteflika has retained power by taking care of key groups (the security forces, key politicians and non-government leaders).

The government is using a combination of violent censorship (lots of journalists arrested and jailed or expelled if foreigners), deficit spending, taking good care of the security forces, discouraging luxury imports and foreign travel to keep an increasingly unhappy population calm. The government also benefits from and fractious and uninspiring political opposition that could win national power if they had a recognizable leader of a united coalition. So unemployment remains over 10 percent and growing (thanks to more young workers who cannot find jobs), corruption continues to discourage initiative, entrepreneurs or innovation and oil revenues continue to decline. The half-century of oil income allowed the development of a corrupt political elite that brutally suppressed a decade-long Islamic terrorist uprising in the 1990s and uses popular aversion to using another uprising to change the government. But as time goes on memories of the 1990s violence fade and armed insurrection becomes more appealing to a growing population of unemployed. Algeria is another national uprising waiting to happen."

http://strategypage.com/qnd/algeria/articles/20180621.aspx

[spike jones]

10. This is how the Armenian genocide started.

Interesting to note that the Armenians are described as Christians. IDNK.
I wonder if the fact that most southern border immigrants to US are Catholic means that the Protestant/Catholic war continues?

https://www.history.com/topics/armenian-genocide
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BEGINS
On April 24, 1915, the Armenian genocide began. That day, the Turkish government arrested and executed several hundred Armenian intellectuals.
After that, ordinary Armenians were turned out of their homes and sent on death marches through the Mesopotamian desert without food or water.
Frequently, the marchers were stripped naked and forced to walk under the scorching sun until they dropped dead. People who stopped to rest were shot.
At the same time, the Young Turks created a “Special Organization,” which in turn organized “killing squads” or “butcher battalions” to carry out, as one officer put it, “the liquidation of the Christian elements.”
These killing squads were often made up of murderers and other ex-convicts. They drowned people in rivers, threw them off cliffs, crucified them and burned them alive. In short order, the Turkish countryside was littered with Armenian corpses.

[JI7]

11. Armenians are christians and that is why the genocide happened

The southern border immigrants are mostly catholic but hated against them is because they are brown.

[oberliner]

13. What are you basing that on?

(Referencing your claim that the hatred against the migrants entering Algeria is "because they are brown" as opposed to their religion or other reasons).

[JI7]

14. I'm referring to the US.

[oberliner]

15. OK - well, I agree with you there

I am curious, though, to get more insights into this situation in Algeria.

[dembotoz]

16. question would be why are they coming? perhaps the collapse of agriculture due to climate change

no rain, no food
pretty damn simple

[oberliner]

17. Hoping to reach Europe?

For better opportunities and to escape conflict in their home countries?

[spike jones]

18. I think there is a good chance

that they are the wrong kind of Muslim in their home country.

[dembotoz]

22. hope to go somewhere

[lagomorph777]

21. We already do that.

Sessions is prosecuting anybody who leaves water stations in the desert.