Tag Archives: Territory

In Mexican heartland, ‘bad guys’ still hold sway amid bid to restore order

By Lizbeth Diaz

SANTA ROSA DE LIMA, Mexico (Reuters) – Burned-out autos littered empty streets this week in the town where Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador faces a first major test of his ability to take control of territory absorbed by organized crime during years of mounting violence.

Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday he was winning the battle for hearts and minds against a gang of fuel thieves in the central town of Santa Rosa de Lima, a few miles east of Salamanca, home to one of Mexico’s main oil refineries, and close to a center of the nation’s export-driven auto industry.

But in the grimy settlement of some 2,800 people where authorities say the eponymous Santa Rosa de Lima gang paid residents to obstruct marines and federal police with blockades and burning vehicles and by informing on their movements, some were less certain the government had the upper hand.

Police officers patrol a street after a blockade set by members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel to repel security forces during an anti-fuel theft operation in Santa Rosa de Lima, in Guanajuato state, Mexico, March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

Police officers patrol a street after a blockade set by members of the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel to repel security forces during an anti-fuel theft operation in Santa Rosa de Lima, in Guanajuato state, Mexico, March 6, 2019. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido

“It’s very hard for people to change,” said Pedro Mendez, 52, who sells household goods in the town. “The bad guys know how to get to them and that there are people who’ll take money to do their bidding.”

Others accused security forces of damaging private property and breaking car windows in the raids, while denying they were in cahoots with the gangs.

Santa Rosa is a microcosm of the lawlessness that permeates large swathes of Mexico where cartels have for years replaced the state as benefactors, providing jobs and handouts in return for residents’ loyalty.

It lies in Guanajuato state, part of the country’s industrial heartland that was long peaceful and is a major magnet for carmakers such as Volkswagen, General Motors and Toyota, but that suffered a doubling of murders last year, official data shows.

The effort to capture gang leader Jose Antonio Yepez, known as “El Marro,” or “The Mallet,” and blamed for stealing vast quantities of fuel from the Salamanca refinery, is also a test of the government’s ability to end organized crime’s growing threat to legitimate businesses and ordinary citizens.

Fuel theft costing billions of dollars a year, along with dwindling output, has weighed heavily on state oil firm Pemex, threatening to damage the government’s creditworthiness.

This week, ratings agency Moody’s warned that “increasing insecurity, robbery and travel warnings hurt Mexican companies’ top lines.”

ONLY ONE BOSS

Lopez Obrador’s determination to reassert the government as the main provider of services in anarchic regions is an early hallmark of his presidency, which began on Dec. 1.

He set his sights on fuel theft soon after taking office, turning off oil pipelines and risking a public backlash as lines began to form outside gas stations.

Days after the country’s most famous gangster, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, was convicted in a U.S. court, Lopez Obrador became the first president in decades to visit his home town, cutting the ribbon on a road project.

This week he addressed the violence in Santa Rosa by again urging Mexicans to reject criminal handouts.

“If you need work because of a lack of job opportunities, if you need welfare support, you can depend on us,” he said on Tuesday. “We’re the ones who offer you this.”

His rising popularity in opinion polls suggest Mexicans back the efforts so far.

“HARD TO CHANGE PEOPLE”

Eduardo Solis, head of Mexico’s automotive industry lobby, said on Wednesday the situation in Guanajuato was threatening business and had the look of a “crisis.”

Security has sharply deteriorated in the gangland struggle to control fuel rackets, and at 2,609 last year, murders in Guanajuato were over 10 times higher than a decade earlier, official data show.

Hundreds of police and armed forces arrived in Santa Rosa on Sunday to restore order and round up members of the gang.

Yepez has so far evaded detention, though federal forces arrested his sister-in-law, alleged to be his finance chief, along with six others on Tuesday, a security official said.

By Wednesday, the president was saying Santa Rosa had begun to reject the gang’s largesse, which locals said they heard included payments of 1,000 pesos ($52) or more. The burning blockades and protests vanished on Wednesday.

Among evidence authorities have found in raids was a wage envelope stamped with what appeared to be a symbol of a mallet, reading: “Relatives should go out to protest when required.”

Though reluctant to speak of fuel theft, several residents said they had seen El Marro and that the town was peaceful until “outsiders” began to arrive a few years ago.

Guanajuato’s governor, Diego Sinhue, estimated that around 300 people helped set fire to vehicles, although he defended the town against its infamy as a crime hotbed.

“I’m afraid to go out. If I leave the house something could happen to me because I can see the government’s angry,” said Estela Mendoza, a 44-year-old grandmother, speaking through a hatch in the door of the modest house she shares with her family and which she said she had not left since Sunday.

(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Additional reporting by Sharay Angulo; Writing by Dave Graham; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Leslie Adler)

Mass grave found in last Islamic State bastion: SDF

FILE PHOTO: Buses that carry civilians are seen parked near Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 11, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

By Ellen Francis

DEIR AL-ZOR PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) – A mass grave containing the bodies of dozens of people killed by Islamic State, including many women, has been found in territory recently seized by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an SDF official said on Thursday.

The SDF is poised to wipe out the last vestige of Islamic State’s territorial rule at the besieged village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border. But the operation has been held up as the SDF seeks to evacuate thousands of civilians.

“We will announce the complete victory over Daesh (Islamic State) in a week,” SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Kobani said in a video released by the SDF on Thursday, speaking during a meeting with a group of SDF fighters freed from IS captivity.

It was not immediately clear when the video was filmed.

The SDF announced on Thursday it had freed 24 of its fighters from the jihadist group.

The Islamic State (IS) enclave at Baghouz, a tiny area on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River, is the last populated territory held by the jihadists who have been steadily driven by an array of enemies from swathes of land they once held.

Though the fall of Baghouz will mark a milestone in the campaign against IS, the group is still seen as a security threat, using guerrilla tactics and still holding some territory in a remote area west of the Euphrates River.

The mass grave was found around one week ago in an area of Baghouz already seized from IS and is still being excavated, SDF commander Adnan Afrin told Reuters. It was not clear when the people had been killed.

The SDF was seeking to confirm whether the bodies, most of them decapitated, were those of Yazidi sect members enslaved by IS, he said, adding: “They were slaughtered.”

Thousands of members of the minority Yazidi sect from Iraq were forced into sexual slavery by IS when they surged across the border in 2014 and seized swathes of territory.

More than 3,000 other Yazidis were killed in an onslaught the United Nations later described as genocidal, which prompted the first U.S. air strikes against IS. Thousands more fled on foot and many remain displaced more than four years later.

CAVES AND TUNNELS

Some 40,000 people have crossed from the jihadists’ diminishing territory in the last three months as the U.S.-backed SDF sought to finish off the group. The numbers of people, who are still pouring out of Baghouz, have surpassed initial estimates.

Afrin said many of the people coming out of Baghouz had been underground in caves and tunnels.

The SDF has said it wants to evacuate civilians inside Baghouz before storming it or forcing the surrender of the remaining jihadists, who the SDF has said are mostly foreigners.

The U.S.-led coalition said Baghouz had been “more crowded with both civilians and fighters than expected”.

“The overflow during the lull in battle has been difficult for the SDF and they have responded to everything well …,” said Colonel Sean Ryan, the coalition spokesman.

Afrin said the 24 fighters who were announced freed on Thursday were mostly captured by IS during the Deir al-Zor campaign and were rescued by its special forces based on intelligence.

The SDF has said several hundred jihadists are believed to be holed up in Baghouz, a cluster of hamlets surrounded by farmland on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River.

Afrin said there had been no negotiations with IS but “in the future it is possible they will request negotiations to surrender”. He said IS was still holding hostages inside Baghouz, both civilians and SDF fighters.

(Additional reporting by Rodi Said in Deir al-Zor, Omar Fahmy in Cairo and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Stephen Kalin/Tom Perry; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Gareth Jones)

Gang dispute sparks deadliest U.S. prison riot in 25 years: official

A guard leaves the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill

(Reuters) – A gang-related dispute sparked an overnight riot in a South Carolina prison that killed seven inmates, the deadliest U.S. prison riot since 1993, state officials and prison safety experts said on Monday.

Another 17 people were wounded in an eight-hour long series of fights that spread through three dorms at the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, said Bryan Stirling, director of the state Department of Corrections.

“This was all about territory. This was about contraband, this was about cellphones,” Stirling told a news conference. “These folks are fighting over real money and real territory while they are incarcerated.”

It was the deadliest U.S. prison riot since 1993, when nine inmates and one corrections officer died at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, said Steve Martin, a prisons expert and now the federal monitor for the consent decree involving New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex.

All seven deaths were the result of stabbing injuries, said Lee County Coroner Larry Logan.

Forty-four guards were on duty at the 1,583-inmate prison when violence erupted Sunday evening, Stirling said. Prison staff called in reinforcements and did not move into the first unit until four hours after the fighting began, a delay that he said was necessary to ensure the guards’ safety.

For months, South Carolina officials have said that prisoners used smuggled cellphones to manage crimes outside the prisons. Governor Henry McMaster on Monday said he would renew his request to federal officials to allow him to block cell signals on prison property.

The State newspaper showed video it said was taken by inmates with smuggled phones that depicted trails of blood and dead bodies in the prison. Reuters could not immediately confirm that the video was authentic and Stirling declined to do so.

The state has about 5,000 prison employees in 22 institutions, but “security staff numbers continue to lag behind the authorized strength,” the department’s fiscal 2017 Accountability Report said, without giving numbers.

Martin said staff shortages could have been a contributing factor in the riot.

A guard leaves the main entrance of the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill

A guard leaves the main entrance of the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, Lee County, South Carolina, U.S., April 16, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill

“When high-security inmates start engaging each other and there aren’t enough staff, it’s hard to stop it,” Martin said in a phone interview.

State officials identified the slain inmates as Raymond Scott, 28, who was serving a 20-year sentence for crimes including assault and battery; Michael Milledge, 44, serving 25 years for drug trafficking; Damonte Rivera, 24, serving life for murder; Eddie Gaskins, 32, serving 10 years for domestic violence; Joshua Jenkins, 33, serving 15 years for manslaughter; Corey Scott, 38, serving 22 years for kidnapping; and Cornelius McClary, 33, serving 25 years for burglary.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Jeffrey Benkoe, Susan Thomas, Jonathan Oatis and Steve Orlofsky)

Puerto Ricans skeptical of change after vote for statehood

A man holds a U.S. flag after the economically struggling U.S. island territory of Puerto Rico voted overwhelmingly on Sunday in favour of becoming the 51st state, in San Juan, Puerto Rico June 11, 2017

By Tracy Rucinski

SAN JUAN (Reuters) – Puerto Ricans are skeptical that the struggling U.S. territory’s political status will change any time soon, even after a vote on Sunday asking the U.S. Congress to make the island the 51st state of the union.

Although Puerto Rico voted overwhelmingly in favor of statehood, low voter turnout may weaken Governor Ricardo Rossello’s case for statehood in Washington, where Puerto Rico is seen as a low priority.

Puerto Rico’s two main opposition parties boycotted Sunday’s vote.

The mainly Spanish speaking island has $70 billion in debt, a 45 percent poverty rate, woefully underperforming schools and near-insolvent pension and health systems. Last month, the territory filed for the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Rossello, who became governor in January, had campaigned for statehood as the best path out of the island’s financial troubles.

Yet eight out of 10 Puerto Ricans did not cast a vote in Sunday’s plebiscite, many because they did not believe the non-binding referendum would sway Congress.

“We’re bankrupt and 85 percent of us don’t speak English. Why would the U.S. government want to take on a problem like Puerto Rico?” said Carolina Santos, a single working mother struggling to make her mortgage payment and cover other bills.

“This is the fifth time there’s been a referendum on statehood. Nothing’s going to change. Maybe we should focus more on fixing our financial problems and our schools,” said Santos.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Daniel Bases, Bernard Orr)

Philippines says South China Sea ruling not on agenda at ASEAN summit

Philippine President

MANILA (Reuters) – An arbitration court ruling that rejected China’s claims to the South China sea and strained Chinese relations with the Philippines will not be on the agenda of this year’s Southeast Asian summit, a senior Philippine official said on Thursday.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reiterated last month he wanted to avoid confrontation with China and saw no need to press Beijing to abide by the July ruling that went in favor of the Philippines.

“The Hague ruling will not be on the agenda in the sense that it’s already part of international law,” Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Enrique Manalo told reporters ahead of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting chaired by the Philippines in April.

“So we really can’t discuss the ruling. It’s there.”

The July 2016 ruling rejected China’s territorial claims over much of the South China Sea. Beijing declared the decision as “null and void”, but called on countries involved in the dispute to start talks again to peacefully resolve the issue.

What the 10-member ASEAN will focus on is the completion of a framework for a code of conduct to ease tension in the disputed waters, Manalo said.

“We hope we will have a pleasant scenario during our chairmanship. We will talk to China in a way we will put forth our interest just as we expect china will put forth theirs,” Manalo said.

Since 2010, China and the ASEAN have been discussing a set of rules aimed at avoiding conflict. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

At the ASEAN summit last year, China’s closest ASEAN ally, Cambodia, blocked any mention of the court ruling against Beijing in a joint statement.

Duterte made a stunning U-turn in foreign policy a few months ago when he made overtures toward China and started berating traditional ally the United States.

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Iraq says Islamic State control shrinks to 14 percent of its territory

Iraqi security forces stand with an Islamic State flag which they pulled down in the town of Hit in Anbar

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq said on Wednesday its U.S.-backed military campaign against Islamic State had retaken around two-thirds of the territory seized by the militants in their lightning sweep across the country’s north and west in 2014.

“Daesh’s presence in Iraqi cities and provinces has declined. After occupying 40 percent of Iraqi territory, now only 14 percent remains,” government spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said in a televised statement, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

That calculation appeared rosier than recent estimates from Washington. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Alhurra TV late last month that Islamic State had lost 44 percent of the territory it had held in Iraq.

Iraq’s military, along with Kurdish peshmerga forces, Shi’ite Muslim militias and Sunni tribal fighters, have recaptured several cities in the past year, including Ramadi, Tikrit and Baiji.

Yet Islamic State still manages to launch deadly attacks in areas under the government’s nominal control. On Wednesday, a suicide car bomb in Baghdad’s Sadr City district killed at least 52 people and wounded more than 78.

Iraqi officials say they will retake the northern city of Mosul this year, but in private many question whether that is possible.

Iraq’s military opened a new front in March against the militants in the Makhmour area, which it called the first phase of a wider campaign to recapture Mosul, around 60 km (40 miles) further north. Progress has been slow, and to date Iraqi forces have taken just five villages.

(Reporting by Stephen Kalin and Ahmed Rasheed; Editing by Dominic Evans)

U.S. May Send Warships Near Disputed South China Sea Islands

A U.S. defense official said on Thursday that the U.S. is considering sending warships close to China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea. This would be a signal that the U.S. does not recognize the islands as Chinese territory, despite China’s claims.

The Financial Times newspaper reported that U.S. ships would sail within 12-nautical-mile zones of the disputed territory.

U.S. officials are waiting for the approval of the Obama Administration but said action would take place “within days.”

In May, Chinese officials issued eight warnings to a U.S. surveillance aircraft that had been flying near the Chinese artificial islands.

Chinese officials are aware of the United States’ potential actions and stated that they will continue to communicate with the United States regarding the South China Sea issue.

“I believe the U.S. side is extremely clear about China’s relevant principled stance,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying. “We hope the U.S. side can objectively and fairly view the current situation in the South China Sea, and with China, genuinely play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and stability in the South China Sea.”

During the recent visit to the United States by Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Obama discussed the matter with the Chinese President, stating that he had “significant concerns.” Xi responded by telling President Obama they China intended to militarize the islands. U.S. officials report that China has already begun to create military facilities on the island and are waiting to see how much military hardware will be installed.