Ukraine Expels Russian Journalists, EU Urges Balkan Clampdown on Asylum Seekers
Plus, Kyrgyzstan’s leader blasts Belarus for sheltering ‘villainous’ Bakiev brothers, and the Caspian Sea states pledge to save the endangered sturgeon.
by Ky Krauthamer, Ioana Caloianu, Evgeny Deulin, and Casper Frederiksen
27 February 2015
1. Ukraine expels Russian journalists
Ukraine’s treatment of Russian journalists is again under scrutiny after representatives of several Russian television channels were detained and expelled on 25 February, on the heels of a ban on about 100 Russian media outlets from covering the work of public institutions.
Dunja Mijatovic
The recent Ukrainian measures toward Russian media are “excessive,” OSCE media freedom representative Dunja Mijatovic said 26 February, Radio Free Europe reports.
She called on the Ukrainian authorities to explain the motive for the parliament’s move to strip Russian media of accreditation to cover public bodies, including parliament itself. The names of the banned media were not provided, according to RFE.
On 25 February journalists from Russia’s Channel One and NTV stations were reportedly detained for several hours before being ordered to return to Russia. Two journalists were involved, Russia Beyond the Headlines writes, or four, according to RT.
An official with the Russian Investigative Committee said the reporters were trying to cover a march by the far-right Pravy Sektor group when they were detained, RBTH reports.
2. Kyrgyzstan urges Belarus to extradite ex-leader
Kurmanbek Bakiev
Dozens of people rallied in front of the Belarusian Embassy in Bishkek today demanding the extradition of exiled former leader Kurmanbek Bakiev and his brother, RFE reports.
The protest followed a strongly worded statement from Kyrgyzstani President Almazbek Atambaev urging Minsk to extradite Kurmanbek and Janysh Bakiev.
Atambaev blasted Belarus for shielding them from justice, saying that the country had “given shelter to villains.”
Both brothers were sentenced to life terms by a court in Kyrgyzstan for their involvement in the killing of more than 80 protesters in 2010 when a popular uprising overthrew the Bakiev regime and forced the pair to ask for asylum in Belarus.
Earlier this month Atambaev accused Janysh Bakiev of underworld ties after the killing in Minsk of a Kyrgyz-born alleged gangland figure, AFP reports.
A witness told Kyrgyzstani investigators the dead man, Almambet Anapiyaev, met with Janysh Bakiev on the day he died, Kyrgyzstan's Foreign Ministry said 26 February, according to RFE.
Atambaev’s statement said the ongoing dispute will damage relations between the two states and their cooperation in the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union after Kyrgyzstan joins the bloc in May.
3. Abuse of travel rules fuels tide of Balkan asylum seekers, commission says
The skyrocketing number of asylum seekers in the EU coming from five Balkan countries within a visa-free scheme is a cause of “considerable concern,” according to the European Commission.
The number of asylum seekers from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia climbed 40 percent in the first nine months of 2014 over the same period a year earlier. The numbers had already hit a record high in 2013, when 53,705 applications were filed.
Still, only a small fraction of applicants are granted asylum status. Serbians, the most numerous group, made up 42 percent of all applicants in 2013, with a recognition rate of 2.7 percent, while Albanians, who constituted a fifth of all applicants, had the highest recognition rate at 8.1 percent, the EC press release says.
The number of Kosovan asylum seekers is also rising at a worrying rate, with tens of thousands reportedly crossing into Hungary from Serbia so far this year.
Germany continues to be the destination of choice for many irregular EU migrants. The country received 203,000 asylum applications in 2014, Deutsche Welle writes, more than any other EU country. Syrians comprised the largest single nationality, with 5,530 applications, followed by Kosovans, Serbians, and Albanians.
Germany and other EU countries saw a huge increase in Balkan asylum seekers when the EU began lifting the visa requirements for western Balkan countries in 2009-2010.
In the press release, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs, and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said dropping the visa requirement has “enhance[ed] people-to-people contacts and business opportunities,” but warned, “the misuse of the visa-free travel scheme for seeking asylum in the EU must be addressed systematically and through proper allocation of resources.”
4. Caspian countries in fresh bid to save endangered sturgeon
The Caspian Sea sturgeon population is declining to a critical level, an Azerbaijani scientist warns.
Large-scale illegal fishing is the major threat, said Ilham Alekperov, who heads the zoology institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Azernews reported earlier this month. Seismic exploration, pollution, and competition for food from invasive comb jellies are compounding the problem, Alekperov said.
Overfishing and poaching have reduced the sturgeon population to less than 3 percent of its level in the 1970s, when 96 percent of the world’s sturgeon catch came from the Caspian. So a protocol signed last week by the five Caspian Sea littoral states on conserving the sea’s biological diversity came as welcome news, Silk Road Reporters writes.
On paper, the sturgeon and the other flora and fauna in the world’s largest inland body of water are protected by international conventions and fishing bans. In September, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of the sea’s fish and other organisms during the fourth Caspian summit meeting, the Astana Times reported.
But political disputes have blocked consensus since the Soviet Union spun off three new littoral states and all five began disputing over their fair share of the sea’s resources, Silk Road Reporters writes.
Iran argues that the sea’s waters and seabed – second only to the Persian Gulf in hydrocarbon deposits – should be divided equally among the five countries, while Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan say its assets should be apportioned according to the length of each country’s coastline. This would allot 30.8 percent to Kazakhstan, with the others each receiving from 15 to 19 percent.
It may be too late to save the sturgeon, though. In 2013 Kazakhstani Deputy General Prosecutor Andrey Kravchenko warned that sturgeon numbers fell from 3 million to 1.3 million in the previous three years.
“At such a rate sturgeon will be fully extinct in four to five years,” he said, according to Silk Road Reporters.
5. Brussels tiptoes into Abkhazia, Georgia blasts Russian ‘annexation’
Tamar Beruchashvili
Georgian Foreign Minister Tamar Beruchashvili accused Russia of the “creeping annexation” of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions 26 February, after talks this week with EU and NATO officials, Reuters reports.
She said Russia maintains 11,000 military personnel in the two breakaway regions of Georgia, which Moscow recognized as independent following its 2008 war with Georgia for control of South Ossetia. Russia and Abkhazia signed an agreement in November on significantly strengthened economic and military ties, and Moscow hopes to make a similar arrangement with South Ossetia, Reuters says.
Tbilisi’s latest blast against Russian support for the breakaway regimes comes shortly after a tentative EU move to build ties with Abkhazia as well as the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The EU’s special representative for the South Caucasus, Herbert Salber, held talks with Abkhazia’s top foreign policy official, Viacheslav Chirikba, on 3 February, EurasiaNet.org reports.
After some reports said the EU planned to open a representational office in Abkhazia, deputy head of the EU delegation to Georgia Boris Iarochevitch told EurasiaNet.org the proposed office was only an “EU info center.”
Ukraine Expels Russian Journalists, EU Urges Balkan Clampdown on Asylum Seekers
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/content/ukraine-expels-russian-journalists-eu-urges-balkan-clampdown-asylum-seekers
