..

INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY,SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

AFGHANISTAN

TRUMP HALTS

PEACE TALKS

PAGE 7| WORLD

WASTE NOT

LEFTOVER FOOD,

PRICED TO MOVE

PAGE 10| BUSINESS

‘THE TESTAMENTS’

MARGARET ATWOOD

GOES BACK TO GILEAD

PAGE 18| CULTURE

though part of the facility was reduced

to rubble.

Even as the system falters, few in the

West seem to be paying much attention,

and critics say that is also part of the aim

— to keep a problem that has roiled Eu-

ropean politics on the other side of the

Mediterranean, out of sight and out of

mind.

Screening asylum seekers in safe, re-

mote locations — where they can qualify

as refugees without undertaking per-

ilous journeys to Europe — has long

been promoted in Brussels as a way to

dismantle smuggler networks while giv-

ing vulnerable people a fair chance at a

new life. But the application by the Euro-

pean Union has highlighted its funda-

mental flaws: The offshore centers are

too small and the pledges of refugee re-

settlement too few.

European populists continue to flog

the narrative that migrants are invad-

ing, even though the European Union’s

migration policy has starkly reduced

the number of new arrivals. In 2016,

181,376 people crossed the Mediterra-

nean from North Africa to reach Italian

shores. Last year, the number plum-

meted to 23,485.

But the bloc’s approach has been

sharply criticized by humanitarian and

refugee-rights groups, not only for the

Critics say the Rwanda deal will deep-

en a morally perilous policy, even as it

underscores how precarious the Euro-

pean Union’s teetering system for han-

dling the migrant crisis has become.

Tens of thousands of migrants and

asylum seekers remain trapped in Lib-

ya, where a patchwork of militias con-

For three years, the European Union

has been paying other countries to keep

asylum seekers away from a Europe rife

with populist and anti-migrant parties.

It has paid Turkey billions to keep ref-

ugees from crossing to Greece. It has

funded the Libyan Coast Guard to catch

and return migrant boats to North Afri-

ca. It has set up centers in distant Niger

to process asylum seekers, if they ever

make it that far. Most don’t.

Even as that arm’s-length network

comes under criticism on humanitarian

grounds, it is so overwhelmed that the

European Union is seeking to expand it,

as the bloc aims to buttress an approach

that has drastically cut the number of

migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

It is now preparing to finish a deal,

this time in Rwanda, to create yet an-

other node that it hopes will help allevi-

ate some of the mounting strains on its

outsourcing network.

trol detention centers and migrants

have been sold as slaves or into prostitu-

tion and kept in facilities so packed that

there is not even enough floor space to

sleep on.

A bombing of a migrant detention cen-

ter in July left 40 dead, and it has contin-

ued to operate in the months since, even MIGRANTS, PAGE 6

Keeping asylum seekers at bay

BRUSSELS

E.U. to pay Rwanda to host

migrants in what some see

as a morally perilous policy

BY MATINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF

Migrants onboard a Dutch-flagged rescue vessel in the Mediterranean in January. The

European Union’s migration policy has starkly reduced the migrant flow from Africa.

SERGEY PONOMAREV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Is Africa’s cultural heritage better off in
Europe or in Africa?
That is the question at the heart of a
yearslong debate that has gripped mu-
seums in Europe, where many officials
say they support the idea of repatriating
artifacts but worry that African muse-
ums cannot compare with state-of-the-
art facilities in Britain, France or Ger-
many.
That debate has been given new life in
recent months after an investigation by
the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper
found that many of the artifacts that will
be on display in the Humboldt Forum, a
huge new museum under construction
in a rebuilt Berlin palace, had for years

been stored in less-than-ideal condi-

tions. The report featured searing depic-

tions of flooded storage rooms and de-

pots choked with toxic dust.

“They complain that they do not have

enough money to do research on these

objects to take proper care of them,” said

Tahir Della, a postcolonial activist based

in Berlin, “but they had enough money

to build a castle in the middle of Berlin.”

“The question remains: Who are the

rightful owners of these objects, and

how can we treat them so they are not

destroyed or damaged in the museum

depots?” Mr. Della added.

The Humboldt Forum will bring to-

gether the collections of several existing

museums in the city under one roof, but

reports in the German news media have

focused on the storage facilities of the

Ethnological Museum of Berlin, which

will be the Forum’s largest single con-

tributor.

Officials at the museum, which closed

to the public in 2017 to prepare for the

move to its new home, have responded

with what observers call an unusual de-

gree of openness.

They have denied some of the reports,

in particular the claim of flooded store-

rooms, but said their depots were beset

with problems common to museums

across Germany. Those included out-

dated facilities, a lack of staff members,

and a sense of disarray that dates to mo-

ments of crisis in German history.

Despite all that, they steadfastly re-

MUSEUM, PAGE 2

Who should safeguard African culture?

BERLIN

Troubling report renews

debate on African artifacts

in European museums

BY LIAM STACK

Items at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, where news reports have focused on faulty

storage conditions. “We definitely know what we are doing,” a museum official said.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANDREAS MEICHSNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinion
from a wide range of perspectives in
hopes of promoting constructive debate
about consequential questions.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, warned a

gathering of senior Communist Party of-

ficials in January that the country faced

a raft of urgent economic and political

risks and told them to be on guard espe-

cially against “indolence, incompetence

and becoming divorced from the public.”

Now, after months of political tumult

in Hong Kong, the warning seems

prescient. Only it is Mr. Xi himself and

his government facing criticism that

they are mishandling China’s biggest

political crisis in years, one that he did

not mention in his catalog of looming

risks at the start of the year.

