Day: November 21, 2021

MEXICO CITY— Migrants from 12 countries were among 600 people found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico on Friday, most of them from neighboring Guatemala, the government’s National Migration Institute (INM) said.

 

The INM said 401 of the people were from Guatemala, 53 from Honduras, 40 from the Dominican Republic, 37 from Bangladesh, 27 from Nicaragua, 18 from El Salvador and eight from Cuba.

 

There were also six men from Ghana, four people from Venezuela, four men from Ecuador, a man from India and a man from Cameroon in the two trailers discovered in Veracruz state.

 

The institute said 455 of the migrants were male, and 145 female. The people detained would either be sent home or given the chance to have their stay in Mexico regularized, it added.

 

Most migrants from Central America and the rest of the world who enter Mexico head for the United States and say they are seeking to escape poverty or violence in their homelands.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

DAKAR— US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said his country was investing in Africa without imposing unsustainable levels of debt, as he witnessed the signing of contracts worth more than US$1 billion in Senegal’s capital Dakar.

 

The deals between four US companies and Senegal are being billed as part of his country’s pitch to help Africa build infrastructure with transparent and sustainable deals.

 

Careful not to directly criticise Chinese infrastructure projects, which have proliferated across the continent in the past decade, Blinken said during a visit to Nigeria on Friday that international deals were too often opaque and coercive.

 

The US is investing “without saddling the country with a debt that it cannot handle,” he said during the signing ceremony with Senegal’s Economy Minister Amadou Hott.

 

He said he had a deep concern for the stability of neighbouring Mali, which has experienced two coups in the last 18 months, and that the upcoming election there must follow a timetable drawn up by the regional bloc ECOWAS.

 

Earlier this month ECOWAS, West Africa’s main political and economic bloc, imposed sanctions on Mali’s transitional leaders, after they informed the organisation they would not be able to hold presidential and legislative elections in February.

 

“We look forward to resuming the full array of assistance as soon as this democratically elected government takes office,” Blinken told reporters.

 

It was reported that Mali’s military junta was in discussions about deploying a Russian military contractor, Wagner Group, in Mali to help fight a growing Islamist insurgency.

 

“It would be especially unfortunate if outside actors engaged in making things even more difficult and more complicated and I’m thinking particularly of groups like the Wagner Group,” Blinken said.

 

Blinken said the US has real concerns, widely shared with partners in Europe, over Russia’s “unusual activity” at the Ukrainian border, after Ukraine said it feared Russia might be preparing an attack.

 

“We do know the playbook of trying to cite some illusory provocation from Ukraine or any other country and using that as an excuse to do what Russia was planning to do all along,” Blinken said.

 

During a visit to Dakar’s Institute Pasteur bio-medical research center, Blinken said the United States was working with partners to generate more financing for vaccine manufacturing in Senegal.

 

In October BioNTech signed an agreement with the Institut Pasteur de Dakar and the Rwandan government to construct the first mRNA vaccine facilities in Africa, starting in mid-2022.

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK