International15 FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016

Risking all to reach Europe: One migrant’s story

KHARTOUM: Selam hoped that escaping pregnant. She made up her mind to flee from Eritrea into Sudan would be the first to Sudan immediately and decide where step towards a better life for her unborn she could then go to raise her child. On child, away from military service and dire leave that month, she took the bus to the economic prospects. border and walked unchallenged into But after traffickers seized her in Sudan, eastern Sudan. the dream quickly became a nightmare. Selam-not her real name-was beaten, Raped, beaten and shot raped and shot in captivity. As she traipsed through arid scrub out- Despite her ordeal, two years later she side the city of Kassala, two pick-ups set out again, joining thousands of armed with machine guns appeared and migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia and pulled up besides her. She was forced to Somalia willing to risk anything to reach get in. The men in the trucks-Selam says Europe. “I suffered every kind of abuse a they were Arab tribesmen from eastern woman can face,” the 32-year-old said, Sudan-were people traffickers. speaking in the Khartoum office of the UN She was taken first to a safe house and refugee agency (UNHCR). then to Egypt’s Sinai, an arduous two- Nearly 30,000 Eritreans and Ethiopians week drive in searing desert heat. “On the crossed the Mediterranean from North This file photo of March 17, 2016 shows Hollywood star and UN refugee way there was a lot of abuse. We were Africa to Italy last year, as did smaller num- agency envoy Angelina Jolie listening to an aid worker during a visit to the badly treated,” she said. Far worse was to bers of Somalis and Sudanese. Almost all Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. — AFP come, as she and 22 other Eritreans were travelled via Sudan, the UN says. sold to a Bedouin gang. “Everyone comes, whether there are smugglers to take them thousands of kilo- Libya, and her experiences traumatized For seven months, her captors raped risks or not,” Selam said, her three-year- metres (miles) to the Libyan coast to her deeply. In April 2012, she was entering and beat her, keeping her in squalid condi- old son clutching her side. Crossing chance a perilous sea crossing. her seventh year as a conscript-military tions as they called Selam’s family and Sudan’s porous eastern borders, most Last year the journey cost some 3,800 service can last indefinitely in Eritrea- members of the diaspora in Europe to migrants go to Khartoum where they pay migrants their lives. Selam never reached when she found she was three months demand $30,000 for her release. — AFP

US forecaster sees rising chance of La Nina in H2 2016 Ukrainian president’s

NEW YORK: A US government weather forecaster yesterday forecast an increasing chance of the La Nina weather phe- nomenon taking place in the second half of the year as El ally elected new PM Nino was seen weakening further. The Climate Prediction Center (CPC), an agency of the National Weather Service, in its monthly forecast said the El Nino weather phenomenon is Govt hopes vote to end month-long crisis likely to neutralize late in the Northern Hemisphere spring or early summer 2016. Last month, CPC said it saw a 50 percent MOSCOW: The speaker of the Ukrainian par- chance La Nina could develop by the Northern Hemisphere liament was elected the country’s new prime fall on the heels of the El Nino conditions likely to dissipate in minister yesterday in a vote that the govern- the coming months. ment hopes will end a months-long political “The official forecast is consistent with the model fore- crisis but which reformers say gives ’s casts, also supported by a historical tendency for La Nina to oligarchs a free hand in running the country. follow strong El Nino events,” CPC said in the report. Typically In recent months, political tensions have less damaging than El Nino, La Nina is characterized by risen in Ukraine and some respected reform- unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific ers have resigned, citing disenchantment Ocean and tends to occur unpredictably every two to seven with the government’s cronyism and years. Severe occurrences have been linked to floods and entrenched corruption. droughts. The ongoing El Nino, a warming of sea-surface tem- The Supreme Rada on Thursday voted peratures in the Pacific, has been linked to serious crop dam- 257-50 in favor of , a age, forest fires and flash floods. — Reuters compromise choice nominated by President after his appar- ent first choice, US-born Finance Minister Nigeria cautious over ‘proof Natalie Jaresko, was rejected by the gov- erning coalition. of life’ video of Chibok girls “The new prime minister and the cabinet will help to bring the government out of a LAGOS: Nigeria’s government yesterday said it was studying a “proof months-long lethargy,” Kiev-based analyst of life” video showing 15 of the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Vadim Karasyov said. Jaresko had been laud- Boko Haram, as parents and their supporters marked the second ed as a West-friendly reformist untainted by KIEV: Newly-appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman (left) anniversary of the kidnapping. The footage, shown on CNN, is the first Ukraine’s rampant cronyism and corruption. speaks to Stepan Kubiv, newly appointed First Vice Prime Minister and time any of the missing girls have been seen since a previous Boko She helped to negotiate a deal to restructure Economy Minister, during a parliamentary session in Kiev yesterday. — AFP Haram video in May 2014, when about 100 were seen in Islamic dress Ukraine’s $15 billion debt and has been reciting the Koran. A total of 276 girls were abducted from the negotiating a bailout with the International Avakov. In Groysman’s acceptance speech, ter and a leading figure behind Ukraine’s Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, on Monetary Fund, but lost her post later which was greeted by shouts and a murmur 2005 democratic revolution, announced that April 14, 2014. Fifty-seven escaped in the immediate aftermath. Three Thursday when Groysman announced his of discontent, the new prime minister said her party will oppose the new government. mothers and a classmate of the 219 schoolgirls still missing confirmed new Cabinet. Ukraine faces three major challenges: cor- After a crushing defeat in the 2014 presi- the identities of the girls in the images broadcast on Wednesday night. Ukraine’s outgoing prime minister, ruption, poor governance and a populism dential vote, Tymoshenko largely disap- A senior government source told AFP it had received the video, which , resigned this week after that he described as “a no less threat than peared from public view before being elect- shows the girls in black hijabs, stating their names, that they were weeks of pressure for him to step down. the enemy in the east.” ed into parliament later that year. The latest abducted from Chibok and saying they were “all well”. Yatsenyuk’s cabinet survived a no-confi- Fighting between Russia-backed sepa- opinion polls show Tymoshenko as the The video was said to have been shot on December 25 last year. dence vote in February, but two parties left ratists and government troops in eastern nation’s second-favorite politician, gaining But the source said they were keen to avoid the problems encoun- the governing coalition to protest the failure Ukraine has claimed more than 9,100 lives ground on Poroshenko. tered by the previous administration, which prematurely announced to oust the prime minister, who was under since April 2014, and a political settlement In Germany, Foreign Minister Frank- talks with Boko Haram elements and even a ceasefire. “Our intelligence fire over the worsening economy and the remains a dim prospect. Walter Steinmeier lauded Groysman’s and security authorities... received a similar video in July last year and slow pace of reforms. Oleh Lyashko, leader of the right-wing appointment as a “chance to end the when they followed the lead it led to a cul-de sac,” he revealed. Groysman, however, kept several minis- Radical Party that left the coalition earlier phase of political uncertainty in Kiev.” He Contact could not be made and it was impossible to determine the ters from Yatsenyuk’s government who have this year, dismissed Thursday’s vote as an oli- urged the government to speed up the identities of the purported Boko Haram members who sent it or if the faced accusations of corruption and crony- garchs’ coup to secure their vested interests. pace of reform, saying that Ukraine “has move had the blessing of the group’s leadership, he added. — AFP ism, including Interior Minister Arsen Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minis- no time to lose.” — AP