IOM has provided evacuation assistance from Syria to 1,410 migrant workers from the Philippines, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Moldova, Ukraine, South Sudan, Belarus, and Indonesia. A flight chartered by IOM returned 263 Filipino workers to the Philippines on 11 September, but thousands of Indonesian domestic workers in crisis-hit Syria still need help to get back home. ----- Jakarta Globe, 23-09-2012 Indonesian Domestic Workers in Syria in Need of Repatriation http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/indonesian-domestic-workers-in-syria-in-need-of-repatriation/545997 Thousands of Indonesian domestic workers in crisis-hit Syria need help to get back home, activists say. “We wrote to the government in June to bring the suffering of migrant workers in Syria to their attention,” Anis Hidaya, executive director of Migrant Care, a Jakarta-based NGO campaigning for migrant workers’ rights, told IRIN. “Today we demand the government protect its citizens and repatriate all those in danger.” In Indonesia, families of women and girls working in Syria continue to receive reports about the dire circumstances of their loved ones, including abandonment by employers. These women are particularly vulnerable to abuse in Syria, says Hidaya. According to the International Organization for Migration, there are more than 100,000 migrant workers in Syria, including some 15,000 who may be in need of evacuation assistance. Precise data is not available. Prior to the crisis, the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry estimated the number of Indonesians working in Syria at some 12,000. However, this figure is difficult to confirm as many migrant workers, mostly women, are undocumented, said the Indonesian embassy in Damascus. Syria witnessed a steady rise in the number of foreign domestic workers between 2001 and 2006, following the legalization of foreign nationals as domestic workers, said a 2012 report by the Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration (CARIM). In 2010, the Syrian authorities estimated the number of female domestic workers at 75,000-100,000, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Ethiopia. In their offices and emergency call centers across Indonesia, Migrant Care employees help families call their daughters, sisters, and mothers to comfort them, learn about their situation, and talk about how to get them home. At a Migrant Care office in Jakarta last week, Hidaya received an urgent text message: “My daughter is in Aleppo in a house alone. Please - we cannot contact her for two weeks. We don’t know where she is.” The NGO is getting more and more such messages, says Hidaya. “These women and girls are extremely vulnerable when they migrate for work in the first place,” she explained. “Now, living amid this violence and being ignored by their employers, they are defenseless and exposed to the horrors of the fighting.” “Since the violence in Syria began, the government has directly helped 770 Indonesians leave,” said Tatang Razak, director of Indonesian citizen protection affairs at the Foreign Affairs Ministry. “The biggest issue we face in our evacuation operations is the unwillingness of the Syrian government to issue exit permits to workers without employer permission,” he explained, saying that the Indonesian government currently has custody of 348 Indonesians — mostly domestic workers — in safe houses in Damascus awaiting processing. To date, IOM has provided evacuation assistance from Syria to 1,410 migrant workers from the Philippines, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, Moldova, Ukraine, South Sudan, Belarus, and Indonesia. A flight chartered by IOM returned 263 Filipino workers to the Philippines on 11 September. Of those assisted by IOM, only nine were from Indonesia, though the pace of returns may be improving: Linda Al-Kalash, director of Tamkeen, a legal aid and human rights organization in Jordan, said that just this week she saw 117 newly-arrived Indonesian migrant domestic workers at the embassy in Amman. "They were in Jordan for barely a day before they were repatriated by government charter flight to Jakarta." To date, IOM has received requests for repatriation assistance from embassies of close to 5,000 third country nationals. Some 700,000 documented Indonesian migrant workers go abroad to work every year, sending part of their earnings back to their families. According to the World Bank, registered remittances to Indonesia amounted to more than US$6 billion annually, the second-highest source of income after oil and gas. The government estimates the total number of documented migrants abroad at 2.7 million, while the number of undocumented workers could be 2-4 times that amount.
Xinhua (Chine), 27 septembre 2012
L’UE appuie à hauteur de 8 millions d’euros la stratégie de migration de la Mauritanie
L’Union européenne va apporter un appui financier „sans contrepartie“ de 8 millions d‘ euros à la Mauritanie en appui à son projet de stratégie de migration, a appris Xinhua de source officielle.
Au terme d’une convention signée mercredi à Nouakchott, ce projet vise, entre autres objectifs, à „offrir une meilleure connaissance statistique des personnes entrant et sortant du territoire mauritanien, à lutter contre le trafic humain, assurer la protection des plus faibles et le respect des règles internationales des droits à l’asile“.
La convention a été signée entre le ministre mauritanien des Affaires économiques Sidi OuldTah et Hans-Georg Gertenlauer, chef de délégation de l’Union européenne en Mauritanie.
Au cours de la cérémonie de signature de cette convention, le représentant de l’UE a souligné que la position de „pivot entre l‘ Afrique et le Maghreb de la Mauritanie pose à ce pays le défi de maintenir sa tradition de pays d’accueil tout en assurant la nécessaire stabilité et protection de son territoire et ses habitants“.
„L’Etat mauritanien a mis en oeuvre (en 2011) des efforts importants afin de doter le pays de la première stratégie migratoire de son histoire, qui fait figure de référence dans la sous-région“, a-t-il rappelé.
„La gestion des frontières et la protection du territoire sont intrinsèquement liées aux actions de lutte contre le terrorisme, ce qui est pertinent dans le contexte sécuritaire régional actuel“, a conclu le diplomate européen.
Pour sa part, le ministre mauritanien a déclaré que son pays “ est confronté à une pression migratoire qui met en difficulté les mécanismes traditionnels de régulation des flux migratoires mis en place depuis l’indépendance“. En 2011, la Mauritanie s’est dotée d’une stratégie nationale de gestion de la migration et des frontières. Au-delà de l’aspect sécuritaire, cette stratégie prévoit une meilleure compréhension de la migration et sa contribution au développement du pays.
Plus de 60 postes de contrôle frontaliers ont été mis en place avec l’assistance technique et financière de l’Union européenne.
Le rôle joué par la Mauritanie dans la réduction du flux migratoire vers le vieux continent a été salué par les pays européens, notamment par l’Espagne.
http://french.cri.cn/621/2012/09/27/445s296661.htm#.UGPrFFGAdqE
AS REFUGEES FLOOD TURKEY, ASYLUM SYSTEM NEARS BREAKDOWN
by Susanne Güsten
[…] Asylum is not on offer for Africans and other non-Europeans in Turkey, which retains a “geographical limitation” to the Geneva Refugee Convention, effectively limiting asylum to refugees from Europe.
But Ivorians are only the most recent arrivals in Kumkapi. They join thousands of Iraqis, Iranians and Afghans, as well as Somalis and Congolese, who have run as far as they can and now find themselves unable to proceed further and stuck in a country that precludes asylum for refugees fleeing events occurring outside of Europe.
For many years, the U.N. agency has picked up the slack in Turkey, screening asylum applications and resettling refugees in countries like the United States, Canada and Australia. But with the number of refugees swelling drastically and resettlement quotas shrinking, the system is headed for a breakdown.
Nearly 29,000 incoming refugees registered with the United Nations in Turkey by Aug. 31 this year, according to figures provided by the agency. That figure does not include an estimated 125,000 Syrian refugees sheltering in camps and private accommodation in the southern border area. It also excludes thousands of unregistered refugees, like those in Kumkapi.
Even so, only France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Sweden, among E.U. countries, received more asylum applications in all of last year, according to Eurostat figures.
The figure in Turkey is sharply higher than an average of 10,000 to 15,000 annually in recent years, according to Multeci-Der, a private group supporting refugee rights. “It is a record number for Turkey,” the association’s chairman, Taner Kilic, said last week.
At the same time, resettlement quotas are down from about 6,500 places last year to fewer than 6,000 this year, according to the U.N. agency, with the United States accepting about 4,000 refugees in 2012 and Canada offering 900 places. Australia is taking 630 refugees, with Norway and Finland offering 150 places each and Germany taking 100 refugees.
“A refugee entering Turkey today will wait for a year and a half just to register with the U.N.H.C.R. and another year for his first interview with them,” Mr. Kilic said. “That’s a two-and-a-half-year wait, just for your first chance to plead your case.” With follow-up interviews and appeals, the average wait for a decision is four to five years, he added, with some refugees waiting seven to eight years before they even become eligible for resettlement.
Third countries then choose among the eligible refugees according to criteria like education, language skills and nation of origin. “Afghans, for example, currently have virtually zero chance of being resettled,” Mr. Kilic said, citing cases of recognized refugees who have been waiting 10 years in what are often miserable conditions.
It is the uncertainty of that wait more than anything else that leads refugees to resort to the desperate action of boarding a smugglers’ boat like one that sank off Turkey’s western coast last month, drowning more than 60 refugees on their way to Europe, Mr. Kilic said.
While Turkey does grant temporary protection to registered refugees while their applications are being considered by the U.N. agency, it requires them to sit out the wait in one of 53 provincial towns to which they are assigned by the Interior Ministry. “But no one tells them how to get there or what to do when they arrive, no one asks where they will sleep, what they will eat and how they will survive,” Mr. Kilic said.
Asylum seekers are neither entitled to material assistance nor granted work permits, leaving them at the mercies of provincial authorities and driven to work illegally. They are frequently subject to detention and deportation by the Turkish authorities without recourse to legal appeal.
It is criticism of such conditions that led lawmakers to draft Turkey’s first asylum law, submitted to Parliament just before the summer recess and due to be voted on soon after it reconvenes next week. The draft law has been greeted with praise by activists and academics, who were consulted in its preparation by the Interior Ministry to an extent that is highly unusual in Turkey.
“They invited us to the ministry and sat down with us, and we went over the law for two days, article by article, and then they did the same with the academics,” Mr. Kilic said. Officials drafting the law also traveled to Strasbourg and Brussels to consult the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission. The result is an asylum law that not only meets E.U. standards, but exceeds them, experts agree.
“The law has been deeply influenced by the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights,” specifically addressing the issues raised by the court, Kemal Kirisci, a professor of political science at the Bosporus University and one of the country’s leading experts on asylum issues, said in an interview last week. The draft law, which was supported in committee by all parties represented in Parliament, “puts the accent on human rights rather than on security,” he said.
There is just one problem, activists like Mr. Kilic say: The new asylum law will not extend asylum to refugees from outside Europe, because it does not lift the geographical limitation.
“Over all it is a good law, but in my view as long as the geographical limitation is maintained, it remains problematic,” Mr. Kilic said. “We will continue to depend on the U.N. to resettle refugees in third countries, and if those countries will not take them — perhaps pointing out that our economy is now stronger than theirs and that the refugees have fled to our country, not theirs — then we have a deadlocked system.”
But Mr. Kirisci is among those who argued for keeping the geographical limitation in place. “If Turkey were to lift the geographical limitation without being a member of the European Union, I think it would fall into a situation worse than that Greece, an E.U. member, has found itself in over the last couple of years,” he said, pointing to the overwhelming numbers of refugees there and the international criticism of Greece’s handling of the situation.
Turkey would have to lift the geographical limitation to accede to the European Union, Mr. Kirisci conceded. But for now, Turkey is within its rights under international law in maintaining the restriction, he said.
“Why should Turkey give away such a right without European Union membership itself?” Mr. Kirisci said. “I see this as a hard bargaining chip with the European Union”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/world/middleeast/as-refugees-flood-turkey-asylum-system-nears-brea
kdown.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Presseerklärung, 27.Sept. 2012
Einladung zur Kundgebung
Solidarität mit dem Flüchtlingsprotestmarsch von Würzburg nach Berlin
Kundgebung in Hamburg am Samstag, dem 29. September 2012, Hauptbahnhof/Glockengießerwall um13.30Uhr
Ausgelöst durch den Tod des iranischen Asylbewerbers Mohammad Rahsepar in einem Würzburger Flüchtlingslager hatten Flüchtlinge im März 2012 in der Würzburger Innenstadt ein Protestcamp errichtet und waren in den Hungerstreik getreten, um auf ihre verzweifelte Lage aufmerksam zu machen. Flüchtlinge aus neun Städten folgten ihrem Beispiel.
Die nunmehr sechsmonatigen Proteste gipfeln jetzt in einem gemeinsamen Protestmarsch nach Berlin. Seit dem 08. September haben sich Flüchtlingsaktivisten auf zwei Routen von Würzburg nach Berlin aufgemacht, wo sie ca. Anfang Oktober eintreffen wollen.
Ihre Forderungen sind u.a.:
- Abschaffung der Residenzpflicht
- Abschaffung der Abschiebegesetze
- Abschaffung aller Flüchtlingslager
In einem mehrsprachigen Aufruf rufen die Organisator_innen zu ihrem Protest auf:
„Wir werden keine Gesetze respektieren, die uns nicht als Menschen respektieren. Die streikenden Flüchtlinge in ganz Deutschland, die einen starken und koordinierten gemeinsamen Protest begonnen haben, haben beschlossen am 8.September eine neue Aktion zu starten: Ab diesem Tag werden Asylsuchende auf 2 verschiedenen Routen nach Berlin marschieren, um dort der deutschen Regierung zu zeigen, dass auf jede Anwendung des unmenschlichen Abschiebegesetzes eine Reaktion der Bewegung folgen wird. Die Flüchtlinge werden lauter schreien denn je, sie werden ihren Kampf weiterführen, bis die Lager mit ihren katastrophalen Bedingungen geschlossen werden. Mit der Versammlung in Berlin werden die Flüchtlinge aktiv gegen die diskriminierende Residenzpflicht verstoßen, die sie zwingt, sich in einem bestimmten Bereich aufzuhalten.“
In einem Statement vom 17.09. erklären die Flüchtlinge außerdem:
„Für uns existiert kein Blatt im Gesetzbuch. Durch unsere Anwesenheit beweisen wir wieviele Fehler in den Gesetzen enthalten sind. Gesetze, die uns einst in einem anderen Land zur Flucht gezwungen haben und uns hier nun bis in den Tod langsam zermürben, in dem unser Menschsein ignoriert wird …
Wir haben die Flüchtlingslager verlassen und die Essenspakete boykottiert. Wir haben die Gutscheine ignoriert und die Plätze der Städte besetzt. Die Hungerstreiks haben unsere Kraft unter Beweis gestellt. …
Wir kämpfen gegen die menschenverachtenden Gesetze, die uns an den Rand der Gesellschaft drängen und uns kriminalisieren. … Wir verstehen uns in erster Linie als Menschen, dann als Bürger_innen.“
Wir schließen uns den Forderungen der Flüchtlinge an und rufen zur Unterstützung des Protestmarsches auf!
Auch in Hamburg wird die ausgrenzende Praxis und Gesetzgebung gegen geflüchtete Menschen deutlich: Hamburg lagert die Erstaufnahme nach Nostorf-Horst in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern aus. Viele Flüchtlinge werden direkt von dort in ihre Länder abgeschoben.
Hamburg ist verantwortlich für viele Abschiebungen von Roma in Hunger, Elend und rassistische Diskriminierung. Von der Residenzpflicht sind Hamburger Flüchtlinge ebenfalls betroffen sowie diejenigen, die sich „unerlaubt“ in der Stadt aufhalten, weil es für Menschen in den Lagern weitab von Städten und unter unmenschlichen Bedingungen nicht auszuhalten ist und sie damit aktiv Widerstand gegen die Residenzpflicht leisten.
Einladung zum Gespräch
Die Flüchtlinge der westlichen Marschroute (Bustour) besuchen am Samstag auch Hamburg und werden hier nachmittags an der Kundgebung teilnehmen. Wir laden Sie, Journalistinnen und Journalisten, herzlich ein, mit den protestierenden Flüchtlingen zu sprechen!
Kontakte hier:
Während des Protestmarsches und der Bustour sind die Pressekontakte wie folgt:
Der Pressekontakt für alle Fragen den Protestmarsch betreffend:
Media.refugeeprotest@gmail.com
Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein! Tel.:017698340806
Der Pressekontakt für alle Fragen die Bustour betreffend:
Media.refugeeprotest@gmail.com
Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein! Tel.:017679837911
Für den Flüchtlingsrat Hamburg:
Hermann Hardt
Tel.(FR):040 – 431587,Mobil:0176 – 69383271
URGENT APPEAL: blankets, sleeping bags, tents, waterproofs, warm clothes etc. desperately needed as the police keep destroying everything. The manhunt continues, under the pouring rain. Complete list of materials needed and contacts below.
Chiara
26.09.12: Eviction of Salam followed by mass road block next to the port. Lighthouse area also evicted. Mass arrests.
Pictures to come…
Yesterday morning at 6am many many police – PAF and CRS – arrived at the place of food distribution and kicked everybody out in the rain. A lot of people were arrested, around 50 people, and everyone was not allowed to take their blankets or sleeping bags with them (which had just been distributed two days before by Medicin du Monde) though they were able to take some personal bags.
People were released throughout the day – though not everybody, some still remain in the detention centre.
After the food distrobution by Salam at 6pm more blankets were distributed. Many people from the associations gathered in the distribution place and it was decided together by many communities that they wanted to make a road block in protest to the eviction that morning.
It was very beautiful to see, maybe 100 people or less sat and stood in the road to the port and blocked traffic. Plastic sheeting was brought and people made makeshift tents over the road. Cardboard sheets were written on with slogans like “where are our human rights?” and “we are not criminals!”.
Chanting and singing and dancing made the atmosphere a bit like a surreal party. There were many police – Nationale, PAF, BAC – who stood and watched for a couple of hours at a distance, directing traffic. A huge storm came over the demonstrators with thunder and lighting and terrible rain – people held out in the road in the rain until it was totally dark before dispersing to find places to sleep.
This morning at 6.30am the police came again in HUGE numbers. PAF and CRS. They evicted the area outside of the food distribution and arrested everyone. They were not very violent but really unpleasant.. They woke people by cutting the tents from over their heads and stamping on the plastic, with people sleeping inside. It was very cold and the CRS found it amusing that so many people were shivering and wrapping themselves in blankets.
The translator they brought with them did not speak Pashto or Dari – only Arabic. 95% of the people arrested were Afghan and so the woman walking round screaming in Arabic that everybody must go to the police station to show their papers and could take there bags, was not understood.
In the police station people were divided into language groups, Pashto/Dari/Farsi/Arabic/Urdu and put into cells. The police were calling the porta-cabin where most of their cells are, “la maison Afghanistan”.
We are unsure at the moment how many people are left inside – but it seems most are released. The last person from “la maison Afghanistan” was released today but we are still not sure about the other police cells.
It seems somewhat like a bad joke here at the moment. With the constant rain and now what seems to be becoming an eviction trend the days are very long and uncomfortable. We desperately need more tents/sleeping bags/blankets/waterproof coats etc.
For more information, photos, updates to come:
http://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com/
What we need:
– Tents, tarpaulin, blankets, sleeping bags, men’s clothes: jackets, jumpers, trousers, T shirts M/S, hats, scarves, gloves, underwear, socks, men’s shoes– we need lots of them.
– Books – in any and all languages. Especially, English, French, Italian, Arabic, Pashto, Farsi, Tigrinya, Amharic and Greek. Language dictionaries would be really really cool, and really well used. (We have many in German and Swedish already so don’t need any more!)
– Games – card games, board games, dominoes etc..
– Tools/bike equipment – the bike workshop space is good but could be excellent. We need tools and other equipment and as usual more bikes and trailers.
– Phone chargers and English sim cards (Lyca and O2)
– Also we are in DESPERATE need of cameras… We are missing so much potential footage that could be used against the police.
And if you have any spare time we would love to see you because we have a massive shortage of activists but so much to do!!
Contact :
00 33 6 45 46 59 86 (from outside France)
06 45 46 59 86 (from inside France)
Email: calais_solidarity@riseup.net
RCM’s (Regional Center for Minorities) press-release about the situation outside of the Centre for Asylum Seekers in Bogovađa — the centre has run over its capacity for months, until the management decided to stop accommodating the surplus of people and now around a hundred asylum seekers are staying outside, without shelter, water or food. The situation is becoming drastic, with the falling temperatures.
link: http://minoritycentre.org/actuals/worrying-situation-outside-centre-asylum-seekers-bogova%C4%91
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Worrying situation outside of the Centre for Asylum Seekers in Bogovađa
The basic human rights of the people outside of the centre are endangered – they do not have a roof over their head, access to water, basic sanitation and adequate nutrition. In other words, both their life and their right to a dignified life are endangered.
With this treatment of asylum seekers, the Serbian state is breaking its own laws, as well as international standards, which state that everyone who seeks asylum should be accommodated, and their basic needs provided for, within 72 hours, and until the final decision on their asylum claim has been reached.
The Centre for Asylum Seekers in Bogovađa is, besides the centre in Banja Koviljača, the only centre of this kind in Serbia. Asylum seekers were first accommodated there in June 2011. After racist mobilisations in Banja Koviljača in October 2011, many asylum seekers were relocated to Bogovađa and the centre soon exceeded, its capacity. Thus in July 2012, 229 were accommodated in the centre.
As the number of asylum seekers in Serbia keeps rising, the existing centres are too small to accommodate everybody. However, the Commissariat for Refugees of Republic of Serbia (KIRS), responsible for the accommodation of asylum seekers, has not been opening new centres. Besides, the Centre in Bogovađa reduced the number of people it accommodates to the official maximum capacity of 150 people. The reason for this could be that the costs of accommodating one person for one night is 8 euros, according to the words of a representative of KIRS.
The asylum system in Serbia has serious shortcomings. Since 2008, when the independent asylum system started in Serbia, nobody has been granted refugee status. This means that Serbia is effectively not a country in which migrants could permanently regularise their status, through claiming asylum. However, many undocumented migrants in Serbia seek asylum, because this is the only way for them to gain a temporary legal status and have at least temporary access to basic rights, such as a roof over their head and health-care. It is thus disgraceful to see that, even after they have claimed asylum, migrants are not accommodated in the centers and need to continue to sleep outside.
The Regional Centre for Minorities demands that the authorities find a solution for accommodating the asylum seekers, who are now staying without a shelter in front of the centre in Bogovađa as soon as possible, especially as the weather conditions are becoming more and more difficult and could gravely exacerbate an already worrying situation. We also believe that it is urgent to end the human rights violations and to ensure the compliance with the standards, which represent the minimum of the state’s obligations towards these people — and include providing them with the means necessary for their survival.
Vergessen in der Wüste
Ein Bericht über Flüchtlingslager Shousha von Sabine Schmidtke
Im Rahmen des Projekts boats4people hat eine internationale Delegation bestehend aus 11 Personen aus 9 verschiedenen Ländern am 11.7.2012 das Flüchtlingslager Shousha in Tunesien wenige Kilometer vor der libyschen Grenze besucht. Unter den TeilnehmerInnen befand sich auch eine Vertreterin von borderline-europe, Menschenrechte ohne Grenzen e.V.
http://www.borderline-europe.de/downloads/2012_09_24_Shousha_Bericht.pdf
Angehörige von Boat-people, die im März 2011 Italien erreicht haben sollen, aber verschollen sind, haben in Tunis Klage eingereicht, anscheinend gegen die Untätigkeit der Behörden.
Seit zwei Wochen halten im Raum von Sidi Bouzid im tunesischen Landesinneren Proteste in Form von Straßenblockaden an. Die Überlandstraße Sfax-Gafsa ist dadurch gesperrt. Am 26.09.2012 hat die Polizei 13 Blockierer verhaftet, aber die Straßenblockaden gehen weiter.
http://www.tap.info.tn/fr/fr/component/content/article/378-actualite/33518-sidi-bouzid-arrestation-de-13-personnes-suite-au-blocage-dune-route.html
„WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused President Barack Obama today of seeking to exploit the Arab uprisings for personal political gain, as he addressed a sideline meeting of the UN General Assembly via videolink from his hideout at a London embassy. […]
„It must come as a surprise to Tunisians for Barack Obama to say the US supported the forces of change in Tunisia,“ Assange said, speaking from Ecuador’s tiny apartment-sized London mission. He claimed that uprisings across the Arab world had been inspired, in part, by his organization’s disclosures about despotic rulers, including Tunisia’s deposed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Assange claimed that Obama whose administration he accuses of building a criminal case against WikiLeaks and of harassing its staff was seeking to exploit the reforms of the Arab Spring during his reelection campaign. „Mohamed Bouazizi did not set himself on fire so that Barack Obama could get reelected,“ Assange told the meeting, referring to the 2011 self-immolation by a Tunisian fruit vendor which sparked the uprising that toppled Ben Ali.“
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10836901