A German charity ship carrying 42 refugees and migrants rescued off the coast of Libya has entered Italian waters, defying an explicit ban by the country’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini. 

The captain of the Dutch-flagged boat decided to head to the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday because the situation on board was “now more desperate than ever”, the charity Sea Watch said in a statement.

“I’ve decided to enter the port of Lampedusa,” the group also tweeted Captain Carola Rackete as saying.

“I know this is risky, but the 42 shipwrecked on board are exhausted. I will bring them to safety.”

Sea Watch said Rackete felt that maritime emergency law permitted the ship to enter Italian waters.

“I decided to enter the port of #Lampedusa. I know what I’m risking, but the 42 survivors I have on board are exhausted. I’m taking them to safety.”

14 days the EU failed #SeaWatch3. Our commander has no choice. https://t.co/DKXXsUUfkS (pic: E. Ferrari) pic.twitter.com/rfeh0LLmm7

— Sea-Watch International (@seawatch_intl) June 26, 2019

“Enough, we’re entering. Not to provoke, but by necessity, responsibility,” Sea-Watch tweeted.

Marine tracking websites showed the vessel had entered Italian territorial waters after spending 14 days sailing back and forth off the coast of Italy‘s southernmost island. Shortly after the ship entered Italian waters, Italian coastguard boats went out from Lampedusa to flank it.

In his first reaction, Salvini did not mince his words.

“They are not allowed to dock, I am ready to send the police … this has broken my balls,” Salvini said in a Facebook video.

In a subsequent statement, he called the Sea-Watch “an outlaw ship” and said Rome had asked the Dutch government to assume responsibility for the migrants.

“I will not give permission for anyone to disembark… Our patience is over. The Netherlands will answer. Nobody will disembark unless someone cares to take them to Amsterdam, Berlin or Brussels. I’m totally fed up with this,” said Salvini.

According to a decree approved in June, the Interior Ministry has the power to deny access to territorial waters to vessels that it considers are a risk to security or public order, and to fine them.

Salvini, who heads the far-right League, has repeatedly accused charity rescuers of being complicit with people smugglers and has closed Italy’s ports to their boats.

Sea-Watch picked up 53 refugees and migrants from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya and had remained in international waters since June 12. At least 11 refugees and migrants have already been taken off the ship by the Italian coastguard for health reasons.

More than 400 refugees and migrants have arrived in Italy over the last two weeks aboard smaller vessels, while the Sea Watch has zig-zagged on the high seas without a safe port.

“We can’t hold on any longer. It’s like we’re in a prison because we are deprived of everything. Help us, think of us,” one person from the Ivory Coast said in a video broadcast by Sea-Watch.

Carlotta Sami, spokeswoman for the UN refugee UNHCR in Italy, expressed concern over Wednesday’s events, saying: “It’s serious when the captain has no other choice but to honour her sense of responsibility at the cost of personal consequences.”

She added: “The UNHCR asks for the security decree to be revised and for a system of rescue and disembarkment to be created. The criminalisation of NGOs must end.”

Dozens of German cities have said they are ready to welcome them, and the Bishop of Turin, Cesare Noviglia, said on Monday his diocese would be willing to take them in.

On Lampedusa, where Salvini’s far-right League won 45 percent in May’s European elections, a priest has camped in the street to demand those on board – including three minors – be allowed to disembark.

Last month, an Italian magistrate ordered the Sea-Watch seized after it rescued dozens of refugees and migrants, accusing the crew of breaching immigration rules. It was released at the start of June and returned to the Libyan coastline.

In January, 32 migrants rescued by the vessel were stranded on board for 18 days before they were allowed to disembark in Malta thanks to a distribution deal made between several European countries.

Migrant arrivals to Italy have plummeted since Salvini took office a year ago, with 2,456 crossing the Mediterranean so far this year, according to official data, down 85 percent on the same period in 2018 and down 96 percent on 2017 levels. 

Washington, DC – The Republican-led United States Senate has defeated a $4.5bn emergency funding bill passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and is preparing to approve its own version of the spending measure with bipartisan support.

“The topline numbers of the House bill may be similar but the policy implications are vast. Time is of the essence here,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, said in remarks to the Senate on Wednesday.

“We may not agree on how we got here or how best to move forward but we agree there is a crisis, a major crisis, and that the resources are needed now,” Moore Capito said.

After the vote, the Senate was expected to hold a series of additional votes designed to send the Senate bill to the House.

The Senate action puts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a political bind between demands from progressives in her caucus to rein-in President Donald Trump‘s family-separation practices at the US border with Mexico, which Pelosi has harshly criticised, and an urgent need to provide US agencies with more funding to handle the recent surge in migrants.

Trump and Pelosi had a phone call on Wednesday to discuss reconciling the House bill with the Senate version, according to a senior Democratic aide speaking on background to reporters. The two spoke for about 15 minutes.

‘This is not a partisan issue’

Senators were outraged by a picture of the bodies of Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, who drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande River between the US and Mexico.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, displayed a poster-sized enlargement of the photo during the Senate debate.

“Her head tucked in a shirt. Her arm draped around his neck. They are holding on to each other,” Schumer said.

“These are not drug dealers or vagrants or criminals. They are simply people fleeing a horrible situation in their home country for a better life,” he said.

The Senate bill is a “temporary solution to address the most urgent issues,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee which wrote the Senate bill. “This is not a partisan issue, taking care of children. We should all agree on that.”

Neither the House nor the Senate bill includes funding for more ICE detention beds that Trump has requested.

“The president’s predilection to turn to mass detention is horrible and cruel. It’s also a waste of taxpayer money,” Leahy said. 

“Lock up those who really do present a danger. Most five-year-old children don’t,” Leahy said.

The Senate bill has a number of provisions aimed at easing the humanitarian conditions at US detention camps at the border.

House measure

The House had approved its bill with a 230-195 vote following outcry over another report of inhumane conditions for children held by the US at border detention centres. Hundreds of children had been held for weeks in filthy conditions at a US Border Patrol detention centre in Clint, Texas, according to immigration rights lawyers who had visited the site.

Most of the abuses uncovered at detention centres have been reported by lawyers visiting migrants under terms of a 1997 court order requiring the US government to maintain standards for detention of migrant children. With few exceptions, members of Congress and the press have been prevented by US officials from entering the detention sites.

For purposes of oversight, both the House and Senate bills include provisions ensuring politicians in future will have access to places where migrant children are held. 

The Trump administration had asked Congress for the $4.5bn in emergency funding to address the situation at the border, but the White House said on Monday that the president would veto the House version of the bill.

Many House Democrats have said they would be loath to approve any funding for the Trump administration’s handling of refugees and asylum seekers at the border that does not include restrictions on family separations.

The restrictions on spending in the House bill seeks to prevent the Trump administration from using any of the funds to create an ICE deportation force, or for mass deportations, which the president has threatened.

The House measure provides $200m for a multi-agency processing centre that would work with NGOs to help families and unaccompanied children with an additional $100m for legal services for unaccompanied children, child advocates and post-release services.

The US-led economic workshop in Bahrain closed amid derision and rejection from Palestinian officials on Wednesday, who said its framework for a trade and investment boost ignored their political aspirations for statehood.

The two-day workshop, led by White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, began on Tuesday in the capital, Manama, and showcased the economic part of the Trump administration’s long-awaited Middle East peace plan.

Kushner, who is also President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law, urged Palestinian leaders boycotting the event to think outside the “traditional box” and consider the $50bn plan to boost the Palestinian and neighbouring economies, which the United States is hoping the wealthy Gulf states will bankroll.

But the workshop was criticised by Palestinians and others for not addressing the political core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The elephant in the room in Manama is obviously the [Israeli] occupation itself,” senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Hanan Ashrawi told reporters in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, adding that the workshop is “totally divorced from reality”.

Kushner told reporters his team would release the plan’s political details, which remain secret, “when we’re ready”, adding: “We’ll see what happens.”

He said a peace deal would happen when both sides are ready to say “yes”. He acknowledged that they may never get there.

Neither the Israeli nor Palestinian governments attended the meeting, which took place amid a years-long stalemate in other international efforts to resolve a conflict that has lasted more than seven decades.

‘Solution to occupation is not money’

The Peace to Prosperity workshop set an ambitious goal of creating one million new Palestinian jobs through $50bn of investment in infrastructure, tourism and education in the territories and Arab neighbours.

It also proposes a $5bn transport corridor to connect the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip together.

But Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera’s correspondent Nida Ibrahim, have been adamant in saying that any economic solution should happen in parallel with a political process.

“Palestinians do not see that the solution to their issue is just by money,” Ibrahim said, speaking from Ramallah. “They say they are not looking for a better life under occupation, but are looking for ways to end it.”

Ibrahim said that the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom, Hossam Zomlot, likened the US efforts as a “real estate issue, where the Palestinians will take the cash and Israelis will take the property.”

Analysts have also questioned the logistical aspect of investing a vast amount of money into Palestinian territories under military occupation.

Phyllis Bennis, from the Institute for Policy Studies, told Al Jazeera the proposed plan will “simply not happen”.

“The notion that there is going to be $50bn invested over 10 years in an area of land that is under the complete control of a different government – that is still occupied – where Israel controls everything about the borders, not going to ever happen,” she said.

