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Trump’s tariff threat over Greenland risks ‘dangerous downward spiral’, warn Nato members – Europe live

Northern Ireland first minister Michelle O’Neill has described US president Donald Trump’s plan to “apply tariffs and economic pressure on European countries in order to take control of Greenland” as “deeply concerning”. “The economies of Ireland and the United States are closely linked, and for many years that relationship has positively supported jobs, investment, and prosperity on both sides,” she said, in a statement on social media network X. “However, when world leaders make dangerous decisions in the pursuit of land and resources, it is often ordinary people who pay the price. “In the time ahead, I will work with political and business leaders at home and internationally to protect our local businesses, our all-island economy, and people’s livelihoods.”

EU diplomats to hold crisis talks over Trump Greenland tariff ‘blackmail’

Senior European diplomats are due to hold crisis talks after Donald Trump said he was targeting eight European nations with tariffs over their opposition to his attempt to annex Greenland. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump’s tariffs would be a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president’s threats to allies as “blackmail”, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will urge the EU to use its powerful anti-coercion instrument if the US goes ahead with the tariffs in the standoff over Greenland, Agence France-Presse reported on Sunday, citing his team. The anti-coercion law, which has so far never been used, enables the EU to impose punitive economic measures on a country seeking to force a policy change. The ambassadors of the EU’s 27 member states will meet later on Sunday in an emergency session after Trump announced tariffs on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland. Trump accused the countries, which have all deployed troops to Greenland in the last week, of playing “a very dangerous game” and said they would be subject to 10% tariffs from 1 February, increasing to 25% from 1 June. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said the tariffs would be levied “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland”, a largely autonomous territory that is part of Denmark. The threats to Greenland have cast a long shadow over Nato and thrown into doubt the EU-US trade deal that the bloc signed with Trump last August. The leader of the European parliament’s largest group, the centre-right European People’s party, Manfred Weber, tweeted on Saturday that “approval is not possible at this stage”, a conclusion Socialist and Green MEPs had already reached. Ratification of the deal, which would reduce EU tariffs on some US goods to zero, had been expected by February. Macron said on Saturday that Europe would not change course in its opposition to a US takeover of Greenland, declaring: “No intimidation or threat will influence us – neither in Ukraine, nor in Greenland, nor anywhere else in the world when we are confronted with such situations.” In a joint statement, the EU leaders Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa said tariffs would “undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral”. The pair, who had been in Paraguay signing a trade deal with four South American countries in the Mercosur bloc, are understood to have been blindsided by Trump’s latest threats. Meloni, one Trump’s strongest EU allies, told journalists in Seoul that she had spoken to him “and told him what I think”, describing the proposed sanctions as a “mistake”. The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, who bonded with Trump over their shared love of golf, said European countries stood united in support of Denmark and Greenland. “Tariffs would undermine the transatlantic relationship and risk a dangerous downward spiral,” he wrote on X. Spain’s leader, Pedro Sánchez, said a US invasion of Greenland would make Vladimir Putin “the happiest man on Earth” by legitimising the Russian president’s attempted invasion of Ukraine and sounding the “death knell for Nato”. Sánchez’s interview to La Vanguardia, published on Sunday but apparently conducted before Trump’s latest threat, reflects the broad European support for the Danish territory. After the Trump broadside, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, tweeted: “China and Russia must be having a field day.” She went on: “If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside Nato. Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity.” Kallas warned against the dispute “distract[ing] us from the our core task of helping to end Russia’s war against Ukraine”. Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who was in Washington last week for talks about Greenland, said Trump’s announcement came as a surprise, after the “constructive” talks held with the vice-president, JD Vance, and the secretary of state, Marco Rubio. “The purpose of the increased military presence in Greenland, to which the president refers, is to enhance security in the Arctic,” Rasmussen wrote. Trump’s latest threat underscores allies’ seemingly impossible job to appease Trump without ceding Greenland to the US. Trump criticised the motives of countries that deployed troops to Greenland in the name of enhanced security while also mocking Denmark for not doing enough to defend the territory. “China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it. They currently have two dogsleds as protection, one added recently,” he wrote. Denmark announced last week that it was increasing its military presence on the island, while troops from the seven other countries targeted with tariffs went to Greenland on a short scoping mission designed in part to show the US that European Nato members were serious about Arctic security. The threats represent an “existential crisis” for Nato, said one former official at the transatlantic alliance. Robert Pszczel, now a senior fellow at the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw, wrote on X: “Pretending that we are not dealing with an existential crisis for Nato is no longer possible nor desirable. “Threats made by the current US administration towards allies of the [US] and the use of economic blackmail are direct violations of article one and two of the North Atlantic Treaty,” he wrote, referencing parts of the agreement on peaceful settlement of disputes among allies and promoting “peaceful and friendly international relations”. The head of the European parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, said the EU needed to activate its anti-coercion instrument, a law that allows wide-ranging economic sanctions in response to hostile actions from another state. The anti-coercion instrument, originally conceived in response to China, allows the EU to take wide-ranging punitive measures against a country seeking to use economic coercion, such as tariffs or investment restrictions. Lange, a German Social Democrat, said Trump was using trade as an instrument of political coercion, adding: “The EU cannot simply move on to business as usual.”

Dictator ousted but regime intact – what next for Venezuela’s opposition?

As the harsh reality sets in that Venezuela’s authoritarian regime remains essentially unchanged even without Nicolás Maduro, activists who have spent years fighting for the country’s return to democracy are unsure about what the next steps should be. They agree that the country should very soon either hold new elections or install the retired diplomat Edmundo González – widely believed to have won the 2024 election – but neither option appears to be on the White House’s agenda at the moment. After capturing Maduro and taking control of Venezuela’s oil, Trump could have chosen to install González – whose victory the opposition has demonstrated through collected tally sheets – but instead decided to leave the former dictator’s entire cabinet in charge of the country, claiming it would now operate under White House oversight. Yet despite US assertions that the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, has so far been playing along repression continues. Armed militias continue to patrol the streets and search people’s mobile phones; a group of teenagers was detained for allegedly celebrating Maduro’s capture and only released a week later; and despite the regime’s promise of a “mass” release of political prisoners, nearly 1,000 people remain behind bars for having dared to criticise or protest against the regime. The sociologist and activist Rafael Uzcátegui, co-director of the NGO Laboratorio de Paz, describes the current moment as just the latest iteration of the movement launched by Maduro’s mentor, Hugo Chávez. With a government led by Rodríguez, her influential brother and congressional president Jorge , and other figures such as the feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela is now seeing “Chavismo 3.0”, he said. “So far, state terrorism remains in place,” said Uzcátegui. “I still have doubts about the route towards a democratic transition. So far, the signals are very weak,” he added. Like many other activists, Uzcátegui was forced to leave Venezuela to avoid arrest or death: between 2016 and 2019 alone, police and other security forces killed more than 19,000 people under Maduro, according to Human Rights Watch. The work of civil society organisations inside the country has been further undermined since the approval of the so-called “anti-NGO law” after the 2024 elections, which requires organisations to be authorised by the government to operate. Only a handful of groups continue to work directly there, most of them focused on humanitarian issues, such as supporting the families of political prisoners. Uzcátegui is among many who argue that, under the constitution, a new election should be called, with debate over whether it should happen within three or six months. He fears that the Rodríguez siblings’ plan is to remain in power until the 2030 elections, when some economic recovery driven by the reopening of relations with the US would “give them a chance of winning”. Trump has said the US must first “rebuild” Venezuela and that Venezuelans “wouldn’t even know how to have an election right now”, but pro-democracy campaigners point out that Venezuela’s opposition was able to mount an effective – and victorious – campaign during the last election in 2024 – even if that vote was then stolen by regime. “Elections should not be at the end of the transition, but at its beginning,” said Uzcátegui, adding, however, that there was an “issue to resolve” among organisations, because “some believe that calling new elections would undermine the significance of the results of 2024”. The swearing-in of González has also been demanded by the main opposition leader and Nobel peace prize winner, María Corina Machado, who chose González to run in her place after the regime barred her. Deborah Van Berkel, from the NGO Ideas por la Democracia and now living in exile in the US, said that among activists there was “a combination of a certain hopeful expectation, but also a great deal of caution, because … the regime remains in internal control of the country through repression”. For new elections to take place new conditions would need to be put in place, including a truly independent electoral council, unrestricted access for international observers, a free press and, afterwards, “conditions of democratic governability” for the elected government, she said. Another exiled activist, Griselda Colina, director of the Global Observatory for Communication and Democracy, stressed that there was not a single public institution that is not dominated by Chavismo, and said the long-awaited democratic transition would unfortunately not be swift, given that democracy “has been dismantled for more than 20 years”. “This struggle is not new, but if Venezuelans have learned anything, it is that we know how to manage hope,” she said. “We are a people who refuse to live under dictatorship, a people who carry a democratic reserve in our minds and aspirations – and that has not disappeared.”

Israel far-right ministers reject US-backed postwar Gaza panel

Far-right members of Israel’s governing coalition on Sunday rejected a US-backed plan for postwar governance in Gaza, criticising their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for failing to annex the Palestinian territory and establish new Israeli settlements in the territory. After the announcement of the White House’s pick of world leaders who will join the so-called Gaza “board of peace”, which includes representatives of Turkey and Qatar, both of which have been critical of Israel’s war in the strip, Israeli far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, described Netanyahu’s “unwillingness to take responsibility for Gaza” as “the original sin”. According to Smotrich, himself a settler in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Israeli prime minister should instead “establish a military government there, to encourage immigration and settlement, and in this way to ensure Israel’s security for many years”. The White House announced this week the setting up of the “Gaza executive board”, which will operate under a broader “board of peace” to be chaired by Donald Trump as part of his 20-point plan to end the war. The executive board, described as having an advisory role, includes the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, and a Qatari diplomat, Ali al-Thawadi, alongside other regional and international officials. Presumably referring to Qatar and Turkey, Smotrich said on X: “The countries that inspired Hamas cannot be the ones that replace it. Those who support it and continue to host it even now will not be granted a foothold in Gaza. Period. “The prime minister must stand firm on this, even if it requires managing a dispute with our great friend and President Trump’s emissaries.” On Sunday, in an apparent attempt to calm tensions and assess his next move, Netanyahu convened a meeting with coalition partners. The prime minister’s central challenge is containing his far-right allies, whose continued participation in the government is key to his political survival and who never agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire struck last October. Netanyahu himself objected to the plan on Saturday, citing how some of the appointments were “not coordinated with Israel and were contrary to its policy”, without specifying who. He told his foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, to contact the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Israel has previously objected strongly to any Turkish role in postwar Gaza, with relations between the two countries having deteriorated sharply since the war began in October 2023. In addition to naming Turkey’s foreign minister to the executive board, Trump has invited the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to join the overarching board of peace, along with Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, the former UK prime minister Tony Blair and the president of Argentina, Javier Milei. The White House said Trump’s plan would include three bodies: the board of peace, chaired by Trump; a Palestinian committee of technocrats tasked with governing Gaza; and the Gaza executive board, which would play an advisory role. The Palestinian technocratic committee held its first meeting in Cairo on Saturday. A draft charter sent to about 60 countries by the US administration calls for members to contribute $1bn in cash if they want their membership to last more than three years, according to the document seen by Reuters. “Each Member State shall serve a term of no more than three years from this Charter’s entry into force, subject to renewal by the Chairman,” states the document, first reported by Bloomberg News. “The three-year membership term shall not apply to Member States that contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the Charter’s entry into force.” The US said this week that the Gaza truce plan had entered a second phase, shifting from implementing a ceasefire to the disarmament of Hamas, whose attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 triggered the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The focus of the second phase has shifted from simply stopping the fighting to establishing transitional governance, demilitarisation and reconstruction in the territory – a dramatic escalation of diplomatic ambition amid persistent violence from the Israeli military. At least 451 Palestinians have been reported killed since the ceasefire took effect in October last year. Life in the enclave remains precarious. While airstrikes and gunfire have slowed, they have not ceased. At the same time, recent storms have compounded the crisis, causing deaths and flooding in displacement camps already stretched beyond their limits. Strong winter winds caused walls to collapse on to flimsy tents housing displaced Palestinians last Tuesday, killing at least four people. On Saturday, a 27-day-old baby in Gaza died from severe cold, bringing the number of children in the region who have died of hypothermia since the start of the current winter season to eight, according to the Palestinian health ministry. AFP contributed to this report

UK stance on Greenland’s future is ‘non-negotiable’, says Lisa Nandy

The UK’s stance on Greenland is “non-negotiable”, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has insisted, as European countries push back strongly against Donald Trump’s decision to impose 10% tariffs on the UK and seven other countries. After Keir Starmer called Trump’s imposition of the tariffs “completely wrong”, with the president saying they would rise to 25% if European countries did not agree to a US plan to buy Greenland, Nandy refused to say if or how the UK would respond. But asked if the UK would never accept the US idea, Nandy told Sky News: “Yes, of course.” She went on: “The prime minister was very clear last night that we believe that this decision on tariffs is completely wrong. The future of Greenland is for the people of Greenland and the people of the kingdom of Denmark to determine and for them alone. “We’ve been consistent about that. That is a view that we’ve expressed to our friends and allies in the American administration.” In a post on his Truth Social site, Trump said the tariffs would apply from 1 February to Nato members – including the UK, France and Germany – who have deployed troops to the territory in response to growing uncertainty over its future. He said the tariffs would rise to 25% on 1 June if a deal to buy Greenland had not been reached. Trump wrote: “Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown … This is a very dangerous situation for the safety, security and survival of our planet.” Nandy was pushed to say whether the UK would retaliate with its own tariffs, or through other measures, for example delaying King Charles’s state visit to the US this year, but refused to say. “What you’re urging me to do is to come on your show and shout and yell,” she said. “We’re going to go and have that conversation with our American counterparts … We’re also going to be talking about the security of the United Kingdom and the United States, and how our interests are better served by working together. “Our position on Greenland is non-negotiable. We’ve made that very clear and we’ll continue to make that clear. President Trump’s position on Greenland is different. Notwithstanding that it is in our collective interest to work together and not to start a war of words.” In a statement on Saturday evening, Starmer said: “Our position on Greenland is very clear: it is part of the kingdom of Denmark and its future is a matter for the Greenlanders and the Danes. “We have also made clear that Arctic security matters for the whole of Nato and allies should all do more together to address the threat from Russia across different parts of the Arctic. “Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of Nato allies is completely wrong. We will of course be pursuing this directly with the US administration.” Opposition politicians also condemned Trump’s threats. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said: “President Trump is completely wrong to announce tariffs on the UK over Greenland. “These tariffs will be yet another burden for businesses across our country. The sovereignty of Greenland should only be decided by the people of Greenland.” Nigel Farage said: “We don’t always agree with the US government and in this case we certainly don’t. These tariffs will hurt us. If Greenland is vulnerable to malign influences, then have another look at Diego Garcia.” Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “Starmer’s US policy lies in tatters. Trump is now punishing the UK and Nato allies just for doing the right thing. “Time for the PM to stand firm against the bully in the White House, and work with European and Commonwealth allies to make him back down from this reckless plan.”

Why a Chinese ‘mega embassy’ is not such a worry for British spies

While there has been no shortage of politicians eager to raise concerns about China’s proposed “mega embassy” near the Tower of London, the espionage community quietly takes a different view, arguing that concerns about the development are exaggerated and misplaced. The domestic Security Service, MI5, is already quietly welcoming the prospect of rationalising China’s seven diplomatic sites to one, but a more significant argument is that modern technology and the nature of the Chinese threat means that, in the words of one former British intelligence officer, “embassies are less and less relevant”. Spies have long operated from diplomatic outposts, posing as officials or trade envoys. If, as is expected, China is granted planning permission this month to build a new embassy complex at Royal Mint Court, it will employ over 200 people. All are expected to be Chinese nationals, in line with Beijing’s normal policy, from the lowest kitchen porter to the ambassador, with residences provided on site. As is the case now with its smaller existing embassy on Portland Place, north of Oxford Circus, among them will be a handful of undeclared officers from its ministry of state security (MSS) and military intelligence. According to one former MI6 officer, “they will be acting as ‘radars’, highlighting contacts of potential interest, getting to know people,” all of which are routine intelligence tasks. Yet it will not be easy for any of them to engage in the “serious business of espionage”, the former officer argued, not least because any embassy would be a “magnet for attention and surveillance”. A single site, officials have argued, makes that task easier, allowing MI5 to monitor the activities of Chinese officials, if needed, as they conduct themselves across the UK. It is also a psychological warning, subtler than the embassy-monitoring techniques used by China and Russia in their own back yard. British diplomats who have worked in Beijing or Moscow already operate on the premise they are watched and monitored digitally 24 hours a day. “You have to assume your life is not your own,” said John Foreman, a former UK defence attache to Moscow in the run-up to the start of the war in Ukraine. “I’d chat to my opposite number in Beijing and we’d try to work out who of the two of us was most followed,” Foreman said. Every time he left the British embassy in the Russian capital he would be tailed. If it was on foot, by a couple of people; if it was by car, “there could be as many as four, because I was a defence attache”. Russian agents would “point thinly concealed listening devices at you if you sat in a cafe,” the former attache said. They would also track planned movements on his phone, adding that “they were quicker to find you if you used a Russian app rather than Google”. The whole aim was to put pressure on people, to the point where they lost their judgment. “Some people got so intimidated they wouldn’t leave the embassy, which was the point.” Critics of the planned Chinese embassy argue that it is the greater size of the new development that poses key problems. “More state employees from the People’s Republic of China equals more Chinese interference,” said Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, pointing to a US decision to shut a Chinese consulate in Houston in 2020 as an example. The diplomatic mission in Texas, comprising of 60 employees, was shut suddenly on US orders in July 2020 towards the end of the first Trump administration amid accusations that it was a base for planned intellectual property theft, in particular of medical research during the coronavirus pandemic, and that it was a location for the coercion of Chinese citizens wanted in their homeland. A second concern was highlighted in the Daily Telegraph last week. Publicly available floor plans for the embassy had been heavily redacted, but the newspaper obtained the full floor plans, revealing 208 previously blacked-out rooms, including a “hidden chamber” near high speed internet cables running through the adjacent street. The cabling, the newspaper suggested, could be at risk of being tapped underground. It is understood that the full plans were well known to the security services as part of the planning process, now led by the communities secretary, Steve Reed. Insiders add that even though the Royal Mint Court site is roughly between London’s two financial districts in the City and Canary Wharf, the concerns about cabling are exaggerated. “Traffic can be re-rerouted and, if necessary, cabling removed,” an official said. However, recent espionage incidents in the UK demonstrate that China does not run key intelligence operations out of embassies. Much of Beijing’s spying activity is conducted from China – from where it has hacked into global phone networks, in the Salt Typhoon episode. Pressure placed on researchers at Sheffield Hallam University to halt research about human rights abuses in China was conducted in Beijing. Three recent attempts by China to interfere in the Westminster parliament have all been conducted outside the embassy. Christine Lee, an Anglo-Chinese lawyer, was accused of trying to covertly cultivate “relationships with influential figures” in 2022 and subject of an MI5 warning. A parliamentary aide, Christopher Cash, was accused of passing sensitive information about Westminster to a friend, Christopher Berry, based in China, though a prosecution of the two collapsed. Two recruitment consultants based in China, Amanda Qiu and Shirly Shen, were accused by MI5 of using LinkedIn to try to recruit MPs and peers to obtain “non-public and insider insights” and, ultimately, insider information. “The embassy is only a small part of the total espionage threat from China; we need to be more alert to where the real dangers are coming from, when to be permissive and when to be assertive,” a former senior Whitehall official said.

Dublin Bay’s oyster graveyard rises from dead in effort to restore rich ecosystem

The dinghy slowed to a stop at a long line of black bobbing baskets and David Lawlor reached out to inspect the first one. Inside lay 60 oysters, all with their shells closed, shielding the life within. “They look great,” beamed Lawlor. So did their neighbours in the next basket and the ones after that, all down the line of 300 baskets, totalling 18,000 oysters. They are, however, never to be eaten. Instead they are tasked with reproducing and restoring oyster reefs to Dublin Bay more than two centuries after they were wiped out. “We want them to live long and happy lives,” said Lawlor. This pioneering project in Dún Laoghaire harbour is betting that a species that thrived here for millennia – before the waters became an oyster graveyard – can do so again. Similar restoration projects are unfolding elsewhere in a continent that once had sprawling reefs of the European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis) until overfishing, dredging and pollution wreaked obliteration. Reefs create rich ecosystems, provide a habitat for almost 200 fish and crustacean species and play a vital role in stabilising shorelines, nutrient cycling and water filtration. “These oysters are amazing climate heroes,” said Lawlor, co-founder of Green Ocean Foundation, a nonprofit that is driving efforts in Dublin. “They are natural filter feeders. Each oyster filters at a rate of 190 litres of seawater a day.” By feeding on plankton and nitrates, the oysters clear algae and help sunlight to reach the seafloor, boosting sea grass – a carbon sink – which in turns helps other species and improves coastal biodiversity and marine habitat. Ireland’s inhabitants cultivated oysters in the middle ages but in the 1800s industrialisation and overfishing killed off the Dublin Bay reefs – a phenomenon replicated from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. Inspired in part by New York’s Billion Oyster Project, Lawlor enlisted volunteers and business sponsors for pilot projects that moved oysters from Tralee Bay in County Kerry to sites in Malahide, Howth, Poolbeg and Dún Laoghaire, which ring Dublin bay, and in Greystones, in County Wicklow. “You’re building your understanding of why things work well or don’t work well. You want to make sure they survived, to see what the growth was like, and to see if they spawn,” said Lawlor. The transplanted oysters fared especially well in Dún Laoghaire so it was chosen for the next phase of the project – last November volunteers placed 300 baskets with 18,000 adult oysters in a sheltered part of the harbour. It is hoped they will become broodstock – spawn baby oysters in summer that will settle around the harbour and, in time, create a reef. Scientists from Dublin City University’s Water Institute analysed the water last year for baseline indicators and will monitor the oysters’ impact with sensors and chemical and biological assessment. The baskets are connected along a 100-metre line and are flipped by hand every few weeks to let Arctic terns, gulls and other birds to peck away fouling that might otherwise curb the flow of water through the baskets. In Northern Ireland, the charity Ulster Wildlife used a different technique recently to place 2,000 adult oysters and 30,000 juveniles, sourced from Scotland, on the Belfast Lough seabed. The Luna Oyster Project, a collaboration between Norfolk Seaweed and Oyster Heaven, aims to restore 4 million oysters to the North Sea by using the first mass deployment of clay structures called mother reef bricks. The Dublin initiative is far smaller but will hopefully grow, said Lawlor. “The temptation is to think massive but you need to take one step at a time. A lot of the challenge is bringing people with you,” he said, citing government departments, local councils, wildlife groups and harbour authorities. Last weekend, accompanied by volunteers Andrew Collins and Aoibheann Boyle, he returned to Dún Laoghaire, a wealthy, liberal neighbourhood, and boarded a dinghy to flip the baskets. Under a winter sun the trio recorded clips for the Green Ocean Foundation’s social media accounts and fielded supporters’ queries. One, sent in jest, proved unanswerable: “Can the oysters filter the smugness out of the people of Dún Laoghaire?”

Smuggled to suburbia: no end to danger for Ethiopians looking for better life in South Africa

On the evening of 5 January, residents driving through the suburb of Mulbarton in south Johannesburg saw five young men in the street dressed only in underwear. They were later picked up along with seven other young men by South African police. Police said two were in a car involved in a high-speed chase. A 47-year-old Ethiopian man was arrested and charged with kidnapping and failing to stop when police instructed him to. The 12 men, originally thought to be teenagers but said by police to be 22 to 33, were charged with being in South Africa illegally. The incident was just the latest involving young Ethiopian men and boys escaping from suburban houses in Johannesburg, where they were allegedly locked up in dire conditions while people smugglers demanded money from their relatives to free them. The UN’s International Organization for Migration estimated in 2024 that as many as 200,000 Ethiopians live in South Africa. Yordanos Estifanos, who has researched the “southern route” from Ethiopia to South Africa, said his “educated guess” was that tens of thousands arrived each year. Ethiopians have been migrating to South Africa since Nelson Mandela opened the country up to other Africans when he became president in 1994 at the end of apartheid, a few years after the brutal Derg junta that ruled Ethiopia was overthrown. “There have been other political moments in Ethiopia which have inspired waves of migration from particular regions, particularly where there’s been repression in those places,” said Tanya Zack, whose book The Chaos Precinct profiles Jeppe, the economic heart of Ethiopia’s diaspora in downtown Johannesburg. Aseged Yohannes arrived in South Africa in 2012 after fleeing Addis Ababa. He had been arrested and briefly imprisoned, after expressing support for an opposition party on Facebook and attending political meetings. “I did not feel safe there,” he said. Yohannes caught a bus with three friends to Moyale on the Kenyan border. There, he paid 22,000 birr (then about £785) to a smuggler, with another 20,000 due on arrival in South Africa. They walked over the border at night, then drove across Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique, taking about two months in total. Yohannes claimed asylum, worked in spaza corner shops, sold clothes and now manages an alcohol store in a Johannesburg township. The 36-year-old considers himself fortunate to have had a relatively smooth journey: “It was luck. God first, actually. And I paid and then I found the right people [smugglers].” Since then, the journey has become more dangerous and extortionary. In 2020, 64 people were found dead in a truck in Mozambique. The lucrative nature of the smuggling has drawn in more rival gangs, who sometimes intercept groups of migrants en route so they can trade them, said Estifanos. The profile of the Ethiopians travelling the more than 3,000 miles overland has also changed. “Increasingly, the migration is inspired by economic opportunity here and lack of opportunity in Ethiopia,” Zack said. Those who head south are now mostly following others from a region around the town of Hosanna in southern Ethiopia. This was at least partially catalysed by Tesfaye Habiso, Ethiopia’s ambassador to South Africa from 2002 to 2004. He told Dereje Feyissa, an Addis Ababa University adjunct professor, that he arranged for dozens of people from the region, including 15 extended family members, to come to South Africa. Estifanos said the migrants, who are mostly male, are driven by a combination of poverty in the largely rural area where they live and comparisons made with wealthy returnees and extravagant social media posts from people in South Africa. “It inculcates a sense of feeling inferior and left behind,” he said. Sahlu Abebe’s brother, who migrated to South Africa in 2012, told Abebe not to follow. But three years later, he set out anyway. His brother had no choice but to pay the first half of the 63,000 birr (then about £2,030) smuggler’s fee. In Tanzania, while travelling through a forest on foot, his friend fell sick with diarrhoea and vomiting and was left behind with another group. Abebe, now 36, assumed that he died, along with more than 40 others that he later heard had perished in Tanzania. “I was hoping to see him here,” he said, through a translator, at the township spaza shop he works at. “I never thought he would die on the road.” His group was then arrested in Malawi, where he spent six months crammed in a jail cell with up to 90 others. “The route was the most painful thing, as a human being,” he said. Abebe was not abused at the smugglers’ final stop in Johannesburg, something that appears to be a newer phenomenon. However, he did say he had been violently robbed twice in South Africa, where xenophobic attacks are also a constant risk. Abebe said he would not advise others in Hosanna to follow him. “I can’t say that you must come this side,” he said. “It is not safe.”