On April 14, 2023, Jack Teixeira, who was charged with releasing classified government documents, appeared in federal court for a hearing, NBC Boston reported. According to BBC News, the documents contained information describing how the United States government views Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with information about allies of the U.S. and their involvement in the war. The leaked documents have raised concerns about how safe classified information is in the U.S..
Large protests, which began on April 5, 2023, have taken place in Ethiopia’s Amhara region in reaction to the government’s decision to create a unified paramilitary force, BBC reported. According to Reuters, members of Amhara’s special forces and militias opposed Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s command to merge the regional military with the national force. Ahmed has claimed that the new plan was made “for the sake of Ethiopia’s national unity.”
On March 30, 2023, the Russian Federal Security Service announced that they had detained Evan Gershkovich, an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and were opening an espionage case against him, The Guardian reported. According to CNN, the FSB has charged Gershkovich with attempting to “obtain state secrets.” Almar Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones, the company that publishes The Wall Street Journal, has staunchly denied this allegation.
The United Nations adopted a new resolution on March 29, 2023, which requested that the International Court of Justice give an advisory opinion on countries’ obligations to combat climate change, a U.N. press release reported. The U.N. also asked the ICJ to weigh in on the consequences for countries that do not provide aid to efforts that combat climate change. The resolution highlighted developing island nations and the global south as regions that experience the impacts of climate change disproportionately.
On March 27, 2023, at least 38 migrants from Central and South America died in a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Reuters reported. According to NPR, a surveillance video, which was posted online, shows detainees trapped in a locked cell while uniformed agents left the building without aiding them. BBC reported that the agents ignored the men trying to escape the fire while they yelled and banged on the door. After the smoke filled the room, however, it is unknown what took place at the facility.
On March 27, 2023, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he will be delaying the proposed judicial reforms that were announced earlier this year. According to an Al Jazeera news article, this announcement followed a mass strike of workers across the country, as well as protests from tens of thousands of Israelis opposed to the reforms. Malls and kindergartens were closed, seaport workers refused to work and flights were suspended at Ben Gurion International Airport. Al Jazeera also explained that the delay announced last Monday means that the proposed changes will not be voted on by parliament until late April at the earliest.
20 years ago on March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, starting the war on terror with the goal of ending President Saddam Hussein’s rule and removing the alleged weapons of mass destruction from Iraq, Al Jazeera reported. According to Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S., the United Kingdom and other allies swiftly took over the Iraqi Army, and three weeks after the invasion U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians pulled down a statue of Saddam.
On Feb. 27, 2023, legislation from the British parliament titled the Windsor Framework was introduced. According to PBS News, the bill will open the border between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, allowing free trade in place of the previously restrictive custom checks on some goods such as meat, eggs and medicine.
Graphic by Mari Al Tayb ‘26.
By Qingyun Shi ’23
Staff Writer
On Jan. 31, 2023, South Korea dropped indoor mask mandates, a New York Times article reported. Beginning March 13, 2023, the government of Japan will further ease COVID-19 guidelines on mask-wearing, including those pertaining to public transportation and schools. According to The Japan Times, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hopes that relaxing public health measures will benefit economic and social activities.
The New York Times article explained that wearing a mask has become part of a daily routine in people’s lives over the past three years, especially in some East Asian countries where pandemic restrictions have lingered for much longer than in other parts of the world. Despite the fact that governments are now easing legal restrictions, the article reported that many residents in countries such as South Korea and Japan are unlikely to stop wearing masks completely any time soon.
Naomi Tanaka, who lives and works in Japan, spoke to this issue in a recent interview with Mount Holyoke News. “Japanese people have always been wearing mask[s], even before COVID-19,” Tanaka said. “In Japanese society, wearing masks is very common; many people — including me from time to time — will put on a mask when going outside.”
There are several reasons for people to continue wearing masks, according to the article. First, the habit can be difficult to change since masking has been the norm for the past three years. In Japan, for example, some call masks “kao pantsu,” or “face pants,” to convey that individuals would feel the same level of embarrassment when removing their masks as when removing their pants in public, The New York Times explained. For others in South Korea and Japan, masking can be a solution for social pressures around behaviors such as wearing makeup or smiling frequently. The article also explained that mask-wearing is seen as an effective measure for protecting individuals such as the elderly or those at risk of developing severe symptoms from being infected with COVID-19.
Tanaka discussed the reasons why many people in Japan still wear masks. “I think there are two main reasons why Japanese people adopted this habit. One: wearing a mask when sick is a sign of consideration for others in Japanese culture. Two: Many Japanese people are allergic to flower [spores] in the air, especially in the spring. Wearing a mask can help you avoid contact.”