The proposal, Bennis continued, is not designed to factor in Palestinian rights and self-determination.

“This is designed to divert away from Palestinian rights, to buy off the Palestinians, to urge them to essentially surrender the demand for rights,” she said, adding that the Trump administration has no concern for Palestinian rights.

US ‘punitive measures’ against Palestinians

The PLO has reiterated its rejection of the US economic plan, saying the proposal’s lack of political vision guarantees its failure.

In a statement, the PLO Executive Committee accused the White House of using the workshop as cover for Israel’s efforts to achieve normal relations with Arab states and grow its settlements in the West Bank, adding that peace could not be achieved without ending “Israeli occupation and economic domination”.

Kushner said that the door remained open to the Palestinians to engage in a peace plan as he blamed the leadership of letting down its people.

“If they actually want to make their people’s lives better, we have now laid out a great framework in which they can engage and try to achieve it,” he told reporters.

“What the [Palestinian] leadership has done is that they’ve blamed Israel and everyone else for all the people’s problems, when in fact the common theme coming up is that this is all achievable if the government wants to make these reforms,” he added.

But senior PLO official Ashrawi hit back, asking: “If the US is so concerned about Palestinian well-being, then why did they carry out these punitive measures against us?”

In August last year, Washington announced an end to all US funding for the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees. The US had been UNRWA’s biggest donor by far up to that point, giving it $364m in 2017.

In February, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) ceased all assistance to the Palestinians, to whom it provided $268m in 2017.

The US cuts were widely seen as a way of putting pressure on the Palestinian leadership to re-engage with the White House, which it has boycotted since Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.

“The same team that cut $350m of aid to refugee camps … [goes] to Manama to say we have a brilliant plan to bring Palestinians a new chance, a new opportunity,” Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday.

“Why would Palestinians say no to such [a] plan?” he added, mockingly.

Putrajaya, Malaysia – Malaysia’s government has set up a special taskforce to reinvestigate the kidnappings of two activists – Amri Che Mat and Raymond Koh – after the country’s human rights commission blamed the police’s intelligence branch for the abductions.

Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin told reporters on Wednesday that the government established the taskforce because of the seriousness of the allegations raised by the commission, known as Suhakam.

“With this special taskforce, it is hoped that justice can be provided to all affected parties,” the home ministry said in a statement.

Koh, a Christian pastor and activist, was kidnapped by masked men as he drove along a suburban Kuala Lumpur street on the morning of February 13, 2017.

The 62-year-old’s abduction, captured on CCTV cameras, shocked the country. The outcry brought attention to the disappearance of Amri Che Mat, a Shia Muslim, who was kidnapped in the northern state of Perlis in November 2016. Mat, like Koh, worked with the poor and underprivileged. 

After a public inquiry that took more than a year, Suhakam in April said the two men were “abducted by state agents, namely the Special Branch”.

Both men were taken from their cars by a group of people in several vehicles and were targeted by the religious authorities and police over allegations of proselytizing before their disappearances, the commission said. 

Islam is Malaysia’s official religion, and while other faiths can be practised in “peace and harmony”, attempting to convert someone from Islam is a criminal offence. The government only recognises Sunni Islam, with religious authorities labelling Shia teachings as “deviant”. 

The police have denied involvement in Koh and Amri’s abductions, but Suhakam said the two men were victims of enforced disappearances and called for a special taskforce to reinvestigate their cases. 

‘Totally unacceptable’

It recommended the panel include independent investigators and exclude anyone connected to the E2 Division of the police’s Special Branch, the religious authorities or to the police’s initial investigation in to the abductions.

Muhyiddin said on Wednesday the six-member panel to reinvestigate the cases will be led by former High Court Judge Abdul Rahim Uda. It will also include Mokhtar Mohd Noor, a former director of the police’s legal department, and Zamri Yahya, the director of the police’s Integrity and Standards Compliance Department. 

The minister did not share the panel’s terms of reference or a proposed start date, but said the taskforce will be required to present its final report to the cabinet within six months from the time it starts its work.

Abdul Rahim, chairman of the taskforce, told reporters the panel would do its work “fairly”.

However, the families of Koh and Amri expressed concern over the composition of the panel, noting Mokhtar had presented the final arguments on behalf of the police during Suhakam’s inquiry.

Norhayati Mohd Ariffin, Amri’s wife, said in a statement that while she and her daughters were glad the government was now “taking steps” to address the Suhakam inquiry’s findings, they were concerned the panel’s composition would affect “the independence and impartiality necessary for a credible investigation”. 

Susanna Liew, Koh’s wife, and her three children, also pointed out the lack of women, ethnic minorities and members of civil society on the panel, despite Suhakam’s recommendation the panel reflect Malaysia’s multi-ethnic society. 

“If a police officer who participated in the Suhakam hearing can be appointed into the taskforce then a lawyer from each of the families should also be appointed in order to ensure a balanced and fair approach to the investigation and the report to be submitted,” the family said in a statement.

“We find this totally unacceptable and believe that in any part of the democratic civilised world, this would not happen.”

‘No integrity’

Koh’s family also rejected Muhyiddin’s decision to investigate Amri’s case and delay the pastor’s case. He blamed the move on the ongoing prosecution of a driver accused of trying to extort money from Koh’s son in the wake of the kidnapping. Police have previously said that case was not linked to Koh’s abduction.

Koh’s family said the disappearances of both Koh and Amri should be investigated together given the similarities established by Suhakam.

Koh’s abduction, captured on CCTV cameras, showed his vehicle being forced to the side of the road by a number of pick-up trucks and cars. A group of men in black balaclavas then took him away as others kept traffic at bay. In Amri’s case, an eye witness said he saw three vehicles boxing in the activists’ car on the night of his disappearance. 

Meanwhile, others raised concern over the inclusion of an official from the police’s integrity department on the investigative panel, noting the watchdog body had failed to act on Suhakam’s findings or the families’ complaints over police conduct. 

“It’s three months since the Suhakam report came out,” said Rama Ramanathan, a human rights activist who is part of the Citizen Action Group on Enforced Disappearance.

“Even before that the police knew what the families were submitting and knew what the likely outcome would be, but this integrity office took no action. [It] has no integrity and in my opinion is a totally ineffective department.”

Police interrogations in the immediate aftermath of Koh’s disappearance focussed on allegations that he was trying to convert young Muslims to Christianity, Liew and her children told the inquiry.

Meanwhile, Norhayati found herself being asked repeatedly about whether her husband was attempting to spread Shia teachings.

As a result of the “serious anguish and suffering” caused by the police investigation, Norhayati submitted a compensation claim to the government at the end of last month, she said.

A week after Amri’s kidnapping, Joshua Hilmy, also a Christian pastor, and his Indonesian wife Ruth Sitepu also disappeared in unusual circumstances after leaving their house in Kuala Lumpur. Suhakam also planned to investigate their disappearances but ran out of time. 

Congress

Democrats are demanding the Trump counselor testify about alleged violations of the Hatch Act.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted on Wednesday to authorize a subpoena for White House counselor Kellyanne Conway after she failed to appear at a hearing centering on her alleged violations of the Hatch Act.

The White House blocked Conway from attending Wednesday’s hearing, prompting the Democrat-led panel to authorize Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to issue the subpoena.

Story Continued Below

“Here, we have a clear-cut case of a federal employee violating federal law over and over and over again,” Cummings said ahead of a tense debate between Republicans and Democrats.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) issued a report earlier this month citing Conway for multiple violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from participating in political speech while performing their official duties.

Lawmakers raised their voices at times as they sparred over the allegations, with Republicans asserting that Conway was unfairly targeted. The debate got so heated that Cummings repeatedly slammed his gavel to bring the committee back to order.

One Republican — Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan — joined all Democrats in voting to authorize Cummings to subpoena Conway. Amash is an outspoken opponent of the president and has called for his impeachment.

Henry J. Kerner, who leads the OSC, testified before the Oversight Committee on Wednesday to defend his report. A former GOP staffer for the Oversight panel, Kerner was nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate.

In his report, Kerner described Conway as a repeat offender of the 1939 law, citing her comments about the 2020 presidential race and the Alabama Senate election in 2017. Kerner recommended that Trump fire her.

“Ms. Conway’s advocacy against the Democratic candidates and open endorsement of the president’s re-election effort during both official media appearances and on her Twitter account constitute prohibited personnel activity under the Hatch Act,” Kerner’s report stated.

The White House has gone on the offensive in response to the allegations, asserting that Kerner’s report violates her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and due process. A White House spokesman accused the OSC of “weaponizing” the Hatch Act.

The president, meanwhile, has said he does not plan to fire Conway, whom Republicans have lauded as an effective communicator for Trump’s message.

Conway has dismissed the alleged violations, quipping to reporters last month: “Let me know when the jail sentence starts.” She accused the OSC of trying to silence her.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the Oversight panel, called Kerner’s report “outrageous, unprecedented, unfair — and it’s flat-out wrong.” He and other Republicans accused Kerner of singling out Conway.

“This subpoena is nothing more than a political spectacle,” added Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a senior member of the committee. “We have one standard for Kellyanne Conway and another standard for everybody else.”

Democrats dismissed the GOP arguments.

“With the president’s full support, Ms. Conway has engaged in an astounding show of defiance by increasing the frequency of her illegal activity and disparaging the law itself,” Cummings said.