Tag Archives: Protests

Hundreds arrested in Venezuela after latest bout of unrest

A man shouts during a protest over food shortage and against Venezuela's government in Caracas

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan security forces have arrested at least 400 people after the latest bout of looting and food riots in the crisis-hit OPEC member country, local officials said on Wednesday.

Violence engulfed the eastern Caribbean coastal town of Cumana on Tuesday as looters swarmed over dozens of shops and security forces struggled to maintain control.

There were unconfirmed reports on social media of several deaths in Cumana, the capital of Sucre state, and an opposition legislator from the zone said one man was shot dead.

But regional governor Luis Acuna from the ruling Socialist Party said the reported deaths were unrelated to the looting.

“There were only 400 people arrested and the deaths were not linked to the looting,” he told a local TV station, calling the looters vandals encouraged by right-wing politicians.

“I have no doubt they paid them, this was planned,” Acuna said.

Nelson Moreno, governor of Anzoategui state, which neighbors Sucre, said eight people were also arrested on Tuesday in “irregular” situations, a term that usually refers to looting.

With desperate crowds of people chanting “We want food!,” protests and melees at shops have spread across Venezuela in recent weeks, fueled by severe shortages.

Three people were shot dead in separate incidents last week, with a policeman and a soldier arrested in two cases.

According to a local monitoring group, the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, more than 10 incidents of looting are occurring daily across the nation of 30 million people that is suffering a brutal recession and the world’s highest rate of inflation.

Venezuela’s political opposition says President Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chavez are to blame for failed socialist economic policies. The opposition is pursuing a recall referendum this year in an effort to remove him from office.

But Maduro, 53, says his foes are waging an “economic war” against him and seeking to foment a coup. Government officials say there is not enough time this year to organize a referendum.

Should there be such a vote in 2017 and Maduro loses, his vice president would take over – rather than a new presidential election being held – meaning the ruling “Chavismo” movement would still be in power.

(Reporting by Diego Ore, writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Sarah Dagher; editing by G Crosse)

Rubbish piles up in Paris as pre-euro soccer protests go on

Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers

By Brian Love and Lucien Libert

PARIS (Reuters) – Rubbish piled up on streets in parts of Paris and other French cities on Wednesday as strikes and pickets by waste treatment workers took a toll in the country which hosts the Euro 2016 soccer tournament from Friday.

The protests were part of a wave of demonstrations and work stoppages led by the hardline CGT union against government plans to reform labor law to make hiring and firing easier and help lower the jobless rate from 10 percent.

Police removed blockades at some of the major incineration and rubbish collection depots around the capital but to little effect because workers inside the premises subsequently walked off work, the CGT said.

Despite signs that broader strike action is running out of steam, train services were disrupted for the eighth day running.

The SNCF state railway company said less than 10 percent of workers were on strike, considerably fewer than last week, with three out of four high-speed TGV trains running and six out of 10 slower inter-city connections.

Working to defuse the conflict, Prime Minister Manuel Valls told parliament the state could take over all or part of an SNCF debt of 50 billion euros ($57 billion), possibly hiving it off into a sinking fund to be paid down gradually.

The CGT was holding workplace meetings to decide whether to call off the rail strike.

As millions of foreign visitors and soccer fans prepared for the month-long tournament that kicks off on Friday evening, CGT activists also disrupted a pre-championship publicity event at Paris’s Gare du Nord train station.

About 200 protesters mobbed the station as a locomotive carrying the Euro soccer trophy arrived, a Reuters reporter at the scene said. Riot police protected the trophy.

Separately, the minister in charge of drafting the contested labor law, Myriam El Khomri, condemned a dawn protest outside her Paris home in which she said about 30 demonstrators yelled hostile statements through a megaphone.

Valls has refused to scrap the labor reform but, on top of the debt pledge, has agreed to protect existing rest and shift time quotas for workers in SNCF reorganization talks.

Pilots at Air France are also planning to strike over pay curbs from June 11 to 14.

“The (rail) strike is incomprehensible and the one planned by pilots is every bit as incomprehensible when France is about to start the Euros,” Transport Minister Alain Vidalies said.

(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert and Emmanuel Jarry; Editing by Paul Taylor)

Protesters throw rocks, bottles at police outside Trump rally

A protester disrupts a rally with Trump and his supporters in Albuquerque

By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers who responded with pepper spray outside a rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Albuquerque, New Mexico, police said.

Hundreds of protesters tried to storm the convention center in New Mexico’s biggest city, knocking down barricades and throwing objects at a door and then hurling rocks and bottles at mounted police in riot gear, the Albuquerque Police Department said on Twitter on Tuesday and video posted online showed.

Several police officers were injured, the police tweeted.

Protesters chanted anti-Trump slogans, held anti-Trump signs and waved Mexican flags before the demonstration descended into chaos with some protesters standing on top of police cars.

Television footage showed officers responding by using pepper spray and smoke bombs to disperse the crowd.

Police said they made arrests both outside and inside the rally, where protesters continually interrupted Trump’s speech.

No one at the police department was immediately available for comment.

Protests have become common outside rallies for Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, who has polarized opinion with his rhetoric against illegal immigration. He abandoned a rally in Chicago in March after clashes between his supporters and protesters.

He has accused Mexico of sending drug dealers and rapists across the U.S. border and has promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

According to CNN, his supporters chanted “build that wall” during his rally on Tuesday in Albuquerque where a little less than half of the population is Hispanic or Latino.

“Watching thugs (and) punks in Albuquerque – en route to California. They don’t even know what they are protesting,” Trump aide Dan Scavino said on Twitter.

Trump heads on Wednesday to a rally in Anaheim, California, which has a growing Latino minority.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

France hit by rail strike, demo by weary police

A police car burns during a demonstration against police violence and against French labour law reform in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – Strikes by French railway and port workers halved train services and prompted cancellation of ferry links to Britain on Wednesday as labor unions sought to force President Francois Hollande’s government into retreat on labor law reforms.

After weeks of protests in which hundreds of their number have been hurt, police held a rally of their own to vent frustration over the stresses of near daily clashes with violent youths on the fringes of the anti-reform movement.

As they did so, a crowd chanting “police everywhere, justice nowhere” surrounded a police patrol car, which went up in flames after the police officers inside fled the scene, a few hundred meters from where their colleagues were rallying.

The public prosecutor’s office said after the incident it was opening an inquiry into attempted homicide.

Wednesday’s rail strikes, set to run until Friday morning, reduced high-speed and inter-city services by 40 to 50 percent, also heavily disrupting local and suburban commuter lines, the SNCF state railway company said.

Strike turnout, the SNCF said, was about 15 percent, lower than in previous stoppages.

Brittany Ferries announced mass cancellations of connections between Britain and northern France, where port workers joined the industrial action.

Truckers maintained blockades set up on Tuesday in a bid to strangle deliveries in and out of fuel and food distribution depots.

At issue is one of Hollande’s flagship reforms a year from a presidential election – law changes designed to make it easier for employers to hire and fire staff and to opt out of cumbersome national rules in favor of in-house accords on pay.

Hollande says the change will encourage firms to recruit and combat an unemployment rate that has remained above 10 percent.

The 61-year-old leader has said he will not consider running for re-election if he fails to make inroads against joblessness. Critics say the reform will totally undermine the standards of protection enshrined for decades in national labor law.

“ANTI-COP HATRED”

The plan, which pollsters say is opposed by three in four French people, has provoked weeks of often violent protests.

It has also increased pressure on police who were already stretched by extra duties following last November’s deadly militant Islamist attacks on France and are also gearing up for the Euro 2016 soccer tournament that kicks off on June 10.

Condemning what it described as mounting “anti-cop hatred”, the Alliance police union called for Wednesday’s rally in the Place de la Republique, a central Paris square that has seen regular skirmishes in past weeks between riot police and youths hurling petrol bombs and paving stones.

Paris police chief Michel Cadot banned a counter-protest by a group that accuses the police of brutality.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve defended the police and said 350 of them had been injured in standoffs that had produced 1,300 arrests in just two months.

Further strikes and protests are planned for the rest of the week in what labor unions, along with a youth protest movement called Nuit Debout or Night Rising, hope will prove a big enough show of force to make Hollande reconsider.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Bon; Editing by Andrew Callus and Gareth Jones)

France’s government faces nationwide protests over labor reform

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s government faced nationwide protests and a no confidence vote in parliament on Thursday after opting to bypass widespread opposition and impose labor reforms that will make hiring and firing easier.

As crowds gathered in cities across France for another day of demonstrations, the CGT labor union called for weekly rolling strikes at the SNCF state rail company from Tuesday night until Friday morning.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ Socialist administration was expected to survive the confidence vote.

But a series of strikes and waves of street protests that have shown no sign of easing since they began in late March suggest popular discontent over a reform that pollsters say three out of four people oppose is becoming more entrenched.

“It’s time to move up a gear,” Philippe Martinez, head of the CGT union, said. The main objection to the reform from unions is that it would allow firms to adopt in-house terms on pay and conditions instead of complying with national standards.

The official reason for the rail strike call is a standoff with management over conditions, but its timetable dovetails with the broader protests against government policy.

As crowds gathered in cities across France, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said there was no question of withdrawing the reform.

But it has left an already deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande, who narrowly survived a rebellion by dissenters in his own party on Wednesday, in an uncomfortable position a year from elections.

The reform is also under fire from a rolling youth protest movement known as Nuit Debout, or ‘Night Uprising’.

Since the protests began, several hundred police have been injured in clashes, often with hooded youths hurling stones and petrol bombs. On Thursday, news television channels showed footage of secondary-school pupils blocking schools entrances with garbage bins.

The interior ministry advised motorists to stay away from central Paris ahead of an afternoon march and also reported traffic halted by road blockages in some places.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, a prominent Socialist, added her voice to the dissenters, declaring on Europe 1 radio: “This law does just nothing for social justice.”

Hollande has several other problems piling up.

Media speculation is rife that his youthful economy minister Emmanuel Macron could run for president in the election scheduled for May 2017.

His government has also been caught up in a controversy over sexual harassment in the corridors of power.

After the resignation a politician accused of harassing female colleagues, Finance Minister Michel Sapin, a close Hollande ally, on Wednesday admitted behaving inappropriately toward a female journalist.

(Reporting By Brian Love; Editing by Andrew Callus and John Stonestreet)

French Police clash with more protesters over labor laws

Masked youths face off with French police during a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love

PARIS (Reuters) – French police clashed with protesters outside a school building in Paris on Wednesday in fresh unrest involving police amid anger over government plans to reform highly-protective labor laws.

Police used teargas to disperse a crowd that tried to stop them removing nearly 300 immigrants who had moved into an empty secondary school that was due to reopen after renovation, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

“The state is obliged to apply the law,” Cadot said. The migrants from countries including Sudan and Eritrea had been removed peacefully after police broke through a ring of 200 to 250 protesters, he said.

Four police were slightly hurt, a statement said.

Hundreds of police officers have been reported injured in the past weeks in clashes with demonstrators during street marches across France the country – most of them rallies in protest over a bill that would make it easier in some cases to fire employees.

On Tuesday seven riot police officers were hurt in clashes with masked youths in the Western city of Nantes.

“This is totally unacceptable, with 300 police hurt since the start of the year,” said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll. “We will not let this pass.”

The primary focus of protest is the planned reform of some of the most extensive and protective labor rules in Europe.

An Elabe opinion poll released on Wednesday showed that three out of four French people oppose a bill that the government argues will remove red tape and encourage employers to recruit in a country where the jobless rate is above 10 percent.

Critics fear the bill will undermine employers’ obligations under the current national labor code.

Police chief Cadot is also seeking to tighten the noose on a rolling youth protest movement – called Nuit Debout – that has been organizing late-night sit-ins at the large Place de la Republique square in central Paris.

After repeated clashes where youths hurled petrol bombs and paving stones at police, he has banned alcohol consumption and late night music on the square and told Nuit Debout activists to quit the area every day before midnight.

(Reporting by Brian Love; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Paris police arrest 27 after overnight violence

French labour union workers and students attend a demonstration against the French labour law proposal in Paris

By Brian Love and Simon Carraud

PARIS (Reuters) – French riot police arrested 27 people during overnight clashes with dozens of youths in central Paris, following a day of protest marches over labor law reforms that turned violent.

Some opposition lawmakers and police union representatives urged a government crackdown on demonstrations and said it was time for an outright ban on the daily, mostly peaceful, youth protests at the site of Thursday night’s skirmishes.

The latest trouble erupted when police moved in to clear a group of about 150 youths from the Place de la Republique square in the early hours of the morning. Cars were set ablaze and lumps of concrete and cobblestones hurled at officers. Twenty-four of the 27 arrested were held in custody, police said.

“These are largely people coming looking for a fight,” Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

The unrest comes at a time police forces and soldiers are working overtime to ensure security in the wake of last November’s deadly militant attacks on the capital.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets country-wide on Thursday to protest against labor law reforms aimed at making hiring and firing easier. Violent clashes broke out on the fringes of demonstrations in several cities.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said 214 arrests were made in all. Seventy-eight police were injured, with one in a serious condition after a skull-cracking blow from a paving block.

Paris police prefect Michel Cadot has said organized groups were behind the protest violence, which has mushroomed despite the state of emergency imposed after November’s attacks.

Some police union representatives have called on police chiefs to issue fewer protest permits.

Nicolas Comte of the police union SGP police-FO said it was time to ban the Place de la Republique protest known as “Nuit Debout” – which roughly translates as “Up all night” – arguing gangs of hardcore troublemakers were hijacking the movement.

The French government has condemned the violence but, with just a year to national elections, has appeared keen to avoid the curfews it has the power to impose under the state of emergency.

Cazeneuve said almost 1,000 people had been arrested since protests started in March and dismissed calls for an all-out crackdown.

“State authority does not mean you abandon the rule of law,” the minister said.

(Additional reporting by Simon Carraud; Editing by Andrew Callus and Richard Lough)

Possible British exit from the EU

Wales Stronger in Europe supporters prepare to give out free shopping bags and leaflets in Bute Park, Cardiff, South Wales

By Kylie MacLellan

CAERPHILLY, Wales (Reuters) – In the shadow of Caerphilly’s 13th Century castle, a handful of activists have been handing out leaflets to Saturday shoppers for several weeks to drum up support for a British exit from the European Union (EU).

Elsewhere in the Welsh former mining town, members of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party have also been out campaigning. But the vote they are focused on comes seven weeks before the June 23 EU membership referendum.

Like Scotland, Northern Ireland and much of England, people in Wales will vote in local and regional elections on May 5 — timing that could prove costly for the EU “In” campaign.

Prime Minister David Cameron, whose own Conservative Party is deeply divided on whether or not to stay in the EU, is relying on Labour and other pro-EU political rivals like the Scottish National Party and Liberal Democrats to get supporters out to vote to remain in the 28-member bloc.

But with those parties distracted by the May 5 polls, the field is wide open for those in favor of Britain leaving the bloc to push their overlapping political message.

The anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) in particular hopes to fuse growing euroscepticism with local election issues such as the impact of immigration on housing availability to steal many of Labour’s traditional voters.

It’s a situation the leaders of the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland had hoped to avoid. Earlier this year, they wrote to Cameron calling on him to hold the referendum later in the year so that it would not conflict with the local election campaign period.

“Cameron went ahead anyway and one of the consequences might be that the remain camp suffers … because people are going to be focusing on other things,” said Roger Scully, Professor of Political Science at Cardiff University.

“They are all focusing on May 5 and then after May 5 they’ll want to rest and so who is going to actually get out and do a lot of the work for remain?”

AVOIDING THE SUBJECT

UKIP candidate and Wales campaign manager Sam Gould, who increased his party’s vote share in Caerphilly by 17 percentage points at last year’s UK-wide election, says rivals are avoiding the subject of the EU.

“The other parties didn’t want to see any crossover whatsoever,” he says, pausing to thrust a campaign leaflet at a passerby. “They know it will help us.”

UKIP has seized on the potential collapse of Tata Steel’s Port Talbot plant in south Wales, saying the EU did not do enough to stop cheap Chinese imports and the bloc’s rules on state aid have prevented government intervention.

With Tata expected to set a deadline to sell by the end of May, thousands of jobs could be lost just weeks before the EU vote, adding to the “In” camp’s woes.

Hefin David, Labour’s candidate in Caerphilly, said he may get involved in the “In” campaign after elections for the devolved Welsh Assembly, but his focus is on local issues for the time being.

“The Welsh Labour campaign that I am running in Caerphilly is about the bread and butter issues of health, education and social services,” David told Reuters.

“If people want to vote to get out of Europe they can do that on June 23. This is the Assembly campaign and I think they should be separate … I’m not thinking past May 5,” as he warmed his hands on a coffee in a local supermarket cafe.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is also focused on May 5, his first major electoral test since taking over in September with the strong backing of party members but little support among his own lawmakers.

With some of his opponents in Labour looking for a reason to justify a leadership challenge, all eyes are on the May results.

LABOUR STRONGHOLD NO MORE?

There is reason for Labour to be concerned.

Wales, which has a population of around 3 million and is the poorest region in Britain, according to official statistics, is traditionally a Labour stronghold where the party has won every Assembly election since it was created in 1999.

Opinion polls show the party is now running around 14 percentage points below where it was at the same time before the last assembly election in 2011.

Cardiff University’s Scully says a worse result than in 2007, when Labour won 26 out of 60 assembly seats in its poorest performance there so far, would set off alarm bells that could have national implications.

“Some losses have been priced in … 2007 is probably the benchmark. If they are doing worse than that then I think serious questions will be raised and should be raised, both about the leadership in Wales and the leadership of the party across Britain,” he said.

“You could have a situation where Labour will certainly have their worst ever performance in Scotland and they could have their worst ever devolved election in Wales as well, and lose significant ground in the English locals.”

A long-time eurosceptic, Corbyn now backs the party’s position that Britain should remain in the bloc.

But he has come under fire for not doing enough to help the cause, and with polls showing that backers of Cameron’s Conservatives are more likely to be eurosceptics, some supporters fear the “In” politicians are cutting it very fine.

A YouGov poll published on April 11 showed support in Wales for Britain leaving the EU had risen 3 percentage points from a month earlier to 39 percent, while those wanting to remain had dropped by the same amount, to 38 percent.

“If we don’t get the Labour vote out, we are going to lose,” said one person involved in the “Wales Stronger In” campaign.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, editing by Elizabeth Piper and Sonya Hepinstall)

Migrants Sent from Greece to Turkey

Migrants are escorted by Turkish police officers as they arrive in the Turkish coastal town of Dikili, Turkey,

By Dasha Afanasieva and Karolina Tagaris

DIKILI, Turkey/LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) – The first migrants deported from Greek islands under a disputed EU-Turkey deal were shipped back to Turkey on Monday in a drive to shut down the main route used by more than a million people fleeing war and poverty to reach Europe in the last year.

Under a pact criticized by refugee agencies and human rights campaigners, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees who cross the Aegean Sea to enter Greece illegally, including Syrians.

In return, the European Union will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations.

Two Turkish-flagged passenger boats carrying 136 mostly Pakistani migrants arrived from the island of Lesbos in the Turkish town of Dikili, accompanied by two Turkish coast guard vessels with a police helicopter buzzing overhead.

A third ship carrying 66 people, mainly Afghans, arrived there later from the island of Chios.

The EU-Turkey deal aims to discourage migrants from perilous crossings, often in small boats and dinghies, and to break the business model of human smugglers who have fueled Europe’s biggest influx since World War Two.

EU authorities said none of those deported on Monday had requested asylum in Greece and all had left voluntarily. They included two Syrians who had asked to return to Turkey.

“We didn’t see this morning unrest or riots. The operation was organized properly with the sufficient Frontex presence and with enough, very well organized security guarantees,” European Commission spokesman Margaritas Schinas told a news briefing in Brussels. He was referring to the EU border management agency Frontex, which has been reinforced by national police and migration experts.

Schinas said the first returns were legal, although Turkey has not yet made changes to its regulations that the EU said were necessary at the time of the deal.

The EU said at the time of the deal that Ankara would need to change asylum laws to give international protection to Syrians who enter from countries other than Syria, and to non-Syrian asylum seekers returned from Greece.

MIGRANTS KEEP COMING

A few hours after the first boat of returnees set sail from Lesbos, Greek coast guard vessels rescued at least two dinghies carrying more than 50 migrants and refugees, including children and a woman in a wheelchair, trying to reach the island.

Altogether, more people arrived on the Greek islands in the 24 hours to Monday morning than were transported to Turkey, Greek authorities said, putting total arrivals at 339, including 173 on Lesbos and 73 on Chios.

“We are just going to try our chance. It is for our destiny. We are dead anyway,” said Firaz, 31, a Syrian Kurd from the province of Hasakah who was traveling with his cousin.

Asked if he was aware that the Greeks were sending people back, he said: “I heard maybe Iranians, Afghans. I didn’t hear they were sending back Syrians to Turkey… At least I did what I could. I’m alive. That’s it.”

Two groups of mainly Pakistani men, totaling around 100 people, were also intercepted by the Turkish coast guard on Monday near Dikili, a coast guard official said.

Under the pact, the EU will resettle thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey – one for each Syrian returned from the Greek islands.

German police said the first 32 Syrian refugees arrived in Hanover on two flights from Istanbul on Monday under the deal. The European Commission said more resettlement flights were due to Finland on Monday and the Netherlands on Tuesday.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Sunday that the “high point of the migrant crisis is behind us”, but many migration experts say the pressure to reach Europe will continue, possibly via other routes.

PROTESTS

A few dozen police and immigration officials waited outside a small white tent on the quayside at Dikili as the returned migrants disembarked one by one, before being photographed and having their fingerprints taken behind security screening.

The returnees from Lesbos were mostly from Pakistan and some from Bangladesh and had not applied for asylum, said Ewa Moncure, a spokeswoman for EU border agency Frontex.

Turkish EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said any Syrians returned from Greece would be sent to the southern city of Osmaniye, around 40 km (25 miles) from the Syrian border.

For non-Syrians, Turkey would apply to their home countries and send them back systematically, Bozkir said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster Haberturk.

Rights groups and some European politicians have challenged the legality of the deal, questioning whether Turkey has sufficient safeguards in place to defend refugees’ rights and whether it can be considered safe for them.

Amnesty International’s deputy director for Europe, Gauri van Gulik, visiting Lesbos to monitor the returns procedure, told Reuters: “It’s almost based on the assumption Turkey is a safe country for refugees, and we’ve documented very clearly that it is not right now.”

Amnesty last week accused the Turkish army of having turned back thousands of Syrians trying to flee their country in the last few months, sometimes using force.

“The most important thing we lose sight of is that these are individuals who are fleeing horrific scenes of war and we’re playing some kind of ping pong with them,” van Gulik said.

EU spokesman Schinas said Ankara had provided “assurances” and an amendment to its temporary protection regulation was in the works for Syrians returning from abroad. EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos was in Turkey on Monday to discuss outstanding issues, including rights of non-Syrians.

Turkey insists it is meeting its international obligations. The EU was determined to get the program under way on schedule despite such doubts because of strong political pressure in northern Europe to deter migrants from attempting the journey.

There were small protests as the returns got underway.

On Lesbos, a small group of protesters chanted “Shame on you!” when the migrant boats set sail as the sun rose over the Aegean. Volunteer rescuers aboard a nearby boat hoisted a banner that read: “Ferries for safe passage, not for deportation.”

The governor of Turkey’s Izmir province, Mustafa Toprak, told reporters that the returned migrants would be taken to Kirklareli near the Bulgarian border, well away from the coast.

“We will not build camps on the Aegean,” he said adding that those who wanted to stay in Turkey could apply to do so.

Each migrant was accompanied on Lesbos by a plainclothes Frontex officer. They had been transported in a nighttime operation from the island’s holding center to the port. Greek riot police squads also boarded the boats.

At the Moria holding center on Lesbos, where more than 2,600 are being held, a group of men gathered behind the barbed wire fence and shouted to journalists, who are barred from the camp.

One, who said he was from Iran, shouted: “Women just cry. All our children and women are sick (with the) flu epidemic.”

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and rights groups have said the deal between the European Union and Turkey lacks legal safeguards.

More than 3,300 migrants and refugees are on Lesbos. About 2,600 people are held at the Moria center, a sprawling complex of prefabricated containers, 600 more than its stated capacity. Of those, 2,000 have made asylum claims, UNHCR said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels, Thorsten Severin and Michael Nienaber in Berlin and Nick Tattersall in Istanbul; writing by Paul Taylor; editing by Peter Graff)

Chinese, Czech presidents forge strategic partnership on Prague visit

By Jason Hovet and Jan Lopatka

PRAGUE (Reuters) – China’s President Xi Jinping and his Czech counterpart Milos Zeman signed an agreement on a strategic partnership on Tuesday, meant to step up business ties and investments.

Zeman has been keen to forge stronger ties with China and Russia since his election in 2013, rather than with the ex-communist country’s partners in NATO and the European Union, although the Czech government not the president is chiefly responsible for foreign policy.

EU relations with both Beijing and Moscow are tainted by disputes over human rights.

The partnership agreement puts the Czechs among about 15 other European countries that have similar ties.

Xi was given a special welcome to mark the first ever visit of a Chinese leader, including a dinner at the presidential residence and 21 artillery salvos in a ceremony at the historic Prague Castle, courtesies not extended to other visitors.

But it drew protests from opposition parties and human rights activists.

Police on Monday detained more than a dozen people who replaced Chinese flags on the main road from Prague airport to the city center with those of Chinese-ruled Tibet. There was a scuffle between pro-Tibet activists and groups of Chinese supporters.

Two demonstrations by activists were called on Tuesday outside Prague’s Lichtenstein Palace, where Xi is to meet Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, and at the Prague Castle.

Czech government officials told Reuters the agreement does not deviate from standard EU language on human rights, diplomatic or economic relations, and reflected Czech interests in continued business relations with Taiwan, which China sees as a wayward province.

The Czechs are hoping to become a financial and air travel hub in central Europe for China, where Czech firms such as financial group PPF and Volkswagen’s Skoda Auto have been active.

Chinese investments in the Czech republic have so far included several acquisitions of financial, airline and brewery companies by a company called CEFC China Energy, whose ownership has not been disclosed.

“I wish that Czech Republic becomes … an entry gate for the People’s Republic of China to the European Union,” he said.

While the Czechs maintain the EU line on China, Zeman has made gestures others have not. Zeman attended a military parade in Beijing last September marking the end of World War Two, the only Western leader to do so.

(Editing by David Holmes)