As of March 13, passengers on public transportation in Japan will not be required to wear masks due to individual seating, an article by The Japan Times reported. Students and teachers will also not be required to wear masks during upcoming graduation ceremonies as long as preventative health measures are put in place, such as adequate ventilation in rooms. The government will also encourage institutions to not pressure people to remove their masks if individuals wish to continue wearing them. Masks will continue to be recommended in congested indoor areas when social distancing is impossible, The Japan Times said.
Although both South Korea and Japan are continuing to reduce mask regulations, The New York Times reported that health authorities in both countries still encourage mask-wearing. COVID-19 infections in both countries have declined steadily in the past month, but health authorities worry that decreased regulations around masks and travel restrictions will cause another spike in cases.
Over 200 asylum-seeking children, mainly from Albania, disappeared from government housing in the U.K., causing concern over migration policies. Photo courtesy of Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.
By Kiera McLaughlin ’26
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article mentions human trafficking and involuntary sex work.
An investigation by The Observer broke the news in mid-January that over 200 asylum-seeking children are missing in the United Kingdom, The New York Times reported. NPR reported that Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration in the U.K., notified lawmakers that more than 200 children and teenagers under 18 were missing from government-approved accommodations, most of whom were teenage boys from Albania.
According to The New York Times, this government-approved housing consists of hotels, where asylum seekers stay until the Home Office moves them to a more stable location. Yvette Cooper, head of immigration policy for the Labour Party, explained to The New York Times that “there is a pattern here but no one is properly investigating.” She went on to say that “there is no targeted unit going after them and saying, ‘this is a pattern,’ where young people are being trafficked across the channel and then into cannabis farms — or into prostitution in some of the worst cases — but into organized crimes, being picked up from outside these hotels.’”
According to an article by BBC News, there has been an exponential increase in Albanian migrants coming to the U.K. over the past three years. The New York Times reported that in the last year, approximately 40,000 people made the trip across the channel to the U.K., including 13,000 Albanians. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been working towards slowing the number of migrants coming to the U.K. and refusing to grant asylum to many.
An article by The Observer explained that these goals to create strict immigration laws have worked in traffickers’ favor, as some traffickers have been exploiting the Home Office’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to Africa in order to target young asylum seekers. “Traffickers tell them they’ll be sent to Rwanda if they stay in the hotel,” sources told The Observer.
The Guardian reported that their whistleblower who works at a hotel in Hythe, Kent, believes that approximately 10 percent of the children seeking asylum in the U.K. disappeared each week. The article continued to explain that there are many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the U.K. Figures published by the Guardian show that in hotels run by the Home Office, 282 children have gone missing in the six months between April and October, and seventy had not been found.
Many organizations and the Home Office are disputing who is to blame for the lack of action on behalf of these children. Al-Jazeera reported that “rights groups condemned the [U.K.] government, while The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT), a fostering charity, said the Home Office had ignored its calls to place the children in care homes.”
According to The Guardian, many asylum-seekers in the U.K. have been met with anti-migrant protests. The Guardian reported that an organization called HOPE Not Hate, which tracks far-right activity, identified five anti-migrant demonstrations that took place over the weekend. Clare Moseley, the founder of Care4Calais, a volunteer-run refugee charity, has called out the U.K. government for not protecting asylum seekers, according to the Guardian. When speaking of the U.K. government’s lack of action in defense of asylum seekers, Moseley said that “not having documents makes you vulnerable and makes it difficult to stand up for yourself. Intimidating asylum-seekers is an act of pure cowardice. We need a government that shows leadership and protects the vulnerable rather than empowering bullies by using damaging and divisive rhetoric.” Rebecca Hamlin, a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, echoed these sentiments and said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News that “the anti-immigrant politics in the U.K. is very toxic, and portrays a lot of people with legitimate claims for protection under international and domestic law as illegal and undeserving.”
The roles of this rising anti-migration movement in the U.K. and the response by the government have led to unrest and fear for asylum-seekers around the country, according to NPR. As reported by NPR, Labour Party lawmaker Peter Kyle pointed out in the House of Commons that “the uncomfortable truth for us is if one child who was related to one of us in this room went missing, the world would stop. But in the community I represent a child has gone missing, then five went missing, then a dozen went missing, then 50 went missing and currently today 76 are missing and nothing is happening.” While the number of asylum-seeking children placed in hotels by the Home Office increases, people like Yvette Cooper, Clare Moseley and Peter Kyle continue to speak up for the missing children seeking asylum.
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, to resign. Photo courtesy of First Minister of Scotland via Flickr.
Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24
Global Editor
On Feb. 15, 2023, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon announced her resignation from the role, a New York Times article said. According to BBC News, Sturgeon is the longest-serving first minister in Scottish history, as well as the first woman to ever hold the position.
The announcement of Sturgeon’s resignation comes amid controversy in Scottish politics. The New York Times article explained that in recent weeks proposed Scottish legislation aimed at making gender transitions easier was shot down by Britain’s Parliament. However, Sturgeon maintains that the recent controversy is not the reason for her resignation, a CNN article said. Sturgeon reassured skeptics that “[the] decision is not a reaction to short-term pressures.”
As the leader of the Scottish National Party, Sturgeon has spent the past eight years working towards Scottish independence, the party’s founding goal, a BBC News article explained. In fact, according to the SNP website, Sturgeon has been advocating for Scottish independence since she was sixteen, and over the duration of her career, she has worked toward making Scotland an active participant in world politics.
In a press conference addressing her resignation, Sturgeon said that a new leader will be better equipped to achieve Scottish independence, as Sturgeon herself believes that she has become too polarizing of a figure. According to BBC News, Sturgeon’s resignation leaves Scotland without a decisive leader in ongoing discussions surrounding Scottish independence and the prospect of future referendums. As reported by CNN, a majority of Scottish voters expressed that they wanted to remain a part of the U.K. in 2014. However, after Brexit in 2016, popular Scottish opinion on independence may have changed. According to CNN, support for independence had grown since Scotland was forced out of the European Union by the U.K. in 2016, but hopes for a referendum have faced some recent obstacles.
CNN reported that in November 2022 the British Supreme Court barred the Scottish government from holding a second referendum on its own, meaning that any referendum plans must now be approved by the U.K. government. BBC News explained that the SNP is holding a conference in March to figure out how to address these restrictions and move toward a second referendum, but Philip Sim, a political correspondent for the BBC, stated that “with no clear successors waiting in the wings if Ms. Sturgeon isn’t running the independence campaign, it’s not clear who will be placed to call the shots.”
According to BBC News, Kate Forbes, a current parliament member, is one of the front runners to take over Sturgeon’s role. Some of Forbes’s ideas conflict with the political precedent that Sturgeon has set, however. For example, Forbes, who was on maternity leave during the vote that passed the self-identification legislation in the Scottish Parliament, has said that she would not have voted in favor of the bill, and that, as first minister, she will not fight the U.K. government on their block of the legislation. Nick Eardley of the BBC reports that this conflict reflects an upcoming change in the direction of the SNP. BBC News reported that Sturgeon will remain in office until her successor is elected.
The Australian Migration Act sponsors mandatory detention. This legislation led to the dentention of refugees at Nauru’s Regional Processing Center. Photo courtesy of John Englart via Flickr.
By Norah Tafuri ’25
Staff Writer
Australia is currently using Nauru — a Micronesian island once under the control of New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom — as an offshore Regional Processing Center to detain refugees and immigrants. According to the Australian Parliament, the legislation for the processing center is called the Mandatory Detention Policy and was included in the Migration Amendment Act in 1992 with bipartisan support. “Under sections 189, 196 and 198 of the Migration Act, all non-citizens unlawfully in Australia must be detained and kept in immigration detention until granted a visa or removed from Australia,” the bill states.
The Migration Act, passed in 1958, stipulates that “asylum seekers who arrive on the mainland without a valid visa must be held in immigration or community detention, or transferred to an off-shore processing facility.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has stated that it “is clear that detention of asylum seekers ‘as part of a policy to deter future asylum seekers, or to dissuade those who have commenced their claims from pursuing them, is contrary to the norms of refugee law’.”
“For years, Australia has not lived up to its commitments under international and domestic law to provide protection to asylum seekers and give them refugee status determination hearings. This failure sends a message to other countries that they might be able to get away with providing inadequate protection for vulnerable people. So, it harms asylum seekers everywhere,” Rebecca Hamlin, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “In my book ‘Let me Be a Refugee’, which compared the refugee regimes of the United States, Canada and Australia, I found that despite many similarities between those three countries, Australia was consistently less likely to treat asylum seekers well, to accept their claims and to welcome them as future citizens.”
The Refugee Council of Australia explained that there were 66 people living on Nauru as of Jan. 31, 2023. “Currently, refugees on Nauru are all living in the Nauruan community, with no one living in the RPCs since the end of March 2019,” according to The Guardian. In place of using the center, many have been relocated to motels where they are held awaiting uncertain resettlement. While moving people beyond the walls of the Regional Processing Center may appear as an effort to stop the use of off-shore RPCs, the Guardian reported that a recent contract has been made with the U.S.-based private prison operator Management and Training Corporation, which is indicative of the enduring practice.
Children held in the Nauru RPC experienced high levels of chronic distress and severe mental health symptoms, including suicidal ideation, hallucinations and cognitive impairment, according to the Asylum Seeker Resource Center. In 2018, CNN reported “Using the hashtag #KidsOffNauru, the Australian charities have started a petition calling for the government to allow the refugee children to leave the island.” Despite the outcry among organizing groups and media outlets, these centers continue to stay in use.
This new change in contract with MTC came at a price of $421,830,424 paid by the Australian government. MTC is the third-biggest for-profit prison corporation in the U.S., according to The Center for Media and Democracy. It has been implicated in a number of scandals, not the least of which is neglect and abuse of the people incarcerated within their facilities. As reported in 2007 by Prison Legal News, the corporation was named in a bribery scheme involving more than $10,000 in bribes in exchange for favorable votes on a $14.5 million private prison project. Time Magazine reporter Anjani Trivedi stated that when private prison contractors are unable to find profitable contracts in the U.S. they look towards exporting their services abroad, both as carceral institutions and for garrison use, as seen on Nauru.
Hamlin expressed concern about this trend. “There is a lot of research to support the idea that private prisons and detention centers operate with less transparency than state-run centers. It is more difficult to document abuse and neglect of immigrants in detention when the government outsources these functions of the state,” she said.
According to an article from The Guardian, Nauru Regional Processing Center was formerly run by Broadspectrum, a corporation that was tasked with handling welfare services for refugees in Nauru’s RPC. Broadspectrum — which was later rebranded as Transfield Services — was previously owned by the Belgiorno-Nettis family, who have reportedly donated $895,298 dollars to the ruling Labor Party, which currently holds the parliamentary majority in Australia.
This donation is but a small drop in the sea of donated dollars that fund the Labor Party. “In nine years, Labor has taken over $90 million from corporations,” Democracy For Sale, a website that tracks political donations, stated. More money is certain to be in exchange, with 55 percent of the Labor Party’s income being derived from undisclosed donors.
Labor home affairs spokesperson Kristina Keneally confirmed that Labor “completely supports Operation Sovereign Borders — offshore processing, regional resettlement and boat turnbacks where safe to do so,” The Guardian reported.Broadspectrum received 1.5 billion dollars from the federal government over the course of three years for managing RPCs such as the one at Nauru.
An earthquake starting in Kahramanmaraş has caused over 40,000 recorded deaths as of Feb. 14. Photo courtesy of IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation via Flickr.
Jendayi Leben-Martin ’24
Global Editor
On Feb. 9, 2023, an earthquake and subsequent tremor with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 respectively started in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey and rocked southeastern Turkey and northwestern Syria, Al Jazeera reported. BBC News explained that the earthquake, which seismologists say is one of the largest ever recorded in Turkey, was widespread, resulting in the mass destruction of thousands of buildings across the region. Chris Elders, professor at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University in Australia, told Al Jazeera that the aftershocks stretched “a distance of about 100 km to 200 km (62 to 124 miles)” from the epicenter in Kahramanmaraş.
According to James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations, the 10 provinces affected by the earthquake are home to approximately 4.6 million children, while the affected areas in Syria housed 2.5 million children, CNN reported. Days after the quake, people buried under rubble are still being rescued, but the death toll is still expected to increase. According to Al Jazeera, as of Feb. 14, over 40,000 deaths have been recorded, and UNICEF confirmed that the number will continue to grow according to a CNN article.
Adele Akbulut ’24, who is part of a small group of students affiliated with nudasyria.org at Mount Holyoke that have begun organizing fundraisers to help provide relief for those displaced by the earthquake, spoke about the resources that Turkey and Syria have lost, stating, “Many of the people there are now homeless —the ones that are alive — they are all outside.” The student group will be fundraising outside of Blanchard Dining Commons until Feb. 17.
In the wake of the earthquake, the U.N. has begun funneling aid into the region through Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra’ee, two points between Turkey and Syria.On Feb. 13, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad opened the cross points, and they will remain open for at least a three-month period to allow aid into the countries.According to U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths via CNN, 11 trucks have carried resources into the region through Bal Al-Salam, and 26 more have passed into the region through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing, as of Feb. 14.