And although few in Beijing would

dare blame Mr. Xi openly for the govern-

ment’s handling of the turmoil, there is

quiet grumbling that his imperious style

and authoritarian concentration of

power contributed to the government’s

misreading of the scope of discontent in

Hong Kong, which is only growing.

Over the weekend, the protests and

clashes with the police continued in

Hong Kong, even after the region’s em-

battled chief executive, Carrie Lam,

made a major concession days earlier

by withdrawing a bill that would have al-

lowed the extradition of criminal sus-

pects to the mainland, legislation that

first incited the protests three months

ago.

The Communist Party’s leadership —

and very likely Mr. Xi himself — has

been surprised by or oblivious to the

depth of the animosity, which has driven

hundreds of thousands into the streets

of Hong Kong for the past three months.

While it was the extradition bill that set

off the protests, they are now sustained

by broader grievances against the Chi-

nese government and its efforts to im-

pose greater control over the semiau-

tonomous territory.

Beijing has been slow to adapt to

events, allowing Mrs. Lam to suspend

the bill in June, for example, but refus-

ing at the time to let her withdraw it

completely. It was a partial concession

that reflected the party’s hard-line in-

stincts under Mr. Xi and fueled even

larger protests.

As public anger in Hong Kong has

climbed, the Chinese government’s re-

sponse has grown bombastic and now

seems at times erratic.

In July, at a meeting that has not been

publicly disclosed, Mr. Xi met with other

senior officials to discuss the protests.

The range of options discussed is un-

clear, but the leaders agreed that the

central government should not inter-

C HINA, PAGE 6

Faith in Xi

is shaken by

protests in

Hong Kong

BEIJING

There are hints of unease

among Chinese leaders

over handling of unrest

BY STEVEN LEE MYERS,

CHRIS BUCKLEY

AND KEITH BRADSHER

Protesting in Hong Kong. There is quiet grumbling in Beijing that President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian concentration of power contributed to a misreading of the unrest.

LAUREL CHOR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

When you foresee a death, there’s no
joy in being right. On June 4, I told my
colleagues that Jimmy Aldaoud — a
medically frail Michigan man who
came to the United States in 1979 when
he was an infant — was not going to
survive. That was the day his sister
Rita Bolis called to tell me he had been
deported and was sleeping on a bench
in an airport in Najaf, Iraq.
Mr. Aldaoud had never been to Iraq.
He was born in Greece to Iraqi refugee
parents. He had no ID and no ability to
get the medical care he needed for his
diabetes. He did not know Arabic,
much less how to navigate a war-torn
society where being Americanized
makes you a target. On Aug. 6, Ms.
Bolis contacted me again to say that
her brother was
dead. His family
believes he died
because he couldn’t
obtain the medicine
he needed in Iraq.
His funeral was
Friday. His physical
remains were sent to
Michigan, the only
way he could come
back home. Jimmy
Aldaoud — the living
person who loved and was loved by his
family — would never have been al-
lowed in America again.
I am part of a team of lawyers who
began trying to save Mr. Aldaoud’s life
over two years ago, before we even
knew his name. He was one of more
than 1,400 Iraqis in this country with
deportation orders, most issued years
or even decades ago. In June 2017,
Immigration and Customs Enforce-
ment suddenly rounded up hundreds of
them for immediate deportation.
My organization, the American Civil
Liberties Union of Michigan, working
with lawyers around the country, went
to court, warning that deporting these
people to Iraq would result in persecu-
tion, torture and death. A federal judge
ruled that an immigration judge had to
decide whether they would be safe in
Iraq before deportations could be
carried out. That order saved hundreds
of lives.
But ICE appealed, no matter the
human cost, intent on deporting people
like Mr. Aldaoud who have lived their
whole lives here. The Sixth Circuit
Court of Appeals overturned the rul-
ing, giving ICE the green light to re-
sume deportations in April. And ICE
did, even though Iraq is so dangerous
that the State Department recently
evacuated all nonessential personnel.
Mr. Aldaoud was one of the first to be

Deported

by the U.S.,

only to die

Miriam Aukerman

OPINION

When ICE
sent Jimmy
Aldaoud to
Iraq, it was
the first time
he’d set foot
in the
country.

AUKERMAN, PAGE 14

HOSPITALITY

MORE THAN JUST A WORD

Issue Number

Andorra € 3.70Antilles € 4.00 No. 42,

Austria € 3.50Bahrain BD 1.

Belgium € 3.50Bos. & Herz. KM 5.

Cameroon CFA 2700

Canada CAN$ 5.50Croatia KN 22.

Cyprus € 3.20Czech Rep CZK 110

Denmark Dkr 30Egypt EGP 32.

Estonia € 3.

Finland € 3.50France € 3.

Gabon CFA 2700Germany € 3.

Great Britain £ 2.20Greece € 2.

Hungary HUF 950

Israel NIS 13.50Israel / Eilat NIS 11.

Italy € 3.50Ivory Coast CFA 2700

Jordan JD 2.00Lebanon LBP 5,

Luxembourg € 3.

Slovenia € 3.40Spain € 3.

Sweden Skr 35Switzerland CHF 4.

Syria US$ 3.00The Netherlands € 3.

Tunisia Din 5.

Qatar QR 12.00Republic of Ireland ¤ 3.

Reunion € 3.50Saudi Arabia SR 15.

Senegal CFA 2700Serbia Din 280

Slovakia € 3.

Malta € 3.50Montenegro € 3.

Morocco MAD 30Norway Nkr 33

Oman OMR 1.40Poland Zl 15

Portugal € 3.

NEWSSTAND PRICES

Turkey TL 17U.A.E. AED 14.

United States $ 4.00United States Military

(Europe) $ 2.

Y(1J85IC*KKNPKP( +#!z!$!@!/

RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws