Migrant crisis: UK to send ships to tackle people smugglers

The UK will provide "vital military assets" to help a Nato mission tackling people smugglers in the Aegean Sea, David Cameron has said.

The PM said the amphibious landing ship RFA Mounts Bay would be sent, ahead of an emergency EU summit in Brussels.

The ship, which carries a Wildcat helicopter, will be working alongside three UK Border Force boats.

More than a million migrants entered the EU illegally by boat travelling mainly from Turkey to Greece last year.

RFA Mounts Bay and two Border Force patrol boats, known as cutters, will join naval vessels from Germany, Canada,
Turkey and Greece as part of Nato's first intervention in the migrant crisis.

The vessels will identify smugglers taking migrants to Greece and pass the information to the Turkish coastguard so it can intercept the boats and take the migrants back to Turkey.

The EU has pledged €3bn (£2.3bn; $3.3bn) to Turkey in return for housing migrants and stemming the flow.

Some 13,000 are stranded on Greece's border with Macedonia as European states seek to restrict entry.

RFA Mounts Bay would begin the operation in the "coming days", the cutter Protector was on its way to the region and a further cutter was expected to join them later this month, the government said.

Another Border Force boat, VOS Grace, is already in the Aegean Sea, between Greece and Turkey.

Source: BBC

Congo-born priest in Germany quits over racist threats

Olivier Ndjimbi-Tshiende, 66, told parishioners of his decision during a church service on Sunday in Zorneding, a small town near Munich in Bavaria.

A statement on the parish website (in German) said: "We are shocked and saddened by these [death] threats." He began preaching in the town in 2012.

Tensions had arisen between him and two local conservative CSU politicians.

Fr Ndjimbi-Tshiende criticised language used by local CSU leader Sylvia Boher in October. She had spoken of an "invasion" by Eritrean "refugees from military service".

The surge in asylum seekers entering the EU includes many Eritreans fleeing military service, to avoid years spent in deplorable conditions for little or no pay.

After Fr Ndjimbi-Tshiende's intervention a CSU friend of Ms Boher, Johann Haindl, lashed out at the priest with a racist insult.

Both CSU politicians were heavily criticised over the affair and resigned from their party posts.

Police investigation

The Christian Social Union (CSU), based in Bavaria, is politically allied with Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU).

Police are now investigating a suspected crime of racial incitement and abuse targeting Fr Ndjimbi-Tshiende.

Germany is struggling to accommodate record numbers of non-EU migrants - 1.1 million asylum seekers were registered last year.

German media say the priest, born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had received five death threats.

An online petition (in German) has been launched urging him to stay in Zorneding. But the Catholic Church Archbishopric in Munich plans to transfer him to a new post on 1 April.

The local broadcaster BR says that in 2014 a school project to help 35 child refugees in Zorneding triggered a barrage of xenophobic emails.

Source: BBC